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 Extreme Veteran
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Location: SW MO | This has probably been beat to death a 100 times but I have been working with a gelding and I need ideas. I am riding him at the walk in a divided O ring 3 piece mouth and work on bending and getting soft in his rib cage (he was straight as a board). he will tip his nose to the inside and soften into a nice arc some of the time, but other times he wants to just get really tight in the circle or he will want to stop moving his hind end and roll back. On top of that, he is super light so I only use fingertip pressure to ask him to do these things. How can I keep him from getting too tight or rolling back? I have been trying to keep him moving forward on the circle but he is quick. any suggestions appreciated! |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 672
| Work on disengaging his backend. You can start on the ground, and get the inside back leg to cross over. Can be pretty hard to figure out if they're pretty stiff and have never done it before. I always disengage the back end and front end on colts and stiff horses when I first get on them. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 456
Location: SW MO | veintiocho - 2016-08-18 3:22 PM
Work on disengaging his backend. You can start on the ground, and get the inside back leg to cross over. Can be pretty hard to figure out if they're pretty stiff and have never done it before. I always disengage the back end and front end on colts and stiff horses when I first get on them.
Thanks! I will work on that more. Do you start at a stand still or do you just go straight to doing it at a walk? |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 788
| agreed. I start at a walk or they get confused about what your asking. I just work them in a small circle on the ground where I can walk around in a circle beside them and ask them to give their head a little bit and move their hip over. Something I do with all my colts before I even ride them. I have a friend that has a mare I rode for her and she had kinda this same issue and I had her take her to the Chiro and sure enough, she was really sore in her lower back, so something you might consider. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 456
Location: SW MO | He has been adjusted and vet checked :) |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 672
| Mzbradford - 2016-08-18 3:36 PM
veintiocho - 2016-08-18 3:22 PM
Work on disengaging his backend. You can start on the ground, and get the inside back leg to cross over. Can be pretty hard to figure out if they're pretty stiff and have never done it before. I always disengage the back end and front end on colts and stiff horses when I first get on them.
Thanks! I will work on that more. Do you start at a stand still or do you just go straight to doing it at a walk?
Here is a link showing how to start. You can also do it from the ground just ask for their nose and move their hip around making sure you get that cross over. Once the get it down I'll ask for 3-4 steps. Front end is the same, just tip the nose and bump the shoulder making sure to get the legs crossed over.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xmKq3h9gxFY |
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 Elite Veteran
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Location: West Texas | Mzbradford - 2016-08-18 3:13 PM
This has probably been beat to death a 100 times but I have been working with a gelding and I need ideas. I am riding him at the walk in a divided O ring 3 piece mouth and work on bending and getting soft in his rib cage (he was straight as a board). he will tip his nose to the inside and soften into a nice arc some of the time, but other times he wants to just get really tight in the circle or he will want to stop moving his hind end and roll back. On top of that, he is super light so I only use fingertip pressure to ask him to do these things. How can I keep him from getting too tight or rolling back? I have been trying to keep him moving forward on the circle but he is quick. any suggestions appreciated!
Are you talking about around a barrel pattern or just riding circles and basic body control? Darn I hate to say this but disengaging the hind end is never a way to soften the ribcage. I am having a hard time seeing in my head what you are describing this horse doing, but moving the hind end keeps the ribcage straight. If I had to guess, it sounds to me like your horse is diving in his shoulders and not engaging the hind end. This is a common problem with horses. Pick the shoulders up and keep them straight, then asked for the ribs and get bend if you want....if the horse tries to come out of it by diving the shoulder in, use your foot to straighten push it back over. You can also do some counter bending or counter canter circles. On all of this you have to keep driving the hind end up underneath themselves and keep them propelling themselves forward with the hindend.
Edited by Tdove 2016-08-18 3:59 PM
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 456
Location: SW MO | just walking circles, no barrels. If he can't keep his shoulders up he won't turn a barrel the way I would like (previous owner let him dive in and drop his shoulders). So I have been going back to basics and getting him more broke before I even get him out of a walk. He would not even tip his nose to the inside and follow it around when I started. Now he will bend in his neck somewhat, and will follow the bend through the ribs, but he will either bring his shoulders in and tighten the circle or bend his body around my leg and roll back. Its hard for me to describe because I have never rode a horse that did this. I will try counter arcing him some and see what happens. |
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 Coyote Country Queen
Posts: 5666
| Tdove - 2016-08-18 3:54 PM
Mzbradford - 2016-08-18 3:13 PM
This has probably been beat to death a 100 times but I have been working with a gelding and I need ideas. I am riding him at the walk in a divided O ring 3 piece mouth and work on bending and getting soft in his rib cage (he was straight as a board). he will tip his nose to the inside and soften into a nice arc some of the time, but other times he wants to just get really tight in the circle or he will want to stop moving his hind end and roll back. On top of that, he is super light so I only use fingertip pressure to ask him to do these things. How can I keep him from getting too tight or rolling back? I have been trying to keep him moving forward on the circle but he is quick. any suggestions appreciated!
Are you talking about around a barrel pattern or just riding circles and basic body control? Darn I hate to say this but disengaging the hind end is never a way to soften the ribcage. I am having a hard time seeing in my head what you are describing this horse doing, but moving the hind end keeps the ribcage straight. If I had to guess, it sounds to me like your horse is diving in his shoulders and not engaging the hind end. This is a common problem with horses. Pick the shoulders up and keep them straight, then asked for the ribs and get bend if you want....if the horse tries to come out of it by diving the shoulder in, use your foot to straighten push it back over. You can also do some counter bending or counter canter circles. On all of this you have to keep driving the hind end up underneath themselves and keep them propelling themselves forward with the hindend.
I agree with this. I wanted to add that you need to get you horse to respect leg pressure, as well as learn to flex laterally. I'm sure this is implied, but I wanted to add it for clarification. I'm riding one right now that wants to lean into my leg and put her weight on the front leg and keep her head straight. She also wants to turn a tight circle. So we do a lot of counter arcing and two-tracking along with working on spirals to keep her light in the front end and moving forward. I began riding her in spurs and that little bit has done wonders in getting her to break at the rib cage instead of leaning into my leg. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 456
Location: SW MO | Counter arcing is probably what I will start working on today when I ride. He flexes laterally great at a stand still, he is just now starting to realize that is what I want at the walk too. Thank you! |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 672
| Tdove - 2016-08-18 3:54 PM
Mzbradford - 2016-08-18 3:13 PM
This has probably been beat to death a 100 times but I have been working with a gelding and I need ideas. I am riding him at the walk in a divided O ring 3 piece mouth and work on bending and getting soft in his rib cage (he was straight as a board). he will tip his nose to the inside and soften into a nice arc some of the time, but other times he wants to just get really tight in the circle or he will want to stop moving his hind end and roll back. On top of that, he is super light so I only use fingertip pressure to ask him to do these things. How can I keep him from getting too tight or rolling back? I have been trying to keep him moving forward on the circle but he is quick. any suggestions appreciated!
Are you talking about around a barrel pattern or just riding circles and basic body control? Darn I hate to say this but disengaging the hind end is never a way to soften the ribcage. I am having a hard time seeing in my head what you are describing this horse doing, but moving the hind end keeps the ribcage straight. If I had to guess, it sounds to me like your horse is diving in his shoulders and not engaging the hind end. This is a common problem with horses. Pick the shoulders up and keep them straight, then asked for the ribs and get bend if you want....if the horse tries to come out of it by diving the shoulder in, use your foot to straighten push it back over. You can also do some counter bending or counter canter circles. On all of this you have to keep driving the hind end up underneath themselves and keep them propelling themselves forward with the hindend.
I agree with what you said, and maybe I misunderstood her question, but you would want to have control over the horses back and front end before trying harder maneuvers like a reverse arc and which gaining control would begin with leg pressure/disengagement but maybe I went too far back to basics and he is further along. That's what o get form riding too many colts!! Whoops! |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 851
Location: West Texas | I agree with you 100%. The answer to the question is very dependent on where the horse is and what exactly he and she are doing. It looks like I probably assumed he was farther along. The very first thing to teach a colt is to disengage hind end, no question from me on that  |
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 878
Location: "...way down south in the Everglades..." | Tdove - 2016-08-18 5:24 PM I agree with you 100%. The answer to the question is very dependent on where the horse is and what exactly he and she are doing. It looks like I probably assumed he was farther along. The very first thing to teach a colt is to disengage hind end, no question from me on that
I agree with both of you as it totally depends on the age and the horse and how far back to basics OP's starting at.
OP - Do you have a video? Age of horse? Years running? Would help some to see what he's doing rather than explaining (at least for me as I'm totally a visual person lol). On a side note, I love counter arching for fixing lots of shoulder diving issues so it certainly sounds like it would be very good to work him on that as you mentioned he dove with his previous owner.
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 509
| I like les gotta methods get his five easy pieces DVD and work on the five body parts, i don't think disengaging the hip will help. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 509
| Les voigt lol |
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 Worst.Housekeeper.EVER.
Location: Missouri | I have one that will dive into a spin if I am not riding correctly.
I spent time teaching him that his mouth controlled his feet (picking up on right rein means step with right leg, etc) and moved into shoulder control, which led to a step or two of a spin.
I wanted all those buttons, but now I have to backtrack and teach forward and around, with shape/bend without sweeping the shoulders around.
I'm trying to keep a lot of inside leg at the cinch to keep his shoulder up. Outside leg is at rear cinch to keep his hip in. And sometimes I have to move forward out of the circle and try again.
Not sure if this makes sense or if it's anything close to what you're dealing with.... Hope it helps some though. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 456
Location: SW MO | Sorry guys! I don't usually get on here on weekends. UPDATE- I feel stupid because I went home and added spurs. He was 95% better! (I don't have a ton of leg strength because of nerve damage). TDove, I worked on counter arcing. its a work in progress.
Info on the horse. He is 10 years old. Ran 5 years at ammy rodeos and earned money with previous owner. disclaimer- he was allowed to dive into the turn instead of keeping is shoulder up and moving through the turn. SO in a attempt to correct it I have went back to basics. Gave him a year off the pattern, and now I am working on correct circles.
Edited by Mzbradford 2016-08-22 12:36 PM
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 456
Location: SW MO | Speedy Buckeye Girl - 2016-08-19 8:27 AM
Tdove - 2016-08-18 5:24 PM I agree with you 100%. The answer to the question is very dependent on where the horse is and what exactly he and she are doing. It looks like I probably assumed he was farther along. The very first thing to teach a colt is to disengage hind end, no question from me on that
OP - Do you have a video? Age of horse? Years running? Would help some to see what he's doing rather than explaining (at least for me as I'm totally a visual person lol). On a side note, I love counter arching for fixing lots of shoulder diving issues so it certainly sounds like it would be very good to work him on that as you mentioned he dove with his previous owner.
Getting him to listen to my legs has been half the battle. I took him WAY back to basics because I don't want any holes to show up in a run. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 456
Location: SW MO | Just 4 fun- My gelding is like that. he will go right into a spin if I pick up one rein too hard. What you have explained is what I have been doing. When he goes to dive in Ive been pushing him out with my inside foot or I just push him forward so he cant stop his motion. |
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 Some Kind of Trouble
Posts: 4430
| Squares exercises! |
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