Episode 45: Whoa! Teaching Your Horse to Stop.

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SWS045.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy's goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.

Speaker2:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and I'm here to teach you how to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In this episode, I'm going to explain the three cues that I use for stopping my horse and the magic that it creates when the horse understands all three. While this is a podcast about teaching your horse to stop, the first point that I'm going to make applies to many, many other things you will do with your horse. And that is this idea. I have three cues Refuse to stop. My horse and I teach each one of these cues to be 100% strong. The three cues that I use when stopping my horse are reins, legs, and voice. Now, this probably isn't groundbreaking in some version. You've probably seen several of these being used, and oftentimes what you'll see is all three of them being used at the same time. So it would be very common to see somebody say, whoa, pull on the reins and open or release their legs. Sometimes people will even tap with their legs to back the horse up, but it's very common to see people use all at the same time. Sometimes when people come to ride with me, it actually becomes a bit of a joke. Because when we're working on this, I will say, let's have you ride down through there to walk. Keep your hand, your rein, hand down on the horse's mane and say, whoa. And let's see if your horse stops.

Speaker2:
And when they say whoa, their hand reflexively moves. And I'll say, okay, let's try that again. Your hand moved, and they'll be like, what? No. Oh. And then they'll start laughing and they'll do it again. And it's actually kind of comical how difficult it can be for people to break these apart. Because if you've been riding for years and always saying the combination of saying the word whoa, pulling on the reins and some kind of movement with your seat or legs, it's actually pretty challenging to break those things apart. But here's why I want you to be able to do that for something as important as stopping. It is very helpful if your horse will stop 100% of the time off from the reins, 100% of the time. Off the leg Q and 100% of the time. Off the voice Q. That was how I was able to train my horses to ride Bridleless because even when I took the bridle off, which took away the reins, I still had the legs in the voice, so I still had 200% stopping power. If you stop your horse and you use all three cues at the same time, you say, whoa! You pull on the reins and you shift your weight or your legs. Then what happens? A lot of times is without knowing it, you actually have a third, a third and a third. And so your horse doesn't stop when you take one of those three away because you only have two thirds stopping power at that point.

Speaker2:
This is why I teach my horses each one of these as a 100% strong. So basically I have 300% stopping power during the training process. There will be times when I'll use different combinations of them. So I might use reins and legs, but no voice or legs and voice, but no reins or voice and reins, but no legs. There's all kinds of different ways to mix it up, but at the end of the day, what I really want to know is that my horse will stop off from all three. Now, obviously this is a progression when I very first start with the horses and they're in elementary school, it is reins and I actually start doing that before I even mount up. I teach that through the bend to stand still queue, and I also teach that through ground driving. So with the ground driving, I'm able to actually do a lot with the reins that I will then do when I'm mounted up on their back. It is a beautiful thing. If you have a horse that tends to throw its head during the stop, or tends to be very resistant, and it scares you a little bit, and it makes you want to release the reins in bad timing. Like maybe the horse tosses its head and it makes you think about the horse possibly rearing and that scares you.

Speaker2:
So you release, like I talked about in another podcast. I call it self-defense. You know, people just react in a way that they, when they feel threatened, they're trying to make themselves safe, but they can teach the horses bad habits during that. That's where ground driving can come in really handy. Because then again, like I've talked about before, you're now separate from the horse so you can see it a little bit more clearly when you're ground driving. I just love people to understand the reins, because the reins are going to be so helpful when we're working on connection and collection and all of the advanced things that we want to teach these horses, and so often people get away from making any kind of connection or touching the horse because they think they're doing a favor by not handling the horse's face, that what they end up doing is they end up causing the horse harder time learning some of this, because there's nobody there to hold the horse's hand and shape the horse's body, because that's a very important thing that the reins do that will come up again later when we're talking about common mistakes. When I start teaching a horse and again, I start before I even mount up. So the horse is going to stop with the rein pressure while I'm ground driving. When I ground drive, I will actually have the horses walk, trot, and lope while I'm ground driving, which also means that I can then transition down from lope to trot.

Speaker2:
Trot to walk. So there's a lot you can teach in the ground driving, which means that when I mount up, the horse understands that the reins when I apply pressure. If the horse moves to a certain different point, which is what I call it, a game of hot or colder. So at first when you put some pressure on the reins, the horse might speed up or the horse might try turning left and you just kind of stick with that pressure until the horse guesses a different thing, which hopefully one of those guesses is slowing down. And when the horse slows down, you soften up a little bit. So a lot of times I look at this like a game of hot or colder. And as far as applying rein, pressure goes, it is not about applying more and more and more, it is about being very accurate with where you soften. So I think there is a false idea out there that if your horse doesn't stop when you apply some pressure, that applying a lot more would be a great idea. And realistically It's actually the holding and the waiting that I'm trying to constantly encourage people to do. When I do this talk about whoa! In a expo situation, I typically try to find a horse that has been trail ridden or generally ridden or just kind of, you know, isn't that advanced with its understanding.

Speaker2:
And then my favorite part is to have the people just barely pick up and take the slack out, and then just wait and I'll say, you'll know you've taken enough of the slack out of the reins when the horse is showing some kind of sign of recognition. So if I've got them applying a little bit of pressure to both reins, the horse might look asleep, but it might be just every once in a while, bringing its chin back just a little bit. And the rider's not moving their hands at all. Their hands are locked down on the front of the saddle pad. And then I'll say, just wait. Just wait. And the horse, as long as they've got some kind of an ear flick going on or some kind of a movement going on where you can tell they're thinking about it, they might be chewing. They might be moving their head like up and down just a little bit. Most of the time my coaching is wait, wait, wait for it. This isn't supposed to be a tug of war. Wait for it. And you can watch these horses experiment with where to move their head and where to move their jaw and where to move. And they kind of. And then eventually the horses are going to make one of three mistakes.

Speaker2:
Typically, hopefully they take a step back. If they take a step back, that's not really a mistake. It's one of the three most common things that they'll do. And then you're going to release. So it was never a tug of war to get there. It was just patience of holding that light pressure, the other two common things for them to do are step forward, because a lot of times riders have done a lot of forward motion things, so the horse may just step forward, experimenting, asking a question in that direction. And in that case, I will ask the rider to stop the horse with whatever they normally have stopped the horse with. And sometimes that's a combination of the other cues, or sometimes that's applying more pressure, because that was the habit that they had coming into the expo. But basically the horse asks a question and we're going to answer it that that way. And then the other thing that really commonly happens is the horse does just kind of fall asleep. And so they stop showing any signs of movement, and some of them will, like, almost lean onto the bridle and kind of just be totally comfortable and literally shutting their eyes and dozing off. And at that point I'm like, well, then that means that they're not really very aware or attentive to this aid. So at that point you could apply just a little bit more pressure.

Speaker2:
Or if you're holding the reins in your hand, you could open and close your fingers, which sometimes people will call like massaging the horse's mouth because you've got that really light. Let's just say that you're holding like just the weight of the reins. And, you know, let's say let's call it a pound of pressure. Let's say you're holding a pound of pressure in each hand. You could lightly massage. And then if that horse, you know, the eyes open up, then you know that it's more likely to be thinking about what? Maybe it should take a guess of some direction to go. And so this is the general idea with the rein, pressure. And a lot of times when the horses come into an expo, they're already being ridden and will work on this from a standstill, actually improving the backup, because improving the backup is directly tied together with improving the stop. Then the same exact concepts work. When you want to start teaching this horse to back up from leg pressure. So now picture that this horse has come into the expo and it will stand there and the rider can pick up and hold a pound of pressure. And maybe it stands there for 30 to 60s kind of contemplating. And then it steps back and then the rider releases after we have confirmed that this horse understands this more basic cue, then the next thing that I will have the riders do is transfer that cue to a leg cue.

Speaker2:
And this is really fun to do, because you can see whether you're sitting in the crowd or whether you're the person on the horse's back or another rider in the arena. With me, it's very visual that you can actually see what I call the wheels turning in the horse's head. So picture that we've just taken 15 minutes to refresh this horse's backup queue and with the bridle reins. And now I'm going to ask them to teach this horse that tapping with the legs in front of the girth. So up in the shoulder area is going to mean back up. Now let me clarify when I say tapping with the legs, typically what that is going to look like is a lot of times I've got riders in a western saddle, so they're going to swing that leg straight forward, and the stirrups are pretty restrictive because they're kind of big and heavy in a Western saddle. So they'll swing that stirrup and serp leather forward. And realistically, they're tapping on the horse's shoulder with the side of the stirrup or the ball of their foot slash boot. It is not the spur. It is not the heel. We're not attempting to do that. We're literally just making this waving motion. So I want to clarify that since you can't actually see me sitting here waving my hands around, which I am doing, so what I have this rider do is I have them sit there and I have them have the slack just barely taken out of the rein,.

Speaker2:
So they're not actually pulling on the reins, but the reins aren't draped and loose. So we've almost got that door shut, but we're not holding that horse in that spot. And at this point, the horse has been out here doing these exercises for 15 minutes. They're pretty relaxed. So I'll say, okay, now slide your legs forward so that your ball of your foot or your inside of your stirrup is going to tap at that horse's shoulder. But here's the deal. I want you to wave both legs at the same time, and I want you to wave them at the shoulder, but I don't actually want you to touch the shoulder. And so the rider will pull the legs forward and they will begin to wave. And it's going to be wave, wave wave wave wave wave wave with their leg. You're going to have rhythm, but they're not even touching the horse. And I'll say, let's everybody watch the horse and they start doing this. And again we're going to have three typical reactions. Some horses, as soon as those legs are pulled forward like that and start to have any movement, some horses will immediately try to walk off. And if that happens, I will tell the rider to go back to the cue. So keep waving and then pull on those bridle reins.

Speaker2:
Ask the horse to take a step back, still waving. And then as soon as the horse steps back because of the bridle rein that it already knew, you're going to then release both. You're going to stop doing the pulling and you're going to stop doing the waving. It's very important that the waving continues until the step back happens, because the step back is what we're trying to reward on. So if you make this mistake and you begin waving and the horse steps forward and you stop waving and then you back the horse up, that will not be nearly as effective, because the horse will have a harder time making the leap from one to the other, where if you keep waving that leg and remember, we're not even touching the horse's shoulders yet. If that waving quits at the same time that they take that step back, they're going to make that connection much quicker. So that would be a mistake. Horses tend to make more common mistakes. It actually just depends on what the horse's background is. But one of the really funny ones to watch happen is that the rider's not even touching the horse's shoulders, and they're waving, and I'll let this go on for a couple of minutes. And if you think a couple of minutes is not a very long time, you can sit in a chair and pick your feet up off the floor and sit and make that waving motion with your legs for a full two minutes with a timer running, and you'll find that that motion actually burned some calories.

Speaker2:
It's probably an exercise out there in some YouTube video. But anyway, I will generally be making jokes about being able to eat extra dessert or something else. But in reality, what happens? A lot of times if you've got the combination where the horse is willing to kind of wait it out, what you'll get sometimes is horses that are they literally are like going to sleep. Heads down, eyes are shut, leg cocked, and I haven't let the rider start touching the shoulder yet. And this is when I'll say, okay, if the horse is showing no thoughts of thinking, no awareness of your movement, then you can add a little bit more pressure just to the level, to the bare minimum level that the horse shows recognition. So that might be that the rider actually just barely starts touching the stirrup on the side of the shoulder in that same wave wave wave motion and the minimum would be some kind of motion. A really common one would be you'll actually see the horse's ears flick, flick, flick, flick in that same rhythm as the rider's leg, and sometimes it'll look a little bit like they're contemplating, you know, is this a shoulder massage? But the really important thing is to give that horse time to think, because what you don't need to do is then go, my legs are getting tired and slap the horse's shoulders really hard because the most likely thing for him to do in that scenario, if he doesn't already know this, is to jump forward.

Speaker2:
So you essentially just threw him into the wrong answer and then he's going to get in trouble. So don't do that. If you're sitting there and you're waving and the horse is flicking the ear, the two things I would rather see happen are that you can just keep waving your legs. But realistically, and this is where it gets a little bit funny at expos, is that you'll start to see the rider fatigue. So the horse is actually flicking the ear every time. So we know he's he's aware and he's thinking, but you'll start to actually see a rider fatigue. And I'll say, okay, if you can't physically keep waving your legs. So let's say the horse has been standing there flicking the ears for five minutes, then I would rather have you give the horse the answer than escalate and have the horse make the wrong choice because you were getting tired. It's okay to me that the horse needs time to think it through. As long as they're showing that flick of awareness and thinking, I want to give them as much time as possible. But I recognize that at some point, the rider may actually fatigue to the point where they can't continue.

Speaker2:
And when you start to lose your rhythm, what happens is the horses actually take it as a reward, and then they basically just learn like, oh, if I ignore 38 waves or 3.5 minutes of waving, it just goes away. So the answer is just do nothing for longer. Because this is the way lazy horses who are not having reactions think. So what I'll tell the rider to do in this case, as I see them fatiguing excessively, I do push the limit of how far they can go. And then I'll say, okay, you're really fatigued. Continue the waving. Now also pick up and make contact with the reins and ask the horse to take the step back. So essentially, again the rein, is making the step back happen. But then you're going to quit the waving of your leg at the same time that the horse steps back. And of course, the answer we all have been waiting for is that the rider could pull the legs forward, begin waving, the horse could show slight recognition, and then step backwards. Or with a lot of reining horses that show up, the rider will shift their legs forward and the horse will back up before the waving even begins to happen. So a lot of this comes from. It's obviously it's repetition and training and some disciplines value this more. So that's why I'll say that Rainer's a lot of times will automatically know this.

Speaker2:
Ironically, a lot of trainers will actually have a lot more resistance to the rein, pressure because I've discussed it in another podcast where sometimes as people learn how to use these rainless techniques, they then don't use the rains and it can just spiral into all kinds of other interesting things. One of which is that the rains help shape the horse. And right now, I've been talking about doing all of this from a standstill to a backup, but especially when you start doing downward transitions from speed, a lot of times the horses are going to get a little lazy in how they execute this. Very similar to me doing sit ups. I much prefer to do really lazy sit ups. And so when I was in gym class, I would throw my arms during my sit up and my gym teacher would say that's incorrect and I'd say it's easier. And you said, do 20 and I'm flinging my arms because it's easier. So a lot of horses have that same thought process. So it's important that you can make contact with the reins, because later on when we're talking about other movements, I call it dumping the front end, but it's dropping the front end, lowering the front end, stopping heavy on the front end. Any of these versions of just let the horse just kind of crashes down with its front end not comfortable and actually not good for the horse's joints or body either.

Speaker2:
So all across the board. Bad idea. So now we've done a review of refreshing the Rein,. Q now we've done a review of refreshing or teaching the backup from the leg. Q which is always so fun at an expo because you can see the horse's wheels turning, you can see that flick of the ear and you'll see them experiment. And it's so rewarding to watch these riders just stay consistent and watch the horses kind of figure it out. And it's and and typically everybody cheers. And so it's very it's very fun. But you can literally train it inside of a very short window typically not even 10 or 15 minutes. It just doesn't take that long when you're really consistent with the releases. So then let's talk about the third one, which is the voice cue. And when I talk about teaching the horse the voice cue, this is where I will say it is the one that cannot reinforce itself, so the other two can reinforce themselves. Again, this is not about tug of war or kicking your horse really hard, but reinforce can just be that you can keep that there. It can be slightly rhythmic, annoying if you want to think of it as annoying, but a lot of times it's just this rhythmic thing that the horse can think about. And you can change the intensity a little bit.

Speaker2:
So if your horse is asleep while you're doing the leg tapping, you know you could do a little bit more because that horse is a little bit more dull or is actually taking it as a massage. And you might have to go up just a little bit more so that they're a little bit like, oh, well, maybe I should look for some other answer aside from sleeping or enjoying this so much. So it's not that about force, but it is about the fact that you can use different degrees of it now with your voice if you say the word. Whoa. First of all, my first tip is that you want to say it deep and low. So you want to drop into that voice that you use when the kids are in trouble. So it's got to be, whoa, it's got to be this deep. So you're just not allowed to yell at the kids while you're riding your horse, because that really confuses the horse because they'll try to stop when they hear you, like, drop your voice low. I can't do it because I'm laughing right now, but you get the drift. So the first thing if you want your word wo to really be effective is to make sure that you do a different voice. So for me, I drop it into wo and I do in the beginning with a lot of people.

Speaker2:
I teach them to kind of like sink a little bit deep in their seat during the word, saying that word. And then later on we'll talk about separating that out, but make sure that you make a difference. That way the horse actually stands a chance of picking it out of the rest of the conversations that you tend to have when you're riding, and then know this wo cannot reinforce itself, because if your horse doesn't stop off from Wo, it's probably not going to stop off from Wo. So really yelling it is not more effective. So you can't really make a range of of voice that's really going to do anything. Your horse is just going to be like, okay, she's definitely yelling at the kids now. So not the best thing. So what you have to do is with this. Q you have to realize that it is the third one that is taught because you're going to need to use one of the other two to reinforce it. So the horse is automatically now at a slightly higher level of learning because they've already learned the rein, Q for stop and back up, and they've already learned the leg Q for stop and back up. And then we're going to teach the voice Q for stop and backup. Yes, that was correct. Stop and back up. So what I often teach people to do is I say, I want you to teach the horse that whoa means back three steps, because a common mistake riders make is they make whoa mean halt.

Speaker2:
Which okay, granted, I'm showing in dressage. That's exactly what we want. But I'm telling you that if you teach your horse early on, that whoa means back three steps. That is harder to achieve than whoa means stop basically undoing it so that whoa just means stop is easier than trying to work just on perfect. So we're rocking that teeter totter just a little bit to the back up side, and then we essentially just won't reinforce it into the backup and it will dissolve into a regular halt. So this is the way that I teach all of my horses, even little Willow, who's doing so well in dressage. She totally understands both. And good news. I don't even say whoa when I'm in dressage because you're not allowed to talk to them, so there's really no confusion. So when I teach the horse that whoa means back up three steps, it gets the rider a lot more clear in the idea that we're going to be moving that horse straight into the backup. So what tends to happen is that the rider rides that whole movement a lot more precisely. Riders can have a tendency to throw themselves and just blur and just kind of flatten out and drop down and not actually help that horse stop with collection. But it's way more likely for them to have that horse stop with collection if they're going straight into a few steps of backup.

Speaker2:
A lot of times when I'm teaching a horse to think that whoa means back three steps. It actually means I'm probably going to be saying whoa and backing that horse 7 to 10 steps, because it's going to take that exaggeration or that rocking of the teeter totter. The other direction, to get the horse to the point where they will hear the word whoa and then anticipate, they're thinking, oh, wow, they're probably going to back me 7 to 10 steps. Then they'll probably throw in 2 or 3, which is what we were really looking for. And so it is just this very systematic that every time you say the word whoa, you're going to back them up five, seven, ten steps, whatever number you pick and works for you, it's going to change horse by horse a little bit, but it's something like that. And then you'll start to know because you'll say, whoa! And the horse will stop and back itself up a step or two. And if you are in the middle of a show season where you're going to get in trouble, if your horse takes backup steps, either don't reinforce it by backing all the way up, or just do this when your show season is over, which is what I do. I do this outside of the show season, so if I'm getting ready to go to a dressage show, like I am getting ready to go to a western dressage show, I'm not going to be reinforcing the backup cue right now because I don't want to use it right now.

Speaker2:
But both Willow and Gabby were trained this way in the beginning, so it's much easier to refresh when it is needed. I want to go over a few of the mistakes that people tend to make, and I've mentioned a little bit, but just let's review a couple things. One would be not using the reins enough. And I started talking about this. I said, I see it a lot in the reining horses, where the horses understand that the leg release or the word whoa means stop. And so people start to value those methods above the reins. And when that happens, it leaves the door open for the horse to drop out of frame or drop that front end, or basically put their body in a bad shape. And so I just would highly encourage you to try to value all three of these equally. That's why I'm saying they should be 100% strong with the reins, 100% strong with the leg Q, 100% strong with the voice Q, and make sure that in your mind this is where this happens. You need to really question yourself when you're riding. Are you valuing one more than the other? And typically people who have worked on enough stuff to be able to stop the horses without the reins will value the rain less, stop more, and you just have to be careful that you're not doing your horse a disservice by letting them practice a poor frame and poor use of their body, because that will have long term consequences and you can't help them out.

Speaker2:
And we want to be able to help them out. It's good to hold their hand and help shape them because we are their dance partner and their coach. One of the reasons that I also don't talk so much about Seat and I talk more about legs. Have you noticed I said that there's a rein, Q, a leg Q, and a voice cue for some of you that might have thrown you because you're like a leg. Q I thought this was a seat. Q well, one of the reasons that I have trained myself over the years to call this a leg Q instead of a seat Q is because I noticed early on that when coaching, I wanted the riders to think about opening up their legs, which will affect a lot more than your legs. It's definitely going to affect your seat, but if I talk about the rider's legs, they tended to use the leg and then let the natural extension of what happened in their seat happen. But what happens if I talk about the seat is that they would throw their upper body back? And this is not helpful for your horse when you are riding it, especially when people add speed.

Speaker2:
So if they're walking, you're not so likely to see them throw their body back. But if they're trotting or loping, a lot of times what you'll see is that the rider would throw their body back when they thought they were actually adjusting their seat. And realistically, what they're doing is it's like the horse is giving you a piggyback ride. And then as the passenger up there, you're flinging your body weight around, which is not easy to balance if you've ever given a piggyback ride before. So if I talk about the legs more than the seat, it tends to have riders think about the legs and then that will affect the seat. So realistically I'm talking about both, but I talk about the legs a lot more, because I don't like the idea that people start throwing their body weight around, which is not helpful. I actually put out a YouTube video that I will link to in the show notes that discussed the riders positions, and I show in the video how I want my seat to be really deep during stops and when I'm riding colts. And I will dig that up and I and make sure that that makes it into the show notes so that you can see so that you can see how I'm actually demonstrating this in the video.

Speaker2:
And the most common mistake I see with the voice cue is somebody overusing it. So people a lot of times will overuse the voice by just defaulting to the voice and requiring the voice cue at all times. So it's really common to see people do voice and legs or voice and reins, but just a lot of voice cue. And again, the voice cue can't reinforce itself. So another thing that I call it is it's kind of like saying please, and it is nice and polite to say please, but if please isn't working and you're having to be reinforcing it with something else, then a lot of times you would stop saying please and you would. You would just say, okay, this is just the fact stop, stop. And so you would turn it more factual, because what happens a lot of times is people will start to nag or beg with their voice, and you'll hear this both in upward and downward. So it's really common to hear people clucking or kissing and basically kind of a version of nagging with their voice because they're not reinforcing it. And the same thing can happen with downward cues too, where people will overuse them or again, if they're using their voice so much that sometimes they're not using the reins and not helping the horse with the shape. Now, at the beginning of the podcast, I said that something magical happens when the horse understands these cues, and the best way to describe it is that the horse becomes educated to a higher level and they can think at a higher level.

Speaker2:
One of the very magical things that happens is that in the beginning, when we use our legs with our horse, it means go forward. That's why episode 39 talks about forward motion being one of the two most important cues. And in that episode, I really made a big deal about the forward motion. And then I even made a bigger deal by going into episode 41 and talking really more about forward motion. So there's a lot about forward motion that comes up early in riding, because it gets rid of a lot of problems, and it is the base for riding the horse. If you want to do more than stand still, which is just sitting on a horse. So the horse needs to move. But we spend a lot of time early on getting that horse to move forward, which is excellent, but this stuff can actually start to teach the horse. Oh, legs can mean more than move forward. So at some point in the horse's training, when the horse understands, legs can mean forward, legs can move sideways, legs can move me backwards. When they start to understand that the legs are more than just a go forward, cue the horses. Get smarter. So a lot of these really hot horses only think that legs are the gas pedal.

Speaker2:
So when you start to show them, legs can be the brakes because we're going to be able to back you up with them. Legs can mean move sideways, which is a different podcast. When they start to understand that the legs can mean more than just forward. It opens up something in the horse's mind. And I'm going to have to put another disclaimer in here. If your horse doesn't have true forward motion, go back to episode 41. Do not teach the backup with your leg cue, because the horses that don't have true forward motion are lazier horses. And if you have a lazier horse that doesn't truly understand forward motion and you teach that the leg wave means back up, then the next day you're going to go out and you're going to get on, and you're going to wave the legs behind the girth. And the horse is going to go. Yesterday, waving in front meant back up. I'm going to try backing up behind the girth. And you're going to be like, what? That's confusing. I must have done that wrong. And you're going to go try to dig out a video or something, and your horse is going to be like, yes, score. All legs mean back up. This is going to be way easier than when we used to trot and lope. If your horse doesn't truly go forward. Do not teach the leg cuz as a backup cue, you should always be able to get your horse to go forward.

Speaker2:
And I jokingly at the clinics will say pretend you have a piece of duct tape over your mouth and I want to see you go walk, trot, lope. You're not allowed to have a whip. You're not allowed to use your voice. You're just allowed to bump, bump, bump. Because if you can bump, bump, bump and move your horse from a standstill to a walk, from a walk to a trot, from a trot to a lope, then I will be convinced that your horse understands going forward. And then I will show you how to teach it to back up with a leg cue, because that might be another question the horse might ask. And you need to be a confident to be able to say no legs behind the girth mean go forward, legs in front of the girth mean go backwards and you'll be really confident and the horse will already know that. Answer a little bit more about the magic that happens is that you may have noticed in my videos online that you will often see my legs in motion, or what I call waving, and I get asked a lot of times about why my legs are in motion, why they're waving, what I'm doing there. Sometimes it's more visible, like at different times in the Jack series. So on younger horses or greener horses and sometimes you can't see it at all.

Speaker2:
Like when I was doing the bareback Bridleless ride with Roxy, I am doing leg waving, but it's so dialed in and so minute that you can't see it because she can feel my muscles contracting bareback so she can totally feel this. And what that is, is it really deserves its entire podcast, all dedicated to just leg waving. But for right now, I'm just going to answer the most common questions about leg waving. And that is, does it dull the horse out so people will see the leg waving? And I will say it's part of the bridleless cuz it's part of communication with your horse. It's part of the stopping cue. And they'll be like, doesn't it dull your horse out? But the short version of this is, no, it doesn't dull my horse out. Because for me to be able to stop my horse when with my leg. Q so if I'm riding forward and I open up my legs to take them forward to tap in the shoulders, what starts to happen is the horse starts to realize that when my legs come away from their side and then shift forward to get up by their shoulder, they start to connect the dots and they start to go, oh, when the legs come off and then the legs go forward and then the legs start to tap. It means back up.

Speaker2:
And then what the horse does is they start to realize sooner. So your legs open up and before you get a chance to pull them forward, they start slowing down. This is where the magic looking speed control comes from. Does the leg waving doll the horse out actually doesn't really have to do with that. It has to do with whether or not you're willing to reinforce the horse going forward. So it could dull a horse out if you were waving your legs and the horse went slower and slower and you didn't hold the horse accountable, then moving your legs all the time could dull your horse out. But you have to also accept that if you ride with your legs braced off all the time, then the other thing that does is basically a lot of times the riders that are having that issue, the horse is very sensitive on their sides and they're riding. They're dulling out the face all the time because it's like me on my barrel horse. Remember the one that I hit the car with when I came out of the the end gate? That horse I couldn't get my legs anywhere near. So the sides were super sensitive, but the face was kind of dulled out, which is why I couldn't stop. So there's always this balancing act. So no, like the waving doesn't have to dull the horse out. Dulling the horse out is actually a different subject.

Speaker2:
And I like wave and have been doing that for years. And actually, if you watch a ton of the videos, like I watch Charlotte and Valegro all the time, she's totally like waving, I love it. Another question. Super common and I'll just answer it here is isn't it exhausting to wave your legs like that. And no, it's not tiring at all. Because I'm using the energy that's coming from the horse. So the only time that I'm offering up extra energy is if we're standing still. I'm going to wave my legs. Wave wave wave wave. And then the horse's job is to pick up that motion and timing and match me. So it becomes beautiful, because I can be standing still and I pick up a wave, wave, wave. That's a walk. And if I pick up wave, wave, wave, that's trot. And that's how I can get a nice clean trot off from a halt. Because the different wave, how quickly I do the wave will actually cue the horse into a different speed. So I've got all this speed control that's much more invisible than using the reins all the time, although it is complemented with the reins and the shape, but it's its own thing. And no, it's not exhausting because again, once the horse is trotting, now I'm just using their energy to maintain the trot. Because if you're not waving your legs with the horse's energy, then you're trying to block the energy from your body, because those are the two choices you have.

Speaker2:
Because you may have noticed if you ever threw a friend onto your horse, that they kind of flop around up there because there's motion coming from the horse. So when you see the leg waving, know that it is actually the energy coming from the horse and that if your legs are on slightly, that makes it a lot easier to install a cue where when you release your legs and they come off that the horse would slow down. And no, it doesn't have to dull the horse out at all. So I hope you guys have listened to episode 39 and episode 41. If you haven't, I suggest you jump back there because they really complement this episode a lot, especially 39, because I bet that a lot of people who saw the title of that one would. The two most basic cues when riding a horse may have made the guess that that would have been like steering and stopping or something, but I'm telling you that the stopping cue is hidden inside of the steering cue in the beginning, and then later on we get this more advanced stopping cue. If you have any questions for me, go ahead and call them in on the voicemail hotline that you'll find on the right hand side of my website, and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Speaker1:
Supporting companies make this show sustainable. Thank you.

Speaker2:
I would like to again thank Aqua Thrive for sponsoring this podcast. I have been using Aqua Thrive's products and have most recently tried their vitamin E, which I've been impressed with because it is an all natural form of vitamin E, not a synthetic and I didn't know. But now I do that a lot of the synthetics are not bioavailable to the horses. And this is a problem, because if you have it on your feed label that vitamin E is in the product, but the horse can't actually absorb it. You're not going to get the benefits, and you might be paying extra for something that they really can't even access. I love the science behind Aqua Thrive and their products. If you'd like to learn more about their products, you can visit Aqua Thrive.com. And if you decide to purchase something, use the code Stacy Stacy in the checkout to receive 10% off plus free shipping. Thanks for joining me and I'll talk to you again in the next episode.

Speaker1:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall. Com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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