Before You Hit the Trail

Are you ready to dust your boots off, get in the saddle and head down the trail? If your horse had the winter off, you’d be smart to prepare him for his first ride of the year. “A lot of people make the mistake of letting their horse sit in a stall or pasture for four months and then throwing the saddle on him, yanking up the girth, jumping on his back and heading for the trail. Three feet away from the barn, the horse breaks in two and they’re rushed to the hospital. One of the best pieces of advice my mentor Gordon McKinlay gave me was: The more times you pick yourself up off the ground, the better your groundwork gets. It really is true. Every time I got bucked off a colt when I was apprenticing for Gordon it was because I did a poor job of preparing the horse for the ride,” Clinton says. “Groundwork exercises are designed so that you can get control of your horse’s feet and mind on the ground before getting in the saddle. You only have one body, and you need to take care of it.”

Just because your horse was riding well before you turned him out for the winter, don’t assume he’s going to be the same quiet, calm horse that’s using the thinking side of his brain when you bring him back to work this spring. He’s going to be fresh and full of energy. “Bringing a horse back to work after a winter off is a lot like kids coming back to school after Christmas break. They’ve had a couple of weeks off school to run wild and eat as much sugar as they can. When they come back to the structure and rules of the classroom, they’re full of beans and unhappy about it. Within a week or so, their teachers have them settled back into their daily routines and everyone is happy (or as happy as kids can be in school),” Clinton says.

The good news is if you’ve done a good job of teaching your horse the Method, it won’t be any work at all to get him back in the right frame of mind to start working again. “I’d recommend doing nothing but groundwork for the first week. Groundwork is a good way to ease your horse back into training sessions – it reminds him that you’re the leader and tests what he remembers. You get a chance to connect with him again and brush up on reading his body language – is he fresh today? Did that make him nervous? And so on. It also gives his body a chance to get back into work mode. You wouldn’t go from not working out to spending four hours straight in the gym. Don’t expect your horse to do the same,” Clinton says.

One of the best resources available for horsemen who like to get out on the trail with their horses is the Fundamentals In Action on the Trail Series. The series is full of how-to training advice and commonsense fixes to problems that are likely to crop up on the trail. The lessons included in the series prove to be great refreshers for horses coming back to work after time off. Learn more about the training kit and watch and read free lessons from its DVDs and books at www.clintononthetrail.com.