# Taking off (trails)



## duskexx (May 8, 2019)

I rode my pony down the road next to our property after our lesson, and as we were headed back up one of his herd mates started galloping up the hill next to us. Ninja started trotting after the herd mate and I let him, and then that spiraled into a canter. Was a bit unexpected because when unfamiliar horses muck around in paddocks while we're on a trail, he never really cares, but I suppose it's different with a herd mate.

I just rode it out because he really wasn't going to go far since he was following another horse, but I'm wondering what you all think is the best way to deal with this sorta situation? Once a horse has started cantering/galloping in a bolt, do you try a one-rein halt or ride it out? Never ridden a horse that voluntarily canters before, so it's new territory.


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## SteadyOn (Mar 5, 2017)

Letting the horse decide for himself to trot was the mistake here. Especially in two situations that are going to make that worse: heading towards home, and catching up to a herd mate. I really really really recommend never letting the horse make that call in this situation, or else you're going to end up with a very dangerous bad habit. If you had shut down that trot right away, it probably wouldn't have escalated. But now he'll think it's okay to do, next time, so you'll likely have to be a lot firmer.


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## ACinATX (Sep 12, 2018)

Yes, I wouldn't have let him trot in the first place. In a situation like that, he needs to be reminded that you are in charge.


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## Horsef (May 1, 2014)

I agree.

However, I think that there are situations in which it might be a good idea to go with the flow. 

I was in one of those. I went on a commercial trail ride with just the owner of the horses, whom I never met before. The two horses were obviously bonded and worked well together. This guy had a quirky habit of not announcing a change in gait, which I know is quite rude but I think he was trying to show off, or show me up or impress me, or something. He seemed to have pegged me as a “schooled” rider (😂) and he was very proud of being self thought, so maybe he tried to unseat me to show off his riding prowess. Or something. The first time he did it, we were walking on a loose rein. All of a sudden we are cantering. My reins were fluttering in the wind. From then on, I kept good contact.

Anyhow, as soon as the other horse and rider changed gait, my mare would follow suit. In this particular situation, I thought it would be counterproductive and cause a tantrum if I tried to keep my horse from following. She wasn’t pulling, bolting or racing the other horse, she was just following her master and her horse friend. It all ended well and I enjoyed the ride but I never rode with him again.


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## SueC (Feb 22, 2014)




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## Avna (Jul 11, 2015)

Part of becoming a real horseman or woman is to etch in your mind some essential unchanging facts about the minds of horses. Here's three of the biggest. 

One, they are herd animals, and will always want to stay with the herd. 
Two, they are security-seeking animals, and home is security. 
Three, their primary mode of protecting themselves is to run away. When they get excited, that is what they do -- run. 

So in that situation, I would absolutely expect my horse -- any horse -- to have the impulse to ignore me and bolt for home, unless I was very proactive and preventative. 

With horses, being able to anticipate problems and stop them before they get momentum, is the way to stay safe. 

If a horse does bolt, what you do to stop depends on the circumstances and your horse. Running along a road with a fence on the other side is a poor place to slow him down by turning him in circles. In my experience the best use of a one rein stop is to stop a bolt from happening before it starts, not stop one once it is in full swing. Also the one rein stop must be TAUGHT before it is ever needed. It isn't like a car emergency brake, it is a trained response. 

I used to have a horse when I was a kid who bolted with me whenever we cantered. On trails I used to only canter where there was a hill at the end I could run him up.


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## knightrider (Jun 27, 2014)

As @Avna said, what you do depends on the situation. Even if your horse isn't trained to do a one rein stop, if you have the space, you can turn him in tighter and tighter circles.

If you are on a real trail (not running through dense woods), I recommend you just stay with the horse and ride him. Remind yourself that you know how to gallop a horse. Eventually the horse gets tired. Hills are good for that sort of thing. If there is any reason why you don't have to bail, I think your best bet is to stay with the horse.

When I was 12, I was run off with on a race track. I figured the horse would get tired sooner or later. But instead, he stepped in a hole and flipped with me, giving me a concussion.

So I decided that I would never get run off with again (I was young then and do not recommend this advice now). I practiced every day jumping off and rolling with arms and legs tucked in until I could do it at a full gallop. Funny thing was that after I got that skilled, I also developed a strong enough seat that I didn't get run off with again.

The main thing, as everyone else has said, is once a hot pulling horse surges into a trot, DO NOT let him continue trotting. You have to pull him down right away, back to a walk. The time I got hurt, that is exactly what happened. He was on the track, he was a super hot horse, he started trotting, I thought, "That's OK. I can trot him." Big mistake.


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## Caledonian (Nov 27, 2016)

I agree with the others it depends on your location. If you have space turn circles, look for a hill or ride until he gets tired. 

When i was young, my riding school gave us a couple of classes on how to fall correctly. In theory it was a great idea but, in practice, coming off is never that well controlled, padded or at the walk. The best advice was to stay with the horse unless you're being taken to something more dangerous and you're unable to turn. 

When i was a teenager, my mare decided to run as soon as she saw her barn. She went from walk to canter in a blink of an eye. We were on a main road at the edge of the village, so i had cars to my right, pavement and houses to my left, and nowhere to turn. I managed to keep her at the canter but she slowed as soon as she got back to the yard. She was in for a shock though, as she was ridden through the yard to the fields at the back and made to work. The next day i went out with an older friend and she was made to walk the road calmly until she got the message.


Many years later, when i worked TB and hunters with similar issues; we used circles or hills to slow (the one rein stop wasn't something we used) and, if there wasn't a risk of making the situation worse, they were made to keep working when they slowed down.


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## duskexx (May 8, 2019)

SteadyOn said:


> Letting the horse decide for himself to trot was the mistake here. Especially in two situations that are going to make that worse: heading towards home, and catching up to a herd mate. I really really really recommend never letting the horse make that call in this situation, or else you're going to end up with a very dangerous bad habit. If you had shut down that trot right away, it probably wouldn't have escalated. But now he'll think it's okay to do, next time, so you'll likely have to be a lot firmer.


Yes, I agree. Definitely my fault, probably should have said that in the original post


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

My new horse has done this with me a number of times. As the others say - best to stay in control before it escalates. One thing I do with him that helps now is ask him to halt once in a while on a trail. Just to remind him I'm still there. Especially if he's getting excited. But I have been in situations where he's just going to fast to try to turn him safely, so I did ride it out. He only goes a few strides then slows right back down, but still, I now try to stay in control at all times. This means keeping my hands on both reins at all times, maintaining contact, and always being in charge.


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## duskexx (May 8, 2019)

knightrider said:


> As @Avna said, what you do depends on the situation. Even if your horse isn't trained to do a one rein stop, if you have the space, you can turn him in tighter and tighter circles.
> 
> If you are on a real trail (not running through dense woods), I recommend you just stay with the horse and ride him. Remind yourself that you know how to gallop a horse. Eventually the horse gets tired. Hills are good for that sort of thing. If there is any reason why you don't have to bail, I think your best bet is to stay with the horse.
> 
> ...


Yeah, I definitely should have stopped him when he started trotting. Actually I probably could have stopped him before then, because there was a good few seconds he was halted and just looking.

He's never been a hot/pully horse though, like I can have him walking behind another horse who's trotting off and he doesn't care (though I've never tested that for more than 10 metres or so), which is why I think I was so slow reacting.


I'm gonna take him back down there tonight and see if he tried to pull anything


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## Woodhaven (Jan 21, 2014)

For myself I would have prevented the horse even starting to trot because it was not something I was asking for and if he became excited I would turn, do some circles, leg yields etc. and hopefully keep him concentrating on me. But after saying that, your safety is the first priority and it is better to choose your times for correction so you are in a position to win. 
If I thought the horse would react strongly to me preventing him from following his friend and dump me, I would have just gone with the flow and followed the other horse but after that would be the time to do some schooling and work to try to teach him not to want to follow buddies but work with me and ignore them but do it in a manner that is safer for me and build on that until you get what you want.

A bit off topic but SueC I love Thelwell pictures and the one you posted brought back a memory from a very long time ago, 60 years. We had bought a nice green broke three year old mare for my thirteen year old sister to learn to ride on.
One of our first rides we were riding with a friend and cantering along this trail and I heard a shout from behind, I looked back to see Sis, saddle off on the side of the mare and Sis clinging like a leech under the horse's neck. We stopped got the saddle back in place ( she was pretty round and the saddle just slid sideways) Sis back on top and carried on.


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## beau159 (Oct 4, 2010)

duskexx said:


> I rode my pony down the road next to our property after our lesson, and as we were headed back up one of his herd mates started galloping up the hill next to us. Ninja started trotting after the herd mate and I let him, and then that spiraled into a canter. Was a bit unexpected because when unfamiliar horses muck around in paddocks while we're on a trail, he never really cares, but I suppose it's different with a herd mate.
> 
> I just rode it out because he really wasn't going to go far since he was following another horse, but I'm wondering what you all think is the best way to deal with this sorta situation? Once a horse has started cantering/galloping in a bolt, do you try a one-rein halt or ride it out? Never ridden a horse that voluntarily canters before, so it's new territory.



In your particular case, it doesn't sound like he was a runaway of any kind, so a one-rein stop would not be necessary. 



Yes, hindsight is always 20/20. You admit and agree you shouldn't have let him start trotting in the first place, that that is correct. Horses almost always will naturally get more excited when a pasture mate (or strange horse for that matter) come running over or running by. I just always do my best to keep my horse listening to ME, and keep their attention on ME, as it is MY decision how fast/slow we go. If a horse gets unruly, I do what I need to do to descalate the situation, whether that's turning them into a circle, halting them, or whatever needs to be done.


In a situation like what you posted, I would never "ride it out". You need to regain control of the horse, if possible. Sometimes you might be in an area where the path is too narrow to do something like a circle or a one-rein stop, if the horse is not responding to slowing down with the reins and/or your seat/legs (which is more of a case of a runaway). But those situations usually don't happen often.


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## trailhorserider (Oct 13, 2009)

There was a thread on here a while back on using the "pulley rein." It's not a contraption, it's a way of using your normal reins when the horse gets out of control. You sort of brace with one hand and pull the other rein straight up. I actually used that once on the rare occasion a horse spooked and bolted with me. It worked really well. Maybe try Googling it?


I have rarely been run off with because 1) I am a chicken and try to ride safe horses as much as I can and 2) like others have said, the key is to stop the horse from getting out of control to begin with. But of course there are some times when a horse will bolt and you don't have time to prevent it.


I have always been afraid of the idea of trying to turn a horse that is really, truly running off with me. I have this picture of flipping the horse. But the pulley rein works without turning the horse. I have only used it once, but I liked it the time I used it.


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## duskexx (May 8, 2019)

I had another question...

Could getting him to canter on my cue & go past the point he wants to stop also work? So say if he starts tossing his head and trying to start trotting, instead of circling could I ask him to canter there and then keep him cantering past the gate (where I presume he'll want to stop)?

Just because the way we normally deal with him mucking about is getting him to move, and holding him back has never really ended well.


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## beau159 (Oct 4, 2010)

duskexx said:


> I had another question...
> 
> Could getting him to canter on my cue & go past the point he wants to stop also work? So say if he starts tossing his head and trying to start trotting, instead of circling could I ask him to canter there and then keep him cantering past the gate (where I presume he'll want to stop)?
> 
> Just because the way we normally deal with him mucking about is getting him to move, and holding him back has never really ended well.



In my opinion, if you don't have control of your horse at the trot, it would not be a good idea to push them into a canter. So I would not recommend that. 



No, some horses don't do well with being held back. So you have to come up with a way that works. For a horse that wants to go-go-go, I don't like being on both reins at the same time. I feel that it can lead to them pushing through the bit. Instead, focus on doing things like serpentines, rollbacks, circles, etc which are all things you can do with ONE REIN. Then you don't actually have to hold the horse back, but you can instead regulate their speed by asking them to make very tight turns, which will naturally force them to take a slower pace to do the turn. 



I recall many rides with my horse Red (when I first got him) where we would hardly get 1/4 mile from the barn on the trail but yet we'd ride for over an hour. Because we spent most of the time doing direction changes. 



The key is that YOU need to be more persistent than your horse.


If he's barn sour, you don't need to canter him past the gate. Doing so at the walk will still get your point across.


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## knightrider (Jun 27, 2014)

> I looked back to see Sis, saddle off on the side of the mare and Sis clinging like a leech under the horse's neck. We stopped got the saddle back in place ( she was pretty round and the saddle just slid sideways) Sis back on top and carried on.


OK, where is that amazing video of the jump jockey who did exactly that, got back into the saddle and WON THE RACE! Was it @Foxhunter who put that up??


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## Dustbunny (Oct 22, 2012)

You are wise for deciding not to ride with this guy again.


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

This one shows several near misses!


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## Woodhaven (Jan 21, 2014)

It has always amazed me how these jockeys can stay on with those short stirrups, they must be very athletic to manage to get back on and keep going and they must be able to get their feet back into the stirrups before the next jump.
not for the fainthearted that's for sure!

I'll show these to Sis as she can relate somewhat to it.


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## duskexx (May 8, 2019)

beau159 said:


> In my opinion, if you don't have control of your horse at the trot, it would not be a good idea to push them into a canter. So I would not recommend that.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I think I'll speak to my trainer. All the stuff you mention is what I mean by holding him back, and just gets him more worked up. Thanks anyway!


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

Years ago I went, with a family, to look at a very nice 14.2 pony for their eldest daughter. 

The pony was all that we had been told and we went out into a large open field to pop a few cross country fences. There were about eight horses in the field. 

Pony popped the fences and then the loose horses thought it a good idea to dive bomb pony. They were showing off. The owner just called out to the rider to stand still. 

She did and that pony never even thought about joining in the fun. He just stood watching whilst we drove the loose horses away. 

That was excellent training along with a pony with a wonderful temperament. 

We bought him.


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## beau159 (Oct 4, 2010)

duskexx said:


> I think I'll speak to my trainer. All the stuff you mention is what I mean by holding him back, and just gets him more worked up. Thanks anyway!



Yes, please ask your trainer because they can tailer the advise specific to you and your horse, but I will also add that you need to remain CALM when he gets worked up. Make it NO BIG DEAL that you're asking him to turn here, serpentine there, rollback here, etc. Keep your body language totally calm and just let him figure it out. Remember to also use your body language to help relax him including sitting deep in the saddle.


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## txgirl (Jul 9, 2010)

Caledonian said:


> Many years later, when i worked TB and hunters with similar issues; we used circles or hills to slow (the one rein stop wasn't something we used) and, if there wasn't a risk of making the situation worse, they were made to keep working when they slowed down.


Sometimes you have to give them what they want!!


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