I’ve put together a playlist of all my leading and lunging videos to show the progression of teaching a horse these basic skills. You can visit the entire set of the videos at my YouTube page.

Leading allows a natural progression to lunging. While doing this with ZZ, my two year old filly that this was completely new too, I was amazed at how quickly she picked up on what was expected and how comfortable she was with the entire procedure.

Safety First! As always it’s much easier to start experimenting with this method using an experienced horse. If you don’t know how to lunge, work first with a horse that is very experienced with this exercise; that type of horse can help you build skill and confidence.

A higher-spook, sensitive horse may need more time being sacked out and lead before proceding to lunging.

Wear gloves when lunging; rope burn can be very unpleasant.

Teaching a Horse to Lead (part 1)
Using Klaus Hempflings Position One, and walking backwards, I start setting the proper space between the horse and myself. I am looking for her to get more responsive to my body signals for halt and walk forward, while not imposing herself into my space.

Teaching a Horse to Lead (2)
From straight lines, here I am doing arcs, circles and change of rein (bend). This is a more advanced session (taken on a later date) then the next the intro into lunging.

Positions to Lead and Lunge the Horse
Here I show how comfortable ZZ is with me changing position from starting in the leading in front, to parallel walking, to pivoting around me on a circle and finally with me behind her in a traditional driving position. This session was done a week after Intro to Lunging (1) and you can see how much calmer and accepting she is of the work.

Intro to Lunging (1)
In this session, you can follow along at my shoulder to see what I’m doing to teach ZZ to keep pace with me in my parallel position to her ribcage. In this fourth session, she is still breaking into trot and trying to use speed to evade the work and my commands. This is early on and you can see how raw she still is to my direction; the point here is to just get her used to you walking along and following commands – not making shapes, changing direction etc…

Lunging on a Circle (2)
Now we work on a circle at walk, trot and whoa. In introducing gait changes, state the horses’ name and then the command to give them a heads up that something is about to happen. Let the horse stay in a gait for a few strides before changing; this helps their balance and the purity of the gaits.

This post is related to:

• Sacking Out