Whoa!

In my world when I say “Whoa” I want my horse to sit down and slide, laying down some perfect little elevens for thirty feet or so. Not like I can always make that happen. But I want the word Whoa to mean put it down and run with those front feet until we’re out of arena.
I also want my horse to stop moving forward when I need it to.

In my mind this creates two vastly different approaches to “Stop moving.”

So I teach “Stop moving” as two different maneuvers.

When I first work with a horse on the ground (on the longe or in a round pen) I create forward movement by moving toward their hip. I create a turn by moving towards their shoulder. This is all forward movement from me, facing the horse ( to appear larger) with a lot of energy.

I stop them by backing up, turning sideways (to be smaller) and releasing the horse from my forward energy. It sometimes takes awhile, but they learn to stop when I back off. I stay silent.

I cluck to them to increase their speed. Usually from a walk to a trot, but if I cluck I want an increase in speed at any gait.

I kiss to get them to lope. I’m very specific here and work hard to get my young horse to understand the kiss to lope cue.

When I cue to speed him up I cluck once, then send him forward with a step, a swing of the rope, or the longe whip. As long as my horse increases his speed I accept it. It can be from a slow walk to a fast walk, or a trot to a lope, whatever, he just has to increase his speed.

When I cue to lope I kiss once, then send him forward with energy until he’s loping.

I am silent when I ask for my stop. I want the colt to understand a stop comes with a simple release of pressure. Normally I work them good enough to make him grateful for a chance to stop. Then I let him air up. If he moves, at all, he gets sent forward again, after two or three times around I ask for the stop again. I’ve never had one not figure this out pretty quick.

When I start riding them around I teach them to stop by relaxing in my seat, taking my legs off and waiting for them to stop. Yes, sometimes I’m moving around for quite a while before my horse stops. I try to wait to ask for a stop until he is wishing he could quit carrying me around. After he stops I pick up my reins, lead rope, whatever I’m riding with, exhale and pull back. Just enough for him to feel the pull. Then I get down. For the first two or three rides the colt doesn’t really get it, but I don’t worry about it.
I just relax my legs, sink my weight and wait. When he stops I exhale, pull on my reins relax and get down.

Once he gets it, it stays. I don’t ask for a stop until I plan to quit for the day for several rides. This gets my colt thinking about how much he likes to stop.

As time goes on I add a “Whoa” before I pull back. Once I do that I pull back until my colt backs a step. (Backing-another story, another day).

I don’t get off right away either. I want more from a Whoa. I want Whoa to mean stop and back up a step. So I’ll repeat this maneuver until my colt stops and begins to step back before I pull. He doesn't have to actually back, just rock his weight back and be ready. Then I hop off and am done for the day.

What happens is my horses will simply stop when I release them with my legs, but they will get their butts under them and begin to rock back when I say Whoa. So that’s where my slide begins to come in.

The down side to how I stop? I tend to get two-year-old's who are powering into their stops. The eager little over-achievers slam into the stop when I simply relax my legs.Which I really don’t want. I don’t want my horses burying themselves when they have those sticky little legs and rubbery tendons.

If I have my druthers, I’d rather my horses didn’t start to slide hard until waaaaaay into their three-year-old year. Which is why I perked my ears when Laura talked about a shuffle stop she teaches her rope horses. It sounded like a great way to ease the pressure on a young horse’s legs. I asked her to explain it, liked it and asked her if I could post it. I’d love to get some input from the WP folk, the dressage riders (who have complained mightily about my rocked back horses), trail riders and halter folks. How do we train for our stops? What do we expect? Let’s have some fun with this.


Stuff That Works
(With Apologies to Guy Clark)

Not too long ago mugwump posted one of her great Sonita stories in which she referred to Sonita at one point as doing a short hard stop “like a roper”. I commented that I taught my rope horses to do a shuffle stop, and mugwump emailed me to ask what that was and how I taught them. In the end, she decided it would make a good post, so here I am, trying to write a training piece.

Those of you who have read my previous posts, or my novels, know that though I did train horses for awhile, I have been for many years an author of horse related mysteries…I have never tried to write about how I trained horses. Mugwump is a genius at this sort of writing, so I feel a little intimidated. But here goes.

In order to understand this “stopping story”, you need to understand the background. I spent my twenties working for reined cowhorse and cutting horse trainers and showing my horse, Gunner, in reined cowhorse events as a three-year-old and cutting events when he was four through eight. About the time I turned thirty I got really burned out on the political element involved in any sort of judged event and took up team roping (a timed event). At nine years old, Gunner became a team roping horse. I both headed and heeled on him. As a beginning team roper, I was no instant success in competition, but my horse looked pretty good to the ropers. Because he was well broke I was able to teach him how to work as was needed for this event, even though I couldn’t always throw the rope accurately. To make a long story short, I was asked to train a few rope horse prospects.

One of my first projects was a hot, mostly TB colt named Rebby. Rebby had tons of speed, tons of go, a tendency to throw his head up (I didn’t start him), and an inclination to bull through the bridle unless you really parked him, at which point he would bury up, stiffen his front end, and prop you. Not good. But he was a willing, kind colt who could really pick you up and carry you, he had lots of cow and he was really, really fast. I liked him and was determined to get him trained for the guy who owned him, who was a friend.

The problem with Reb was the stop. If you pulled on Rebby while he was chasing a cow, his inclination was to stick his nose out, run through the bridle, and defy you. If you pulled harder he buried up and bounced. I cast back through my training to think what I knew about stopping that would help here. I didn’t want Rebby to learn a sliding stop like a reiner (to quote mugwump, quoting Sonita, “Waste of time.”) The sliding stop has no real purpose, other than it is beautiful. Ropers need to be quick, can’t waste time sliding along. Cutters don’t slide for the same reason; they’d waste time, get behind, and lose the cow. Cutters sort of melt into the ground; even when they’re moving forward, they’re thinking back. But a rope horse has to run flat out down the arena chasing a steer; he can’t be in half-crouch-ready-to-stop mode like a cutter. Traditionally, rope horses are taught to bury up—using a tie down and a good hard pull on the reins. But Rebby already wanted to stop too hard. I needed him just to melt into the ground, soft and easy, but not wasting any time.

I thought and thought and came up with an idea. It must have come from something one of the many trainers I worked for or took lessons from taught me, but I don’t know who to credit. In any case, I began teaching Rebby two things. I taught him to give his nose (lower it and bring it back) at my first touch on the reins, and I taught him to come down to the stop by breaking down to the trot for a stride. I worked on this at the walk and trot endlessly until he had it, and then at the lope. It took awhile, but eventually the tendency to prop was gone. Rebby would insert the little shuffle step (the one stride break down to the trot) as he came to a stop. Everything was smooth and soft, like I wanted. His head was down, he was giving to the bit. Now he had to execute this at a dead run, while chasing a steer.

As you can imagine, this was a challenge for a hot horse. The time honored roper’s way to get a horse to rate off is to steer stop and ask the horse to bury up, or to throw the rope early and teach the horse to back out. But I wanted Rebby to answer the bridle like Gunner did; I wanted him to stay broke, even when running down a hard running steer. Over and over again, starting with slower steers, I ran Rebby after a steer, and when we got to the position to throw, I took hold of him gently, asking him to give his head and back off. Over and over, when he failed to do this, I asked for his “shuffle stop”. I did not allow him to park it. If he tried to bury up, I kicked him forward and we tried our stop again. When he melted into the ground softly, shuffling his feet to a stop, I backed him up (gently) and sat there until he sighed and mouthed the bit and gave the signs that he’d taken in the point (this can take awhile…Greg Ward used to say you should sit there and relax and smoke a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but I used to try to pretend I was, to get the desired relaxed effect).

Eventually it sunk in. I could check Reb off a steer and he’d yield to the bridle and back off, calm and collected, ready to stop. When I did stop him, he melted into the ground smoothly, doing his little shuffle. He still ran the steers down like a damn streak of lightning. I’d never ridden a horse that could run so fast. This whole process took about a year. When I returned him to his owner, the guy decided I was a genius as a rope horse trainer, and had me train a couple more colts for him. I used my shuffle stop technique on all of them to good effect. It was something that really worked for me.

Now I’m not sure if any of you are training rope horses, or doing any discipline in which this technique would be very helpful. The point of the story (for me) is that its an illustration of something mugwump says all the time. Think for yourself. Evaluate the situation, consider what you know and have learned and come up with a plan. Sometimes you need someone to tell you what to do and sometimes you don’t. My shuffle stop technique was quite contrary to the way my cowboy friends trained rope horses, and I got a lot of grief about it to begin with. But I could see it was working on the horse, and I persisted (though sometimes it looked ugly), and in the end Rebby was regarded as a real success by all the guys who talked bad behind my back while I was training him. So, don’t be afraid to experiment with new ideas, or your own techniques. Just look for the “stuff that works.”