3.

The next thing is that he ought to stop. He should stop when you say whoa, and when you pull on the reins. You should ride forward with body rhythm, and when you quit moving your body, he ought to stop. And, importantly, he needs to stop on his hocks, not on his front end.

Make It Happen:

What’s interesting about the stop is that from the beginning when you put a halter on a baby, you’re teaching him to go, turn, and stop. You’ve used the word whoa along the way. You’ve taught him when you quit moving on the ground, he should quit moving. That means he should know the word whoa. You’ve said it in the stall when you’ve caught him, led him, and longed him.

There’s a process I go through on a horse’s back that’s very important and builds off of what your horse knows on the ground. If you stick with my theory that what you’re trying to do is not to create any defense mechanisms, you know not to go to jerking one into the ground. When my horse goes forward and I want to stop, the first thing I do is quit riding. I quit moving my body and my legs, I sit deep in the saddle, and I say the word whoa. Then I pick up on the reins. The greener the horse is, the more I’ll pick up on one rein to turn rather than pull straight back and try to stop him straight. I want no unrequested forward motion. When I teach a horse to stop going forward, he can go right, left, stop, or back up. But no longer can he keep going forward. That way, you aren’t roughing your horse’s mouth around trying to stop him in a straight line.

I use the fence a lot in teaching the whoa, too. I’ll be trotting straight down the fence, and I’ll reach down my rein and bend my horse into the fence. I let the fence help him learn that there’s a barrier. The softer the front end in the stop, the better the back end works. If you rough the front end up when you stop, it’ll drop into the ground. Teaching a horse to stop the way I’ve described should keep the hind end the main force.