JR’s Journal – Dealing with the Pace

JR, the hard-wired to fox trot horse, starting pacing about my eighth ride.  He was started by Jennifer Vaught and got a solid flat foot walk, a beautiful fox trot and a lovely canter with her.  After my eighth ride on him, he did the pace walk, the regular pace and we lost our nice smooth canter.  When JR cantered, every leg was going to the beat of a different drummer.  Rough?  I was flying out of the saddle at every beat.  

Why did he start pacing soon after I rode him?  

  • Remember that fear that I talked about on our first rides?  I tried to relax, but it was there.  
  • My emotion and body language made him fearful and worried and he started hollowing out his back.
  • He discovered the pace and liked it.  After all, it requires a lot less work that the other gaits.  His feet just skim the ground.  He can go at any speed with the pace…slow or fast.  

Here are the parameters:  In my world of natural horsemanship, we start horses with only a halter.  We teach the horse the responsibilities of backing, stopping, turning on the fore and hind quarters and side passing before ever putting a bit in the mouth.  (We save a lot of wear and tear and keep that mouth very soft and delicate.  After about 300 hours, we are ready to refine the horse.  He knows his rein responsibilities by then.

We do start asking for a soft feel which is just the tip of the iceberg for vertical flexion.  

So, here I am with a pacing horse, no bit and no vertical flexion.  How can the pace be fixed within these parameters?  

I did what every red blooded gaited horse owner does!   I ran JR over poles on the ground.   I did this from the ground and while I was riding him.  It worked while I was riding him for almost 4 steps. 

Here’s what I really did:  

  1. Quarter Horse Walk-Get JR to WALK  (This is #1 Heart of Stopping the Pace)JR and I would go for a ride anywhere…in the arena or outside.  We would start out at a Quarter Horse (QH) walk for about 2 seconds and then he would start to run.  When he started running, he raised his head, hollowed his back and started pacing.  I went on long rides pulling him back with a one rein “slow down” action for hours and hours.  Finally, we went on long enough of a ride that he got quite tired and started to QH WALK.  On the next couple of long rides, we tried to QH Walk again.  It took several weeks and many rides before he would just plain QH walk. 

    Finally, he stayed at the walk and relaxed enough to lower his head for long periods of time.  JR relaxed.  We got a consistent Quarter Horse Walk

  2. DOG WALK– After much QH walking, we went up to a Dog Walk.  A dog walk is faster than a walk, but slower than the flat foot walk.  The dog walk is very uncomfortable.  Your seat goes forward and backwards quickly and uncomfortably.  The Dog Walk builds up the muscles in the back that a horse needs to be able to do and sustain the flat foot walk and the fox trot.It’s difficult to hold them in this one speed.  JR wanted to break into a faster gait (and pace). Or, we slowed down to a regular walk. We did this for quite a while. We didn’t get very good at dog walk consistency, but we did manage periods of dog walking. The dog walk is a four beat gait (unlike the 2 beat gait of the pace. Doing the dog walk got his feet in a four beat gait so that eventually we carried that 4 beat gait right into a flat foot walk.
     
  3. Flat Foot Walk on Uneven Ground – JR started being able to hit a flat foot walk as long as we were on somewhat uneven ground. We couldn’t do this in an arena or a smoooooth field. We could do it on trail rides.
    At first, we did a lot of breaking into the pace. We were out in strange new places which made him very suspectible to throwing his head up with the corresponding hollowing back and we would start pacing.

Here is the #2 Heart of Curing the Pace.  Every time JR paced, he suffered a CONSEQUENCE.  When he paced, he was made to:

    a)  Back – this is stop to a back with no pause. orb)  Sidepass, orc)  Disengage the hindquarters

At first we started out just with disengaging the hindquarters a step or two. This was something that we could do when riding with others. It didn’t slow us down very much; we could keep up with our trail buddies.

JR had to back with effort and sidepass with effort. After a few times of this, he became aware that pacing meant he would have to do things (with effort) that he dislikes.

Here’s all the great things that has happened when giving JR one of the three consequences.

    a)  Communication -JR became aware that I was telling him I didn’t want him to pace.  He figured that out!  After doing this for many days, I can tell when he’s about to hollow out his back, but he catches himself!  It’s like he’s remembering, “Oh no! I don’t want to pace because then I’ll have to do one of those horrid things, eccha!”b)  All those three actions set JR up with self carriage.  Upon being asked to sidepass and back, he collects himself!  When he self collects, his body is set up to perform the a 4 beat gait.c)  When sidepassing, a horse develops his front end/shoulder muscles.  JR’s human friends are now starting to notice some really significant widening of his front end.  He’s building up valuable muscles.

    d)  Backing: Backing gets a horse’s weight off the front end.  Backing loads the weight to the back end.  The back end is where the power comes from.  Gaited horses tend put their weight on their front end.  Teaching a horse to load his back end gives him a lot more power and eventually true collection.

    e)  Great practice on sidepassing and backing.  The better a horse can sidepass and go backwards, the better he can do everything else.  This consequence has given us lots of opportunity to practice.

By the way when JR gets into the flat foot walk, I rub him on the neck.  That’s another form of communication to let him know that he is doing the right thing.

NOTE!  Many people pat their horses.  Horses hate that.  Horses like to be rubbed.  Patting is actually hitting.

READY for the FOXTROT

JR is now ready to start the fox trot.  We’ll probably have to use our 3 consequences actions to teach JR that the fox trot is another preferred gait.  He can do the fox trot now when he’s excited as he now self collects himself, rather than falls into the pace.

    How exciting it is to own a gaited horse!