First off, congrats on getting back into horses. Im sure you and your mare will make a great team.
I have been working with horses for quite a few years. I am actually working on a new horse now, he is 10 yr old and never worked with any show event.
I find that the bit i use doesnt make a difference. Some may disagree and thats fine, its all personal preference. I barrel raced my Paint/Arabian Gelding for about 8 years. We used everything from a tom thumb to a hackamore to a gag bit. And honestly, he did the same each time no matter what was in his mouth. This is also because i have him trained with leg and voice commands using my hands as guidence.
I always start from the ground up. Start off by working on your horses movements and flexibility. He/She should be able to touch thier nose to their belly/ribs. If your horse can do certain tricks like bowing, etc. thats actually a good thing because this will make things easier for horse and rider. My horse knew nothing when i got him except to follow the butt in front of him. Just shows a hack horse can turn into an excellent barrel horse.
Anyways. . once you work on some flexing, start having him/her do small circles around you. You can tap her rump with the lead rope to help her swing her rump around faster.
Once you work on the ground with some simple things, you can move to the horses back.
Start with doing spirals, circle starting out large and then slowly getting smaller. I always like to put a barrel in the center of the spiral, this will help the horse in the long run. But as you get smaller with the spirals you get closer to the barrel. Always make sure you leave enough of a pocket around the barrel so the horse has room to turn. To close and you can knock a barrel over, costing you seconds on the clock. Start out the sprials with walking and slowly increase speed after each week. Moving to the trot and then canter.
Another good exercise is to have 2 barrels set a distance apart from each other. You will do figure 8's around the barrels. as you work on this exercise you want to move the barrels in closer together making your figure 8's smaller and smaller. This exercise again, you will start with the simple walk and increase speed as the week of training go on.
After a couple weeks of these couple exercises i would then start on the barrel patter. Choose either starting from the right or left. Dont confuse the horse from the start by switching sides all the time. I like to do a warm up circle before i get to the pattern. This will help you out, your horse wont become gate crazy. you want to have the ability to walk into an arena without your horse taking off to the barrel right away. Just cause shes a barrel horse doesnt mean she cant have manners. Of course there are times where you will run through the shoot without the warm up circle. I have done both.
Okay, well i hope you could understand what i am talking about and i hope these tips/tricks helped you as well. If you have any further questions please feel free to email me.
Good luck with your Barrel Horse and you will see a difference in no time. It might take you 2 weeks or 2 months, just depends on the horse.
Thanks :)
Amanda
Attached is a picture of Geronimo my paint and my new horse Chief, the leopard app
Jan 12 2009, 08:44 PM
