More thoughts on pre-ride ground warmup

I have written before about owing it the horse to get him warmed up in both his body and mind before throwing a leg over and heading out. I recently listened to a podcast where the speaker talked about working on a crew at a large outfit where most of the cowboys after saddling their horses would spend the available minutes, before trotting out behind the boss, talking and telling stories rather than warming their horse up then wondered why some of them would be bucked off.

It's also pretty much common knowledge that lunging, or other ground work warming up, won't necessarily get the buck out of a horse by itself, but certainly a quality warmup allowing the horse to operate off a soft lead rope or rein can get him to looking to the handler, getting his mind on following direction, and getting blood flowing to his major muscle groups. It also allows the handler to discern any stickiness in the horse's gait which could indicate lameness. I have never had a problem having to wait on people to saddle up whether they were taking their sweet time grooming, tacking up, warming up,.....whatever. And I can't remember anytime when I hurried saddling a horse when I thought people were waiting on me. Didn't bother me much as I was there for my horse and not to satisfy people I was riding with or people in a clinic. Of course, that wouldn't be proper nor tolerated working for a cowboying outfit as you need to be ready to ride before the Boss is, but being ready to ride before the last man would get you a few minutes to get that horse warmed up and to his mind ass well.

Sometimes, when I pull a horse from his pen, the 2-3 minute walk to the tie rail can become a ten minute walk as I check him out enroute.....positioning up correctly when leading, stopping, backing, coming forward one foot at a time as I ask, swinging a front leg out, untracking his back end, etc.. So if he is not accurate on leading up, we'll correct that. All this reinforces the horse listening to your direction on the end of a lead rope. So if it's necessary to lead a horse, it's worth doing it with quality.

After saddling, and before I throw a leg over, I'll back the horse up using the as soft a feel as I can get by with and ask him to stand quiet, reinforcing ground tying, then ask for him to come forward sometimes using the lead rope of my mecate and sometimes using a hand signal. I'll ask for a front leg to step out laterally and sometimes ask for the hind end to untrack away from me. Again, getting the horse to look to you for direction.

Lastly, I'll direct the horse in a circle, first at a walk then a trot, getting the proper bend for that size of a circle and doing so on a loose lead, then untrack his hind feet with the hind foot nearest me stepping underneath his body and in front of his outside hind foot, then bringing his front end over and heading in the opposite direction.

So I do all this, usually spending 5-10 minutes at maximum, because I think I owe it to the horse to get a it warmed up and prepared for the ride.