Its been weeks since you went riding. Now you have time to ride this afternoon and there aint no one gonna stop you. Excited, you saddle up your horse and get on him. You get about 50 feet from the barn and your horse turns around and goes back and you cant stop him. Why? You have a barn spoiled horse. This is a common scenario for novice horse owners. Here are the top three tricks to solve the barn sour problem. Teach your horse that you have control over him. Once your horse gets it in his mind that you can make him do what you want him to do, you have control over him and can thus make him leave the barn. One way to get control over him is to use a training technique called doubling. When you double your horse you teach him you can control him. It doesnt take long before your horse will know you can control him. Be careful when doubling though. If you do it too much at a time you can over do it. Your horse could get so sensitive to you doing it that he may try to anticipate it. If he sees your hands making the slightest movement that looks like youre about to double him, he may double himself. Thus, just double him four to six times a day on both sides. Hell quickly learn you have control. The next thing you can try is this: Make it dang hard to do the wrong thing and make it real easy to do the right thing. Heres what I mean. A while back my horse didnt want to leave her buddies or the barn. Wed get about 100 feet away and shed turn around and bolt back. Shed stop in front of the barn expecting me to get off, remove the saddle and tack, and put her back into the corrals. By my barn is two hay stacks. There is a space between them big enough to go through and do figure eights around the hay stacks. So every time shed go back I would make her work, and work, and work at running figure eights around those hay stacks. Then I would test her to see if she had enough and would leave the area. The first seven times she ran back. Each time we came back to the barn wed run more laps around the hay stacks. I could tell she was getting tired. But the eighth time I walked her away from the hay stacks I noticed she went quite a ways before turning to go back. When we went back again we ran more figure eights. Only this time I could tell we didnt have to do too many. I walked her out and away from doing the figure eights and I suddenly had a horse who decided that it was sooo much nicer going for a walk away from the barn rather than doing a bunch of crummy ol figure eights. We had a nice ride that day and she was in no hurry to get home. The last thing to do is this: Ride. Ride a lot. Dont wait for weeks or months in between riding. Try to ride at least once per week for three or four hours. Preferably, try to ride at least twice a week for a few hours at a time. (Ideally, you should ride everyday. But thats hard to do with todays time constraints) Doing that your horse will get in his brain that youre going to ride and hes going to leave the barn and there will be no argument. In fact, if you want to have a great horse the biggest secret is this: Ride the heck out him! So if your horse is barn spoiled you can try doubling him to show you are in control. The next thing you can try is making the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy. Make it dang hard for him to go the wrong thing and very pleasant to do the right thing. And lastly, ride your horse often. Two to three times a week if possible. |
