Hey y’all, it’s Krista with SaddleBox and for today’s video I’m going to give you some tips for teaching your horse how to run.
So a lot of the time, especially when you’re riding a younger horse and you need to do a speed event with them or you’re training them to do a speed event, they don’t always know how to run under saddle necessarily. I mean, all horses know how to run, but they don’t know that they have that fifth gear sometimes, especially on horses like this one who are cattle bred and bred for less speed and more turn. And sometimes the ones that are bred for speed don’t even know they can run.
So I’m going to show you what I like to do to help them learn. Basically, I just come out in a big, open arena like this and I just kind of let them find that gear on their own. So I’m going to use my GoPro and show you what that looks like.
I have already warmed up Chickpea here. One thing that’s important that you want to do is let them see their surroundings, warm up as usual, lope some circles, and then I’ll start asking for a little speed. Now, when I do this, I’m not going to push her into running, I’m just going to kind of let her find it herself, and then towards the end, I may kind of ask for a little more. But it’s important when you’re kind of teaching horses to run to kind of let them find it on their own because then they’ll really want to run, you don’t want to have to push them every time, if that makes sense.
And of course, after I get her going, I’m always going to come back down, walk her around, make sure we don’t just end on running out flat. So I’ll go ahead and ask her to trot here. I’m just going to keep my reins ready if I have to stop her for whatever reason.
Okay, so I’m just going to kind of gradually let her go faster as she wants to around these corners here. And I’m just kind of putting her feet where they need to go, but I’m letting her take off a little bit. There we go. Here we go.
One more thing that’s super important to note is make sure you are very comfortable with the horse you are doing this on. Don’t do this with an extremely green horse or one you aren’t comfortable with. When you get going that fast, it can be kind of scary, so also make sure you are confident. And just kind of work your way up to it. You don’t have to necessarily go as fast as they can the first time. Just make sure you’re staying safe, keeping your horse comfortable, and that you’re comfortable.
Alright you guys, that’s it for this one, I hope you enjoyed it, and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye y’all.