Dec 2, 2009 Lateral Movement   Before you begin this month’s exercise on lateral movement, your horse should be soft in the bridle and know the basics of collection. We covered how to teach these exercises in previous articles. You can get a sidepass if your horse isn’t soft and collected, but you will get a much prettier, correct, high quality sidepass if you take the time to get your horse soft and collected first. For this exercise you will need your normal saddle and bridle, and some type of protective boots on your horse’s front legs. To start, review disengaging the hindquarters. Ride forward, and think about looking at your horse’s hindquarters. You don’t actually have to look, just think about it. This will shift your seat and let your horse know what you want. Then, keeping your horse soft on one rein, disengage the hindquarters. Ride him forward out of this, and ask again. It’s very important to remember that both disengaging the hindquarters and the sidepass are forward movement exercises. Be careful not to lose your forward movement as you practice this. Review of disengaging the hindquarters is preparing you to teach your horse a turn on the forehand. Your goal is for the hind end to pivot around the front end. So, you are going to ask your horse to disengage the hindquarters more and more steps in a row, until he is pivoting a complete circle around his front end with his hind end. If things are not going well and your horse keeps moving his front end, don’t give up on what you want. Stay with him and keep asking until he gives you the correct response. If you stop asking and start over, you are rewarding him for an incorrect answer. At the same time, don’t get mad or frustrated when things aren’t going the way you would like. Just stay with your horse until you get a correct answer. Before you move on to the next part of the exercise, you need to have a level of control that allows you to move your horse’s hind end around while the front end stays basically still in both directions. The next step is to add the second rein to your turn on the forehand, helping your horse to begin straightening his neck. You want the same result: the hindquarters to pivot around the front end. Remember to keep your horse’s nose soft throughout all of this. Another thing to remember in this exercise and every time you train your horse is you need to ride him where he is at today. By that I mean that you shouldn’t go out with an idea in your head of how well your horse will do at a new exercise, and then get mad at him when he doesn’t fulfill that. Work through any problems you may have calmly and remember that the most important things are that you and your horse are safe and having fun. After your horse is doing a nice turn on the forehand on two reins, you are ready to start moving the shoulders. I teach these two pieces (hips and shoulders) separately and then put them together once the horse knows how to do both alone. I like to start this part of the exercise riding down a fence. This is meant as a visual aid for the rider more than for the horse. Ride straight down the fence line. Tilt your horse’s nose slightly towards the fence. As you ride down the fence, use your inside leg, starting at your seat bone, to push your horse’s shoulders away from the fence. Your horse’s shoulders need to be farther from the fence than his hips as you move away. This will let you know that his shoulders are actually moving over. It is very important that you always end the sideways shoulder movement by turning your horse back towards the fence, in the direction you had his nose tipped. If you don’t do this, your horse will stop following his nose when you steer him and start “running away through his shoulders”. Practice this exercise on both sides. There are two things you need to pay attention to in your riding throughout this exercise. Be sure to keep your body completely straight over the center of your horse. If you lean in the direction you want him to move, your weight actually pushes him in the opposite direction, making it harder for him to do what you are asking. So ideally you need to be completely centered, but if you can’t help leaning, lean away from the direction you are asking the horse to move. In this case, that would mean you will lean towards the fence. Also, you need to keep your hands one on each side of the horse’s neck. Don’t cross one hand over trying to pull your horse sideways. The next step in the exercise is to put the hip and shoulder movements together. Go away from the fence in to an open area. Move the shoulders, and as soon as you get a good step, disengage the hindquarters, moving the hips. Ride out of this. Don’t stop your horse. Remember, this is a forward motion exercise. You only need to do this part of the exercise a few times. You are just showing your horse that you want to put the two movements, hips and shoulders, together. Next, move the shoulders over and then move the hips. Use your leg to move your horse over. Keep the motion going sideways, rather than completely disengaging the hindquarters. As soon as you get one good step, release. With this part of the exercise, you want to teach it on one side till it is going very well, and only then switch to teaching the second side. It is very important that you have protective leg wraps on your horse for this. If he steps on himself and it hurts as he starts crossing over his front legs, he won’t want to keep going. The next part of this exercise is to move the hips and shoulders over together without starting by asking for one or the other. Use your outside rein to keep the horse straight. If his hips start to lag behind, use your leg to bump them over. If the shoulders start drifting ahead, use the outside rein to check them. If you feel you are going slightly forward, use the outside rein to bring your horse back a little. If you feel you are going slightly back, add more leg and let up on the reins a little. Play with adjusting your rein and leg pressure till you feel you are getting a straight sidepass. Get more and more steps in a row as your horse gets better at this. When your horse is doing really well with this in the open, put a pole on the ground as a marker and test yourself to see how straight your horse is really moving. I don’t start using a pole or marker on the ground until things are going really well in the open because I feel that the marker, not the sidepass, can become the rider’s goal. That just leads to frustration, and you will probably lose quality on the sidepass as you focus your attention on the marker. Use the marker only as a way to gauge the quality of the sidepass, not as an end in itself. When you are getting as many steps in a row as you want, and they are truly straight by your marker, you ready to move to asking for the sidepass from a standstill. Remember to stop and reward your horse regularly throughout these exercises. Enjoy your horses, and until next time, may God bless the trails you ride. For more information on Ken McNabb’s programs call us at 307-645-3149 or go to www.kenmcnabb.com.   Date   More Articles   12/2/09 Training a Pack Horse ...   12/2/09 Disengaging the Hindquarters ...   12/2/09 Softening to the Bit ...   12/2/09 Neck Reining ...   12/2/09 Rollbacks and Spins ...   12/2/09 Lateral Movement ...   12/2/09 Collection ...   7/14/09 Circle S's ...   7/14/09 Round Pen Fundamentals ...   7/14/09 Problem Solving in The Round Pen ...

Ken McNabb Horsemanship
P.O. Box 2350, Cody, WY 82414
307-645-3149