Work on horse posture
My horse trips and stumbles more than I’d like. Without good footing this time of year, how can I ride safely?
Assuming that you’ve picked hooves thoroughly, and ruled out any lameness/ injury, chances are very good that your equine is slouching. Well, the equestrian version of it! This is quite common in horses, as for humans.
When your horse becomes unbalanced, he will have trouble carrying himself, let alone the weight of a rider and tack. So the goal is to work on his posture to help him hold his balance. In most cases this means shifting weight onto the hindquarters, since most breeds tend to be heavy on the front end, and a rider’s weight is typically balanced toward the withers and front of a horse.
Start easy with some bending exercises at a standstill. Ask your horse to tip his nose around to the side while keeping his ears parallel to the ground. A 90-degree turn is great, but less is OK as long as those ears stay up.
Next, you can ask for some bending with forward movement. My favorite exercise for this I call the Ribbon Candy. Turn your horse (please be gentle on the mouth and nose!) so that his front end goes to where his back end just was—a very tight, small turn—then change direction. If you are doing this down a fence line, you should not proceed down the fence quickly at all, but will be covering quite a bit of ground from side to side, leaving footprints in a line that resembles ribbon candy. The length of your horse determines the size of the bends you can do, again keeping those ears level!
Work on a little backing, and finally on hindquarter turns: The hindquarters stay put, and the front end moves left in a circle. Start with just a few steps, then repeat to the right. This helps your horse shift his weight back in order to move that front end.
It is important to note that although these moves are prerequisites to learning collection (moving weight to the hind quarters, as for jumping), your horse does not need to know collection to be successful at them, and they will help you as you work toward collection.
Another remedy for slouching is to increase your confidence and balance as a rider, so that if/when your horse does stumble, you are calm and confident in riding it out, as long as those feet all stay below you. I have a blog post on my website with an exercise I call the Circle of Trust, created specifically to increase your confidence. Check it out!
Christina Savitsky is a PATH International Certified Riding Instructor and New Mexico’s only Centered Riding Instructor. She operates Buckaroo Balance and offers lessons, clinics, and retreats around the country, including a winter study series in Albuquerque.