Скачать или смотреть Groundwork with a reactive, flighty training horse

Birgit doing some groundwork with a 12-year-old Arabian mare who came to Falling Star Ranch a few weeks ago to be restarted under saddle.
The mare is very flighty and reactive, has some bucking issues at the canter, as well as holes in the foundation of her training. She is also a chronic, violent puller, so she can’t be tied safely.
The issues here are several: herd-boundness, flightiness/extreme reactivity, unwillingness to work with humans, not able to focus/short attention span/impatience.
Birgit has been working on establishing a relationship with the mare and creating not only trust and respect, but willingness, focus and confidence. In order to resolve the above mentioned issues, the mare needs to accept the human as a leader.
Birgit has spent a few sessions with the mare in the round pen so she could work with her at liberty and has made quite a bit of progress.
In this video Birgit is helping the mare find comfort and relaxation through boundaries, which is a very novel concept to this mare who would much rather push through any boundary or pull back.
Frequently (in fact, almost always) a horse who rejects/pushes through boundaries does so as a result of inadvertently mixed body language from the handler. For this reason Birgit carefully and purposefully uses her body to deliver clear and consistent requests to the horse to move her body in a precise way.
In the second part of the video Birgit is using the “straightening game” to get the mare to focus on Birgit and relax. Birgit is using her core energy and energy from the whip directed at the mare’s “bending buttons” (located in the girth area of the horse where the ribs start to curl under) to bend the mare from side to side, until the mare starts dropping her head and stays straight.
Remember, frame of body is frame of mind. A busy body is a busy mind, so in order to calm and relax the busy mind, we need to relax the body.
The more comfortable the mare feels about boundaries, the more trusting and respectful, willing, focused and confident she will get.
Through these kind of exercises we can become true leaders.
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