How to Train a Horse to Jog & Lope

Training a horse to jog or lope begins with good groundwork where the horse learns both verbal and body cues. Practice groundwork before training a horse under saddle 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 how to get your horse to jog, trot, lope, under saddle and like most things with horses, in order to get them to do it under saddle, when you're riding them, you need to make sure they do it on the ground. So with good groundwork you should have prepared your horse, so he knows your verbal queues and any hand or leg or body queues that you've taught him on the ground. So, when you get on the saddle it will be nothing more than extenuation of you from which you've done on your groundwork. So I train my horses, click to trot and kiss to canter. That's a pretty standard type of training that a lot of people use when they're training their horse. When I click that means my horse picks up speed and goes into a trot. When I kiss, that means he picks up into a canter. And if I do that consistently on the ground when I'm lunging him, when I'm round pinning him and when I'm doing my groundwork, when I get in the saddle and he here's a click and he hears a kiss, he should respond. So he walks off as I squeeze my legs to tell him to walk, I don't have to say walk but I could of said walk. Another queue I give him is a trot, so as I turn around here, I'm going to squeeze my legs, click and say trot and he should move into a trot. Trot. Now he's into a trot, I need to keep him going with my body and tell him to keep walking, we're going to go ahead and keep turning around here. We're coming back in a trot. When I kiss and squeeze my legs, he should go into a canter. Easy, go ahead. And if I click and lean back a little bit, he should go back into a trot. Trot, trot. And when I kiss, he should go back into a canter. And that's how you teach a horse to trot and canter under saddle. Oh, good boy.