Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Partial disengagement

In the Savvy Mag this month there is an article by Linda about Partial disengagement to make a horse more relaxed and less tense. I am going to try that on Friday when we go out. Seems like a good idea and I have been thinking alot lately about how I can relax Garbo when we are riding with other horses and they get tense. And then he picks up on their emotions.... (emotionally scattered??).... It's something I have not really dealt with yet (just avoided the situations).

Quite often he will get tense and try and toss his head (grab the reins) or go faster (jig jog), I usually pull on one rein (or sometimes both in a moment of auto predator reaction) and he hates it (and normally bucks).

So I am going to try it on Friday as I think his sister will be tense being that it will be a new place for her.

I'll let you know how I go. I'll read the article a few more times first.

1 comment:

Cilla said...

Liz tosses her head and grabs for the bit and reins when she is tense..which are no longer there! Old riding school habit from being micro managed for all that time. I usually make sure I am relaxed and give her lots of reasuring strokes.
On the are occasion when she has jogged from excitement of others being around I found turning her in circles really helped calm her down. Not something I do very often as I am usually more than happy to have a horse that wants to move for a change! x