Get your Horse to Stop by Backing Up

Think of stopping your horse as if you are driving your car. Instead of pushing the car into park to get a great stop, you want put the car into reverse. Of course this would ruin a cars transmission, but it'll get your horse to stop harder, deeper, and do it with much less resistance. Horses that stop hard do it because they are preparing themselves to have to back up.

Possibly the most important part of teaching the stop, and most overlooked, is teaching our horses to back up. 

Why? When a horse backs up correctly, it drops its butt, rounds its back, and drives its hind legs underneath itself. The same body position of a great stop.

To get a great stop you must first get a great back up.

A great back up goes like this:

1 - Rider lifts the reins and makes light direct contact with the horses mouth.

2 - Horse drops his nose towards its chest to relieve the pressure from the bit, causing the back to round.

3 - Horse backs off the bit by backing up.

Use the back up to teach your horse to stop by:

1 - As you walk, ensuring the reins are hanging loose with no pressure on the bit.

2 - Gently lift the reins, say whoa, release any leg pressure, and ask the horse to back up(reapply leg pressure to help back up). 

3 - Once the horse is backing up and soft in the bit, let go.

4 - Repeat this drill until the horse responds quickly and correctly 90% of the time.

5 - Once the horse can do this at a walk, repeat this drill at a trot, then at a lope.

Pay attention to:

- You'll notice a hesitancy between the horse waking forward and backing up, the key to a great stop is to make that hesitancy disappear. This will happen through repetition of the drill, as the horse gets more comfortable and understands better the cue.

- Your horse may have stiffness to the bridle, this may dissipate as the horse gains more understanding of the cues, or the horse may need softening drills and exercises, or it may have physical ailments causing it pain, such as wolf teeth or an ill fitting bit.

-   Horses are born great, average, or poor stoppers. Great stoppers have God given talents and abilities that make them so, the same as some of us run faster, jump higher, or sing better than others. Some horses simply are born for stopping, and others are not.

Our job as trainers and riders is to give our horses the tools and skills they need to stop at their highest potential, whether that be high or low. No matter how well the horse is going to stop, the skills needed to perform it are the same. 

These drills aren't guaranteed to make your horse slide 30 feet, or drag the base of its tail in the dirt, but they are guaranteed to get your horse stopping as hard as it can.

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Thanks,

Randy White