Trouble With Patterns

Question: I need some advice about my mare and the FreeStyle patterns. I’ve been trying to work on them with her for at least 2-3 months and had to take a break from riding for a week because we were both getting frustrated. She will NOT hold up her side of the responsibility as the horse. I have to correct her every 2 seconds it seems like. Say with following the rail…she will either get WAY too close to the wall and I swear try and kill my leg, or continuously walk away from it! I’ve tried to break it down by going to Point-to-Point, with and/or without treats at every stop. That works…until we try to put it together! On the Figure 8, she tries to duck the carrot stick or will lean on the halter. I’ve tried breaking that down as well! She LOVES the weave and will do that at walk and trot. She also loves the Question Box. Those are no problem. She’s a LBE/LBI with very minor RBI tendencies. I’ve tried doing a lot of stuff like backing up, changes of direction with direct and indirect reins, circles, etc. while following the rail to keep it interesting, but even that doesn’t help. – Michele

Answer: Hi Michele! The fact that your horse likes Figure 8 but has trouble with Follow the Rail may tell you more about a physical issue than a mental one concerning your leadership or her responsibility. If a horse is crooked in their body – or the rider is – that could actually make it a lot harder for the horse to go straight and is especially obvious in one direction more than the other.

If your horse is crooked to the right, meaning the body is curved to the right, it will be easier for the horse to follow the rail when the rail is on the right side (going to the left, direction-wise). It will also mean that lateral flexion is easier to the right and harder to the left; sideways left will be easier; your saddle will tend to slip down to the right; right circles will be easier than left circles. If you put your left hand out in front of you and curve it a bit, you’ll get the picture of what your horse would look like from above. A simple way to improve this is to sit a little to the left of your saddle, so you are in the ‘relative’ center of your horse and not falling down to the right. This will help your horse to get straighter and move her ribs towards the center. When you sit more on the left side, it will help your horse to do follow the rail to the right (with the rail on your left) and also do left circles. I know this is a lot of left-right talking and thinking and could be a bit confusing at first! So take your time, draw some diagrams or use a banana to represent your horse’s shape! You’ll start to see what I’m talking about when you can simulate the situation like this.

Horses are not necessarily trying to be bad, but sometimes they can have trouble doing things. That’s why it’s important not to force them and try to figure out what is really going on. Now, if she’s pressing your leg into the rail, that’s probably the side that her ribs are bulging out – the bulging side of the banana, or to be consistent with the example I gave above, it would probably be on the horse’s left side with the rail on your left because you keep trying to put her close to the rail. When you keep her close to the rail, your leg hits it and and if you don’t she leaves the rail. Apart from the advice on helping to straighten your horse, as an emergency tactic, if you turn the horse’s nose towards the rail it moves the body away and stops your leg from hitting the rail.

I hope this helps Michele, and that your horse’s crookedness is relatively easy to fix. If it is severe, you might want to check the alignment and levels of her hips and shoulders. Sometimes when they are uneven, it affects the whole body. For more on this aspect, go to healthy-stride.com.

Yours Naturally,
Linda