Mums going to ride my horse? Confidence issues.?

Have her on lead line at a walk until she is confident, and then move on to the longe line. You will be amazed at how quickly she remembers everything. She'll return to doing the rising trot as she loses her fear.

She should perhaps spend more time on the ground with them, walking right up to a bunch of them and pushing on through. She knows the attitude, but is afraid to use it. Walk right with her, the two of you barging through a crowd of horses, making them step aside.

Who was that baseball player who said that 90% of the game is half mental?

I would have her on lead rein first. Are there any smaller spaces you could practise in? I remember when Jimmy bolted and I fell off it knocked my confidence for a bit, we started with just walking and a little bit of trotting in the yard and it helped loads! By the end of that day we were cantering again! Hope this helps! :)

I think I can help with this issue. I've also been riding since I was really small. My mother took me on a horse ride instead of a car ride when I was collicy. I've also been severely hurt. I was literally clothes lined off of a horse, I've been tossed several times and almost rolled on and I once broke a leg when younger by sliding off a show sheened horse that was about 17hh when I was wearing nylon soccer shorts. I severly lost my confidence in riding. Even though I'd force myself to do it, I had stomach cramps and anxiety up to and during the ride.

I've overcome most of that by now and I'll tell you how, but I can also tell you that I'm now training two colts and I've given one his first rides, but I'll still have anxiety attacks thinking about getting tossed and drug by the stirrup. So once you've had a bad experience, it's about managing your fear. It'll always be there, because you know they're capable of hurting you by accident.

I finally found out that to get over fear you have to have confidence and the only way to have confidence is to have knowledge. As long as I've been riding, for the majority of that time it was trail rides where we simply walked and my instructions were to kick to go, pull back for whoa, pull left to go left and vice versa for right. Also, that if he tried to run away with me, pull his head around and eventually he'd run into a tree and stop. So having ridden for many years doesn't make you a knowledgable confident rider. What finally got me over the hump was two things. First I started riding in the mountains with my uncle. He rides his horses every sunny day all summer. So I was on a horse I knew I could trust implicitly. He's trained before and I knew there would be no bad behavior and that there would be no excess energy. They knew how to navigate the terrain and wouldn't lead me astray. I can't stress enough how much confidence an absolutly trust worthy horse imparts.

Second was I increased my knowledge. I don't understand why someone will put someone on a horse with so little knowledge. I told you how I was taught. You wouldn't put a teenager in a car and say the gas is go, the brake is whoa, turn the wheel to go the direction you want. Good luck, you'll figure it out. So why is it done on horses. The first thing I'd teach someone is where the brake is. Your horse also has to have a working brake. They need to be able to do a one rein stop at multiple speeds and it needs to be muscle memory. Then she needs to practice that manuver at each speed and become bored with it before moving on. This will have the horse listening to her and give her a saftey net. Next, I'd practice yielding the hindquarters. If you can bend your horse around and disengage his hindquarters, you'll be safe in most situations.

After that, you can work on whatever you want, but I've found that in teaching a horse or a person you need an objective. Don't just ask her to steer her horse around, ask her to weave him in and out of cones. This really prevents your horse from wandering around and her vaugley asking him. To you it might look like she's got it under control, when in reallity he's ignoring her and she's not being assertive. If you have something like cones down, then there is a clear cut boundary between success and failure. When I was teaching my babies to lead and I came off the fence, I'd kick their soccer ball in front of me. It helped desensitize them as gave me a definite place to lead them. We werent' just leading around. We were going from a-b over and over again. So a goal is important.

Having said all of this, I'll advice you not to teach her for a few reasons. One is that while you say your horse is dead broke, and it may be, in reality it's dead broke for you. I remember Clinton Anderson saying that he once trained a horse for a client and it was just perfect. The man comes out and goes to get on. His legs are shorter so the stirrups come up. He gets on and his toe gooches the horse. Then when it's wiggling, he accidently kicks it in the butt. He got dumped. Clinton realized that he'd trained it for his skill level and not the skill level of the owner. He never gooched it's side because his stirrups were down further down and also he swung over smoothly. So make sure you act clumsy with your horse and see if he's still calm. A lesson horse is plenty used to this.