12/15/2024
Quick! What are five basic skills for a firm foundation in any riding horse? If you’ve been paying attention this week, you may be starting to think about riding your green horses in a ‘building block’ frame of mind.
We’re not wanting collection, or lateral movement, or changed speed, or shifted balance… yet. We’re finding forwardness. We’re turning left. We’re turning right. Today, we’re going to be stopping and waiting.
I like all my horses to learn to stop, whether they will be ridden Western, English, or driven. This is different from a downward transition but the DT will vastly improve once my horse learns to stop with soft acceptance. All we will have to do in the future, is ride forwardly into the DT with our leg on, breathing out as our horse beautifully shifts gears…
The key to all of this wondrousness is a simple thing called the trot stop.
So, I’ll not be showing you how to make a fantastic reining horse stop, with a run down and a big slide. I never have ‘sliders’ on my horses, the hind shoes that allow this manoeuvre without damaging the rear soft tissues… but I can safely show you the very basics that will allow such stops to one day happen, if this is your goal. No matter the sort of horse we plan to make, let’s aim to have him happy, willing and confident. Let’s begin.
Teaching a soft stop, or halt, means that we will have to teach ourselves to rethink how we use the reins in training. We’re wanting to use our elbows subtly but like pistons, smoothly just one, or the other. We will never be pulling on both reins! Maybe, have that sentence tattoo’d on your forearm, for knowing it by heart will change your riding, forever.
We’re going to teach ourselves that an audible exhale, done through our teeth, is the precursor every. single. time. we ask the horse to slow, or stop, from this point, onward. We’ll do this exhale, stopping while leading the horse from the ground. We’ll do it every single time we want him to think about reducing speed, or halting. This one thing is going to have him understand our wishes, without the need to pull on the reins.
It will become part of your shared language, throughout the entire ridden life of your horse. Your exhale is also going to be your horse’s cue to stand and wait.
If going forward means listening to my pulsing legs, then a green horse’s stop and slowing down will logically be found in my releasing the asking of my legs. This is hard for riders to understand but it’s important in teaching the relaxed stop. “We need to ride him forward in the downward transition!” I can hear you say. Yes, certainly. But not yet. Not now, when we need him to clearly understand that we want to stop going ahead.
If our pulsing legs mean forward, then stopping or slowing must be accompanied by taking off our leg, in the early riding of the green horse. To do anything else is to send a mixed message, which always results in a heavy push-me-pull-you ride. Once the horse understands to listen for our exhaled breath, it is easy to ride him forward with some leg, later on.
This means that for a horse to stop correctly, he must accept and understand our legs, when going forward! If he is afraid of our leg contact—or if he ignores it—he will be unable to stop correctly. This puts us right back to square one, installing our forward. Forwardness is always first.
Stopping and speed control are cousins. They come about in the very same way, first from the walk but if the horse is kind of getting the idea, I’ll start asking for the stop at the trot fairly quickly… and I’ll be doing these ‘trot stops’ for a very long time. It’s easier for a horse to get his hind legs actively underneath him at the trot and because he always has a pair of legs on the ground, he can easily keep his balance. We don’t want to frighten him, or frustrate him, something that happens when a lot of people think ‘STOP’.
I usually begin on a large circle. Remember, we’ve been teaching our green horse to guide with just the inside rein. So, we’re going along with the one rein to make the turn, the other ‘outside’ rein, hanging without much of a job. Yet. When I decide to stop my young horse, I will give that audible exhale and pick up the outside rein. As I do this, I will soften the inside rein enough that he will not feel as though I am pulling on both reins.
If he slows down, I reward him with a release. If he stops, I really reward him with a rest break and a petting.
If you remember nothing else from today’s lesson, remember this. Slowing down and stopping are rewarded with rest and love; they are never a punishment. In this way, we build a ‘want’ in the horse to do this; we will never instill that desire if we come across as cranky and demanding.
If my green horse needs stopping, or an emergency stop, I will just pull one rein around, either in an actual one-rein stop, or I’ll just pull him into the wall. This is understandable for him, a concentrated dose of the aforementioned ‘guiding’ or turning, with one rein. The onus of knowing how and when to do this is on us.
Teaching a good, soft stopping response in our horses is born from regular stopping and resting, on a loose rein. We give the horse time to process, to shake his head, to think. Soon, this is in the back of the horse’s mind as the place to be! Already, we have put the first brick in place for the foundation in the stop.
By slowing down and stopping from the walk on the exhale and the outside rein, we are building a clear understanding of riding into the outside rein when the horse becomes more advanced. He is learning a baby version of the half halt. Always, in my riding a young horse, I am wanting to break down advanced skills into baby steps that will serve this horse as he progresses. Makes sense, right?
We can absolutely pick up both reins to stop but the majority of our feel will be with one rein, only. Remember, the inside rein is for steering and mental guidance; the outside rein is for downward transitions and half-halts, throughout the ridden career of the horse.
As we pick up the horse to the trot, we will begin to do ‘trot stops’, simple little stops right out of second gear. Breathing out, picking up that rein while taking our legs off. Praise, rest and repeat. Keep it fun. Nobody is going to die here and nobody is trying to win an Olympic medal. Trot. Stop. Release. Praise. Rest. Repeat.
How long do we rest? I often have to tell people to count up to thirty, or fifty. We are so greedy! It just about kills us to do nothing and let the horse rest. This understanding of stopping forward motion and taking a puff will come very quickly to some horses… and it will take practically forever with others. Trust in your program and make sure you’re not pushing while you’re asking for a stop. It’s very easy thing to send mixed messages, especially if we’ve been doing so for years.
All the while this is going on, I will start making a point of asking my horse to back up, from the ground. This will be from his halter and lead rope at first and when he understands this, we can progress to asking with the bridle he is ridden in. We’re going to talk about correctly teaching the rein back tomorrow, so don’t fret too much today.
Note that until our horse can do backing up from the ground, he will always struggle with reining back under saddle.
When we’re working our trot stops, I don’t saw on the reins, nor do I want to kick on a green horse to speed his back steps up. We see that so often in the western world. No, we just wait. The second he sighs and softens, or slightly nods his head, we reward him. This can take a while.
We’re going to build on this and in a few tries, supported by learning how to do this well unmounted, he will begin to softly step back. The reining back from the stop is what engages the ‘sit’ muscles of the hind end. A lot of people, particularly from the English world, don’t like to back up from a halt early on, but I have found that it’s a straightforward thing to teach a horse to halt and stand, without fading back, if we just keep our leg on once we’ve reached immobility.
This backing up after stopping—and as my horse gains understanding, I’ll be backing up quite lot with each ride—is going to be key in teaching him to use himself properly, building a ‘rounding up’ feeling without pulling on the horse’s head.
Now, if my horse just doesn’t get the idea behind the trot stops, I don’t fret. I’ll pick up one rein and redirect him to a new direction and try again. If I’m facing 12:00 o’clock when I’m asking for the stop and he just ignores me, I’ll redirect to 8:00 or 4:00 o’clock, and try again. If he’s getting the idea but isn’t wanting to cease forward movement, I can ask for the stop quite close to the arena wall. I’ll redirect to 6:00 o’clock, until he understands. I’m not jerking, or sawing, or trying to ride him into it. I’m just changing direction, with the wall helping him understand.
It's really important, when teaching the stop, to allow a horse to make a mistake. Don’t saw, or jerk, or pull to get the stop. Just change direction and try again. Remember, when he does stop, to loosen the reins, reward and count to thirty. We want him to crave these still moments.
Even an English-ridden horse, or a driving horse, must be given this loose rein to show him he’s on the right track. A ‘good boy’ doesn’t cut it here; he must see and feel that this stopping is the right thing to do. When we go back to work, I’ll give him a free rein as we go forward again, as well. We want to be clearly understood, an encouraging teacher. Now is not the time to trot up into a collecting hand.
When we move forward after a stop and rest, I don’t usually ride straight ahead. I’ll turn the horse a bit, maybe at a 45˚ turn, or I’ll reverse entirely, before trotting off again. This is to instill the ‘stay’ mechanism, which is also true if we’re teaching the horse to stand after we’ve climbed aboard at the mounting block and excellent under saddle training for a driving horse.
Remember, we want them to guide and not just move off.
In the beginning, I am trotting and stopping by breathing, taking my legs off and picking up the outside rein. I’m not saying ‘whoa’ at the same time. I’m teaching my horse to listen to my body and the rein. Once he understands every single time, I will teach him to stop with The Word, said slowly and really drawn out like my exhaled breath. I will still take my legs off—I will still ‘quit riding’—when I use the spoken whoa.
My goal is to have a horse who will stop with only the rein… or, with only the whoa. I want to break this down into separate building blocks, so I won’t use both at the same time. For some reason, keeping them separate will keep a horse softer, I think because we ourselves stay under the threshold of brace.
Some horses will stop like lawn darts, or jam their heads down through the bit. This begins with tension and can soon become habitual, as they try to obey us without having the correct physical skills. Avoiding the lawn dart stop is the main reason I don’t first ride my horses into a stop with the word ‘Whoa!’. It tends to be too abrupt. Such horses, I’ll also invite them to slow down their trot, more to a jog, as it helps with their timing and worry.
An aside, many tense horses seemingly benefit from slowing down and learning to find a little jog trot. Jogging will not help them to move biomechanically correctly—such a buzzword right now—but it will help their mental game. Remember that tension and dread are emotional and until they are seen and acknowledged, they will undermine everything we strive to attain with the horse.
If my horse is propping on the front end to stop—a bounce, bounce feeling that is impossible to sit—I’ll continue on with my trot stops, just redirecting him in the opposite direction along the rail, or on a circle, only stopping at a 45˚ angle to the fence. This will help him figure out how to engage his hind end more and to not just brace against his front legs. I must be absolutely sure that if he’s ‘propping’, it’s not because I’m pulling on both reins!
When teaching these trot stops, don’t lean forward, don’t lean back or tense up. Just sit and exhale. Quit riding. Let the horse learn. If he doesn’t learn at first, no problem. Remember, we can do these trot stops about three or four feet from the wall. We will still exhale and quit riding. When there’s no answer, we will pull our outside rein toward the wall to change direction. We can do this quite calmly, without emotion or a disciplinary feel… but the horse will soon begin to understand us, no matter his breeding or planned future use.
We can hone these trot stops throughout the lifetime of the horse. We can do them on the trail, if it’s not slippery. No matter our intended discipline, these little stops will quickly tell us if the horse is in a receiving frame of mind and if he understands us.
Remember, knowing this softening is a building block to understanding beautiful and subtle half-halts, as well. This is a skill that will absolutely serve the horse. Melting into the ground is not a harsh physical demand; there is no punishment about it.
Ultimately, we will want to ask for the stop in three different ways. Does he stop off an exhale and the subtle rein? Does he stop off The Word? Does he stop when I just quit riding? With patience, our goal is to have him stop quietly and happily off all three.
A well-schooled horse can go through life with only good trot stops under his belt. There’s no real need to move up to loping the stops, unless you’ll be working cattle or competing with ridden patterns. If that’s the case, it is only fair to teach your horse how to melt into the ground at an easy three-beat gait. Cantering to a soft stop is quite a bit more difficult and for some horses, based upon their conformation, it’s not easy. For these horses, mastering a correct and happy trot stop will absolutely work for most riding.
If you’re wanting to install harder, sliding stops, you’ll need skid boots on the hind fetlocks and also, sliders. These are shoes with a ¾” to 1” width and very smooth bottom surfaces. These are not cruel devices, for they are necessary to allow the momentum of running and stopping to dissipate between the hooves and the ground, rather than through the hocks and stifles of the horse.
You will need good ground that will give under increased speed (not dirt, or mud, or grass) and you will need a horse who absolutely, completely stops beautifully calmly—and with a soft back up—every single time at both the trot stop and also, from the slow lope. Anything less, he is not ready to begin stopping at speed.
In closing, our stopping is always made better for the horse with a reason. Cows will teach a horse to stop on his hind end, rather than as a lawn dart, as will working the flag in the arena. These work their magic because the stopping is always followed by a change of direction. Sound familiar?
If there’s a reason and a reward behind what we teach, a horse will endeavour to make it happen.
Photo: Cait Bascom.
