5 THINGS TO COVER BEFORE YOU SWING ONTO YOUR COLT

5Things To Cover Before You Swing Onto Your Colt BY JASON IRWIN

Iget asked a lot of questions about starting young horses under saddle and what to do to get them ready. As a colt starter, my main priority is keeping myself and the colt safe while providing the best training experience for the horse. I’m going to list a few of the things (in no particular order) that I would like in place before I step onto a young horse for its first ride. This is not meant to be a complete list but more a set of priorities. Also, a lot of these points are just as valid when it comes to getting on a trained or partially trained horse that is new to you. The idea here is to have the horse as ready as possible to make the first ride as easy and safe as it can be.

Here are my five essential training tips to check off before you swing onto a colt for its first ride.

Yielding the colt’s hindquarters.

Make sure your colt is comfortable carrying a saddle. If you see someone getting on a colt for the first ride and that horse is already tight and locked up, or still has a hump in its back things sure aren’t going to get any better when the rider is added to the mix. It’s a good idea to get the horse moving out, carrying the saddle and ensure he will carry it comfortably at all three gaits. If you’re using a roundpen it’s quite a bit easier to do this.

I tend to keep most horses on a line when I saddle them for the first time and do my best to keep them from bucking at all. However, if they really want to buck, I would rather they got it out of their system without me on their back. Be aware that some colts will appear to loosen up after they’ve moved around the pen, will seem calm, and then will blow up again a few minutes later. To try to get this ironed out I will often move one around saddled up and then I will leave the pen for 5 or 10 minutes and just let him carry the saddle around at his own pace. I stay nearby in case he rolls with the saddle, or gets into trouble but I don’t ask anything of him. Then I’ll re-enter the pen and move him around again.

If he moves out calmly– I’m happy. If he blows up again after his little break, then I’ll move him through all the gaits both ways and I’ll leave him again and repeat the process. I want to see that he’s not acting up just because he’s a little winded, but because he truly has accepted the saddle. Once I can re-enter the pen and have him move around right away with no hump in his back at all then I feel he’s fairly comfortable carrying the saddle.

Do some prior desensitization work. Personally, I will first rub my hand over the horse’s body if he’s quiet enough, then I will rub him over with a small tarp, and then a saddle pad before saddling one for the first time. I find that once they’re used to the tarp, getting the pad and saddle on is usually pretty easy. Maybe more importantly though is the fact that if they’re spooking at the tarp, they are pretty darn likely to spook a lot worse if I got on their back. Getting the horse used to the noise and commotion of the tarp helps get them used to potentially scary things in general – including a rider.

Focus on getting forward motion. I’ve already covered part of this in my first point which was to move the horse around the pen saddled up. Generally, the more they go forward the less they go ‘up’ so I’d prefer forward motion to ‘up’ (and down) motion. One thing I’ve observed quite a bit is folks who run and run and run their colts around the pen. The problem here is that things are happening so fast that the horse isn’t getting the opportunity to think or learn

but instead, is just focusing on fleeing the pressure. The other problem is that if the colt gets really winded it will physically and mentally shut down and that’s the exact opposite of what you’re trying to achieve. I find that it’s a lot better to move them around the pen at a medium speed and then let them drop back to a lower speed, let them cruise around easy, and then ask for a bit more effort again. Making a lot of changes in speed with some breaks mixed in keeps the horse from getting winded and keeps him thinking. It also helps the horse learn to carry the saddle through the different transitions of gaits and the better they learn that the less likely they are to buck later on.

Teach your colt to yield his haunches. If I step to the side of the horse and focus on its hind end I want the hind end to swing away from me. There are probably a dozen benefits to doing this but I’ll mention just a few. When you can swing the hip away you can take most of your horse’s power away. This makes things like the first saddling much easier because if they try to bolt forward you can take hold of the front end of your horse by pulling the lead rope and swing the hip away without losing control; and staying relatively safe in the process. The same goes for when you step in the saddle for the first time. If the horse was to blow forward as you went to step on you could pull the inside rein and swing the hip away and not get run over in the process. If I focus on the hip and the horse doesn’t move it away I could tap the hip with the end up my lead rope or a training stick to reinforce what I’m asking.

Train the colt to soften to bridle pressure. I find that a lot of folks don’t teach their colts to give to bridle pressure before they get on. If you use a rope halter or loping hackamore for the first rides it’s usually a bit easier for the horse to figure out what you want. This is because the feel will be similar to the pressure they feel while being lead and basically, as long as the horse is halter broke, they already understand how to give to that pressure. In most cases I prefer to put the first rides on using a snaffle bit. Therefore, I have to prepare the colt on the ground to respond to the snaffle properly so that it is already familiar to him when I swing into the saddle.

I will pull on one rein to the side and get the horse turning that way and then repeat the exercise going the other way. Most colts accept this pretty fast. Teaching the colt to stop and back up from the bit pressure sometimes isn’t as easy. To do this I will stand near the horse’s head and put a bit of pressure

on both reins. I’m waiting for the horse to take one step backwards. In the beginning if he even shifts his weight back then I’m happy and I will release the pressure. If you have good timing, pretty soon he should take a few steps back willingly. If he braces and won’t back up sometimes tapping a front leg with the toe of your boot will make him lift the foot and shift it backwards and I will release the pressure when that happens just to get him started. Now that he’s backing up a bit I will stand on the left side of the horse. I will hold the left rein in my left hand and the right rein will be run back and over the saddle horn and down to my right hand. The idea here is that when I pull the pressure is going to feel pretty similar to the way it will feel when I’m riding. I’ll put just a bit of pressure on both reins and when the horse takes a step back I will release. Keep practising with that and add more steps as he gets better. Then I’ll ask the horse to move forward, I’ll walk with him, and then put pressure on the reins to stop him and ask him to take at least one step back. I would recommend repeating this several times. If you can stop and back him while you’re beside him on the ground you stand a lot better chance of being able to stop him when you’re on his back. Learning to respond to bridle pressure on the ground also keeps a colt calmer during the first rides. If a colt is carrying a rider for the first time and the rider starts putting pressure on that horse that he doesn’t understand, then both horse and rider might get into trouble.

There are many other things a person can work on before putting the first ride on a young horse but these are some of my priorities. All the best to you and your young horse. WHR

The problem here is that things are happening so fast that the horse isn’t getting the opportunity to think or learn but instead, is just focusing on fleeing the pressure.

Jason Irwin is a self-taught trainer who started his first colt at the age of 12. Over the years he has put the foundation training on hundreds of young horses. He has been the trainer at the family business Northstar Livestock Quarter Horses, which is based out of Port Elgin, ON, for the last 20 years. Along with his wife Bronwyn, Jason appears on the new television show The Horse Trainers, as seen on RFD-TV Canada and the Cowboy Channel Canada. You can learn more about the Irwins at www.thehorsetrainers.com or find them on Facebook.