Teaching A Horse To Side Pass On The Ground

A horse that knows how to side pass has a great, solid foundation as a lateral mover. He not only understands how to engage his hindquarters, but knows where he needs to go and that contact is crucial. This article will teach you to teach your horse this graceful lateral movement on the ground, with patience and persistence.

There’s been a lot of chat recently about teaching the horse to sidepass. There are a lot of different opinions out there, but many people don’t truly understand what a successful sidepass is, and how it is achieved. I would like to lay down the fundamentals for everyone so that we can all be equally educated when discussing this topic.

Teaching a horse to side pass on the ground is a great way to work on their turning, balance, and footwork.

  1. Start out teaching your horse simple turns. Ask them to turn left and right for about 10 minutes each until they are comfortable with it.
  2. Once they are comfortable with the turns you can move onto more complicated turns such as the serpentine. For example, ask your horse to turn left, then right, then left again while walking at a slow pace around the arena or pen. You can also try asking them to walk in a straight line while turning right or left every few steps.
  3. Now you can teach them to side pass! Begin by walking forward in an even rhythm while asking your horse to stand still on one side of their body (either front or rear). Do this for 5-10 minutes so they get used to standing still on one side before moving onto the next step! It’s important that you don’t ask too much from your horse too soon or else they’ll get frustrated and give up!
  4. Once they’re comfortable standing still on one side of their body for 5-10 minutes then try asking them

If you’re teaching a horse to side pass, the first thing you need to do is get your horse on the ground. I recommend using a lunge line, which will give you more control over your horse. If you don’t have one, use a rope and make sure it’s strong enough that it won’t break when the horse puts pressure on it.

Start by walking forward with your horse on either side of you. Make sure to keep an even pace and allow him to walk as naturally as possible. You want to make this process as easy for him as possible so that he doesn’t feel like he’s doing anything wrong!

When your horse starts to move toward one side or another, start pushing gently against his shoulder with your hand or elbow so that he knows where he should move next. This will help him understand which way he needs to go in order for both of you to stay balanced together at all times throughout this process!

Repeat this process for several minutes until your horse becomes comfortable with moving between two different sides while staying balanced in the middle so that nobody gets hurt!

Teaching A Horse To Side Pass On The Ground

So in order to do this, I have my little training prop right here and then I have Laramie on a line here. So in order to get them to side pass, which is moving their front feet and back feet sideways at the same time, they need to be able to move them individually first.

Teaching a Horse to Side Pass on the Ground

So I first want to be able to move over her hind end and then move over her shoulders. So I’ll kind of show you how that looks. See, she takes a step in front, that’s for her shoulders, and then I can also move her hind end just like that.

So when you ask them to side pass, it’s going to be kind of awkward at first, but you want to make sure you reward the slightest try. So Laramie is already pretty good at it, but I’ll just kind of show you what it will look like when you first do it.

So what you’re going to do is ask for the shoulder and for the hind end at the same time. So she should move her shoulder, then hind end, and then she threw it together just then. There. Now I’ll reward by releasing.

So basically, what you do is you ask for the shoulder, the hind end, they’re going to move their shoulder and hind end, and eventually they’ll do it at the same time, just like we saw. So I’ll go ahead and do it again. Yeah, that’s better.

And so she’s going forward a little too much there because she’s wanting to move her shoulders over, so I’m just going to keep a little bit of a tighter line right here so she doesn’t move forward. Good.

So I’ll show you again from this side. So I’m going to ask for her shoulders first, then her butt, then her shoulder.

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