Teaching a 12 yr old?

Its best to start at the very begining. Dressage is a great choice to train your horse in as it is the grassroots for most other disciplines, and at the lower levels the motion of the horse is not going to affect your scores very much.

As i said, begin from the ground up. If your horse does not respond to simple pressure aid on the ground, they are gogint o be very hard to teach one you are in the saddle. Start for a couple weeks reveiwing ground work. Press where you would if you were riding with your hand, and teach your horse to step sideways away from pressure. Dressage is a lot about moving from pressure, so make sure he has that down. Backwards, sideways, have him turn on the haunches and on the forehand, all on the ground.

Once that is very solid, integrate some lunging, first without side riens, then with them. Make sure the side reins are very loose, this just gives him an encouragement, a suggestion of where his head placement will be later.

Finally you can hop aboard, and remember not to only do dressage, have some variety, both you and your horse will get bored. Ride to music to develop your tempo. Again, start at teh begginging. Be 100 times softer then you feel you need to, and see if your horse responds.

At teh walk, you need to focus on beingvery soft with your aids and turing him using your body and not your hands. If you follow the motion with your hands and seat he may offer you a tuck of the head, a reachign for the bit. You will feel it. Kepp trying to work for that until you can maintain it.

At the trot, it is very much the same. Dont try sitting until your horse has begun to carry himself in a frame, as it can restrict his back from swinging. Be soft in your back and hands and legs, and invite him to stretch his neck and use his back properly. No part of you shoudl restrict him. follow his head if it turns the wrong direction with your hands, and use your seat to move him.

Repeat the process at the canter.

Once you have moved beyond the basics, its best to get lessons with a trainer.

fuzzy_pony@yahoo.com

Your age has very little to do with teaching your horse anything. Start by reading up on the subject matter. You didn't mention how much you knew about riding dressage. If you can read and learn you can teach your Saddlebred. Your horse's age is not an issue. The condition of his body may be. If he has no real defects in traveling you both should be fine. Start slow and don't expect perfection. The fun is finding out you can learn something new with you horse. It's progress - not perfection.

For dressage, you would need at least basic lessons to get the knowledge- it is not as easy as it looks, unless you have a horse that does it completely naturally.

Go to shows and watch good dressage riders in action- see how their horse moves and try to replicate it.

It is very hard to try to explain dressage in words, and would take a long time.

Right now, work on getting your horse supple and on the bit (inside leg, outside rein at the same time usually works), neck curved, using her back and abs (you should see a muscle line on her belly) and getting a forward walk (in most horses, you can go by if they are over tracking at the walk, but that is only with average back and leg length). Trot- same thing- they should be tracting up (hind lands where front left), and you should feel the power coming from her hind end.

Do a lot of circles and practice making them perfectly round.

Like I said, your best thing to do is get at least one or two lessons from someone who is at least doing first level dressage well, and once you have the basics, you can improvise and improve from there.

U need to work with her every day and reward her for doing the right thing...maybe get a dressage trainer or instructor out every other week or so to help you...My mom is a jumping trainer & did some dressage work and helped me with dressage (Im a jumper though..). Don't get mad if ur horse doesn't get what u want the first time. I think if you are patient and work hard your horse should do great!

Good Luck!

~Taylor~

I would take lessons with a trainer. That'll really help you a lot. Not necessarily a dressage trainer, though. I've had a lot of problems with my horses, and in the end it turned out they were all my fault. My trainer does natural horsemanship and she also rides dressage. I don't know if there are any in your area, I just got lucky, but I haven't found a problem that she can't help me solve.

A couple of things that may help are to work on going straight and going on a circle.

Work on your gaits, by doing lots of transitions, walk to trot to canter and back. Transitions will strengthen and balance you and your horse. Do you have a good library where you live or can your school help you get books? Try Jessica Jaheil, Alois Podhajsky, Mary Twelveponies, Sally Swift for starters. Cherry Hill's books may be good for you. she has one on arena exercises. I have found that learning to lunge a horse properly, to keep a nice round circle and then to control the gaits, is a really good way to see what your horse is doing and then you work towards that improvement when you are mounted. Balance is so important in riding. Good luck!

First off you create a bond between you and the horse than you start to treat it like a large more intelligent dog. youll see horses are also mans best freind but they are more shy so treatem well. good luck

HAHAHA get a whip?....no be patience give her treats very often when she does what u want. Then when she does something wrong take them away.

Check out the link. Good luck honey!!!

your best bet would probably be one of the local expert on horse training, so talking to them would be a good idea.