Training at Buffalo Ridge Arena with Bruce Barber in Georgetown, Kentucky
This week of training was all about speed control and freeing up my horse’s movement. Taking a week and focusing on communicating with Irish in a way that he understands and responds to without picking his face up and poking him with my spur made for one happy horse. My horse Irish is a 13-year-old American Quarter Horse gelding that knows how to do all the maneuvers in a Reining pattern. He does not need to keep repeating the maneuvers, he needs to do them in a way that he is more willingly guided. Bruce believes that the best way to teach a horse is through work. Evaluate each maneuver and see what isn’t working and break it down and work on that part. He does not believe in doing the maneuver over and over and spurring a horse that already knows his job. Below are the exercises that we did during our week with Bruce Barber.
Speed Control
Speed control is like a dance according to Bruce. The way to communicate with your horse to slow down, speed up or stop is with your feet and your body. To develop the speed control, we made a diamond shape pattern instead of a circle. Begin by trotting to the first point once there loping off to the next point. Once you are at that point push down in your feet and stay behind the motion to tell the horse to slow down to the trot. To get the horse to speed up in the lope move your feet front and back with the motion of the horses back feet. Doing the diamond exercise also helps straighten up a horse that is over bent in or out of the circle. Once the horse is listening to your body do the same exercise in a circle. Bruce feels that putting pressure down into your feet and staying off the horse’s back allows the horse to drop his neck and round up his back ultimately freeing up the horse to move out.
Working the poles
Bruce placed three wooden poles about five feet apart horizontally on the ground. The goal of this exercise is get the horse to move out and pick his feet up. The added benefit is to see that when the rider is sitting down on the horse’s back it blocks the horses motion. We started at the walk and walked over the poles with me sitting down. Irish hit most of the poles with his feet. We tried it again and this time I put pressure in my feet and stood up out of the saddle and gave him a loose rein and he didn’t hit a pole. For the trot, we circled around the poles and turned perpendicular to the poles and trotted over them maintaining pressure in my feet and standing up out of the saddle. Irish loved this exercise by the end he was looking at his feet and the poles and you could feel him relax.
The “U” shape pole exercise is used to see if you have control of the horse body. This was set up so you had to trot into the inside of a “U” that was about 6 x 6 feet and circle around and trot back out. Doing this will help determine if your horse pushing in or out with their head, shoulder or hip. For me, Irish was pushing out with his shoulder. Determining that he was pushing out with his shoulder led to the reverse arch exercise.
The reverse arch exercise
The goal of this exercise is to get rid of any stiffness in the shoulder by pulling the horse’s head and neck to the outside of the circle. Trot and loop circles and pull your outside rein back to arch the horse’s head to the outside of the circle. This work helps to free up the shoulder so that the horse is able stay in the tight arch needed to complete a circle in the “U” shape pole exercise.
The “X” exercise
This exercise benefits the horse’s core, lead departure, lead changes, and roll backs. In this exercise, you make two diagonal lines across the pen to form an “X”. Starting at the trot push the horse hip over in the direction of the opposite corner you are heading to. Essentially the hip is leading while keeping the horse’s head in line with his body to form a diagonal line. Once you reach the opposite corner release the hip and trot around the top of the pen to the next corner and trot the diagonal line pushing the horse’s hip again to the opposite corner. Once you have it at the trot do the same maneuver at the lope. At the top of the pen push down into your feet and break into the trot to the next corner and pick up the lope pushing the hip over to the opposite corner. After a few “X” patterns at the lope instead of breaking into the trot ask for the lead change at the top of the pen and proceed to the next corner.
Counter canter lead change exercise
Counter cantering a circle is a great exercise to work on the lead change. Normally a horse wants to be in the correct lead on the circle so it becomes a natural movement for them to change to the correct lead when asked. It is important to stay in rhythm with the horse and to ask for the lead change by softening the horse’s chin and changing your weight into your outside hip and step through the change by placing your outside leg on and releasing the inside leg and clucking. This allows the horse to change into the correct lead for that circle while allowing you to practice the lead change.
Leaning in or out on the circle exercise.
This exercise helps the horse learn how to stay on the circle willingly. The exercise can be done at the trot and the lope. The goal is to make the horse work when they lean. Once they understand that it is less work to stay on the circle you have taught them to be more willingly guided. As you circle you will feel when the horse is leaning as soon as you feel it stop the horse, back them up and rollback and depart. Timing the work to happen as soon as the lean occurs is important so the horse connects the work with the leaning.