liberty work round yard pen natural horsemanship relationship

Taking Roundpen training to the Arena

Last month I talked about the importance of our position behind the shoulder, the use of the advance and retreat technique – advancing on our horses and pushing them away when they are doing the wrong thing and retreating or backing away to invite them to turn and face us – and teaching our horses to respect us loose in the round pen through turning and facing us wherever we go. When you have mastered that, you can start to teach your horse to follow you around, then to run up to you and finally you can test that relationship through liberty work in the arena.

Once a horse is facing us we can start to work on drawing them into following us around. I always start with lots of rubbing and talking to my horse. I want him to like me, trust me and have confidence in being with me. You can start by backing away a couple of steps, first to one side and then to the other. This is an invitation to your horse to follow you. As soon as he takes one step, go in and give him a rub. In order to be a good teacher you must let him know straight away that he is on the right track. Then ask for more and more steps, by backing off, and once your horse takes a step, going in to give them a rub, slowly increasing the amount of steps between rubs.

If your horse does not follow you, try to lift your energy and start to focus on moving his quarters. Often as they move their quarters, they step towards you with their front feet. This is the time to back off, encouraging him to take another step towards you. Keep circling him, working in both directions remembering to release the pressure as soon as he takes a step towards you to show him that this is what we are after.

Waiting for the command to come in

If this doesn’t work, the next step is to send your horse out to do a few more laps of the round yard as an incentive to try harder next time he is invited in. After all, it’s easier for him to be standing near you moving just a few steps, than it is trotting or cantering around the yard. I find that the flightier the horse, the quicker they learn as they are easy to move and we have to move our horse to train them. On the other hand, if he is slow, he will require more pressure to move him. When we send our horse away, we want to raise our energy to the point where our horse starts to move quickly but not so much that we are perceived as being threatening. Remember, we are teaching our horse to want to be with us, not to become wary of us.

Coming in as fast as he can

Once he has started following, try sending your horse out around the round pen, but focus on one spot, for example, the gate. Every time he passes the gate invite him in. This will make it clearer to your horse that you are inviting him in. As he starts to move faster around the yard and comes closer to the gate, back away smartly, making it clear to your horse that the pressure has been released. You will find that each time you do this your horse will start to turn and walk up to you more quickly. Providing your horse has a good attitude and your relationship is growing, he will want to please you and will start running towards you with more urgency, first in the trot and then the canter. Once horses really understand what we want, they often start snorting and showing off. As always, we need to praise and build up our horse’s confidence, so that he enjoys this work and feels happy doing it. Try to break this down into smaller sessions, as with all forms of training, we don’t want to go on and on until they are sick of it – and us!

Working in a bigger arena

When this is going well, we can test the relationship by moving into a bigger area – the arena. Working in the arena can take more time but it enables your relationship to grow stronger and you will notice a big difference in the way your horse moves, using the extra space to express himself. The first time you try it, make sure you allow yourself plenty of time. From the horse’s perspective, they have a much bigger space and may think they don’t have to listen to us as much as they do when in the round yard. There will also be times when your horse says “I’m not in the mood today” and runs off, but it is simply a matter of regathering him, working him around and carrying on. But do make sure the round pen work is firmly ingrained before trying this. Once in the arena, your main job is to keep control of direction, which in a bigger space will mean being more active yourself. You will also need to keep pushing your horse around the corners, not letting him stop or change direction. Once the basics have been established, there is no limit to what you can ask the horse to do, from following you over jumps to zig zagging in and out of cones. It is just a matter of how much time you can spend with him. I love to work this way with my horse once a week, spending the time to move the relationship forward as well as providing more variation to his work. The more fun our horses have with us, the more they will want to be with us.