Circles on a Lead

As discussed previously, the cues to call the horse are to step backward, call him with your voice cue, and possibly motion to him with the whip. After your horse is doing that from a standstill, it’s time to add some energy to the equation.

Start by sending the horse around you, wearing a halter and long lead, on a left circle in a round pen. Hold the rope in your left hand and a longe whip or training stick in your right hand. Once the horse has gone around in one or two circles, swing the whip under the rope and out in front of him, which will block his forward motion.

At the same time, call your horse with your voice cue and step back, drawing him to you. Repeat this a few times, then go the other way and repeat the exercise with the horse traveling on circles to the right.

Leave the lead on in the beginning to help the horse understand that he should come to you, that way you can pull on the lead if necessary. Since you have already taught the horse how to do this from a standstill, this part should be relatively easy.

Loose Horse

Once you have had some success, take the halter and lead off and repeat the exercise with the horse loose. Send him around, cut him off just a little bit, and at the same time back up to draw him to you.

In some ways it becomes easier once the horse is loose because you don’t have to worry about getting tangled up in the lead rope. However, if you’re having any trouble, just put the halter and lead back on until the horse figures this exercise out.

You can practice this at different gaits, but I often find the trot is best because there will be enough energy without things getting too fast.

Liberty Circles

There are some misconceptions when it comes to horses circling at liberty; the main one is that a horse running around in a round pen without a halter on is not really a horse circling at liberty because the round pen is holding the horse in. It seems if the pen were bigger, then the horse would be farther away, so it’s not true liberty.

We always start in a pen, but you want to work toward the horse circling with a strong enough connection to you that in theory, he could be doing small circles around you in a 100-acre field.

The only tool you will need for this part is a whip (either a longe whip or buggy whip) or a training stick. Start by backing up to draw the horse to you.

When he comes to you, stop backing and use the whip to guide him around you as if you were longeing. However, only send the horse about half a circle around you and then back up again and call him to you.

Stop and pet the horse. Keep building off of this. Draw the horse to you, then have him start to circle a bit more, and then draw him back again.

What keeps the horse with you is the thought that he shouldn’t go far because at any second, you are going to call him back, and then he can stop and take a break. Your horse should look at being with you as his “happy place” for this training to work.

Advancing to Next Steps

Build up to where your horse will circle a few times around you before you call him back. If you notice that he looks like he’s going to leave while doing a circle, call him back right away (before he leaves).

If the horse does leave, move him briskly around the perimeter of the pen once or twice, then call him back and repeat the exercise. He will likely learn quickly that it’s easier to do the small, slower circles around you than the bigger, faster ones around the full pen.

Practice on both sides at both the walk and trot. Eventually you can do liberty circles at the lope, but make sure the trot is nearly perfect first.

Once your horse will come to you and circle both ways, you have an excellent liberty training foundation on your horse. From here, the world of liberty and all its possibilities open up to you. You can add obstacles, work in different settings, work with more than one liberty horse at once—and the list goes on. Use your imagination and have fun with it!

Watch our webinar with Jason & Bronwyn Irwin.

This article about building on liberty training basics appeared in the August 2024 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Building on Liberty Basics appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

There are several ways to get started with liberty. Everyone has their own style, but I am going to explain how I start training a horse for liberty. What makes liberty work is to make the horse’s favorite place in the world with you.

I basically want to turn you into a giant magnet for your horse so that he is either with you, or if he is away from you, he will be thinking about getting back to you. This is the invisible connection that keeps a liberty horse attached to the trainer—his desire to be with that person.

However, even though the goal is to work at liberty, I like to begin the early liberty training with a halter and lead rope attached instead of turning the horse loose. With the rope attached, I can teach the liberty cues much easier, because I can help the horse more and keep things slower than I could if the horse was free in the very beginning.

One last point before you start: make sure your horse has good ground manners before you begin this training. If your horse is pushy and doesn’t have good ground manners, that’s going to cause problems.

In the early stages of liberty training, you are going to be bringing your horse to you a lot, which teaches him to want to be with you. However, if your horse is rude, then he will likely end up pushing into you, which isn’t safe.

To get started, you will need a halter, lead rope, and a longe whip.

Watch our webinar with Jason & Bronwyn Irwin.

Step 1

Pick a voice cue to call your horse. It can be any word or a whistle or just about any other sound.

If you ever watched old Westerns, you have probably seen at least a few where the hero whistles or calls out and the horse comes running to save the day—usually just in the nick of time. This is the same idea. I usually say the word “here!”

Step 2

Stand your horse beside the arena wall or a good fence. Start out with the fence on your horse’s right side.

Stand in front of the horse holding the lead rope in your left hand and the longe whip in your right hand.

Step 3

Back away from your horse, and at the same time lower your whip. Give the voice cue to come to you, and then tap very lightly on the horse’s left shoulder.

If your horse starts walking toward you when you tap him, that’s great. However, if he doesn’t, it’s OK. As you back up, the lead rope will tighten, which will give the halter a tug and bring the horse to you anyway.

What is important is to give the voice cue before the tap on the shoulder; the horse needs a chance to respond to the verbal cue before feeling the tap.

Step 4

As the horse is walking toward you, keep backing up. When you’re ready to stop, say “whoa” and lift your whip straight into the air.

The whip going up like this encourages the horse to stop, and later on, the whip being held up can be the cue for the horse to stand still, no matter how far away you are.

Repeat these steps several times. Once your horse is coming to you willingly, just motion toward him, but don’t tap as often.

Step 5

Turn your horse around so that the fence is now on his left side. Stand in front of him holding the lead rope in your right hand and the longe whip in your left hand, then repeat all the same steps tapping on his left shoulder.

Repeat until your horse is walking toward you as soon as you motion with the whip and begin backing away. Be sure to be very inviting to the horse with your posture and expression.

When the horse comes to me, I pet him (usually using the whip) to teach him that all pressure goes away as soon as he comes to me.

Step 6

The idea behind using the fence and tools as described is to make coming to you the easiest thing for the horse to do.

The horse is held in on one side because the fence is there; he likely won’t go the other way because the longe whip is there, and he can’t go backward because of the lead rope attached to him. Coming to you, therefore, becomes the most logical thing for him to do.

However, we don’t want to be stuck at the fence forever, so now it’s time to get away from it and move around in the middle of the arena. Sometimes I will hold a second whip (such as a dressage whip) in my other hand. This way I can gently guide the horse back toward me if he veers off to either side. If you’re holding two whips, you would lower both to bring the horse to you and raise both to ask for the stop.

Step 7

If your horse is coming to you the moment you call him and is following you around willingly, it’s time to get rid of the physical connection. Take off the lead rope or put it around the horse’s neck. Practice calling the horse to you and stopping him, and if it’s going really well, you can get rid of the halter and lead rope completely.

You’re now working at liberty! To learn the next steps, stay tuned for Part 2 of this liberty training series.

This article about how to start training a horse for liberty appeared in the July 2024 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post How to Start Training a Horse for Liberty appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

As a clinician, there are a few training mistakes that I see again and again that are pretty easy to avoid once you know to watch out for them. At one point or another, I have fallen into all of these traps myself, and would like to help others avoid them.

1. Boring Your Horse

This problem is becoming more common all the time. It usually comes from a good place on the part of the trainer; he or she is trying to be thorough and cover all the necessary training steps, then repeat them until the horse has it down pat.

Although repetition is important when it comes to training horses, non-stop repetition is boring, takes away a horse’s desire to learn, and makes the training uninteresting. Think about the most boring teacher you ever had in school, and you probably get the picture.

Start to think in terms of quality instead of quantity when it comes to training. When you’re getting a good response from your horse, move on from that lesson for the day and do something else. Also try mixing in new lessons or putting little twists on old ones to change things up.

2. Only Trail Riding or Only Riding in an Arena

If you always ride in an arena, you stand a pretty good chance of ending up with a horse that knows a lot of maneuvers and handles well in a controlled environment, but he’s probably lacking in overall life skills because he hasn’t been exposed to much.

If you always ride in a straight line on a trail ride, you will likely have a horse that is very quiet and has been exposed to lots of things, but probably doesn’t handle very well—and he likely steers like a big cruise ship.

You need both types of training. You don’t need an actual arena to do what I’m going to refer to here as “arena-type exercises.” To have a well-rounded horse, you should work on improving suppling, steering, leg-yielding, and all the other exercises that you might do in an arena that will get your horse well-trained and handy.

You also need to spend time riding your horse on the trails to expose him to the world and to mix things up. Better yet, practice your arena exercises on the trail to make for a really well-rounded horse.

3. Too Many Programs

With so much horsemanship information available today from so many different sources, it’s very easy to get swamped with information and overwhelmed. This becomes a problem is when you take all this information and jumble it together, or even worse, constantly change the program you’re using.

Not all horsemanship programs fit together, and thinking you’re going to throw everything into a big bowl and mix it together often isn’t that effective. Think of it this way: If you add chocolate chips to a pancake mix, you have a slightly different type of pancake, which is fine. If you add onions, trout, and a bag of chips, it’s probably not going to be a very good mix, even though all those things are good on their own.

As you become more experienced, you can add little parts from different programs, but in the beginning, it’s usually better to stay the course with the program that you’re planning on using.

Constantly changing programs can be the most damaging because the horse never gets a chance to succeed. If every lesson is something completely different, he never gets a fair chance to learn anything properly.

This would be no different than if someone tried to teach you five new languages at the same time; chances are, you’re going to be overwhelmed and throw your hands up in frustration. I have seen several people take this approach with their horses, and they often end up with a horse that shuts down because he feels that he never gets a win and has never done anything right. Some horses will take it harder and completely blow up because they’re so exasperated.

I’m not saying that you can’t learn from everyone. But you need to stay the course with your training if it’s working and make small changes as you go instead of constantly making big changes.

If what you’re doing isn’t working, then you can make some bigger changes as needed. Also, as you get more experienced, you’ll know what can be added into your program with good results.

4. Tack or Equipment “Quick Fix”

Of course, you should use good tack and equipment that fits properly and is suitable for the job you’re trying to do.

What I’m referring to here is constantly looking for that one tool that’s supposedly going to fix everything with your horse. We all know that person who’s always buying a new bit, is constantly changing saddles, and is looking for every new training contraption on the market to fix the problems they’re having with their horse.

Switching equipment can help in some cases, but more often than not, the changes are minor. The main problem that I have with this isn’t so much that the person is changing equipment, but that they’re putting the focus and effort in the wrong places.

Assuming your horse is sound and healthy, 99 percent of the time the solution to training issues rests with you, his trainer. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times people have told me they were going to buy something new to fix a problem when it couldn’t have been more obvious that the person was making a training error.

While you shouldn’t be opposed to changing equipment if you’re having a problem, ask yourself honestly if you could be making a training error that is causing the problem. It’s pretty hard to buy the solution to a training problem—it’s likely going to be matter of working on yourself and your horsemanship.

What to Do with the Knowledge of Common Horse Training Mistakes

By being aware of the mistakes that are frequently made when training horses, you can spot the traps more easily and avoid them. I hope these tips help you in your horsemanship journey.

More Horse Training Advice from Jason Irwin

◆ Jason and Bronwyn Irwin Horsemanship Website
◆ Teach Your Horse to Stand Still While Mounting
◆ Training Your Horse to Cross Water

This article about common horse training mistakes appeared in the October 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Common Horse Training Mistakes appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.