Although his behaviour had been growing steadily worse, no one expected this 11 year old Clydesdale- Thoroughbred lesson horse to begin running out at jumps. Students had reported his unpredictable shies, but this new behaviour began leaving them in the dirt. He gained a reputation of being ‘dirty’ when formerly everyone described him as a ‘teddy bear.’
The clue to this horse is his consistent behaviour. Shying and running out both demonstrate a loss of self-carriage of direction (Principle 10) when the shoulders suddenly turn without a cue, thus throwing riders (Principle 1).
Hemi was retrained to turn his shoulders from a rein cue using operant conditioning (Principle 6). To consolidate the new behaviour, he was ridden in areas where he was known to shy, and the retrained cue was applied during a mistake to bring his shoulders back to the rider’s line (Principle 10).
Upon approaching jumps again, Hemi lost rhythm immediately preceding an attempt to run around the jump, thus failing rhythm and straightness levels of the shaping scale (Principle 8). After training improved transitions within and between gaits, walking up to a low jump (underriding) was used to cause him to speed up just before a jump, producing a drawing effect on the approach and a clean effort over the jump.
Because running out was quite rewarding, the habit meant Hemi could not be returned to the lesson program immediately. However, with practice of the new behaviour by a rider using equitation science, he should successfully return to work.
Clairety Horsemanship 