Jet’s first ride

11 Oct Jet’s first ride

After a few more days of groundwork with a saddle on it was time for Jet’s first ride with me.
He has already come such a long way. Has learnt a lot and is so much calmer than he was when he first came.

I always want to be sure that they are ready to ride. It’s not about riding the buck out of them or anything like that.
I want them not to even think about bucking or any bad behaviour. If you do your groundwork right you shouldn’t have any of those problems.

Before riding him we did some groundwork to make sure he is calm, thinking, respectful and safe to ride.

Some of the exercises we did were quite new to him.
One of them is when I ask him to move his front end around like doing a rollback when being lunged. It will still take a bit of practice but he started to get the idea of it.

We did a bit more circle driving where he needs to trot around me in a small circle. Move his hindquarters away from me, change direction by bringing his front end through and come forwards from the halter pressure. I really like that exercise as it teaches them so many things at once and helps a lot with a horse that pulls back when tied up.

The next one we worked on was flapping the stirrups while he goes around me in walk and trot. He has already learnt not to react when we do it at the standstill but he also needs to learn how to stay calm about it when moving around.

Horses find it difficult to do two things at once like men haha. This is basically desensitising in motion which is very important. Sometimes when you get on a young horse they are ok with it when you get on their back but once those feet start moving this is where they start bucking. The same thing when you first saddle them! Jet was a bit worried about it but nothing too bad and he realised that there was actually nothing to worry about.

He did really well once it was time to get on him. I always get halfway on them at first to make sure they are ok with me patting them all over from the other side. Also by getting on and off teaches them that they did the right thing by standing still. Nothing annoys me more than horses walking off when you are about to get on. Teach them to stand still right from the beginning!

The first thing we always start working on is flexing. Jet already knows very well how to flex from the ground. Remember you have to teach them that from the ground first. Otherwise you are just asking for trouble!

Jet is wearing a bitless bridle like every other horse would when I start them. Why?
Because of all the groundwork I have done. They have already learnt a lot about halter and nose pressure.

The first few weeks we are only going to work on one rein stops. Walk, trot, canter on a loose rein and him following his nose. We will also start doing some poles and jumping and hopefully get out hacking. It will all be on a loose rein.

Get all the basics there first and then start working on the fancy stuff. Make it really simple for them to understand and try and work on just one thing at a time to start with.

We had a little walk and trot around and started learning one rein stops! He did really well and I enjoyed it very much. Hopefully, he did too!

The video is quite long but hopefully not too boring.