I ride a reiner in the summer who becomes my field hunter (first flight) in the winter. My grand daughter is a WP rider, although my three daughters were always h/j and event riders. One of the biggest differences I noticed between the disciplines is the amount of ground work the western showing kids do, compared to the English riding kids (and I don’t want to paint with a broad stroke, but it seems that Western riders expect better ground manners --in general). And you are probably wondering why I’m point this out --western horses (all that I’ve owned and that’s three total) are TRAINED to stand quietly. We start on the ground, in hand. The horses are taught to stand quietly in hand --and a lot of other both useful and useless things, in hand --before they are ridden. If you look at our hunt, the people riding “formerly western” horses are all standing quietly on loose reins --while the English riders are dealing with fidgety horses --in general --again, not pointing fingers --but that’s what it looks like in our hunt. I think the answer to your fidgety horse lies in training him to stand quietly. Maybe some horses “just stand quietly” naturally, but considering the amount of training we do to teach them not to move in a show ring unless cued, makes me think it’s as much training as walk-trot-canter on cue. Maybe more, since horses naturally walk trot and canter, but don’t naturally stand quietly with their hooves aligned frozen in place for 15 min to 1/2 hour. Yet our western show horse will do that --and he puts his ears forward on cue too. You really can train a horse to do about anything with enough time and patience (mine kneels so I can mount --that took 3 years and he’s not perfect, but close). So start with a goal --horse will stand still for one minute --and work toward it. Maybe one minute is too long, 15 seconds? –
You can train the stand in a round pen or with a lunge line, in hand, or if you want to do it mounted, you can. I’m a firm believer in horses choose the path of least resistance. We start with a lunge line (because I don’t have round pen) but it’s a short one, 16-17 feet. That length makes it a little more work for the horse because he’s in a small circle. The horse WANTS to trot out for awhile, and I let them, then when I see the slightest fatigue (slowing, blowing, sweat), I ask for a whoa. The horse stops. He can stay stopped for as long as his feet don’t move. Move one tiny bit, and you are off on more circles, and reverse circles, and more circles and circle in, circle out --and I ask for a Whoa. As long as horse stops and doesn’t move, he can stand still. Move one tiny bit, back to work. You won’t see much improvement the first, second or third day --(I generally do this for 30-45 min -only at the trot), but by day four, they catch on and start stopping and staying planted. In the saddle, you can do the same thing. Just trot and trot until horse is tired, and ask for a whoa. One little movement, reverse and trot some more. Again, 30-45 min is about what you should do. After six or seven consecutive days at this, you really should have a good whoa with no foot movement. At that point, I’d start lengthening the amount of time, or bringing a second, third horse in to the ring to train the whoa in a group setting. Anyway, I’m not a trainer, but this worked for me with three horses, one of whom is an OTTB.
Foxglove
