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Monty Roberts is a renowned horse trainer known as the man who listens to horses and the original horse whisperer. Monty's horse training instructions are accepted worldwide.
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Join-Up methods help horse and trainer to establish a bond of communication and trust. “You must somehow understand that we as horsemen can do very little to teach the horse. What we can do is to create an environment in which he can learn.” ~ Monty
Monty says, “We hear that ‘actions speak louder than words,’ but generally we do not live by it too successfully.” Now Monty has taught thousands of people worldwide how to build trust in animals through our actions and body language.
Monty’s principles really amount to common sense and immense patience. He believes that children and horses have the same behavioral patterns. They are both naturally “flight” animals. "If you frighten them and resort to confrontation, you’ll lose their trust." ~ Monty
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Horse Behavior and Training

Not to Jump

By:

chitristate

Date:

2020-Jun-22 at 05:50PM

I have a 5 yr old quarter horse gelding. Awesome horse! Trained to saddle and trail riding very quickly. Is becoming very reliable and trustworthy..... due to some physical limitations/precautions of my own, I do not want him to jump over small gullies, water holes, creek runoffs etc while on the trail. How should I train him to walk through these uncertainties he faces?

JoHewittVINTA 2020-Jun-23 at 12:21PM

Hi & welcome to the Uni. Monty's concepts are very effective. Study the lessons, educate yourself with the absolute guarantee that all your efforts will reap huge rewards. I can personally vouch for that statement. To sum up your requirement from your gelding, you need him to tackle small obstacles by only stepping over. So, you need to teach him to avoid obstacles he can't step over as well.
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The first thought is - do you use a step up trailer? If you do & he skips in & out then this makes your goal more challenging because he already hops that obstacle/step. If you don't use that type of trailer I would avoid doing so, at least until his training in this respect is advanced. Make the training incremental. Longline him through a gradually increasing obstacle course. You could start with a series of small puddles, building up to a large one so he has all his feet wet, then add a ground pole, then add a slightly raised pole - like a broomstick with light underneath it - so he understands that even if there is air/light underneath it, he just steps. The Dually halter is the perfect tool for training - you don't want his mouth to suffer. Monty's plastic bag on a stick training would be useful too. There are lessons for that here as well as how to cross water. Ideally, your ground training would reach the point where, given a choice, your gelding chooses to avoid attempting to go where he would need to hop, skip or jump. Once he is fully reliable you should go through the incremental process again with a rider. Remember to give him time to process each new challenge, to be quick & generous with praise & to have fun in partnership with him. Cheers, Jo.

conniemacklill 2020-Jun-23 at 07:44PM

Chitristate

Jo has pretty much covered every thing I could tell you.
One of mine did the same thing when crossing a small gully or creek. He would jump or lunge over it so fast it would almost leave me sitting there above the creek alone!!
I followed Monty's advice and watched his videos on how to solve the issue. I actually used a blue tarp and started as Jo mentioned with the tarp about 12 inches wide. By the time I stretched it out to 4 feet he would start jumping it. I used the Dually and approached it then would back him up a couple steps. I would slowly lead him over it and keep him from jumping until he would step on the tarp instead of jumping it. To me that was his way of trusting me to cross it the right way. In about 30 minutes I had him walking over it with it stretched out almost 30 feet wide.
My pond is creek fed and the second day I lead him down to the creek and went through the exact process over and over until he would walk through the creek. You know they are very smart when they start trying to find a way around the obstacle and he would look to see if he could.
I think the biggest thing I found out was how much he did trust me during the training and depended on me to get him through it.
Maybe this comforts you in knowing others have the same issue you have. I hope you work through it and learn from him as he will you.
Like Jo said. Be quick to school but quicker to Praise.

Connie Mack