{"id":686,"date":"2002-11-26T20:50:39","date_gmt":"2002-11-27T02:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/?p=686"},"modified":"2010-09-30T20:51:19","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T01:51:19","slug":"jrs-journal-dealing-with-the-pace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/jrs-journal-dealing-with-the-pace\/","title":{"rendered":"JR&#8217;s Journal &#8211; Dealing with the Pace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>JR<\/strong>, the hard-wired to fox trot horse, starting pacing about my eighth ride.\u00a0 He was started by Jennifer Vaught and got a solid flat foot walk, a beautiful fox trot and a lovely canter with her.\u00a0 After my eighth ride on him, he did the pace walk, the regular pace and we lost our nice smooth canter.\u00a0 When JR cantered, every leg was going to the beat of a different drummer.\u00a0 Rough?\u00a0 I was flying out of the saddle at every beat. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Why did he start pacing soon after I rode him? \u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Remember that fear that I talked about on our first rides?\u00a0 I tried to relax, but it was there. \u00a0<\/li>\n<li>My emotion and body language made him fearful and worried and he started hollowing out his back.<\/li>\n<li>He discovered the pace and liked it.\u00a0 After all, it requires a lot less work that the other gaits.\u00a0 His feet just skim the ground.\u00a0 He can go at any speed with the pace\u2026slow or fast. \u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Here are the parameters:<\/strong>\u00a0 In my world of natural horsemanship, we start horses with only a halter.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 (We save a lot of wear and tear and keep that mouth very soft and delicate.\u00a0 After about 300 hours, we are ready to refine the horse.\u00a0 He knows his rein responsibilities by then.<\/p>\n<p>We do start asking for a soft feel which is just the tip of the iceberg for vertical flexion. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So, here I am with a pacing horse, no bit and no vertical flexion.\u00a0 How can the pace be fixed within these parameters? \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I did what every red blooded gaited horse owner does!\u00a0\u00a0 I ran JR over poles on the ground.\u00a0\u00a0 I did this from the ground and while I was riding him.\u00a0 It worked while I was riding him for almost 4 steps.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what I really did: \u00a0<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Quarter Horse Walk-Get JR to WALK<\/strong>\u00a0 (This is #1 <strong>Heart of Stopping the Pace<\/strong>)JR and I would go for a ride anywhere\u2026in the arena or outside.\u00a0 We would start out at a Quarter Horse (QH) walk for about 2 seconds and then he would start to run.\u00a0 When he started running, he raised his head, hollowed his back and started pacing. \u00a0I went on long rides pulling him back with a one rein \u201cslow down\u201d action for hours and hours.\u00a0 Finally, we went on long enough of a ride that he got quite tired and started to QH WALK.\u00a0 On the next couple of long rides, we tried to QH Walk again.\u00a0 It took several weeks and many rides before he would just plain QH walk.\u00a0\n<p>Finally, he stayed at the walk and relaxed enough to lower his head for long periods of time.\u00a0 JR relaxed.\u00a0 We got a consistent Quarter Horse Walk<\/li>\n<li><strong>DOG WALK<\/strong>&#8211; After much QH walking, we went up to a Dog Walk.\u00a0 A dog walk is faster than a walk, but slower than the flat foot walk.\u00a0 The dog walk is very uncomfortable.\u00a0 Your seat goes forward and backwards quickly and uncomfortably.\u00a0 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\u2019s difficult to hold them in this one speed.\u00a0 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\u2019t 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.<br \/>\n\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><strong>Flat Foot Walk<\/strong> on Uneven Ground \u2013 JR started being able to hit a flat foot walk as long as we were on somewhat uneven ground. We couldn\u2019t do this in an arena or a smoooooth field. We could do it on trail rides.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>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.<\/ul>\n<p>Here is the #2 <strong>Heart of Curing the Pace<\/strong>.\u00a0 Every time JR paced, he suffered a CONSEQUENCE.\u00a0 When he paced, he was made to:<\/p>\n<ul>a)\u00a0\u00a0Back \u2013 this is stop to a back with no pause. orb)\u00a0\u00a0Sidepass, orc)\u00a0\u00a0Disengage the hindquarters<\/ul>\n<p>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\u2019t slow us down very much; we could keep up with our trail buddies.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s all the great things that has happened when giving JR one of the three consequences.<\/p>\n<ul>a)\u00a0 Communication -JR became aware that I was telling him I didn\u2019t want him to pace.\u00a0 He figured that out!\u00a0 After doing this for many days, I can tell when he\u2019s about to hollow out his back, but he catches himself!\u00a0 It\u2019s like he\u2019s remembering, \u201cOh no! I don\u2019t want to pace because then I\u2019ll have to do one of those horrid things, eccha!\u201db)\u00a0 All those three actions set JR up with self carriage.\u00a0 Upon being asked to sidepass and back, he collects himself!\u00a0 When he self collects, his body is set up to perform the a 4 beat gait.c)\u00a0 When sidepassing, a horse develops his front end\/shoulder muscles.\u00a0 JR\u2019s human friends are now starting to notice some really significant widening of his front end.\u00a0 He\u2019s building up valuable muscles.<\/p>\n<p>d)\u00a0 Backing: Backing gets a horse\u2019s weight off the front end.\u00a0 Backing loads the weight to the back end.\u00a0 The back end is where the power comes from.\u00a0 Gaited horses tend put their weight on their front end.\u00a0 Teaching a horse to load his back end gives him a lot more power and eventually true collection.<\/p>\n<p>e)\u00a0 Great practice on sidepassing and backing.\u00a0 The better a horse can sidepass and go backwards, the better he can do everything else.\u00a0 This consequence has given us lots of opportunity to practice.<\/ul>\n<p>By the way when JR gets into the flat foot walk, I rub him on the neck.\u00a0 That\u2019s another form of communication to let him know that he is doing the right thing.<\/p>\n<p>NOTE!\u00a0 Many people pat their horses.\u00a0 Horses hate that.\u00a0 Horses like to be rubbed.\u00a0 Patting is actually hitting.<\/p>\n<p><strong>READY for the FOXTROT<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>JR is now ready to start the fox trot.\u00a0 We\u2019ll probably have to use our 3 consequences actions to teach JR that the fox trot is another preferred gait.\u00a0 He can do the fox trot now when he\u2019s excited as he now self collects himself, rather than falls into the pace.<\/p>\n<ul><strong>How exciting it is to own a gaited horse!<\/strong><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JR, the hard-wired to fox trot horse, starting pacing about my eighth ride.\u00a0 He was started by Jennifer Vaught and got a solid flat foot walk, a beautiful fox trot and a lovely canter with her.\u00a0 After my eighth ride on him, he did the pace walk, the regular pace and we lost our nice smooth canter.\u00a0 When JR cantered, every leg was going to the beat of a different drummer.\u00a0 Rough?\u00a0 I was flying out of the saddle at every beat. \u00a0 Why did he start pacing soon after&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":689,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions\/689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}