How To Stop Your Horse From Jigging On Trail
Games Guy | January 31, 2012
Are your horses jigging on trail? Horses wait for your cue to figure out what action they should perform next, and when they are not used to your cue, then comes the jigging. Baptism by fire won’t do; the simplest way around the issue is to work on their training at home first by establishing your cues and ensure that your horse is responsive to them.
Here is a simple technique of equestrian coaching to get your horse to be right on cue, so to speak. Use a round pen of about 60′. In this round pen, use your rein and seat position as coaching cuess for your horse to either decrease or increase their gait speed.
It’s less complicated if you start with a trot on a loose rein: Shift yourself to a two point seat position and let your hand go as far up the horse’s neck taking care not to get your face in front of or over the pommel. Use your established cue (voice, or leg) to inform your horse to go quicker without changing gait. Keep her at this pace till you feel she is prepared to slow down. When you think she’s thinking about letting up, sit down and remove your hand from its position on her neck. If she slows, good—praise her. Otherwise, resume your two point position and push your hand up her neck again and give her your cue to speed up like before. If she breaks gait turn her head towards the railing and change direction using the rail to help turn her. Get her used to breaking down gait when you sit right down and start changing direction you wish to build this as a definite stop.
You must have patience with the procedure , and at first there won’t be any outstanding changes. You may expect some degree of understanding in your horse after roughly 20 minutes of work. But like many other techniques of equestrian coaching, once your horse tires out, the routine will start sinking in more and you’ll be able to see satisfactory results. Keep on applying this type of training for a couple of days depending on the horse you are coaching until you get both a robust trot and a slow one. You know that you have won when there’s a greater spread of gait speed at your immediate command.
Back on the trail, rein in as much as you can. If she breaks gait, just do as you did in the pen: turn her back and let her know to continue the gait you started with. If in case she breaks gait again, just repeat what you trained for. Soon enough she’ll stay on your chosen gait. A word of caution though: going out with a large group straight after training would put a lot of stress on your horse, so try the trail on your own first or with someone who can wait for you to catch up.
Horses are Heather Toms’ passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100’s of articles with other horse lovers… like all things about stable rugs