Sue – How Do You Do “Tuck and Spurt”?

Tuck and Spurt is a new term I came up with tonight to describe something Sue does.

When she gets nervous or fearful, she tenses, her rear end tucks in and she spurts forward.  This isn’t a good thing.  It would be a good thing if we were in a starting gate ready to chase down a cow. 

As we are riding along and I ask her to go forward, I might “overask” and she’ll tense all up…tuck and spurt.  You might imagine this just destroys the transition that I am asking for.  It makes me frustrated not to be able to ask for a slight increase in speed, but instead I get a tense spurt.  Since she’s a gaited horse, she usually goes into a gait that isn’t comfy. Gaited horses are supposed to be comfy.

I’m taking on the discovery process of eliminating or reducing the number of tucks and spurts we do on each ride

I discovered that short pattern in what we call point to point helps.  We go from short side to side in an arena.  We speed faster than a walk and stop at the opposite wall.  It took about 8 times before she stopped the tuck and spurt the last time I did it.

I’m trying go forward 5 fast steps, stop and back.  It took about 5 times before she would go forward without the tuck and spurt.

Tonight, I discovered passenger riding.  My passenger riding is trying to keep going faster than a walk and the horse gets to pick where ever she wants to go.  I don’t touch the reins.  When Sue breaks down into a walk, I ask her to speed back up.  She gets to turn in little circles if she wants. She gets to go directly into the fence, but when she slows down, I ask her to speed up.  Therefore, going into the fence isn’t as enjoyble as going straight.  The goal is to passenger ride for 21 minutes.  I might have made it about 12 minutes the first time.  We were in an outdoor 120X60 arena.

There was no tucking and spurting!  Only one time did she speed up into a pace.  I just let her pace.  I managed to post to the pace.  She quit and went back into an easy gait.

The passenger riding sort of forces me to relax.  My cues to go faster must be a lot less than if I were holding the reins.  It worked.

After a few minutes of passenger riding, I was able to relax my tension.  It was just great. 

I did another passenger ride for 5 minutes.  Sue maintained her gait for longer periods of time.  She also smoothed out the hard trot.

Passenger riding makes the horse braver and increases the rider’s confidence!

Twenty one minutes of passenger riding is my goal for the next ride!