My horse gets so head strong but then calms down, why?

Question

at the atart of a ride, where it might be pony club or a training session. at the start of it my horse is head strong, nervous and doesnt react to my aids as good as he can.

but after about 1 hour of hard work, he is riding in a beautifully round frame, balanced and doesnt react to whats around him BUT me!!!

at the start i usually push him forward with my legs and seat and ask him to lower his head, this takes a while dew to him being a dork and acting like a typical thoroughbred lol

after a while he lowers his head and i give him some rein when he achieves this. i reward his acceptance with plenty of rein or rest at a walk. this is all done on pretty long contact so he can stretch and also because we are bot learning to achieve a rounder frame and collection.

but after about 1 hour i notice that as soon as i pick up my contact he brings himslef together and i am holding much shorter contact, without him throwing his head up in protest!!!

i couldnt believe the change, is this good , whats you opinion

Answer 1

Ha sounds like my horse, typical thoroughbred! lol my girl ca be a dream to ride in the paddock then go spastic when it comes to trail riding by myself, or she could be an absolute stubborn donkey and won't budge one day and very responsive the next. Got to love how horses test you.

Answer 2

There could be a number of reasons for this, and you'll need to think about the pattern of your riding to see which of these might be causing what you're seeing.

- Sometimes a rider is more tense, either emotionally or even physically (because of tight muscles) at the beginning of a ride. This sends signals to the horse that he interprets as "go faster". As the ride progresses, and you gain more confidence or physically loosen up, the horse also relaxes.

- If the horse is stall kept, he is not able to easily walk the kinds of distances that a horse in nature is meant to - a horse in nature walks 20 mi a day (at least 4000 steps) but in a stall walks only 800 steps. This can lead to pent up energy. You can diffuse this by lunging the horse before riding.

- Your warm up may not include enough in the way of demands on the horse to listen to your aids. I personally like to use the part of the warm up at the beginning for rapid and frequent gait transitions between walk an d trot, and for lateral work such as half pass, two track, sidepass. Finally I usually do some flexibility (pulling the head lightly to one side or the other) and tiny circles both directions and stopping and backing up. After fifteen minutes or so of this, when I am ready to ask the horse for lope / canter, he is pretty fully on the aids.

In terms of the horse lowering his head, remember that he has a huge neck muscle at the crest of the neck which may not be warmed up or flexible at the beginning. Just like a human athlete needs to warm up for effective stretching, so does your horse.

I hope this helps!

Answer 3

maybe hes bipolar