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Cuing your horse to back up usually involves pulling back on the reins slightly and wiggling your wrists. Command a horse to back up with help from a riding instructor in this series on horseback riding.
Hi, my name's McKenna Smith, I am an instructor here at Enterprise Farms, and this is how to back up a horse. A couple of things we want to go over is our reigns, we want them to be short, so you have a good connection with the horse's mouth. As I'm backing up, I don't have to pull very hard with Dylan, because he's particularly soft in the mouth, meaning I don't need to use a lot of pressure. So, while some horses are a little more difficult, you can just kind of wiggle your wrists a little bit, and you can see the bit move in his mouth, and he feels that pressure, and we don't really necessarily need it with him, though. Another idea is to keep him straight. Right now, he doesn't really want to be too straight, so I'm giving him a little bit of a leg yield, and adding a little more leg pressure. Starting to approach the rail, and when backing up a horse into a confined space, it takes complete trust of the horse to the rider. And, he's actually doing pretty good. Especially if you're going into a confined space, I can always push a leg yield with the outside leg, and ask him to turn his hip totally around, so he can go through the corner. Now that we stopped backing up Dylan, you just want to make sure that your horse has a couple of cues, that it's not going to, you know, Dylan's not going to back up just by me pulling. A lot of the biggest cue is really your seat. You really want to make sure you're anchored into the saddle, and you want equal pressure on both sides of the legs for a straight backup. And then, your reigns are going to tell him where to go. So, your legs, with the pressure, they create energy, and your reigns are going to tell him exactly where the energy's going to go. And, for this instance, it's backing up. And, that's how to back up on a horse.
