The Foundation - Part 1 - Hip Control

The Foundation - Part 1 - Hip Control

In last week's post I touched briefly on willing submission.  I want to stress the importance of this.  If you don't have this, or a good grasp of it with your horse then what I will outline as the foundation will mean nothing.  Sure, you may be able to do the tasks that I talk about but it will be forced and will lead to troubles down the road.  I also want to stress that there will be times of unwilling submission.  Horses are just like us, they have attitudes all their own and have bad days too. There will be days that things just won't go right.  Horses will have unwilling submission due to miscommunication.  If they don't understand what you're asking of them, don't be surprised to see their heads in the air, their eyes wild and their jaw rock hard.  It's a defense mechanism.  However, we need to make sure that we keep willing submission as our goal and when it happens, it's a reward to not only our horses but ourselves.  If you've rode a horse under willing submission, it's sure hard to ride one without that in the fore front of your mind. The feeling of it is something that I crave and work for whenever I ride. 

Okay, now that we have that down let's move on.  I'm not going to list the tasks in order of importance because they are all important to me.  Nor will I order them in the order that they are taught because each horse is different.  So bare with me if I jump from one thing to the next.  

HIP CONTROL 

Back when I was in college the one rein stop was popular. Maybe it still is, I don't really follow Clinton Anderson or clinicians like him as much.  We used to do it a lot with our horses teaching them to not only stop, but give us their nose while disengaging their hind quarters at the same time.  Well, after these horses that we started got that down pat and we eventually started them on barrels, I started to see some problems. Such as, as soon as I would come into the barrel and ask for their nose, they disengaged their hind end. Not much when going slow but as I started asking for speed, watch out!  Talk about polar opposite of what I wanted to achieve! So we quit the whole disengaging thing for awhile.  Don't get me wrong, the one reined stop has its time and place and is a great safety mechanism but I was not seeing how it was helping me.  However, I've come to realize that not only did it have a place in our program as a good safety mechanism but also a stepping stone to a horse learning to "engage" their hind quarters. 

 The one rein stop is a great way for a horse to learn to disengage their hindquarters.  If you are not familiar with it, the horse will be asked to stop forward movement by giving its nose to the riders leg as its hindquarters move away from its nose. So for example, to disengage the hind quarters with a one reined stop, say I'm trotting a straight line. I would ask the horse to stop by bringing his left rein to my hip as I tip my weight forward and over to his right shoulder while putting leg pressure with my left leg to make his hindquarters swing to the right. When the horse stops his forward motion and moves his hindquarters over (disengages) then the rein is released.

 Maybe it's just me but teaching a horse to engage their hind quarters vs to disengage is much harder.  In regards to engaging a horses hindquarters in barrel racing, it requires forward movement.  For example, to engage the hindquarters, as you're walking in a straight line, you would lift the left rein slightly forward and up (note: never over and across the center of the horses neck) to where you see the brown of the horses eye, you put your weight on your right pants pocket and bring your right leg back and put pressure on the ribs to ask them to move their hips to the left essentially walking a straight line but with the body in a "C" shape.  I want to be able to shift my weight and put pressure with my leg and have them engage or "tip their hip" at a walk, trot, and lope easily.  

So how does disengaging help with the engaging? Well, with the help of a one rein stop, it's fairly easy to teach them to disengage.  However, to teach them to engage I will have them standing still and essentially disengage and then shape them with the reins as if they are engaged and ask them to move forward taking care that their first step is not to shift their hind quarters away to make their body straight but to go forward in that "C" position.  Their second step should be with the inside hind leg and should be reaching up and over, not back and away.  If they take one step in the correct frame, I release them and let them walk straight bodied. I keep building on this from one step to two to three, etc, to where even in forward motion the position of your body will engage the hindquarters.  

Where does this apply to barrel racing? Well disengaging, I have no clue.  There for awhile after our colts were riding nice and we didn't have to worry so much about using the one rein stop for safety purposes, I quit doing it.  It wasn't until I realized why I was having problems getting my horses to engage their hindquarters that I had the "ah ha" moment on its usefulness to my training program.   Engaging the hindquarters to me is a huge part of barrel racing.  They say if you can control the hip, you can control the shoulder.  When I bring my horses to the pocket of the barrel, I want them to engage their hind quarters and be reaching up with that inside leg to use as a driving force when turning.  In short, with an engaged hip you get the 4 wheel drive turn.  I expect my colts to have a good grasp of this before I show them the pattern as it is used the very first day in my program. 

As I close this week's post I want to clarify something.  Because I start a lot of our colts on barrels with only 30 days on them, a lot of the tasks that I want them to know beforehand will not be set in stone. However, each and every ride I make with them we will be progressing on the foundation and working hard to make it solid.  I will stress though that before my colts are loping the pattern, these tasks will be fairly solid and will be relatively easy for the horse to do. 

So much for not turning this series into a novel!  Kudos to any of you that made it through that!  I hope you stick with me for next week's Foundations post about Leads!