Martha – Good morning. I don’t barrel race, but I do have a question I’m hoping you can answer. We have 3 3- year old Tennessee Walkers who were sent for “basic” training to a south Georgia location. When they returned, one of them responds to leg cues opposite to what would be considered “correct”. Instead of turning away from the leg cue pressure put on his side, he turns into it. In other words, if I’m reining him to turn right, he’ll turn right immediately when I put pressure on his right side. If I rein him to turn right and put pressure on his left side, he doesn’t know what I’m telling him to do.
Is this a behavior I need to fix, or just live with it? He’s very responsive as he is, it’s just that I’m aware that technically, it’s incorrect.
TB
Atlanta
You don’t say if the same person trained all of your horses so I am assuming that’s the case. I would guess that person didn’t specifically use leg pressure to train any of the horses and that each of your horses interpreted any kind of “leg†that was applied differently. If the different response is a problem when you ride, then you are going to have to reinforce the correct response by being very consistent and patient with the horse that you say responds opposite. I don’t think you have to be “technically†correct if you are just pleasure and trail riding as long as you and your horse are enjoying each other.
Martha Wright
wonderful. Thank you – we do enjoy one another, but I didn’t want to cause confusion for him in the future when others ride him. I guess I’ll just “warn” everyone before they get on him. Thank you for your time.
TBuckalew