4.
Every horse should be able to back up. If you take a weanling, and you put a halter on him, he’s got to lead easy, turn easy, then back up. When you’re riding, it’s the same thing. Your horse needs to be able to back up when asked, according to what his job is. If he’s a trail horse, he should back cautiously and smoothly. If he’s a reining horse, he should move his feet and back up with his front freely moving with dispatch.
Make It Happen:
I like to ground drive my young horses, and teach them to get away from pressure by moving their feet backward. Before that, if a colt pushes into me and I push back on a halter or his nose, I teach him to move back. If you’ve done the groundwork, your horse should have a clue what backing up means.
When teaching a horse to back with a snaffle bit, I stand next to him by my stirrup, put one rein over the seat of the saddle and the other rein in my off
hand. I rock the reins, putting incremental pressure on his mouth, until he learns to step back. When I’m riding, he understands he should back away from pressure when I do the same thing. As I progress, I can ride him up into a corner of the arena, then rock my reins back and forth. I don’t let them out of the corner except for a backward step. Then I ride some circles and push them into the corner again and do so until they understand the only way out of that corner is to take a couple steps backward. think collection is frame. They see that tucked head and bowed neck, but that’s not what it is. It’s about your horse staying between your legs with softness and mobility. Flexing at the poll, not throwing his head, and using his neck and head in the manner that makes everything else function properly. Collection is how you sit and use your legs and hands. It’s taking your legs to push the back of your horse toward the front, rounding his back and getting him to move up under himself properly.
Make It Happen:
One of the keys to achieving collection is doing as little as you can to get your horse to react to the best of his knowledge. To start, you want to travel straight and let him learn to move off your leg as he goes forward. If you have resistance, put his head toward the fence as a barrier, take one leg away, and put the other leg on. This makes him move down the fence sideways in a sidepass maneuver, yielding from your outside leg without the forward motion being a problem.
The key is to use as little pressure as you possibly can to give him a chance to respond properly. If the response isn’t understandable or he totally resists, you should incrementally increase the cue to get him to understand.