When getting a horse ready to ride, it's important to check in with a horse to make sure that he or she is not too energetic or frisky. Get a horse to pay attention to the rider with helpful advice from a reining horse trainer in this video on getting acquainted with a horse.
We're going to do some groundwork now, in order to get our horse ready to ride. It's just a nice little check-in to make sure that your horse, the edge is off of him, so that he's not too energetic, too frisky and run the risk of maybe bucking you off. You know your horse better than I do. But I always like to come out and just spend a couple of minutes and just get acquainted with my horse from the ground. There's a few things I like to work on, I like to make sure that I've got his eyes that he's paying attention to me. I also check to make sure that, that excess energy is off of him. Where, especially in cold weather, this horse could have a tendency to really want to buck, get pretty frisky. So I'm going to work that off of him from the ground. I'm also going to do some other things with him, which is going to help calm the horse and relax the horse. I want to get him used to movement, used to sound, used to distractions and used to signs on the wall. And whatever else happens to be in your surroundings, because I don't want anything to surprise him. You know, that would be terribly unsafe if I rode my horse in, what I would call a sterile atmosphere. Then went to ride with a friend, ride down to the neighbors, ride in a show. And now that's the first time that he's introduced to you know, any distractions. So I want to make sure that I create those things here. So there's going to be a lot of movement, there's going to be noise. I'm not going to protect this horse or babysit him, alright. He's going to have to learn to just deal with it and get used to it. Now, I've got what's called a Lunge Line on this horse. Now these are the kind I like, a nice rope lunge line. I don't like the nylon ones, they can slip through your hand and really burn your hand. I like these nice cotton ropes, it's not going to burn my hand, if he tries to pull on me pretty hard. But I'm also going to teach him not to do that, as well. I don't like to put a chain around a horse's nose and you know, lunge him like that, I've seen those. This is just snapped right to his halter, exactly like my lead rope would. Now I'm going to go out and lunge him around a little bit and show you what to do from the ground.
