Working on being correct to the left.

Here’s how you should think about positioning your horse in the pattern.

Leads, speed control and body control - fundamentals for any horse, but especially for barrel horses!

Continuing issimo’s training. Lots of figure 8s outside. Going outside always helps to free up the feet!

Quite a few of the things I think about during a ride. Depending on the education of the horse they may vary.

Plenty to be learned in this ride on my good mare, Cosmo. She’s 9 so she’s pretty far along, but even then, there’s always stuff we are working on fixing.

There are multiple ways to help a horse understand what we're asking of them. We don't need only focus on the pattern, or a drill that will do ONE thing. We can work on other things to help that ONE thing. Here, I demonstrate several ways to help this mare pick up her right front foot.

Turning the first barrel -the money barrel- is something I’ve struggled with on this mare. Thankfully my friend was able to show me a couple things to do to help her learn to drive from behind and stay moving forward, as well as the best way to get her to change her lead leaving first. Before she...

If we can set the horse up for success by preparing them properly - timing up with a foot in a turn around or letting them know we're going to be asking them to stop etc, they'll be better able to do the maneuvers.

Rate the first barrel, speed control, shoulder control, speeding up the feet - on this July Ride.

We cover so many topics in this ride, it’s hard to list them here.
Waiting.
Timing up with the feet.
Working the pattern with quality.
Speed control.
Loping.
Problem solving.
So much more.

Learn to do figure 8s in the pattern.