The front end of a horse is the most important part of the horse to work on because the horse naturally uses its front end a lot. Think about the horse's front end as a steering wheel with helpful advice from a reining horse trainer in this video on controlling the front end of a horse.
Now, the front end of our horse is the most important part to work on, and I probably spend seventy percent of my time and I'd recommend working on the front end of your horse, being able to move those feet around wherever you want them to go. Alright. Because, basically, sixty to seventy percent of your horse is up front. He's got all these part up here and only that much part in the back there. So, he uses his front end a lot just because that's what nature gave him. So I'm going to work on that end and that's, that is actually my steering wheel. If I get that right everything else falls into place. However, there are some things that I'm going to want to do with the back end of the horse. I want to be able to control that as well, and the back end is going to be controlled with my feet. Basically I'm going to control the front end with my hands, the back end with my feet. I imagine that his hands are his front feet, his feet are his back feet, so whatever my hands do, his hands should do, whatever my feet should do, his feet should do, front end, back end. Alright. Now, from where my legs hang, I'm going to reach back and just start teaching this horse to accept the squeeze. Now when I squeeze, he's supposed to move away from it. Whenever pressure is applied to a horse, it means move away. I'm teaching this horse some cues that he'll learn to respond to, and give me a lot more control over him all the way from his chin to his tail. As I squeeze back there, notice how he starts to move his hip. Okay. Now he's moving his hip away. Now I can squeeze with this foot from where it hangs, just slide it back a little bit, begin to squeeze, alright. Then he moves his back end over that way. Now I have control over both ends and all I have to do then, is teach this horse how to connect the two. So I can move his front end, alright, with my hands. Now I can take and apply a leg and move his back end around, alright. Then I can move the front end around again, squeeze with this leg here, move his back end around. So I can teach this horse to do all kinds of interesting things and I'm all, the whole thing I'm after is to be able to have complete control over his body and everything between his chin and his tail.
