Lunging/Longeing - Part Two

Lunge with the right equipment: splint boots with bell boots/wraps, a properly fitted halter, lightweight lunge whip and a lunge line you can work with in comfort. Boots will protect their legs from injury if they happen to have an above reach. What you don't need is for your horse to injure itself after which remember the experience as being a negative one. The lunge whip by the way, is an aid only and not your current primary training tool.

Try to lunge in a round pen or an enclosed area of some sort with rounded corners, and flat ground. Remember the goal is to keep control of the horse at all times, so don't try this in an area without fencing.

When you start the lesson, always start with one direction and stick to it. If you choose to work on the left side, then always hold your current lead in the left hand with excess line in your current perfect (and the whip as properly, if you choose to use one) and keep all body positions the same. You start to the left, pointing to the left, leading the horse's nose to the left and move the feet, swing your own rope end (or lift the whip) towards the horses hip to ask for forward movement. If you horse keeps facing you then guide them forward by swinging your rope/whip toward their shoulder.

Ok, success, the horse is moving in a circle to the left. Move with him, staying in the middle of the round pen with sufficient line played out. Keep the whip low, or the rope end low and walk quietly. The thing you want to teach the horse is, that if Your own feet are moving, his feet need to be moving. Keep your current body behind his withers to ensure forward movement. If you get in front of the withers, your horse will stop.

If your horse does stop, calmly keep moving and touch the whip or rope end to his hind legs to keep him moving until YOU stop the feet. The major reason this approach will work, and work nicely, is that this is totally pure behavior for a horse. Watch a herd in the field and see what happens when 1 stomps its feet after which moves off. The rest follow, they don't stop to ask questions, they only go, and go at the same rate of speed set by the head horse in the pecking buy. If you lunge in this manner, your horse will understand your own body language almost immediately. First the body language, then add voice to the body language.

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