Problem Horse | Buddy Sour

hi i'm ryan rose and i get to travel the country helping owners with challenging horses and i'm out to prove that these challenging horses actually want to do what we want them to do if we can present it to them in the right way using clear communication and building a connection to our idea let's get to it [Music] all right so we're here with um sarah and addison and we're here to look at addison's horse she has a buckskin mare really pretty horse that uh is giving her some trouble riding away from the other horse she tends to be really buddy sweet and so we're going to talk about that a little bit and find out a little bit more about the horse and kind of what you guys have been doing to try to work through it and see where it's at so can you guys tell me a little bit about um the horse they're her name and how old she is and just a little bit about her you bet so duchess is a seven-year-old aqha she's been used for just about everything from cattle sorting to trail riding and even gymkhana and weha so she's had a lot of experience in her short life but because she's been handed off multiple times in multiple disciplines she lacks confidence and quite honestly she's um just used to getting her way i think she's learned how to get out of doing what she needs to do yes yeah so what's the what's the worst behavior that you guys have seen seen from her the worst behavior is um where it appears as if she lacks confidence and when you ask her to ride out on her own she will stiffen up she loses her ability to relax she'll raise her neck really high and on occasion she's been known to rear and she doesn't do it to hurt she is just trying to get out of work and so what do you guys normally do to handle this in all honesty because this is my daughter's horse we've typically had addison dismount and i've gotten on her and just tried to patiently push her through to to where she needs to be but she doesn't really ever fully relax so i know that my horsemanship skills are not where they need to be to help get her to truly overcome the bad behavior okay and is this when she's by herself or is this your you have to when you have both horses yes what's the scenario always when she's asked to write out a loan yeah okay so if she's with her friend um she's calm cool and relaxed and we never have issues so when a horse is um kind of buddy sour or buddy sweet that issue can come from a few different things so we need to figure out is the horse not respecting the the handler and getting trying to evade what they're asking the horse to do or does the horse have like a more deep-seated issue with being separated from other horses all horses have an innate response to want to be with the herd a natural instinct to want to be with the herd but this can be amplified by their past experiences so sometimes when a baby horse is separated from its mom it can be it can happen in kind of an unnatural way so normally what happens is the foal gets old enough that it starts to get on its own and the mare actually will push the full off and they're in a large enough space that that's possible and it'll kind of go off with another band of of wheelings you know that are maybe six seven eight months old something like that if that doesn't happen naturally sometimes people are in a hurry to sell the horse when they're in captivity and we can kind of create an artificial separation by just pulling them apart and sending them on a trailer down the road and this can lead to some really deep seated uh herd bound issues now there's all different ways to go about separating them but that's not really what we're talking about here so we're gonna get the horse out i'm gonna watch uh sarah play with the horse and we're gonna see um what the horse does we're gonna see what sarah does and respond um we don't feel comfortable having addison do it so we're we're gonna try to keep it safe at the same time it'll help me understand what sarah's doing what the horse is doing and see where we can find a solution for this so stay tuned [Music] all right so we're going to get started with miss duchess and we could see um from the previous video that the ground skills um was where is even where the problem was starting and just the idea of going away from the other horse and the way i read it it was yes the horse was concerned about the other horse but it was also about her respecting the human as the leader and so the way we're going to build respect and connection from a horse as the leader is by getting control over their feet in different ways so the more ways we find to move their feet we start to move the needle and get a higher percentage of leadership and so what what she went to at first was circling the horse and that will give you maybe ten percent of the leadership role maybe if i could do a high quarter yield a four quarter yield a little side pass a backup we could get another 10 out of each and next thing you know we're at 80 90 percent of the leader so it's not are you or aren't you it's how much are you and so i'm going to bring the other horse in here and i'm going to play with her by the other horse and then we're going to practice taking taking the other horse away from her i want to establish some control where she feels connected with the other horse and then use that control to take her away and so one of the things that i noticed when you were sending her on a circle is you would go to send her and the horse would kind of head out shoulders first and that put her hind quarters by you and set her up in a position to maybe get kicked now luckily you're far enough out of the way but that's one of the things i want to address on the circle game so first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to control the hindquarters a little bit so i'm going to drive her hind in here with the flag and i'm looking for her to yield turn and face right there very good there we got a little lick and chew which means she found relief doing the yield so i have to put just enough pressure on that she feels uncomfortable so that when she does the move i'm looking for she'll find relief so i'm driving the hindquarters there so we get that turning face we'll see if she looks and chews again or not checking me out that's good good okay now i need a little bit of a backup good good so i want her to respect our space just a little bit more and we're going to ask for a shoulder yield there we go because i'm using the flight cause she seems pretty sensitive sometimes we use this to stick in a string now i'm going to ask her to move her hind quarters out so i need her to go on the circle and then move her hip so that she's circling with a shape around me like that that's a much better position to circle me and so i keep my lead rope short so that if i drive her out it brings her nose in and pushes her hip away i call this the three circle game and this is a simple thing but it's not easy at first there you can see her shaping up really good we'll take that very nice and we'll try that the other way so again i'm just trying to establish a little leadership with her on the ground where it's safer for us than in the saddle she's pretty respectful of that now that was good so see i could just put a little pressure there and that hip is going to the outside away from me very good now i'm going to practice changing directions drive that shoulder away so anytime she runs through my personal space bubble i'm gonna put a little pressure on her and let her get relief out there again she's decompressing she's licking and chewing when a horse does that it means they switch nervous systems and so she's getting there see that how she's stepping away from me there that's what we want to see so now i'm working on that change of direction so it's a slightly different yield so i'm running my hand down the rope i'm going to redirect her nose and then i'm gonna ask her to step off of that very good i wanted just a little bit more of a response there so i put a little pressure on her now i would rather put enough pressure on to be effective and not have to nag her with it that's also an important element of this so i but at the same time i offer it to her with a light feel first so i'm giving her time to move and yield and letting her know the pressure's coming if she chooses to lean on it so this changing directions is going to be a really beneficial thing for you to ask her to do ah she made a good choice that time very nice let's do that again i'm going to lift put a little pressure there for a little attitude now it's also something that's important to note i'm not looking for a horse like i like to grade their behaviors negative 10 to positive 10 positive 10 they couldn't have done it any better i mean they just were perfect negative 10 is like they're gonna kill themselves they're gonna kill a person it's it's really bad and so i would grade her behavior as like negative five negative four so if we get her to a negative two that's a significant improvement does that make sense we're not going to look for her to go from a negative 4 to a 10. so the negative 4 behavior was her kicking out and taking off and that that sort of thing that was where the the negative number comes in because if somebody were to get kicked if your daughter addison were to get kicked by her that's a trip to the hospital with broken ribs you know it's bad right so when it becomes that dangerous that's when it gets a negative number and it starts with just also owning space and just having her respect our bubble a little bit more you know a lot of people think that you have to get super super creative on the ground or just tire them out but it's really just the fundamentals if i can walk through her space here and have her just yield that makes me the leader in her herd so sometimes i'll just practice just i'll pick a line to walk on i'm going to put a little pressure here and i'm gonna touch her if she doesn't move out of the way it's her choice i don't care how she gets out of the way but she has to get out of the way i stayed on my line sometimes when i ask people to do this you'll see them they'll they'll go to put pressure on and they'll intentionally miss the horse well that horse is reading and seeing everything and so if if a person is a little bit nervous about touching the horse that horse is going to feel their lack of commitment to it and they're going to push through and they're going to wear the pressure and choose to ignore that that response so i'm gonna go ahead and take her out further now so at this point i feel like we're we're getting some communication down and now i want to test it so now i want to take her further away onto the field and add this distance to it and see if that see if her confidence and yields will hold through out there i could check some of my yields and see if there's still some yields here so you can see she's still just a little bit reactive to that flag so i'm just going to keep that flight going until she gets a little bit softer to it still reactive still reactive see she she's kind of learned that if she gets big and reacts that the person will stop doing what they're doing and i'm saying to her here just because you're getting big isn't going to get you relief from me moving this flag but now there's an underlying thing here which is my energy is still quiet and so i'm not touching her with it i'm not driving her strong i'm just waiting for her to get soft and give me a soft response getting closer there she's softening but she's not quite there yet there that was a little change we'll try that the other way so she's got to start to learn the rules of engagement here and that it's not the flag that determines that's going to put pressure on it's when she acts um like a pray animal and tries to escape by jumping and rearing and kicking and leaping through the air so i'm just gonna leave this here a little bit there see she's challenging the process she's trying to be curious about it and there she had a big let down there she stopped she licked and chewed so it's really important that if she gets bothered by something to leave that there until she settles and works through it that will be equally as important as teaching her to yield from pressure and move away it's teaching her to not be afraid of pressure but to understand it and understand what it means and so this is actually teaching her to follow a human's life up and life down you know people people are sometimes told that if you're calm your horse will be calm and unfortunately that's not true just because you're calm if something else bothers the horse and sets them off it doesn't matter how calm you are now you can train a horse to be calm when you're calm so what i can do is i can bring my life up and drive her around like this and as long as i keep driving her with the flag and then i lower my energy she can learn to be calm when i'm calm even though the flag is still being noisy and that's one of the lessons that she needs to learn is to follow the humans life up and life down you know it's kind of natural you'll see if one horse takes off running they all want to take off running it's natural for them to follow the life up and life down of a herd so now we're teaching her to follow the life up and life down of this herd the herd of two you and the horse so i think that's a good place for now and we'll go ahead and mount up and see if we can't get this a little better under saddle okay so we're gonna get a ride on duchess here and i have her pasture mate here with her and there's a couple of things that i would like her to know that when things are going well when conditions are good that's when i want to teach it to her that way if i ride her away and conditions become not ideal i'll be able to um utilize the same thing so i don't want to teach them something new when i'm in a survival situation because the horse is acting up or i'm on a trail something like that so i want to teach it here when things are going well this also creates a scenario where we're making it more uncomfortable or like i like to call it hot lava around this horse and make it relief away from her that's the scenario that we're trying to create now again i think it is 50 about the two horses but it's also about her seeing the the human or the rider as the leader okay so what i'm going to do to start off with is i'm just going to bend her around and i'm going to ask her to ex to yield to a disengagement a hindquarter yield so i want to teach her to disengage and then after i disengage her this would be a correction that i would use then i'm going to ask her to lower her head down and i'm going to do that by lifting up on the reins here and just waiting for her to think about lowering her head down and so this becomes something that is consistent that i can do if she starts to act up if you could stay down here that would be great okay now i'm going to set that up again so i'm going to bend her around and disengage so i'm putting pressure on here back by the back cinch this is meant to be a little bit uncomfortable and it's meant to get her attention onto me it's also meant to be a safe position for us to get into if she starts kind of jumping around and acting silly now i'm lifting it up making this uncomfortable for her to have her head up as soon as she thinks right there about putting her head down she gets relief so the secret with horses is to take what they're wanting to do work with the horse where they're at so she wants to be with her so that's where i need to start is work with her here make this uncomfortable and then show her that it's relief away from her versus just setting up a scenario where i take her directly away getting into a fight out there and just seeing who who comes out the other side with less bumps and bruises you know that's that's what i don't want to get into so i'm going to try this one more time i'm bending her to the right each time here i'm going to disengage a little bit now i'm going to ask her to lower her head and it also becomes a pattern that becomes consistent to her but i'm looking for her to to choose this answer so to me that still took a little bit too long so we're going to practice that a few more times before we try to use it out there let's go ahead and ask that again and ask her to lower her head down all right you see how that was like instant that's what we're after now when you do this it's also very important that you pick your reins up slowly and give that horse a chance to respond if you pick your hands up too fast then it becomes confusing okay so now i'm gonna ride around you and i'm gonna do a bunch of turns into you and whenever i turn into you i'm gonna make that a little bit uncomfortable so there's a couple ways to do this one way is just changing directions like this but i want it's got to be enough work and enough discomfort that she thinks this wasn't so fun so that there's an obvious difference to her when i ride away which i'm gonna try right now so now we're gonna ride away and we're just gonna see how easily can i ride away so i drop the reins i'm gonna guide her just subtly but if i ever feel like i have to put a lot of pressure on her we're going back to the her buddy horse so right about there is where we time out and we got to put another quarter in if we want to keep going and so we're going to take that we're just going to let her settle here and just let this feel good to her she wanted to eat grass i'd let her eat grass oh now she's ready so she's had enough she's going to head back to this other horse so i'm going to trot over there so i'm going to go let me help you go back to your friend here's your friend come on down so we're going to trot some circles we're going to change directions now i could do a little bit more passive way for this as well there you go drive her away that'll help but i'm i want him i'm wanting to be a little more assertive by her because i'm also trying to build a little respect for my cues and i want her to feel the difference now there we only made it to there now i'm going to ask her gently if she wants to go and she's telling me she wants to go back to this horse so i'm going to go okay pressure came on once she was facing this other horse does that make sense now i'm looking for her to change to where she's like i'm happy to go away from these other horses this was not as fun as i was hoping it would be there we go so i just gave her one little cluck there and she went yup i can keep going very nice so i hope you guys can see the difference in my energy and my attitude my intention i'm much softer over here i'm not going to get in a fight with her if she wants to to take me back to that other horse she's kind of leaning that way i'm just going to see if i can softly talk her out of that i could very good see if i can change directions here and i feel her pulling me back to that other horse so um what i'm going to do now is i'm going to help her get back to that other horse so we're going to trot over here but now i'm going to change strategies here a little bit i'm going to pick her up and i'm going to make this uncomfortable see it's uncomfortable to be by this other horse and now she kind of turned away there so now i'll put my reins down again if she wants to kind of turn and lean back here letter i call this signing him up let him get committed to what her idea is and then i'm going to go the location and the direction of this is not an uncomfortable or is not a comfortable spot when you turn and you come over here this is where the relief is can you see how that makes sense and it's i'm being assertive with her but i'm not picking a fight with her either i'm i'm working with her where she's at i'm letting her go by the other horse and i'm showing her that that is the uncomfortable spot to be in okay let's try this again so i'm going to sign her up to come in this way pick her up pressure's on i'm putting my legs on her she stepped away right away and went over here very good that felt really nice so at this point i'm feeling pretty good about where duchess is at both on the ground and the saddle but it doesn't really matter if i'm the only one that can do it with a horse now we need to see if sarah can reproduce these same results so what i'm going to have you do first is do the disengagement okay so just disengage her and then we're gonna ask her to lower her head down i want you to try that so one rain one rain bender to the side yep go to the right yeah go to the right tight circle and just only your right leg right leg back by the back cinch bumper bumper yup tapper with the rain tapper with the rain ideally on the right cheek there you go there okay now stop and now lift your reins up softly and just out soft soft soft you give her a chance there to settle hold it hold it just a little there for release release that's definitely head down though wasn't it okay now just go ahead and ask her to ride away here and then just kind of turn around pitch the reins loose and just see how easy it is if it feels like you have to do a lot to get her away like right there pick her up now lift up your hands pointing at this horse and pressure on pressure on strong with your legs now turn her the other way turn pressure on pressure on with your legs and release release yep go ahead and just ride on here good just loose rain just just casually nice soft energy here good so again if it takes more than that little squeeze right or back right or back here right or back strong right or back strong good that's good now we'll pick her up pressure pressure now turn her away and release release yep and just softly just take a ride out around the around the pasture there kind of picturesque sun setting taking your horse for a ride on the pasture go ahead and turn her away and ride back this way there how'd that feel very good so she's okay with turning away from that other horse good now addison can you go ahead and lead that other horse away please tap her with the rain keep your legs on and tap her with the rain good so it's really important there that you don't start kicking that you just squeeze and if she doesn't go you tap her with the rain that will teach her to respect your leg cue so that i believe is a bit of a separate issue from the herd the herd deal it's her respecting the humans pressure good that was better so how did you think that went sarah that went well yeah that's manageable something that we can work with day in week in a week out absolutely so you don't think you need me to come and write her every day to work through that you feel like you can do that all right that's excellent good deal so how did you feel um riding her the second time much more relaxed she was relaxed so i could relax so that just in turn helped both of us together yeah easier to think about what you're doing and stay focused yep to be right he's good leg positions awesome thank you all right keep up the good work i feel very privileged that you guys came here today we'll stay in touch yeah yeah just keep up the good work with her and you can see that just a few of those things changing on the ground and saddle will make a world of difference yeah all right keep it up very much a pleasure yeah well there you have it sarah and duchess are off to a good start but keep in mind this is only the start they need to keep practicing and they need to build this so that this uh new behavior becomes the normal and then the source will be ready for addison so thank you guys for watching this video hope you enjoyed it we got more problem horse videos coming at you thanks for watching

Channel: Ryan Rose

Views: 891,420

Keywords: horse, horse training

Id: 6o5nrcBPXas

Length: 28min 2sec (1682 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020