07/05/2026
Pumpkin has been a very interesting horse to work with. He started both skittish and frozen. Scared of sudden movement, schooling sticks, ropes, and constantly apprehensive.
We started simply with accepting the rope, learning a head down cue to set his body up to become more relaxed and allow his brain to follow. Allowing the rope to be swung over his wither and around his body.
As with every horse, it was important to to push to far to fast. Pumpkin has a tendency to freeze when he doesn’t like something, which can appear relaxed but that tension is still very much there. These are the types that can to an untrained eye look to be accepting everything your throw at them until suddenly they ‘blow up’. After a few instances of this with pumpkin, I wanted to take it right back and found actually his point of tension started as soon as the halter was put on.
A great way to tackle this is by asking the horse to engage when uncomfortable, pushing them ever so slightly into tension and teaching them they can release that pressure by engaging with it. For example, feeling a hand/stick/flag at his side and instead of of freezing or running, turning his head and neck and engaging. He quickly then learnt that the pressure wasn’t scary, instead a game that he could succeed at.
This quickly trasferred nicely into target training with the flag, then following with a low head and neck into poles and moments of flextion.
If you are interested in working your horse in a similar way, do get in touch.
