{"id":831,"date":"2008-08-20T23:03:04","date_gmt":"2008-08-21T04:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/?p=831"},"modified":"2010-10-07T23:04:01","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T04:04:01","slug":"sue-how-do-you-do-tuck-and-spurt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/sue-how-do-you-do-tuck-and-spurt\/","title":{"rendered":"Sue – How Do You Do “Tuck and Spurt”?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tuck and Spurt<\/strong> is a new term I came up with tonight to describe something Sue does.<\/span><\/p>\n

When she gets nervous or fearful, she tenses, her rear end\u00a0tucks in\u00a0and she spurts forward.\u00a0\u00a0This isn’t a good thing.\u00a0 It would be a good thing if we were in a starting gate ready to chase down a cow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As we are riding along and I ask her to go forward, I might “overask” and she’ll tense all up…tuck and spurt.\u00a0 You might imagine this just destroys the transition that I am asking for.\u00a0 It makes me frustrated not to be able to ask for a slight increase in speed, but instead I get a tense spurt.\u00a0 Since she’s a gaited horse, she usually goes into a gait that isn’t comfy. Gaited horses are supposed to be comfy.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m taking on the discovery process of eliminating or reducing the number of tucks and spurts we do on each ride<\/span><\/p>\n

I discovered that short pattern in what we call point to point helps.\u00a0 We go from short side to side in an arena.\u00a0 We speed faster than a walk and stop at the opposite wall.\u00a0 It took about 8 times before she stopped the tuck and spurt the last time I did it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m trying go forward 5 fast steps, stop and back.\u00a0 It took about 5 times before she would go forward without the tuck and spurt.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tonight, I discovered passenger riding.\u00a0 My passenger riding is trying to keep\u00a0going faster than a walk and the horse gets to pick where ever she wants to go.\u00a0 I don’t touch the reins.\u00a0 When Sue breaks down into a walk, I ask her to speed back up.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Therefore, going into the fence isn’t as enjoyble as going straight.\u00a0 The goal is to passenger ride for 21 minutes.\u00a0 I might have made it about 12 minutes the first time.\u00a0 We were in an outdoor 120X60 arena.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was no tucking and spurting!\u00a0 Only one time did she speed up into a pace.\u00a0 I just let her pace.\u00a0 I managed to post to the pace.\u00a0 She quit and went back into an easy gait.<\/span><\/p>\n

The passenger riding\u00a0sort of forces\u00a0me to relax.\u00a0 My cues to go faster must be a lot less than if I were holding the reins.\u00a0 It worked.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a few minutes of passenger riding, I was able to relax my tension.\u00a0 It was just great.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I did another passenger ride for 5 minutes.\u00a0 Sue maintained her gait for\u00a0longer periods of time.\u00a0 She also smoothed out the hard trot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Passenger riding makes the horse braver and increases the rider’s confidence!<\/span><\/p>\n

Twenty one minutes of passenger riding is my goal for the next ride!<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0tucks in\u00a0and she spurts forward.\u00a0\u00a0This isn’t a good thing.\u00a0 It would be a good thing if we were in a starting gate ready to chase down a cow.\u00a0 As we are riding along and I ask her to go forward, I might “overask” and she’ll tense all up…tuck and spurt.\u00a0 You might imagine this just destroys the transition that I am asking for.\u00a0…<\/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":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sue-how-do-you-do"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","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=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}