Flexing and Laterals Teaching a Hip-Around The first lateral movement you'll want to teach your horse is the hip-around. It is the easiest to teach, the hardest to keep clean and the most important to further your training. - Flexing - HipArounds - Sidepassing This is the way I ask for the lateral movement towards the left. Easy enough to see my leg and rein aid on the right, but take note that my left leg is well away from the horse to give room for her to step that way. Also, my left rein will be away from her. Even when I have to use it to stop forward motion, I will still hold away from her, in a leading rein. The second to last picture shows how I hold it clearly. Bring your horse to a stop parallell with the fence. Set your hips and shoulders, and give the signal with your leg. You can clearly see my leg in her side, my back is curved in the same curve she'll have to have to comply with my signals. She feels my leg signal and mistakes it for the go forward signal. But I make sure I never quit giving the signal, even tho she's screwing up. If there is any mistake folks make, it is that they quit whatever they were asking to begin with when their horse refuses or gets confused. So at this point it is extremely important that you keep giving the correct signals. The fence is now stopping her forward motion and she's wondering what to do. I'm still giving the signal... My right leg is tapping her over, my left leg is giving her room to move in that direction and my back is still bent in the curve I would like for her to have. She finally puts 2 and 2 together and comes up with the only motion that is left to her, the hindlegs away from my tapping right foot. Just as soon as she does that, even tho it is usually completely by mistake and on accident, I will stop all requests and sit and pet her for a while. Training is trial and error from the horse's view, and you might as well make it easy for your horse to find the error that you want them to make. She will probly be grumpy, a little put out that I bugged her into doing something so... weird, but I'll pet and praise her profusely anyway. Then I let her walk away from there on a loose rein, and then bring her right back to it. Another whoa, another request to move the hindquarters, another not-letting-up-until-she-moves-the-hindend. And she'll probly go thru the same fussing again, until she makes the same mistake in the right direction during her fussing. And I will reward it again. We'll do that several more times, and now we'll see her step her hindquarters over faster and eventually with purpose. Once she's learned the signal real well, and I feel her responding correctly as soon as I give the request, I'll ask her to move over more. I'll do the same thing that I've been doing, Stop parallell with the fence, ask her to move her hindquarters away from the fence, praise her when she responds. But instead of walking off on the loose rein, I'll ask her to move her hindquarters again. Two more steps in the right direction will get another set of "Good Girls". Depending on the horse, I may let her walk away, or I may go ahead and ask for the final few steps over to the fence. In her attempt to comply, she may jam my leg into the fence. That's ok, it don't hurt, Honest, it don't. And it's important that I don't interfere with her attempt to do as I asked. Click here for a short vid clip demonstrating this. Before starting on the other side, I'll let her trot around the arena a couple of times and let her shake her head out. Just some free movement to get over the heevey-jeevies. Then I'll bring her back to the same spot and ask for the same thing going the other way, in this case to the right. This particular horse made a fairly common mistake and mistook my signal first for moving towards the left (which is what we just got done doing), and then misassociated my signal with moving her front end over, not her hind. In both cases, I just kept asking her, tap-tap-tap, till she stumbled onto what I actually wanted from her. You might think of it like you are bugging them into doing what you want. You don't have to get after them, or be authoratitive when they make a mistake. You just have to be persistent, even when they are refusing. Another short vid clip demonstrating the other side. Do it right... Laterals are crucial building blocks for neck reining, flying lead changes and whole body control. Let me guide you thru the foundations to advanced training by joining the Online Clinic. Check it out... click here.