Littlest Warmblood Gelding Ever?

Today I need to introduce a new cast member.

Texas is a six year old Welsh Pony gelding. We've only had him a month or so. He came from a family who rode him mostly Western, did some leadline and some barrel racing with him. He is here to be retrained as a hunter pony. He is such a character! He is absolutely convinced that every horse and pony wants to be his best friend and is happy with him being, say, right on top of them. All the time. Luckily the other ponies are pretty good-natured about this and there is only occasional half-hearted kicking and squealing on their part to get him to back off. Under saddle, Texas is green and can be pretty stubborn. When he wants to he can have a pretty good motor but sometimes he'd just like to stand with his feet planted. He knows some good pony tricks.

Texas just came back from the beach. Two of my students were going to go horse camping but one of their horses came up lame just before the trip. I let them take Texas so they wouldn't have to cancel the trip or share one horse. I don't often loan horses out but I trust these girls not to do anything stupid. After all, everything they know was learned from me. :) Anyway, I think the beach was a good break from the arena work because Texas came home refreshed and ready to work.

Texas is super flexible and has a tendency to curl his neck up when I ask him to bend or turn. I put side reins on him today for our ride just to hold his head a little more in a forward-facing direction. I have to talk a little bit about side reins now. I have heard people expressing indignant horror about riding in side reins but I think they are one of the very few valuable training tools out there. Note: I never ever use draw reins. The potential for rider error with draw reins is just too great -- whether by accident or out of misguided sense of how to use them or even in anger. The ability to crank down on something more and more, with no way out for the horse, is just a bad idea. With side reins the length is fixed and as long as they aren't overly short for that particular horse's training level, there is no harm done. The benefit is that it allows the rider to leave the horse's face alone. For example, with Texas if he gets all curled up I have to add a lot of outside rein to straighten him out and that's just a lot of contact with his mouth at this early stage. He already has a tendency to get behind the vertical on occasion so I want to leave his mouth alone as much as possible. He goes in a very flexible rubber mullen mouth snaffle to save his nice, soft mouth. With the draw reins on today, only as tight as they needed to be so that he can't get his head around to practically my knee (which he can do easily) I was able to work on circles and serpentines without touching his mouth too much. He was very, very good and finally understands what I mean with the direct rein. I even did some canter work today -- five times around the arena each direction -- which I haven't done in a while because he needed so much work at the trot.

The last thing we worked on was the halt. He's super with his downward transitions (love that soft mouth!) except for walk to halt. (At this point in his training I wouldn't ask for the halt from any gait but the walk.) He fights that one for whatever reason by curling his nose to his chest and barging through my aids. I worked on it using the voice command along with my seat and as little rein as possible and he is getting the idea quickly now. I've just made the connection that training Texas is most like Isaac, an ISR gelding by Ideal that I worked for a couple months many years ago. Both are powerhouses with natural push from behind but both can be stubborn and resistant to going forward. I ride Texas in the warmblood spurs and carry a dressage whip. Neither one touches him very often but they're there when I need them. Maybe he'll be a dressage pony. :)