Terrain Difficulty Level (Overview)

Training a horse on various terrain difficulty levels is important so the horse is not spooked when faced with obstacles. Build up a horse's confidence when introducing hills, rocks and rough terrain with helpful advice in this video on training horses.

Hi, I'm Rick Gore from the Travis Equestrian Center. Today we're going to talk about riding on uneven terrain. So, obviously you're not going to just take a horse down a hill like this without preparing him and showing him that he can do it, building his confidence. So we'll start on some little hills and then afterwards we're going to walk down here and I might walk a horse straight down at first or I may walk at an angle, to where he knows that he can control himself. And then I'm going to turn him a little bit and make him turn and change his footing. He doesn't want to do this because it's a little uncomfortable. And now we're going to walk forward and we're going to keep walking on this uneven. He's getting used to balancing me and he's getting used to balancing himself. And now instead of letting him go straight up this hill and run up the hill, I'm going to walk him up a couple of steps and we're going to just turn a little bit and try to keep him in control, there we go, so in case we ever get in a situation to where we need to turn around on a small area because there's a tree or there's a dead animal or a bear comes out and we need to turn around, this isn't the first time a horse is going to know this. He's going to know how to walk sideways on a hill, he's going to know how to stop on a hill, hey pay attention, get back. He's going to know how to back up, back up. It's a little bit muddy today. He's going to know how to turn. And all the time he's changing his balance and he's learning to carry me and himself doing everything that he knows how to do on the side of a hill. And this is just basic introducing a horse to uneven terrain and this is a little bit more advanced, you would start with smaller hills, smaller ditches, and then advance to something like this, to where if you need a horse to move up and down a hill, he's confident in how he does it and then he's confident in coming down it, nice and slow and controlled and a nice dropping his butt, I'm leaning back, I'm staying neutral, he's balancing me, he wants to run, he's getting a little irritated, he's giving me a little attitude so we're just going to slow down and we're just going to make him go nice and slow and controlled. He's using a lot of butt muscles, he'd rather run down that hill, but I gave him some good direction there and told him he couldn't do that and he walked down here just nice and fine. That's how you ride on some uneven terrain.