Horse Training Question! Help?

First, you need to address the problem with your horse being barn sour. When your horse is leaving the barn, she is leaving her comfort zone. She needs to know that going out is not a punishment and she will always come back. This will take time. Try going for short easy rides over time. Start off with only walking and going to the end of the property or to just before the point where she starts misbehaving. Stop there, turn around and go back. Do this several times, then end your riding for the day. Do the same thing the next time you ride, but on the second trip for that day take her just a little further. Do not wait until she misbehaves to say "ok, lets go home" because that will only encourage her bad behavior. Attempt to time it to where you head home while she is still behaving herself. Each time, take her just a little further. When you have gotten away from the barn and she is behaving herself, it is ok to give her a treat (but not every time). That will encourage her to want to go out on the trails because then she will know that she has a chance of getting rewarded. Remember, do all of this at a walk and over the course of several days, or even a couple of weeks, depending on how much time your horse needs.

After you have handled that problem, you can work on her kicking out and pinning her ears back when you ask her to trot. While you are out on the trails (or in the roundpen if she exhibits this behavior there too) ask her to trot. If she pins her ears back or kicks out, give her a verbal warning, like firmly stating "No!", and bring her to a complete stop. Then try again. As soon as you get the behavior you want from your horse, praise her and give her a pat, but keep her in a trot. This also will take time and cannot be solved in one day. You just have to be attentive and firm with her.

Ground work is also a good thing to do with your horse so that you can earn her respect and teach her that you are in charge. Do some research on the Joining Up method and Natural Horsemanship. When done correctly, you can earn your horses respect in one day and have her follow you without a lead. That is a true sign that she has accepted you as her leader.

I might say educated horses are less complicated to journey most effective due to the fact that they have acquired "mileage" and so while soliciting for some thing they obviously recognize what you desire, even as no longer always giving it to you, they realise. Where in inexperienced horses you could have acquired to instruct them what you are asking, and many times this turns right into a struggle. School horses are plenty distinct considering they are utilized in classes mostly and get right into a movements, and probably break out with being lazy, so for you driving a inexperienced horse might be distinct, and most likely extra a laugh, motive you could have just a little extra forwardness and not more predictability.

How does her saddle fit? If she's being pinched then anything more than a walk is going to be painful.

She is barn sour, which you know. Start bringing a crop with you and make her only option forward. Ground work won't help this. She's learned she doesn't need to listen to you.

It is not more ground work that she needs it is more forceful riding.

You need to take a riding whip and when she stops you need to use it hard behind your leg to make her go forward. She might object in the form of a buck or kick, in which case she has earned another couple of whacks. When she goes forward give her a scratch on the neck and continue on the way.

She will soon realise that stopping is not worth her while.

Sierra has you buffaloed to no end. She's trained you very well indeed and is very spoiled from the sounds of it.

When someone says you need to go back and do a lot of groundwork, I realize that can sound like nonsense because "groundwork' is a term loosely used today that each person has their own definition for. Put let's put it this way: Groundwork, when done properly, establishes your leadership of your horse (shows your horse you're the leader) - it does this in a way that builds respect and trust from your horse to you and should work the other way too. Whatever you ask a horse to do under saddle, you should be able to get the horse to do from the ground - if you can't get it done with the horse on the ground, you won't get it done while you're in the saddle. riding is 90% groundwork and 10% refinement of those things learned from the ground while in the saddle - it's the foundation of all other work.

So - in order to do groundwork properly, you have to have some specific goals in mind and it helps to have a tutor to give you some ideas of exercised to do to meet those goals effectively and efficiently. I mean you can start out on your own not knowing anything and get to it, but not nearly as fast as you can using tools and techniques that known trainers or clinicians will give you. I'll get flak from this site for this because so many people are against Parelli - but Pat Parelli has build a program geared for helping people who know virtually nothing of leadership, respect and proper groundwork - it really helped me to understand when I was starting with my youngster. the seven games are geared towards doing a few things: Getting you to learn to control your horses feet in all 4 directions as you desire. Also, teaching you the important of levels of pressure of all kinds and teaching you the importance of consistency. Dennis Reis, Clinton Anderson and Chris Cox all have similar training content in DVDs as the Parelli's do - so check into any one of them.

The full answer to your question is much longer and deeper than can be answered here. Professional trainers take a good 30 days to do what you need to do with Sierra. Myself as a beginner took a couple years with a little DVD and book help to understand it. If you don't know what you need to know, it will take you many years to get it done if you can at all. I'd suggest that $100 or $200 worth of DVDs would be well worth the money to take you years less time to get it done right.

Basically, when working in a round pen and/or with a longe line, you use the force of pressure of your body space and your eyes to move the horse around. This is how horses show dominance over each other - they maintain a certain amount of body space. When a more dominant horse 'pushes into' the space of a less dominant horse and the less dominant backs or turns away, the more dominant is known to both to be the leader between the two. The more dominant doesn't establish it's place by simply going in an kicking the snot out of the less dominant nor actually by touching it in any way. So you ask the horse to move and if it doesn't, you ask a little harder by making your gestures more pressured - here's an example. You want the horse to move to the left - you step toward the horse's rear much like a predator would and when it moves off to the left, you release the pressure as the reward for doing what you want. You use that same pressure by either keeping it on consistently (staring at the horse and keeping in proximity to it's rear end to keep it moving away from you and increase the pressure by stepping closer to get the horse to move away faster. To remove the pressure, you drop eye contact and turn away. This whole process, when done right is what sets and maintains your leadership. So what's this got to do with riding and her minding? It sets you up as the leader. Groundwork is VERY complex, not just this simple action or idea. You must prove to your horse thru patience, repetition and understanding that you won't put her in danger at all - that she can trust you and herself out away from the barn in scary places. If you lose your temper, swat at her, yell at her or anything like that, you're proving that you don't understand her fears or needs and thus are not worthy of being a trusted leader - after all, if you don't understand why she's acting as she is when she's trying to tell you something, then how can you possibly be a trusted leader all the time?

If you wish to start dialogue thru email on this site, feel free to email me and I'll share the exercises I've done over the last 8 years and what I've learned trying to fix the exact same problems you've got now. There's really not enough space here to tell you everything you need to know. You'll need to test what I share with you as well as getting opinions from others - or an alternative is to buy a beginning groundwork DVD set - I like Buck Brannaman's ground work DVD bes

It's frustrating, and sometimes dangerous, dealing with a buddy-sour or barn-sour horse. But the solution isn't complicated. Read here . . .

sounds like shes in some discomfort. do you do her up after riding? as an ex athlete i'm sure she has old nagging injuries. try doing her up in all 4's for a week or so. say may have be getting injections for competitions that she no longer gets from you. i'd try a joint formula w/ hylaronic acid & glucosamine.

You may need to take her to the Vet and have her checked out. She may have some-thing wrong in her mouth. With her teeth and the bit is making it very uncomfortable for her. She may also have some-thing in her hooves. Have u cleaned them out very well lately? If not then i may suggest a farrier to come and check on her hooves. Please I.M me i have a lot of knowledge about horses. My horse did this once and it was her teeth were being sharpened by the bit and then cutting her tongue. This is very serious for you and your horse. If it gets so bad she may end up rearing and falling back while you are in the saddle. This has happened to one of my friends!