Things get a little complex here. At times I have backed up to to highlight the skills needed to make sure the horse is confident with all the prerequisite bits before introducing the new bits.

Please be aware that at this point in our training of more complex maneuvers, where Boots has already learned many things over many years, I use a body extension to make my intent as clear as possible for her to understand. It is a visual aid for the horse. It compensates for our strange upright posture so different from the ‘long’ postue of a horse.

A. Rope Relaxation

Before we do anything else, we have to ensure that the horse is relaxed with long body extension such as a stick&string combination or a lunging whip which we use merely to clarify our intent. The horse needs to totally cool with such things moving around him. If he has been traumatized by such things in the past, it will take time and patience. The Most we need to do with a body extension is to create air disturbance with it. (See video clips #121 and #22 below.)

B. Rope Texting Signals for the Back-Up and the Halt

A clip called Rope Texting in my Thin-Slicing Examples playlist gives a visual demonstration of parts of this process. 

When you write your Individual Education Program, decide whether you want to use a lane rather than just a fence to help keep the horse straight during the teaching and learning (acquisition) phase.

Slices: to start

1. Ensure the horse has a good understanding of a voice back-up’ signal.
2. Begin at halt, standing in LP3 (shoulder to shoulder). Position the horse facing a barrier so it makes sense to step back because it is the only choice.
3. Holding the rope straight up toward the horse’s ears and wiggle it gently and rhythmically while using your ‘back-up’ voice signal. Drop your hand plus click&treat the moment the horse even shifts his weight back. Then work toward getting one step, and so on. Most horses seem to quickly work out that stepping back will immediately stop the wiggle pressure plus earn a click&treat.

Back-up: Lift the rope straight up and jiggle it and use your voice cue, starting extremely gently and amplify until the horse even thinks, “back”, at which point, click, drop your hand, and deliver the treat. By teaching this with positive reinforcement, we don’t need to put a lot of energy into the rope, since horses feel everything.4. Gradually ask for a few more steps before you relax (click&treat). However, each time you begin again, be sure to stop the rope jiggling the very instant the horse begins to move back. It’s the removal of the signal energy plus the click&treat that teaches the horse what you want.

Slices: to continue

1. When the horse takes one or more steps back, walk backwards along with him.
2. When the horse can back smoothly with a light jiggle of the rope lifted up toward his ears, gradually jiggle as lightly as possible to get the response. If you start feather light, you can amplify as necessary. If you start heavy-handed, the horse does not have a chance to be sensitive to the light signal. Eventually just your raised hand will be all the signal the horse needs.
3.  LP 8: When the horse backs up readily with a light rope text (jiggle) gradually stop moving with him. Instead, glide into LP8 facing his ribs and keep your feet still as he moves.
4.  Gradually step back a bit in LP8 so you can give the rope text signal from further away.
5.  Work along a fence minus the mat destinations if you were using mats. Tap behind the withers for ‘walk on’ (plus your ‘walk on’ voice cue, and use rope texting to signal a halt; relax (click&treat).
6.  Repeat the ‘walk on’ gentle tap and ‘halt’ gentle rope texting until they are smooth.
7.  When 6 above is good, after the halt, use rope texting again for ‘back up again please’. Release (click&treat) for the smallest sign of backing at first, then gradually ask for a bit more before the release (click&treat).
8.  When you can use a gentle tap signal behind the withers (or just your voice cue) to ask the horse to walk forward, light rope text to ask him to halt: relax (click&treat), then use light rope text to ask him to step backwards; relax (click&treat), you have almost achieved the whole behavior.
9.  When 8 above is smooth, ask for the ‘walk on’ and the halt before you relax (click&treat). You have chained two separate parts of the overall task together.
10.  When 9 above is smooth, ask for all three parts of the whole task: the ‘walk on’, the ‘halt’ and the ‘back-up’ before your release (click&treat).
11.  When it is all smooth on one side of the horse, teach it again, from the beginning, on the other side.
12.  Generalize by working away from the fence, using a lane of rails on the ground.
13.  When that is smooth, use one rail. You can vary having the single rail on the far side of the horse or between you and the horse.
14.  Work away from fences with no props. If each slice of the overall task is in the horse’s deep memory, it will have become a habit. If the task falls apart at any point, go back to where it is still successful, and work forward from that point again.

As mentioned earlier, teaching the ‘walk on’, ‘halt’ and ‘back-up’ signals from LP8 can make it easier for the horse to learn to confidently work in a circle around us.

There are a variety of suppling exercises we can do on the long line or lunge. See clip #37 in my HorseGym with Boots playlist for a short overview of some of the things we do on the lunge.

C. Stepping Sideways with LP8

I’ve included this here because it is fun to work with and a great suppling exercise for the horse. But it’s important to take all these things slowly and build them up over weeks and months, depending on how often you can play with your horse.

Horses move sideways by crossing one pair of feet while the other pair is spread. If they crossed both at the same time they would be very unstable!

Stepping sideways: When horses step sideways, one pair of legs is stretched apart while the other pair crosses over. In this photo Smoky is crossing his front legs.In his next step they will separate and he will cross over his hind legs.

#52 and #53 (further down the blog) illustrate a process for developing the ‘moving sideways’ task.

We can begin by asking the front and rear legs to move over independently and build up his skill until we can ask the horse to move both hind end and front end in rhythm, ideally keeping his body in one plane.

Moving sideways is not something horses do much in their everyday life. It may therefore take the horse a while to get his legs organized smoothly when we first ask for such movement.

You can get a sense of this if you step sideways crossing your legs. While your legs are crossed, spread out your arms. While your legs are apart for the next step, cross your arms. If you’ve never done this before, it is quite hard to synchronize at first. I’ve seen horses having to think very hard to get this sorted, so be especially patient, give it lots of time and celebrate small successes.

A few background points

1. An angle of up to 45 degrees is fine at the beginning. Most horses will find this easier on one side. Aim to eventually become equally smooth on both sides.
2. Yielding sideways is the basis for many ridden maneuvers right up to flying changes of lead.
3. Moving sideways helps suppleness by gymnastic stretching of the muscles.
4. Moving sideways will enable the horse to do other things better. It helps develop his spatial awareness and his body awareness.
5. It teaches isolation of forequarter and isolation of hindquarter movement, to lead into graceful movement sideways in one plane as well as the ideas that relate to shoulders in and haunches in.
6. It’s useful for all safe maneuvering on the ground. It’s useful to negotiate gates and when asking the horse to line up with a mounting block for mounting and dismounting.
7. Doing a little bit often gives the most reliable results. As usual, we are teaching a habit in response to a signal. We don’t want to make the horse sore.

Aim: Teaching Sideways in Motion.

Environment:

• Horse in an area where he is usually relaxed and confident.
• Herd buddies not able to interfere but in view if possible.
• Horse in a learning frame of mind.
• A safe, straight stretch of fence. Electric fence turned off if using that.
• Good footing for the horse.
• Halter and about 12 foot leadrope.
• Ensure the horse is warmed up.

Slices:

There are a few steps in the teaching of this movement. Be careful not to do too much of this at once. You don’t want to make the horse sore. Break up the training with other familiar activities inbetween working on sidestepping.

1. Ask the horse to move the front end over; click&treat(see Blog 84 via the Blog Contents List link at the top of the page).
2. Ask the horse to move the hind end over; click&treat ( See Blog 83)
3. Quietly, with the horse facing a barrier, ask for font end over, then back end over. Click&treat and treat each movement until they feel easy. Then begin to ask for both ends to move over (still one at a time) before you click&treat.
4. At some point, it will feel like you can link these two movements together with a touch signal where your leg would be if riding, and get a smooth step sideways. Celebrate.

Generalizations

1. Practice in other spaces where there is a safe barrier.
2. Set up intermediate exercises by using a row of barrels laying down or a rail set at knee height as a barrier to stop forward motion.
3. When that is perfect, move to doing it with a rail on the ground and then without any barrier. Using a road or driveway can also be helpful to keep the line straight.
4. Eventually advance this game by asking the horse to move sideways around things like cars, trailers, logs set out as a square or shapes made out of cones, barrels or plastic bottles of water. 
5. When the side-pass is smooth at the walk, you may like to ask for it at the trot. To teach it at the trot, go back and work through the slices again.
6. Generalize by asking for sideways straddling a rail, log or barrels.

LP8: Side-stepping straddling a rail.

In LP8 as Boots steps over a wagonwheel obstacle for Horse Agility.

Note:

To teach ‘straddling a rail’ as in the cover photo, see Blog Number 67.

Straddling a Rail