Trust between horse and rider

Question
Hiya thanks for replying to my message and i was woundering if you could tell me about how to Join Up with my horse.I have heard and read about it but not sure how to do it properly.

Please can you explaine to me how to do it properly?

thankyou

Answer
Sorry for the wait, I've been having a very hectic week. :)

http://www.montyroberts.com/ju_about.html

Above is a link to a site that goes into detail about how and why join up works. I thought it would be nice for you to have a bit of background information to work with.

Join-up is basically talking to horses in THEIR language rather than our own. We want to show the horse, through body language, that we are a friend and leader, not a threat.

To do this, we need a round pen or some other smaller enclosed area where we can free lunge the horse. I prefer to use no halter either. Using a long rope, and as little voice as possible, start pushing the horse around the arena (by tossing the rope at it).

You're going to keep moving the horse, until it starts asking you if it can join you. How will you know when this has happened? The horse will start lowering its head as it trots or canters around you, turn an ear towards you and keep it on you, and start licking and chewing. With each of these steps we want to back off the pressure ever so slightly, but until all three have been completed we don't want to allow the horse to stop.

Once the horse has started doing all three signs, we want to take a step backwards away from the horse, and turn so we are standing with our shoulder to the horse, eyes down.

Stand quietly, and the horse will watch you for awhile, then probably start taking cautious steps towards you. Don't reach out to the horse, let it touch you first.

Once its touched you, give him/her a pat without looking it in the face, and then walk a few steps away.


If the horse, rather than coming to you looses all interest and starts wandering around, ignoring you, start over.


Hope that helped some. Its a slightly difficult process to explain but if you understand it, it's really quite simple.

Good luck!