• Home
  • AJ’s Blog
  • New Book
    • Front Cover
    • Sample Chapter
    • Back Cover
  • Horse Articles
  • Horse Videos
  • How-to Videos
  • About
  • Horse Links
  • Music
  • Art

Looking for something? Search here!

My Latest Book

Judging Hunters by Anna Mullin, 4th Edition

My newest book, Judging Hunters & Hunter Seat Equitation, Fourth Edition is available here at Horse and Rider Books.

Recent Posts

  • Riding from the Horse’s Point of View
  • Let Your Excitable Horse Realize It Is Tired
  • Teaching a Horse to Land on a Particular Lead
  • Benevolent Riding
  • The story of “Rivet” presented on EquestrianCoach.com

Archives

  • February 2022
  • April 2016
  • July 2013
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010

Archive for July 2011

Training a Horse Not to “Jig” at the Walk

By Anna Jane White-Mullin
Monday, July 4th, 2011

A horse usually “jigs” at the walk when it does not fully accept the rider’s leg. You need to do a lot of relaxing work at the walk, such as riding on trails or in a field, making sure that you don’t take your legs off the horse’s sides for even a moment. If you will concentrate on keeping a light, but steady, feel with your legs, then your horse will learn to expect the constancy of the legs and will even crave it, much like a child craves the comfort of its “security blanket.”

When you are working in the ring, try to keep your horse moving from one bending movement to the next, rather than just going around and around the arena. When working on a bend, you have more control of the horse’s hind legs, particularly the inside hind leg, which is controlled by your inside leg—that is, your leg that is toward the inside of the bend. Movements such as circles, serpentines, half-turns, etc. will slow the horse down a little and tend to make it stay in the four-beat rhythm of the walk, rather than break to the two-beat trot. In addition, using suppling movements, such as the shoulder-in, will help slow your horse and make its footfalls more precise.  You can learn how to perform additional lateral movements that can be useful in solving this problem in my latest book, the fourth edition of Judging Hunters and Hunter Seat Equitation.

Finally, half-halts can be beneficial, as long as you keep your legs on all the time, rather than taking them off if the horse breaks gait from the walk to the trot. To learn how to do the half-halt properly, read “How to Perform at Half-halt” in the Horse Articles section of this site.  You can go directly there by clicking on http://annamullin.com/how-to-perform-a-half-halt.

Categories : blog
AJ's Blog
Copyright © 2023 All Rights Reserved
iThemes Builder by iThemes
Powered by WordPress