A good equestrian knows how to read her horse’s expressions. Because before it is possible to teach your mare dressage movements or even just enjoy riding her, you must implant the basics in her first, which entails her understanding you and you understanding her. And our equine mates can’t exactly let us know how they feel—we have to read their expressions. We’ll take the practice of basic roping for instance.

It is not tough to find a roping teacher or lesson thanks to roping clinics. Trainers who set up such clinics usually provide manuals or at a minimum advise the owner to accustom their pony to ropes and prepare the animal for the particular roping clinic.

Manuals meant to accustom horses to ropes or lassos as preparation for roping coaching have in-depth instructions frequently with massive graphics to better aid the owners in understanding the best way to carry out the lesson and thus prepare their mares. With such manuals, you shouldn’t have a problem preparing your equine partners, unless they’ve had a bad experience associated with ropes. I they have then ropes would certainly make your horse panic when you try to rope her.

A horse, as an example, which was roped to be caught when it was 3 and was sent to be gelded, shod, and trained, in all probability has since then developed fright of ropes. The rope is associated to being caught and the negative experience that followed. You should expect such a pony to gallop away at the sight of a rope or lasso, and would not stop unless a wall it cannot jump over is in the way.

So what do you do when your mare has developed fear of ropes or, for some unknown reason, panics once you get into the saddle and begin to lift the rope off the saddle horn? You can go to an expert, a pony trainer, to get some assistance. A course of action similar to the following would most likely be recommended:

Return to the groundwork level. While holding the rope, quietly stroke your mare. Then start swinging the rope at you side. It is understandable if the horse accepts your strokes while you are holding the rope but will panic when you start swinging the rope. What you need to do is continue carefully swinging the rope and watch out for signs from your mare indicating the she’s thinking. Horses blink, twitch their ears, breathe faster, or quiver their lips when they think. These are your cues that your mare is thinking—most likely, processing what you are doing or trying to do. Once you see a signal that your horse is thinking, stop swinging the rope and praise him.

“Release” your pony from that part of the lesson. She has already recognized the exercise and is prepared for a repeat or another exercise. When you see your horse snorting, inhaling deeply, moving her feet, licking or chewing or both, yawning, shaking her body or head, or dropping her head, then that indicates that you can release her from the lesson.

Horses have their own way of expressing themselves. A good equestrian should focus not only on dressage-level routines but should also take time to learn a horse’s expressions and the way to interpret them to better understand her equine pal. She should similarly help the mare get over her fear, if there’s any.

Horses are Heather Toms’ passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100’s of articles with other horse lovers… like all things about riding hats