How to Stop a Bolting Horse - The Secret is in Prevention

hi and welcome i'm caroline best of dow horsemanship and today for the blog we are going to be working with zoar we'll show you the or in a minute so welcome back to everything horses and more this is lovey we're not gonna be working with lovey but we're going to be talking and demonstrating about my special technique for stopping a Bolton horse so Zora and I are gonna show that to you but what I wanted the camera to catch is that he's laying down hi honey so I just like to show everything hi baby I like to show the whole process of us getting our horses and working with our horses and grooming them and tacking them up so that you guys see consistently that we work the same way with all of the horses and the horses are the same each of these horses responds the same way even though they're unique their own individuals with their own personalities ha look at that beautiful boy look at your beautiful baby oh it's so warm and your bellies full you're gonna be a lazy horse we don't have much of a bolts with you aw sweet pea all right sweet pea Tamlyn come on Biggs so today I'm going to be showing you with our bareback pad and our bitless bridle which is really just our rope halter and lead rope tied into a hackamore style as soon as he decides to get up tell my bed but you can lay down afterwards come on come on sweet pea no I think your fan died huh No maybe not let me see yep that one died hi Riley yeah it looked like it was on its last leg don't just unplug it come on come on sore come on you're not gonna be much of a vaulting horse today are you come on bibs come on your mama's gotta get on yeah come on babe come on let's get up yep come on good boy good good good good boy oh yeah beautiful boy I love you too buddy oh here comes our huggin our hugging in 11:00 the coolest thing you guys I try to show you in each of my videos with my horses then I have a lot of horses is the relationship and how that's gonna keep you safe cuz they're gonna think about you they're gonna care about you you notice house or I've never done that with zorp that's our first time ask anybody here but it doesn't matter what the new experience is he's gonna look at me he's gonna see where I am feel where I am make sure I'm okay before he goes and gets up now I have to spend about 10 minutes he was beautifully cleaned before you lay down have to spend 10 minutes just getting you clean now oh my gosh buddy my buddy so yes today is hot in Florida in the summer well fall at September it's in the 90s or is not gonna be a Bolton horse per se but we're gonna get him up into a trot in a canter and show you guys this amazing technique it is not the same technique that everybody else teaches as far as bending a horse to a stop and we're gonna talk about that and when that specific technique is very effective and useful then being a horse to a stop and when it's not useful and it's not gonna help you and save you soar used to be one of the most spooky horses I've ever worked with and ridden he's in the unpredictable horse videos the two videos on YouTube he was much younger that has a lot to do with it as I talked about it many years ago the maturity level of your horse is not necessarily aged just the maturity level has a lot to do with them processing information and thinking not to mention the work that my method produces my training method this bar is getting the left brain exercising the left brain - thinking side of the horse that's the key right there is the group teacher worse how to use their brain so that they're not relying on their instincts all the time that's part of it that's part of the secret you guys that I want to talk about hi Sabrina you do need a thinking horse to be safe but you need the relationship it's got to be at least 75% that's what's keeping Zoar here with me right now it's not because I hit him or I force him to stand here or he has negative reinforcement and gets in trouble every time he moves he's staying here because he enjoys it because he wants to be here that is not a technique 75% of my work at least 75 if not greater is about the relationship it's not a technique but you learn technique you learn skill sets that are valuable and today we're going to talk about some of those skill sets but what I don't want you guys to think is that when you learn this specific technique of mine that that's gonna keep you safe it's not just about the technique look how big this horse is he's almost 2,000 pounds 18 hands you can't stop him if he's bolting you can't can't stop him physically you cannot now maybe if you put a really cruel bit in his mouth and you're a man and you're ten times stronger than me and you can pull that nose around but the point I'm making is that's not me and that's not you most of us aren't strong enough to deal with a horse like this we need to get his heart and his head he's got to be thinking about us and he's got to want to be with us that's number one I'm a bit thank you sweetie so while I'm gonna show you technique technique is only gonna get you so far when hits the fan you can stay there Sabrina I'm just working around to get this girth just right and the cobwebs in the mold oh I know your mother hasn't written you in months months come wake up Peppa there you go good boy so yep he knows what I'm doing it's got one year on me eivol on me love so when I was developing Zoar to be a safer horse I knew that it was gonna take years of him just to grow up because he was four years old when I got him I knew that he was going to mature late be a late bloomer he's ten now he's at a great age for most horses period and I also knew I didn't have the time and dedication to put into him because of my work schedule I had that working against me I had his age working against me his past experiences working against me but I knew that if I followed my own curriculum my own foundation training and did what I could and was consistent all those things would come together and they have me sweet boy all right I'm going to grab my water you're going to help me so let's see if I can get on look at all this stuff all these horses are taught to come help you no matter where you are especially when you ride bareback thank you big nope we're not going that way son it's like what is that noise my water Matiz used to okay in alt we go so yes I have a thinking horse you guys you have to have a thinking horse you have to teach your horse to back up to light contact which I showed you with Sundance in the video released not too long ago you have to have these things working for you like doing a turn on the haunches like I just did you have to have this level of technique or you're going to need a big bit and you're gonna pull forever and that's not the way I train and that's not being safe so you do need to put the time in to teach your horse some really some good skills meaning these horses need to know their leg yields how to move off your leg how to side pass turn on the haunches turn on the forehand they need to be able to stop with one rein and back up with light contact so you have to teach your horse had to become responsive so again everything that I'm talking about is getting their mind on you your horse paying attention to the subtlety of your cues the subtlety not that yanking and the pulling and the snatching around and bit that causes pain and that's why the horses respond Oh Sabrina we're gonna get that love thank you thank you so doors awake now and alert he's checking in with all his horses all his herd hi baby so yes Zor and I if I can reach that we have all the skills and technique to side pass up to that gate and on and move the gate which means I'm going to have to pick the gate up with my foot because a hair on my hand if I kept the oars oars gonna get it Thank You oars oars gonna get it you guys again a thinking horse good boy thank you love and we are going to close it isn't that pretty cool so I have been a judge and a designer of some of the horse world expose obstacle courses I am a working equitation instructor so you bet every time I trained horses and especially my own I am working on ethical boy so what I'm going with that is I know how amazing and amazingly important it is to have your horse respond to these types of cues again they're they're set up these cues which can be in raining and injure size to develop your horse to develop their mind their partnership you want to develop a responsive horse a light horse that's the first step you guys to stopping a bolting horse we all right there Thank You Biggs put this here knowing that one of the horses is probably gonna mess with it okay I'm also going to I'm gonna put it up on the round pen and grab myself a dress size come pay attention to meter size whip and I'll show you guys why because we're gonna teaching you a couple of the steps here on how to develop this not that I have to use it right now thank you big wait wait wait all right grab this little dime good way okay so just like I showed you in my video with Sundance how to help your horse become light to contact and responsive to contact you know this crop that I have here or dressage with is just an add-on I call it an add-on it's not a teaching tool so an add-on could be your leg could be a cluck a smooch or a tapping of this whip and so when I want to teach my horse to tune in and become more responsive to the subtlety of my hands the lightness of my hands if I know that they're going to push back or push through and also there's so many varying degrees of this especially if you've got a more sensitive horse that might have had some really negative riding experiences you're going to have trigger points who have to be really careful with your aids because it might trigger them so I know that soar does not have an issue with the whip so I don't have to work with that to desensitize him so to speak or to make sure that he's very confident and trusting with me and the whip I don't have to work on that but I would definitely recommend that you do that before you use a tool like this because so many horses had been been abused by these whips the whips have been used incorrectly so you know my gosh you'd go to pick up a whip like this and this big monster 2,000 pounds is running sideways to get away from it and Zoar is so agile so this is a historical fact about big horses draft horses they know innately instinctively that their size is a hindrance on some level they know that their size that they can push through things they know that they can that they're very powerful but they also know that it takes them twice as long to get out of the way and to move when there's a threat so that's what makes a horse especially this guy be able to literally spin sit back on his haunches you guys do a rollback basically a little perch Orlov odd and spin around and bolt the other direction he is so fast and yeah so you have to pay attention to a horse legs or you have to really know this type of a horse or any horse that is predisposed to bolting for whatever reason you have to work on that work on their confidence work on all of these things and then when you go to apply either the bend you want to bend them you need to bend them we're gonna back up just a little bit more get out of the get away from the camera a little bit so I do want to be able to at the halt have a bend like this you bet I do absolutely and I want to be able to bend him down from a trot into an immediate halt or a walk or small circle and we're going to talk about that but there's no way when a horse is bolting or cantering that you're able to bend them to a halt just remember that you can't take that kind of speed and shut it down into a bend because you'll flip them over and I don't know I've never been in a situation on a bolting horse where I was able to ever bend them the only thing that's ever stopped me was a technique I'm going to show you guys now before I show it to you and then I'll explain it a little bit you just have to know there's a lot more work that goes into creating this response from zoar and doing this technique there's a lot more steps and a lot more work and if you're interested you need to join my mastery membership program it's my start to finish it's my found it teaches you how to train your horse how to start them or we start them and work through a multitude of challenges that will arise during the training process I'm not going to get into all of that let's wake this big bloke up so again you need to have a horse that's supple and light if my hands if you can't back up with this light contact there's a problem because when you go to pool on a horse and they're bolting good luck they are not going to feel you and they certainly aren't going to be paying attention to you but it's got a lot easier when a horse gets excited when they're this connected to you both in the relationship and in the light contact it's so much easier for you to just shut that door down like I just did close my hands around the reins and look he already took a step back because he's already being taught or been taught through a lot of conditioning consistency and repetition how to respond to light contact and Zoar is one of the toughest horses I've ever worked with not only being a bolting horse but just being thick-headed and you know there's a sensitivity and intelligence with draft horses that's amazing but there can also be a dullness to them and Zoar came with a lot of prior training behaviors really negative training before I got him as a youngster we spent a lot of time undoing those behaviors and whatever training he had endured it made him worse when he came to me he was very dull he was very worried very stressed out very anxious good boy so I like that he's stretching and relaxed so you're reading my horse my horse looks really relaxed right now different than a high head set right so let's get him into a bigger walk good just watch what I'm going to do slide my hands down sit back and just pull that rein up you need to have this level of response to start with at the walk so good boy come good come step pay attention to me good boy thank you so once we have this going really well at the walk and I can do three very responsive and fluid steps back up steps three of them so here's our halt shorten my reigns knows how I shorten I don't pull one two three tap to get them to be a little bit more responsive to my hands come good good yep good good all I want is response right now I don't care how straight he is excellent good boy good baby good boy so just to quickly review before we move on you definitely want your suppling you want to be able to turn this horse in Bend him to the right and not have his feet move and you want to be able to do that in both directions consecutively that's one in each we're going for two to the right we're gonna go for two second to the left and a third I want to have this flexibility with my horse more he moves his feet the more opposition he tells me he has or the more uncomfortability he has so horse that has a busy mouth or busy feet has a busy mind so you need to practice this at the halt and while you're walking before you ever add speed and it has to be done correctly correctly means you're not pulling on your horse you're teaching your horse how to respond to light contact and that's why we have add-ons aids to help reinforce lightness if you want to learn this and more depth and really how to train your horse or others I have my program it's for trainers and for horse owners alike good boy you have to have this level of maneuverability because it's teaching the horse to think and teaching him to trust you at the same time I'm a rehab specialist and a foundation specialist I've gotten so many horses including Zora that could not focus on those types of cues and the more you pushed like juez or the more he'd want to blow in bolt because it takes a lot of trust to give you a hundred percent of that horses attention and that's what I'm trying to reinforce with you guys it's not all about technique you've got to have this horse's mind on you good boy and you can see his eye and his ears on me so now that we have a good halt and a really nice backup good booba we're gonna work on the truck and I'm going to demonstrate to you how it should be bending a horse at the trot to a stop as well as shutting it down complete halt and kena you're teaching horses as soon as they feel this contact to not only release themselves from it which means release back up but to back up again this helps with horses that have way too much go as well as Boulter's and work in a safe environment so we're gonna pick up a little trot here come on we've been off for many months many months so around we've got our circle come bed come please e good boy no I don't want a canter so here's our left bend left bend drop your other rein and Bend Bend sit back and Bend you don't need this other hand trust me with zoar when he would bolt I would be right here right Janine Janine's witnessed everything in the last four years with this horse I thought about getting rid of him trust me I'm like I don't need to get hurt and I'm not gonna cowboy you up not that that's where he was headed but I don't have the strength and I don't have the time that this horse needed but I love him and it's worked and he's had the time good boy here we go again left me pull out out out into your thigh out into your thigh put your knuckles on your thigh that's your best leverage good boy grant it if he's scared I am NOT going to be able to bend him there is no way and I'll show you another technique that I've done with many horses that have been posted on me and you can't stop them so I've got a loose rein so just watch I'm gonna bend them to the right but I'm gonna lean real far forward good and grab all the way up here yep you better have good balance as a rider grab all the way up there and pull that nose around and lean back gotta have a strong core you've got to have a good balance and I don't even have a saddle on by the saddle I'd feel even safer and I would be a lot safer boy after szura bolted with me the first and last time i did ride in my helmet and my dressage saddle with him for a while again we're gonna slide the hand down and pull out out out he's strong that's why you don't want to meet a horse this strong with a lot of force they'll get stronger and more oppositional it's by nature it's instinctive got to teach these guys to get lighter and to get become more responsive to lightness it's the exact opposite of what everyone's teaching everyone's get stronger use a bigger bit no teach these guys to get softer to become more responsive but you have to learn how to do that you have to learn how to do that he was not taught that when he came to me as a four-year-old all right so now we're gonna do my secret little technique here what are we gonna do okay picked up speed slide your hands down sit back and grab look at that that happened a lot faster than bending him and I didn't lose my balance nor was I taken off my balance point by stretching and reaching down so the point I'm trying to make is a speed faster than a walk and you go to bend these horses to an emergency stop is only going to get you so far if you have a saddle sure it's going to keep you in place you're gonna feel a lot safer absolutely I understand that but the point I'm making is with these big horses or if you're not strong enough and the horse pulls his nose in the opposite direction you better be ready to go and bend to that direction or you're gonna have to figure out something else so let's now see this at the caner we are both very out of shape you guys yes that is your friend Subaru so this is not a social event my dear so come on let's go come on lady I know I know it's just way too hot here in Florida for a big guy like this in the summer come on yep come on so we're gonna ask for a canter let's see how well we do cut might get a little Bob just let it go I'm gonna basically I just came to an emergency stop in my seat and he stopped but he's also really out of shape and lazy oh come on big let's do that again so it's not pretty you guys good good boy oh you big oaf okay good boy thank you so I'm letting him go as if he's run away with me a little bit we're gonna do a bend to a stop sit back sit back sit back so kind of went down to a trot to a halt believe me I'm using my stomach like crazy you guys he's pretty responsive if he really wanted to bolt like he did years ago I would not be successful but because we've done this mental work and he's grown up and we have a really great relationship it all helps I'm so sick of these professionals out there trying to give you smoke and mirrors trick you into thinking it's just one simple technique it's not good boy I've seen you get up and go out there pretty beautifully Bubba okay now we're gonna do my way a lot faster huh and what's cool is you've already seen him anticipating asking looking at me while he's cantering are we ready he's looking at me I can see him looking are we ready or do you when are we gonna stop so you're teaching that brain to when are we gonna stop it she's gonna ask now she's gonna ask now does that make sense I hope it's a lot more involved than you think though okay let's go let's do the Select good boobie he's breathing happy been to the left not every horse is is balanced Azure so good luck with that oh he's exhausted already he's so out of shape and let's look at my quick shorten the reins again slide to hand down shorten either pick up both or just pick up with one good boy thank you sweet thank you sweets is party you're registered name buddy you are sweet too good boy thank you good liked a buck but he's too lazy good here we go emergency stop my way yep you want your horse responding like that thinking about that alright that's a pretty quick video as I mentioned thank you there's a lot more that goes into it a lot more technique and development a quick review work on your relationship so your horse wants to be with you even in the work even in the work we work hard but we work together there's always a relationship that's going to be at least 75 percent that's what's going to save you the other is the technique but it's not just one technique the ultimate technique is slide your hands down lift up and you could teach a horse to become responsive to this contact that's the ultimate goal but there's many steps and building blocks to getting this and getting a horse that is so responsive to your leg to your seat to your queues you need that level of responsiveness that engagement from your horse to pay attention to the subtleties of your request and then if I need to pop pop pop couple little pups with the crop to say hey don't be so lazy pay attention to me too this lightness alright if you guys have any questions please leave them in the comments area or email me personally thank you may you always be one with your horse [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Tao of Horsemanship

Views: 185,337

Rating: 4.7505627 out of 5

Keywords: natural horsemanship, horse riding, horse training, pat parelli, bolting horse, natural horse training, your riding success, how to stop a bolting horse, understanding horses, softness in horses, spooky horse, horse fear, feel in horses, horse training tips, natural horsemanship training videos, pat parelli problem horse, bolting horse videos, bolting horse problem

Id: CiFlNScRqOI

Length: 33min 44sec (2024 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 12 2019