TRAIN
A REINER
Todd
and Taumi Martin
Copyright©2009
Lesson
9
Preparing for the First Trip to the
Show Pen
This is the last lesson, but by far my
favorite chapter.
You’ve spent a lot of time training and
working your horses, and you are well prepared to perform. Still there is anxiety about going to the
show pen. Many think showing is just for
certain people….or they feel it is “just showing off.” Truly the show pen is a test of
communication, understanding and cooperation between horse and rider.
There a lot of horses which are great
at home, but completely different at a show.
When you go to a show pen, you
shouldn’t go there worrying about winning.
Winning should be the last thing on your mind. The first thing on your
mind should be taking care of your horse.
And that leads us into the first part of this lesson.
Your first priority is the horse.
Before you are ready to go to a show
you must be adequately prepared in every area, not just the maneuvers of the
reining class. You should have all of
the elements mastered so well that you know what to expect of your horse, and
there will be no “surprises” when you go out on the road.
The first couple of times you go out
on the road don’t go with the purpose of showing to win. Your first couple of times should be devoted
to nothing more than getting your horse acquainted with being on the road. Your job is to get your horse familiar with
working in traffic (lots of other horses) and acceptance of his new
surroundings.
Take whatever time is needed to get
the horse to relax. You want to get out
there and let your horse enjoy the new environment. You want your horse to be fully aware of his
surroundings, but you still want him to consider your requests first. Every time your horse is distracted, give him
something to do. The primary responsibility now is to allow the horse to be
aware of all the activities going on, but to continue to focus on what you are requesting.
If the first time you take your horse
to show, you lose your concentration, become nervous and worried, it will
translate into punishment instead of pleasure for the horse. Going to a show should feel like a reward to
you horse. The horse should enjoy going
to shows, rather than dislike the experience.
Often we worry about what others think
of our horse and how he is behaving.
Don’t worry about the opinion of
others. Keep your head on straight. Focus
on your horse.
Don’t concern yourself if your horse
is shying from this or that. Just put
the horse to work. Make him lope in a
circle. Work on guiding, turning,
rollbacks and spins.
Keep your training program the same on
the road as you do at home. Make sure when the horse is in a new environment,
the ride is still the same. The person riding is still the same person, and the
training regime should continue to be the same training regime. Ride at the show just as you ride at home.
It takes some horses several shows
before they settle in and get comfortable.
You want your horse to behave the same
at the show as he does at home. If he
doesn’t, you are not ready to show. Plan on taking the horse to as many shows
as it takes for him to be comfortable.
The first time your horse is asked to
“show”, you don’t want to push him and you don’t want to ask a whole lot of
him. The show pen environment is just as
much a new experience as hauling them out the first time.
Going into the show pen for the first
time should be nothing more for the horse than executing all the maneuvers while
staying well within his capabilities.
Let him enjoy the show as much as he enjoys the warm up or being at
home.
Remember when we were teaching the
stop and we said that on every practice stop we were working to make the next
stop better? Well, the same thing
applies in the show pen. Every time we take them out to the show pen we are not
trying to get the best run we can possibly get today. We are working on making
sure our horse will be better for the next show.
When the horse is relaxed in the show
pen, and is giving us precise maneuvers, then we can begin to ask him to give
us all he’s got.
You can’t expect the horse to perform
“all out” his very first time out. The first time out he is going to be
distracted by his new environment. If
your goal is to improve each run without pressure, eventually the horse will
perform at a very high level without ever having been pushed beyond his
capability.
You have to spend as much time
teaching the horse the “show pen” as you spent teaching him everything else.
We spent a lot of time getting the
horse ready for the show pen; now we need to spend a little time on you.
Before you leave for your first show,
you have to have a game plan. You need to know exactly what you are going to do
with your horse. Regardless of what the horse does, stick with the game plan.
For example, I am going to warm up at
the show in exactly the same way I do at home. I know how long I need lope him
before I ask him to turn. I know the
sequence of maneuvers I’m going to ask for.
First the lope, then some turns, then some stops.
When you get to the show you are going
to see people running their horses harder to the stops, or spinning harder or
asking an extra amount from their horse.
You may feel your horse can do just as well or better, but don’t change
your training program. You have a plan,
execute it and stick with it.
If your plan doesn’t work as well as
you hoped, then change it for the next show, but not for this show. If you stick with your plan and it turns out
not so good, you can adjust for the next time you show. If your initial show
plan turns out good, then you can build on it.
But if you changed your plan at the
first show, then you don’t know if what you did helped or didn’t help. You don’t know if what you did at home made
him bad, or what you changed at the show made him worry, or got him too hot.
If you don’t have a plan, you don’t
have a way to measure the results of your training…you have no baseline.
Don’t allow outside influences to
change your training or change the way you ride. Your purpose is the see what happens at this
show so that everything you do is of value in making the next show better.
Horse shows are great places to rob your horse
of his confidence. With all the new and strange sights (baby strollers, dogs,
traffic in the pen, banners, etc.) a horse can get worried and start
shying. The last thing you want to do is
get physical (trying to force compliance) or take away his routine. (Horses love routine; they feel comfortable
and safe.) If you take away his routine,
he’ll lose confidence not only in himself, but you as a rider.
At your first show with an
inexperienced horse, you are going to be nervous, especially when you know
everyone is watching your performance.
Your horse will read your nervousness or your
calmness. Your horse will feel what you
are feeling by the way you sit, your leg aids and the way you hold the reins.
At home, when you are relaxed, you
hold the reins with a somewhat open hand. You don’t have a tight grip on the
reins and you aren’t hanging on your horse’s face. You keep your hands light and you feel the
bit come into your hands. So an optimal grip or tension on your reins is a
loose one—the lighter, the better. If
you have a light touch on the reins, as you draw your hand up you can feel the
bit start to engage.
You’ve been riding with a light hand
and your horse is familiar with your touch.
But at the show you start to get nervous and you lose your natural
“feel” for the horse. Because your horse
reads you and you’ve started to lose the feel for your horse, your horse starts
to lose his feel for you. Inevitably you start to tighten up because you can’t
feel your horse. The next thing you know
you have a tight gorilla grip on the reins and you are trying to force your
horse to put his head down or you’re yanking on the reins trying to make the
horse “soften.”
In reality your horse is probably
riding pretty much the same as he always does; it just that you can’t feel him
as you did when you were relaxed and calm.
You can’t feel the bit in his mouth; you can’t feel the looseness in the
reins. As a result you take the slack of the reins and start riding with a
tighter rein.
Everything is now different than the
way you were riding at home and that is something you don’t want.
If you want to “test” what I’m saying
about the fact that you will get nervous, here’s what you can do. Invite someone to come out to your arena and
watch you ride.
Let’s suppose you feel comfortable and
you are having a great day stopping your horse.
It’s all going so well that you are ready to invite someone out to watch
you perform some sliding stops.
I will guarantee you that as soon as
you start to perform stops for your guest, your horse’s stop are not going to
be nearly as good as they were when you were all alone. For no reason you can see, your horse is
tight, grabbing the ground too hard, over stopping, or getting stiff on the
front end. Whatever the issue, the stops aren’t as good, and the reason is you
have introduced an outside stimulus.
Once you introduced that outside
stimulus (the person you have invited to watch you) you have an audience and
you need to perform. You want to show them that “great stop.” Now you have
placed a lot of pressure on yourself and that pressure is going to be
transmitted to your horse. He is not
going to stop nearly as well as he did when there was no pressure.
It’s the same in the show pen….now it
counts.
In the show pen you need three stops,
and all three need to be good.
If you are not comfortable when you
enter the show pen, if you’ve put a lot of pressure on yourself, you are going
to grip harder, pull faster, and throw yourself back trying to guarantee a good
stop. All you’ve done is guarantee the
stop won’t be as good….your horse will be reading your nerves and he’ll
tighten.
Learn two things. First learn to control your nerves. Second learn to believe in your horse.
Controlling your nerves doesn’t mean you
won’t be nervous; it means you can hold the reins lightly even though you want
to strangle them.
Half the secret of controlling nerves
is to admit you are nervous…then you can take action to make the nerves work
for you instead of against you.
When I go the show pen I know that
nerves are going to cause me to lose feel in my hands…so I will open my rein
hand up and hold my reins as light as I possibly can. I am forcing myself to go
back to a lighter grip to avoid a tighter grip. I can’t pull hard on the reins
if my hand is open and my grip is very light. I can pull the same way I do at
home with a light hand.
Recognizing that you are nervous
provides the opportunity to compensate for those nerves.
Another thing that helps eliminate
some of the nervousness is to be prepared for the pen. If you know that you are
going to show some time around
Sometimes I take a horse out early in
the morning and give him a 20 or 30 minute ride first thing in the morning. I get a feel for how the horse is feeling and
it gives both of confidence that all is well.
After our ride, he gets a bath, groomed, fed and allowed to relax. At 10 he is saddled with show his number,
blanket, brushed out, tail braided so he stays clean. He is ready and I can
take a break.
I take some time to walk away, check
on the show, check on my pattern, and spend some quiet time alone.
I like to close my eyes and visualize
the entire pattern.
Not just that I am going to run down
and stop. I visualize myself running
down and executing the perfect stop, the perfect rollback. I know exactly where
I am going to roll back. I know exactly where I am going to start my spin and
stop it. I visualize a winning run.
When I am visualizing this performance,
it can often be on a different horse. My
idea is to visualize the best horse I have ever seen or ridden. In my visualization, I want to be riding the
perfect horse. If I am riding the perfect horse, I don’t make mistakes, and I
don’t anticipate problems. Riding the perfect horse allows me to have a perfect
approach to every maneuver because I am expecting the best, instead of
preparing for the worst.
If you are expecting the best, you
often times will get the most out of your horse.
Part of preparing for the show pen is
to know how many days it takes for your horse to be at his best.
I make a mental note about every horse
I ride. I know which horses ride best
fresh and which ones take three rides to get good, or four or five rides. Knowing when a horse really locks in allows
you to prepare him to “peak” on show day.
Often it is the fourth or fifth day of consecutive riding. So if I am showing on Saturday I need to make
sure I’ve ridden him the proper number of times to have him at his best.
You should also know how long it takes
him to warm up and be ready for a great performance. For your horse it may take 20 minutes.
Let’s go back to showing at
Your horse has been saddled since
10. So at 11.15 you want to get on him
and walk him around for about 15 minutes to get him relaxed. At 11.30 you can start your 20 minute warm
up. You want to be lightly testing all
his maneuvers. With the 20 minutes of
warm up, he should be ready to perform his best…now he has 10 minutes to relax. He’s prepared. You are prepared.
If you are going to a big show, and
have to travel, you want to get to the show grounds a couple of days ahead of
time. If you are showing on Saturday,
you want to be there no later than Thursday.
Then you horse will have a full take of rest and preparation in the show
environment.
My final thought: don‘t approach “showing” as if this is the
“ultimate end” and you must do well.
This show (any show) is not the only show you’ll compete at. It is just
a show.
Go to every show with the same thought--you
are just trying to make it better for the next time. Ride, have fun, your horse is a winner!