[Music]
Hi
my name's Ellen i'm a horse agility
accredited trainer and this is my
mule Inara.
Today i'm going to give you an
introduction to horse agility and talk
about leading.
Horse agility is a fantastic and fun
sport in which you and your equine work
as a team
to navigate a series of obstacles. Some
of the obstacles require good timing and
precision
and others are more scary and require
good trust.
But horse agility isn't just about the
obstacles it's a way of improving the
relationship and handling skills you
have with your equine.
Each new member who signs up for the
international horse agility club
will start out at starter level, you can
then build your way up through the
levels.
There are courses for everybody; there
are walking only courses
for those humans or equines who cannot
physically go faster than a walk,
there are liberty classes for those who
want to work at liberty with their
equine,
and they're also equagility classes
which are the ridden classes.
For those who don't wish to compete
there are certificate courses available
as well as the monthly horse agility
challenge which is a non-competitive
class.
The great thing about horse agility is
that you can join in from home, you build
the course yourself
and video your entries to send in. Horse
agility is open to various horsemanship
techniques and experiences
and how I do things may be completely
different to how somebody else will do
things.
However i'm going to show you what works
for me and my equines
and the horsemanship skills that I teach
my students.
The horse agility club is incredibly
supportive and encouraging.
The main focus is to have fun whilst
building a good relationship with your
equine.
Through these videos I will show you how
to work through the obstacles
and in turn improve your handling skills.
Leading skills are very overlooked in
the horse world and a lot of people see
the head collar and lead rope
as just a tool to get the horse in and
out of the field. However there's a lot
more to leading skills
than meets the eye so today i'm going to
show you the importance of leading
skills
and how to lead with a soft relaxed lead
rope.
A soft relaxed lead rope is very
important when leading your equine.
It makes it a more positive experience
for your equine so you're not pulling on
their head all the time
and it also creates softness between you
and your equine.
In horse agility if you have a taut
rope between you and your horse
so if the rope becomes taut and you're
pulling on the rope you'll lose a mark
for that obstacle.
It's therefore very important to learn
to lead with a nice soft
relaxed lead rope. The way to start this
is to ask for your equine to walk on,
keep a nice relaxed
low shoulder and keep this arm your
leading arm or your guiding arm
nice and relaxed and low and guiding
your equine. So i'm going to ask Inara to
walk
forward and do a little circle and as
i'm doing the circle i'm going to use my
body to communicate to Inara which I
am going.
I'm going to turn my shoulders in the
the direction that i'm going
but also keep half an eye on her to see
what she's doing so if she starts to
veer off to the other side
I need to come back to her drop towards
her and invite her to come back to me.
So i'm just going to let her finish this
scratch... right you ready?
To walk on drop my shoulder
okay i'm going to go this way so I'm turning
my shoulders, keep half an eye on her,
ask for a halt - whoa
Okay
so as i come into the halt there what
i'm doing
i'm bending my knees, pushing my hips
back into a woah motion so you're gonna
go
whoa and that's quite important as a
cue for your equine to stand still and
this usually works with
with pretty much any equine, they respond
to that
 motion there.
You can see the stopping movement really
clearly in slow motion here
and I find that this movement is a
really good starting point to get your
equine more tuned into your body
language
and responding to your body movements.
Okay so we're going to move her off
again this time i'm going to show you the
importance of waiting so i'm going to
ask to walk forward and
i'm going to wait for the response, so
i'm not going to go too far ahead so the
rope becomes taut
and i'm not going to pull her along with
the rope i'm just going to wait for her
response
and use the voice cue to walk her on. I'm
going to drop my shoulder, drop my arm
walk on, wait, and then walk forward
come this way, nice relaxed
lead rope, woah.
Okay now
she's quite easy because she knows what
she's doing, if you've got a horse that
pushes forward
and comes ahead of you - so if you're
leading and the horse gets like here
you'll find it more difficult to
initiate those first halts.
*waits for car noise to pass*
So ideally when you halt you want to be
a good position where you can check in
with your equine. I usually have them
at my shoulder
 and i'll ask for the woah
*she has an itch* if your equine comes
too far ahead of you
you're going to struggle with that
initial halt so what we're going to do
when the equine comes pushing ahead of
you and pulling forward,
I ask you to turn a circle and as you
turn the circle
it just puts you back ahead of the
equine and in a better position
to then halt. So this circling technique
i've shown you here
is good for the initial stages of
training if you've got a more speedy
equine
eventually you should be able to stop
your equine no matter where you are
in position to their body. During a
horse agility course itself
you want to maintain a good flow between
obstacles so you want to avoid circling,
so this technique i'm showing you here
is for the initial training stages if
you've got the more speedy equine.
Practicing changing speed with your
equine can be really useful in teaching
them to match your pace.
You can speed up by extending your own
strides and building up your energy to
go faster.
You can slow back down again by drawing
your energy right down
taking shorter strides and just bringing
your shoulders back in almost a half
halt motion.
A big deep breath out can also be useful
in slowing your equine down.
If you can practice matching your
strides with your equine that's even
better.
So if you can take a step at the same
time as your horse is taking a step
and match the strides it's a really
useful connection to have.
This can be really useful when the horse
starts to mimic you back -
so as you start to slow down your
strides the horse will mimic and slow
down their strides with you.
Okay so with the woah you can bring
your arm up as well
*good girl stand still a minute* and you might
find with this woah motion you need
really quite a big one to start with so
you get a hang of it, don't worry it'll
take a
few goes to get used to doing it and
then you'll find
as you the more you do it the more
subtle you get it
and the more subtle your equine listens
to you.
You can also drag your foot coming
into that as well which creates a
audio cue
to help the equine realize that you're
slowing down.
You may find at times your equine gets
distracted and tries to walk off in the
wrong direction
and at this point it's quite easy to
grab the lead rope and pull them towards
you.
I'm going to show you how to do that
without using the lead rope.
so if the equine say she wants to go
that way
i'm going to then come back towards her,
drop my shoulder, invite to come back
around.
I'm going to take her towards the
curtain because she likes doing the
curtain, hopefully she'll try to go off
to it
and I want to bring her back to me so
let's see what happens.
so going to drop my shoulder and walk on.
Okay so she very nearly went through
that curtain there
but I managed to stop her by not using
the lead rope, but by approaching her and
dropping towards her and asking her to
come back to me.
Another game we can play with the
leading is to lead while facing them
and i'm just going to walk a little bit
away from the camera
and then i'm going to face her i'm going
to drop my shoulders towards her, ask her
to come to me
and then stand up nice and tall and ask her to halt.
Just going to turn around 
*noise*
Okay so I'm going to stand here, drop my
shoulders ask her to come
and then stand up up tall. Drop my shoulders
Ok, show you that again.
You may find you need to take a step
towards your equine, really push your
shoulders back
for that halt but that's quite a nice
game that you can use and it teaches them
to draw towards you
I'm also going to talk to you about
voice cues. So I use voice cues quite a
lot with my equines and I think they're
very important
and again quite overlooked sometimes, so
it's important with voice cues that you
keep consistent
so if you want to halt use a woah
or whatever word you want to use but
keep it the same so don't use woah
one day and then stop the next day
because it won't make any sense to the
equine. It may
might make sense in your head but it
won't in theirs.
So i use a woah and the way i've taught
the woah
is, it's repetition - a lot of it is
repetition. So I
say walk on and woah, walk on,
woah.. and we do that just a few steps of
walk on
*wait for car noise to pass*
You can also reward the the response to
the voice cue when they do correct.
Some like a simple scratch others
will like food rewards. Now it's important
with food rewards that you know how
you're doing it so you've got some basic
idea of how to use food rewards,
and this involves having a marker for
that behavior so when the equine has
done the right thing
you make a noise or a sound
to indicate to the equine that that is
what they are getting the reward for.
Otherwise things could get a bit muddled
if you then carry on doing something
else and then give the reward.
So it's very very much about timing.
So if teaching the woah
voice cue using food rewards
you'll ask them to walk on, use your
motion,
use the voice cue as soon as they halt,
mark that behavior -
I used to click the fingers you can use
whatever noise you like,
so as soon as they halt click of the
fingers and then that follows on with
the reward.
So what i'm going to do, i'm going to walk
around ask her to halt, mark that
behavior
and then give her a reward. So drop my
shoulder,
wait for her to come,
turn my shoulders towards you
Woah. Okay
I'm not gonna reward that because you
got distracted i'm gonna take her round
again.
Okay
Woah, nice. So i clicked as soon as she
halted,
faff around getting the food out the
pocket *nicely good
good girl* Okay, and you can also use that
for the walk on cue if you've got a
slightly
less motivated horse we will say, you can
ask for the walk on, as soon as they walk
click of the fingers, stop and reward
them. So i'll just show you that.
So i'm going to turn this way, guide her.
Do the woah again, nice!
*good girl*
*good*
Okay so that's the basics of some
leading work.
There are lots more things you can do,
we're going to go through backing up in
a different video but i find that quite
important
and again that's a body and voice cue,
but that's in the next video.
There's also the stand which we'll go
through at some point,
teaching them to stand while you walk
away to the end of the rope and come
back again.
There's lots of games you can do just
with this simple leading and halting.
You can go over poles or between
obstacles
and it's really a good basis for
completing a course of obstacles to have
all these cues
ready. With horse agility what I
find
is as you're going along your skills
will develop so it doesn't matter if
you're not very good at this to start
with,
your skills will develop as you go along
and that's the important thing.
I found this with Inara, when we started out
and she had barely done any leading at all.
she was unhandled when I got her
so this is really developed her well and
she's now at the top level of agility.
As we've worked through the levels
*car noise*
I've used Horse agility to work on
our leading skills. Okay
so just one quick tip if you're finding
it hard to keep that
loose rope, because it is habit that we
grab the rope. I don't know if you can
see from here,
what i've got on Inara's head collar,
she's not clipped on it at the moment,
but
there is a tiny bit of bailing twine
tied to the head collar ring 
Bailer twine as it is, is actually
quite thick it doesn't break very easily but
what you can do is separate the threads
out and just clip the lead rope onto just a
couple of threads
and you'll be amazed how soft you become
with the lead rope! Now obviously
only do this in a confined safe area
because if that does break
the equine will be loose but it's
amazing how much more you think about
keeping a soft rope when you've got
literally a thread to hang on to!
I find that sometimes we've got to
push ourselves like that
in order to break break the habits.
So i'm just going to walk around one
more time, go through what we've been
talking about
and then we'll leave it to that for
today. So
i'm going to walk around, i'm going to
drop this shoulder i'm going to use the
voice cue
*I know you're bored Inara* I'm going to use
the voice cue to walk on
*Inara wants to roll*
*nearly done Nara!*
Okay so i'm going to walk around drop my
shoulder, she's facing the other way so
i'm going to come back towards her
walk on
okay i'm going to turn this way so turn my
shoulders,
okay ask for a halt,
nice! Walk around again, drop shoulder,
*good girl*
ask for a halt.
The zigzag game is quite fun, just be
aware they can get a bit excited when
doing
that. So i'll show you again - drop
shoulder ask her to come, turn my shoulders.
So we're going to leave it at that for
today.
Stay safe for everybody, I look
forward to doing the next video.
Thank you very much from me and Inara, and
I hope to see you all soon, take care.
