At the show???????????????

Question

ok so by now a lot of you know that I have taken my ex barrel horse and have tried to turn her into a pleasure horse.... and our show season has been great including the fact from what we have came from. But I have one main concern.... in the warm up pen she will respond to every voice command, body movement and everything but as soon as we enter the show pen she's off in la la land doing her own thing.... why is this? and what can I do to get her attention and to get her doing what she needs to be doing???

this is just mainly in western pleasure..... she's great in horsemanship and trail.... but our western pleausre class is just kinda going down.

Answer 1

if your horse is trained so that when you lift your hand up she puts her head down and keeps it there(most pleasure horses are and if they arent they should be) and you can just lift your hand and there.down goes her head and her attention is back on what you ask. barrel horses are very capable of slowing down..my friend has a barrel horse that also does western pleasure. of course they arent the best but they are ok at it..but if you need to train her the head thing just start by riding her 2 handed pulling the inside hand over the ouside hand which makes them bend(we want our pleasure horses very flexible) and have the horse walk strait while doing this. the do it the other way. make sure to release when the horse gives and makes and effort to bend more..or drop the head while bending. when going on the rail change the low see sawing movement into steady pulls above your saddle horn..so they lear that those pulls mean to put the head down. when they give and put there head down just a little bit COMPLETLY release your reins and let them be until they lift their head back up.then repeat the same thing. and it can be converted to one handed for shows very easily since the pull will mean the same thing. and eventully the horse will figure out well i kind like this release so i think im going to just keep my head down here. it works very quickly and is gread for the show ring..just make sure to pull up and not back..when you pull up on the reins have your hand infront of the wither.