Obedience in-hand, with behaviourist Kelly Marks

2m 25secs
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Posted: 09/10/2008

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Library > Training for all disciplines > Groundwork

Kelly Marks, horse behaviourist, demonstrates the basics of obedience, starting with the easy way to lead your horse. With a 'smiling rope' there'll be no more pulling and tugging your horse, or being carted off across the yard. Instead, you can have a beautifully behaved horse and the first building block under your belt towards achieving obedience in all things, including hassle-free loading!

Comments

Kelly Marks 25 Aug 2009 Hi Hannah and others Thanks Fiona for recommending our website. The Dually Halter is just so handy because it's completely humane (well unless you tied a horse's leg up with it or something!) There's no harsh poll pressure, nothing to harm the mouth obviously, the action is a soft rope over the hard part of the nose which makes it very easy to signal in effect 'yes' or 'no' to the horse and the schooling ring at the side of the head is just the angle to stop the horse if he gets a bit strong. You’ll see also that Linda Tellington-Jones/Sarah Fisher prefer to work from this angle as well, rather than put pressure in the mouth or under or on top of the nose. The dually can also be used for long reining or even riding with some horses (in fact we always start our youngsters in one). Hannah, you’re so right, you MUST make sure your horse doesn’t get in the habit of running off because it’s really dangerous and very hard to cure them of once they’ve started. I’ll give a LOT of advice here and then you decide how much or little of this advice you are able to take. You only take your horse out in a well fitting Dually halter and long cushion web line that’s at least 20 feet in length. You wear a hard hat, gloves that are going to protect you (not skinny nylon) and good footwear. You find a friendly rugby player and you get him to role play being a horse running away while you let out a couple of coils of the line, ‘anchor yourself’ and stop him in his tracks. You see if you let the line out you have ‘leverage’ which makes you a lot stronger than you would normally be. When you lead your horse out after this, you’re totally prepared to hold him, (it’s great if possible to keep your rugby player on the end of the line just in case your horse does make a run for it). If this sound too complicated (it’s so hard covering all eventualities when you can’t actually see the horse or human) do either come to one of the Monty demonstrations taking place starting this October or go to our website www.intelligenthorsemanship.co.uk and go to the section ‘Specialist Horse Training’ to find somebody local to help you. Good Luck whatever you decide! Kelly P.S. By coincidence I have just received this email : “Hi, this is not an enquiry!!!! it is a huge thank you from me and my new horse Rudy!! He had been only led out in a horrible chifney and reared all the time! no suprise! even though this scared me something told me inside to carry on and buy him! we have been using the dually halter and the improvement is unreal, he doesn’t seem to get stressed and is taking everything else in a more trusting manner, thanks soo much, he is 7 and i have had him at home for 6 weeks, thank you , thank you. big hugs from us !!”

hannah97 22 Aug 2009 Hello Kelly, I was just wondering if you could answer my question I have a 15 hh cob, He's very strong in leading and if he spooks he'll bolt off and drag you along! And there's no way of getting him back unless your prepared for lots of rope burns as i have and my mum has blisters he's such a beautiful horse but im trying to get him used to his new home by leading him around our rides and he'll just pull and he's off if he's spooked how can i stop this from the beginning before it gets to out of hand and becomes a habit which would be terribly awful, As for he has real talent and i dont want him to start doing it when im leading him from the field because my old horse used to do this and i just couldnt put up with it. Thank you Hannah x

Fiona Price 7 Jun 2009 Have a look at Kelly's website on her Biog page. You can purchase the headcollar there.

hayleyann 7 Jun 2009 I echo Rachfish's comment and would also like to have some info' on the special kind of headcollar the horse is wearing and how necessary it is and where you obtain them.

rachfish 8 Jan 2009 Useful but would be great if we could see Kelly working with a horse who hasn't been trained beforehand; as if we are watching this video we are probably trying with OUR horses for the first time.

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