Ground work: Train Your Horse to Stand Still Copy

Purpose

The purpose of this exercise is to establish your authority in the relationship with your horse.

If your horse doesn’t see you as the leader, then they will try to claim the alpha spot. This can manifest itself in many subtle ways that even an experienced horse person can overlook.

This may look like your horse pulling their head down to get a bite of grass, dragging you with them. It could be that your horse starts to walk off when you turn your back for a moment or they don’t walk beside you as they should when you lead them. In all of these instances, your horse is not respecting you or your role as the authority.

Horses learn things one way, and that way is repetition. If your horse is constantly getting away with these subtle little things, they could eventually turn into a very bad habit later on. It’s important to nip it in the bud as soon as you notice these things happening.

This groundwork exercise is an easy way to correct one of these little problems. To first understand what you’ll be trying to correct, simply take your horse on the lead and stand. You may notice that your horse takes a sly step forward or backward every now and then even though you aren’t asking them to. You’re just asking them to stand.

Technique

There is a quick fix for this that will teach your horse to stand still and focus on you. Stand face-to-face with your horse. Stand far enough away so that you’re holding the end of the lead in your hand.

All you’re going to do is when your horse tries to step out of the standstill, shake the lead rope side to side. This signals for your horse to back up. If your horse won’t back up right away, increase the pressure of your shake until they step back. As soon as they step back, release the pressure so they know that they did the right thing.

It may take a while for your horse to grasp the concept of standing still, but once again, horses learn by repetition so the more consistent you are with correcting your horse, then the faster the horse will catch on.

Once your horse can stand still for a longer amount of time, start asking them to step toward you a certain number of steps by applying pressure on the rope. When they’ve stepped forward the certain amount of steps, ask them to stop by a slight side-to-side with the rope and holding your other hand up in a “stop” command. If they don’t stop, apply more pressure and make them back up to where they should be.

Result

Once you get this part of the exercise down, you can start adding voice commands. At some point, you should be able to leave your horse in the middle of the ring at a standstill while you’re at the ring’s fence. When you call your horse, they should walk towards you and when you say whoa and hold up your hands, they should stop.