Hello and welcome to episode Seventeen of The Equine System podcast. The Equine system is all about training horses and being the best leader that we can be for our horse.

This episode focuses on the shoulders, the front end of the horse. It is important to remember that everything in front of the girth is controlled by our reins, OR we communicate with everything in front of our girth with our reins. A horse that is LIGHT in front means that we can "guide" the front feet of the horse and encourage the horse to power forward from behind. A light horse finds balance more easily and is less likely to fall in or fall out on a circle.

Our horses SHOULDERS (whither) should always find the center of our reins, but we train the shoulder one rein at a time on the ground before we bring this expectation to our horses attention. :) A closed rein will "block" the shoulder, an open rein will "create space" for a shoulder. When a horse understands these two cues really well, we can begin to ride with two reins and think about lifting our horse into the space we are making for them.

In this episode we build on our shoulder groundwork and begin to work on the exercises under saddle.

There are a couple of things that you need to know before we start. We want to be the leader of our horse, not because we want to be the boss or because our ego is inflated when we're in charge. I like to be the leader of my horse, because I like to make decisions that keep us both safe and.... if I can be the leader of my horse, we can achieve impossible things together.

Each session of season two will start with a safe horse, a motivator and yourself, in a safe environment. Horses are unpredictable animals; it is important that if you are learning these exercises, you do so on an educated safe horse which is appropriate for your ability and skill level.

Today I'm in an arena, I've got some walls. It doesn't matter if you haven't got a fancy arena, but if you're working up against barbed wire or your horse is afraid of the tools that you're using, probably you should have a look at the equine system on YouTube and see how we got a wild Brumby stallion to the level that we're going to be working with today.

For more help, more training tools or to connect with us check out, www.equinedevelopment.com.au

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