Come to the Fence for the Rider

This video series starts with a grey TB gelding. He is a nice boy but he is only accustomed to being mounted from his left side. He may never have been mounted on his right in his life. So he is jittery and excitable when you approach to mount on his right and he has been known to buck fairly strongly on occasions when he is agitated. The trick here is to get him accustomed to being mounted on his right, and to teach him to present himself to be mounted on his right. Sorry about the video quality, but I cannot afford a decent camera.

In the video below, you will see the horse learning the first stages. In this video he learns to bring his right side to the fence alongside me instead of his left. The progression of my aids are as follows:

1. Lift the rope

2. Shake the rope

3. Lift the whip

4. Shake the whip

5. Shake the whip until it makes a whistling noise through the air

I progress through these aids quickly and smoothly if the horse ignores me and does not move. But if the horse moves, then I stay at whatever state I am at even if he does the wrong thing, until the horse does the right thing.

For example: I lift the rope, horse does not move, I shake the rope, horse does not move, I Lift the whip, horse moves but the wrong way, I keep the whip up but DO NOT SHAKE. If the horse starts moving in the right direction, or even stops moving the in the wrong direction, I drop the rope and stroke the horse with the whip. Then start over at stage 1.(Lifting the rope) Make sure that you drop the aids at every indication that the horse is moving in the correct direction. In other words, do not wait until he is all the way up against the fence before you drop the aids. Drop the aids for every single step or movement in the correct direction. Remember, if you want ten steps, you never ask for ten steps, you ask for one step ten times.

In the next video below, you can see that Oliver has now learned to come to the fence and present his right side to the rider. But he is still reluctant to be mounted from that side. But the beauty of this action is that while I am on the fence, there is no precarious bouncing, boosting, hopping, or climbing that is so typical of people when they have to get on a reluctant horse. I can sit on the fence, and mount him slowly and comfortably. And if he has objections, I can quickly and easily grab the fence and NOT FALL OFF or get a foot stuck in the stirrup. Nothing worse than getting taken for a drag. In this video, Oliver is willing to come to the fence, but he is reluctant to be mounted, so he steps away from the fence. But when he does, I can call him back. If he had not been trained to come to the fence on command, then I would have had to start all over in positioning him by a mounting block, fence, or some other way of boosting myself up to his back.

In this video, Oliver has become much more comfortable with being approached from the right and is letting me sit on him and put my weight on him without stepping away from the fence. This is a good breakthrough and I will not push him further. I could get on him today, but what's the rush? He is expecting something unpleasant to happen but is following orders to stay by the fence. Instead of proving him right and riding him to ground, I will prove him wrong, get off him, give him some treats and let him go play in the pasture. Tomorrow, he will be much more compliant and happy to accept me on his back.

In this final video below, I am using a different horse. His name is Rashid, and he is a nice little Arab. He is also not familiar with being mounted on the right side. This video should illustrate the progression of the aids.

I apologise if I am not teaching a horse how to do this from scratch but when I got to the stables, I found that every horse present had already had this lesson and knew it. So in the spirit of improvising, I decided to teach them to pick me up on the right side. If I get another horse in one day that does not know it, I will make sure to tape that one for you. But in actuality, it is really not any different and is in fact easier than what you have seen in these videos