In teaching a horse to lunge, it's important to reserve the use of a clucking sound for when the horse quits. Discover how to direct a horse's speed with helpful advice from a reining horse trainer in this video on lunging in horse groundwork.
I'm going to go ahead and lunge Sparky or actually do this groundwork. I want to, always direct where he's going and the speed, whether it's slow, whether it's fast, coming down from fast to slow, I'm going to be the one directing that. Now, I'm going to use my hands in such a way that this horse is going to learn to follow 'em. I'll take my left hand when I want the horse to go left, and I'll put that lunge rope, the leading line, and I'll stick my hand out like that. Then I'll take my right hand where the rest of the coils are and the tail, and I'll send him out around me, alright? And then I'm going to follow the horse around and stay right about center on the horse, always driving him around me, and make sure that I am in control. Now I'm going to start him off to the left, lift that left hand, cluck to him, and he goes out at a nice walk. Now, step him up to a trot, notice I'm leading with my inside hand, my right hand is out here and I'm actually driving him the whole way. As long as he keeps going, I stay pretty quiet. Now I don't want you to wear out your clucker, that clucking sound I'm making. That's a cue for him to keep going. Alright? The only time I'm going to use it is when he quits, or it looks like he's going to. Don't cluck to your horse the whole time. He's supposed to be responsible for going around. Now obviously, I'm not paying much attention to him. Again, follow your horse around. I don't want to stand in one spot and pass the rope behind me. That could be dangerous, he could drag me around. I want to be always facing my horse. So I'm going to make all the turns with him, always driving him around. Now, next time around, I'm going to ask him to stop. Whoa! There, now when I ask him to stop, I just put my other hand on the rope and that blocks him, alright? Now I've got my horse stopped and I can go the other direction if I want to.
