Okay, I talked to one of the people in my area that does mini horse cart driving and she thinks that I should just keep going with the little guy pulling the cart but when he doesn't want to whoa properly to make him move forwards and not let him "get way with" his bad behavior.
She says that once her horses are pulling a cart she doesn't go backwards in training, basically.
First of all, there is no such thing as “mini horse cart driving.”
There is only “driving,” by which I mean you should train your little guy the exact same way you’d train a full-sized driving horse. Look for any driving instructor in your area, not just a mini trainer! You’ll probably get better information from someone with a broad base and experience in many breeds.
Secondly, I disagree with whoever advised you and said that she doesn’t go backwards in training. For one thing there is nothing wrong with going back to firm up missed steps or deepen the horse’s understanding of something they aren’t quite getting, and for another going back to long-lining or dragging something isn’t necessarily going backwards at all. I may take my experienced horse back to long-lines to teach something that is better learned without the cart, or put my youngster in a drag long after he’s hitched to build his muscles and teach him how to hold a steady gait on the double-lunge. I’m working on
different things, not old stuff! Most experienced trainers do this with their horses as far as I know.
For your boy’s not standing, I would absolutely continue to work with him in-hand and ground-driving and teach him that when you say Whoa, you mean it. At the same time you need to set him up for success by not asking for the halt when he’s wired and asking him to move off just before he’s at his limit rather than pushing and pushing for a specific amount of time like 5 or 10 seconds when he may only be able to give you 2 or 3 to start with. The important part is to build on it each time you ask and get it through his head that the fastest way to be allowed to move forward is to stand quietly. Give him that reward quickly in the beginning so he gets the idea but don’t let him move off, EVER, without your permission. He has to give you at least a moment of immobility before you release him. If he absolutely can’t, if he’s starting to back into a fence or threaten to rear or some other dangerous behavior, by all means push him forward but immediately and calmly make him work so hard he starts to regret it and wish for a chance to stop. Lots of trotting circles and serpentines or walking in deep footing, figure eights, etc. You aren’t doing this to punish him but to offer a clear contrast: Stand quietly when I give you the opportunity, or get tired. It doesn’t usually take them long to get it if you’re consistent.
So when I do ask for the whoa I always back a step or two sometimes more depending on how quickly the horse responds. General rule of thumb is for every step they take over my stopping point, they have to back to that stopping point. The quicker they learn to back with a whoa the quicker they'll learn to down shift those gears and eventually they start to relax into the stop and you won't need to back. Most horses don't really WANT to back at first and a tense horse will have a hard time doing so. Once you get them thinking back anytime you ask for a stop, whoa is hardly ever a problem again because it gets them to think first and in turn to relax.
In general I want to compliment Circlesinthesand for an excellent post, and for providing another perspective on the stop. Different disciplines do teach things differently and it’s always good to consider whether techniques from one may be helpful in another. In this case though, I have to agree with Minimor and Sue C. that I don’t want a driving horse thinking “back” on their own. It can turn into a nasty evasion in a hurry and a very dangerous one at that. My driving pair have suddenly decided that they like to spontaneously back up and it’s driving me insane! Both horses know better and they’re very correct and mannerly about it…except that I didn’t ask for the back and they just keep going in a perfect straight line together until I really get after them with the whip. This habit popped up without warning a couple drives ago and I intend to put a stop to it just as quickly because that is NOT something they get to do. Ever. I’m going to check that their equipment isn’t causing some sort of incidental cue or making it more comfortable for them to back away for some reason but regardless of the reason it needs to stop. One of these days there’s going to be a pedestrian or a ditch behind us and then we’d be in a world of hurt and all because I didn’t keep their minds on going forwards.
Another reason to avoid that western halt method for driving horses is because it is far more of a strain on them with a cart behind that it is for a riding horse. ESPECIALLY for a green horse, having that heavy cart suddenly slam them in the rump (or worse, the saddle) during a fast halt is confusing and unbalancing, and then to ask a tense horse to not only step back (which is, as you noted, difficult) but to shove the cart back as well is almost guaranteed to cause resistance and confusion. It comes across as a punishment, not training, and in inexperienced hands could easily cause the horse to rear and either refuse to back at all or learn to do so in a terrible rush because the groundwork was not laid properly. In the right hands and in measured doses this technique can be useful, but I would not recommend it for driving horses in general and especially not for green drivers.
The biggest problem I had when learning lower level dressage is that they want the horses more forward and don't want the stop/whoa to mean stop on the haunches, it’s more of a down transition and then ready to move out forward again as if it was just a brief pause so I would get marked down for my "stick the butt in the ground stop"
Yep. The halt in dressage is an active gait with the horse balanced on all four feet and ready to immediately and smoothly move out- a collection of his energy into an immobile pause, not an emergency stop or down-time between movements.
For that reason I do maintain contact with my driven dressage horse’s mouth during halts but I also don’t ask him to stand that way longer than a few seconds as I salute or acknowledge the judge. My trainer taught me A) not to drop contact and let the horse stretch during a dressage halt, and B) that there is a difference between a working halt and a take-a-break-whoa and if I expect the horse to stand for more than a few seconds, I need to release the reins and let him relax. I use “Whoa” with contact to tell the horse to make a downward transition to halt and “Whoa, Stand” with a rein release to tell him to stay there. Otherwise he waits on his toes for me to tell him what to do next and for some strange reason, he gets impatient after awhile! LOL
You say he "likes to trot", and of course he does...that is what HE wants to do...but walking is the absolute most important gait for any horse, but especially a driving horse. Walk-walk-walk...
Yep. I made this mistake with Kody, my older gelding, and ended up with a horse who joyfully blew off steam for the first few minutes of our drive at a fast trot or gallop (we do combined driving events so canter is a working gait for us) and then settled happily into his work. I didn’t think it was that much of a problem because he waited until told to go up from a calm walk, would stop immediately if I told him to and would then stand quietly, so surely it was just this little indulgence between the two of us…? Wrong. LOL. He hurt his back a few years later and I spent a lot of time retraining him to walk for the first fifteen to twenty minutes because his muscles were far too tight to do anything more without pain. It wasn’t until we had to walk that I realized how ingrained the habit of having his little gallop had become! He was VERY unhappy with being forced to walk that long and several times I had to turn him around and go a bit towards home to get my point across that if he couldn’t stay calm when allowed to move up, he couldn’t go out. I especially realized what a bad habit it was when I considered the idea of having this horse be my youngster’s mentor in a pair. The thought of what would happen if he tried to take off when hitched to my green baby made my blood run cold and brought a new resolve to retrain him. It took time but now he warms up properly at a walk, trots off quietly when asked to and doesn’t get strong until later in the drive when we’re both ready for harder work. I made sure I did things right with the baby from the start and am glad I did! Don’t let your boy set the rules. YOU are the driver.
Leia
The way I see it, I will have to keep reading up and talking to people and muddling through without rushing and getting the trainer out here when I can. I think it would be great if my little guy could be in the town's 4 block long parade next Memorial Day Weekend in 2013 so I have lots of time to work on stuff. If we don't make that goal, then there is always the next year.
