Hello, I've got a young TWH/KMSH cross "Rebel". He's an amazing horse, so well mannered and gentle, I have so much fun with him, but I need a bit of advice. :)
He's resistent to leg. I don't have too much trouble getting him from a stop to a walk it's the walk-trot or gait transitions that I have trouble with. I will try to explain this so its not too confusing! He is gaited but prefers to trot about 80% of the time- straight from walk to trot with a few steps of some sort of gait in between. I don't mind that he prefers to trot, he has an amazing soft trot (I am sure it is a trot!). So when he is going from a walk to a trot it takes allot of me pushing him to get him to move out. Once he is trotting he wants to go right back to a walk. (I'm riding him in a rope hackamore) It takes so much squeezing, smooching, slapping myself, and as a last resort smacking with the rein to get him to move out and I don't know how to change that. On the ground he is very easy to get moving, when I longe him (which I very rarely do) I just spin the line and pick up my pace and he immediately goes into a trot and stays there until I ask him to come down. What am I doing wrong here? As far as the horsemanship I use, I've tried or thought about trying almost everything. Now I use TTeam and Mark Rashid's philosiphy. I almost got thru PNH L2 on the ground with him but have decided I don't want that dominance-submission type relationship, a bit too harsh for me. Rebel being a RBI type horse became somewhat resentful and fearful. He really didn't retain anything I tried to teach him in PNH because he was very stressed "playing" the games. But i'm still going thru withdrawl with not having a bunch of DVDs to inspire me. ;) I also did clicker training exclusively for a while but he's not a very food motivated horse and would rather just chill out that do something for a slice of carrot, especially when he has a pasture full of grass always available. I know it's hard to know without seeing the horse but any advice would really be appreciated. Best, Karah
