hello this is riding with re and for this week's video we're going to be talking about confidence out hacking in this video i'm going to be covering some of the most common fears associated with hacking out including hacking out alone meeting dogs meeting traffic horses bolting in open spaces or losing control in open spaces spooky horses and falling off this video has been a highly requested topic and actually when i went on my instagram just the other day and asked you to tell me which areas of hacking were the ones that struck up the most kind of fear or lack of confidence in you these areas i've just spoken about were really common and i had hundreds of responses so before we begin i did just want to kind of take a moment to validate that so if you are someone who struggles with hacking out or you do feel nervous when you hack out or something has happened and you're trying really hard to overcome that incident i kind of want you to know that like that is fine this is a safe space welcome i think we've all had incidences in the past or things that make us nervous as we ride out it's not an unusual thing so i did want to validate that i also want to say that of course i'm going to give you as much advice and information as i possibly can as always but nothing is going to i guess nothing is better than a coach and if you can have a coach who's going to help you week by week who knows you and your horse you can be there on the ground and who can ride out with you nothing will replace that and of course i'm not a professional before we dive into each of these topics individually and how we might tackle them i want to touch on something that they all have in common and that is the lack of control so in all of these areas the traffic the dogs horses bolting falling off packing out alone spooking all of these things create fear through our lack of control over a situation or lack of ability to predict things and whilst that is partly true there are a lot of things that we can do and a lot of steps we can take before we even get on the horse that are going to help us with these situations when they arise so what i want to do first is take you with me up to the yard with lovely woody and show you the equipment that i use every single time i hack out and i'm going to talk you through how each of those pieces actually helps when it comes to dealing with these sorts of things when we're at hacking and the decisions that we make before we even got onto the horse so let's go and see woody first so here i am with woody it's about 7 30 in the morning and i'm just about to go for a hack on my own as you can tell it's pretty warm today but let me take you through a few things that i do when i'm riding particularly when i'm hacking out this is a neck strap i always ride in one of these this is actually an old stirrup leather but essentially it's just like a balance strap and initially these were seen as things for novice riders to help them have balance when they're jumping and trotting but now we see huge inventors like william fox pit always riding in a neck strap and they've become more popular so the neck strap is one of my essential bits of kit it's become a bit of a joke over the years but it's very much started off as being something that only william fox put ever used but now there are a few more people out there with them on i'll link an article below if you want to hear more about william fox and why he rides with a neck strap but i always have one of these when i'm riding you can also see on with your saddle there's a tag here this tag has his name my number where he lives my yard owner's number and my in case of emergency number and this gives me the peace of mind that if i were to fall off during a hack if he gets found by someone he's okay he can get taken home the yard owner can be alerted they can call me and if they find me and would be nearby and i'm unconscious they can call my in case of emergency i'd also recommend if you have an iphone that you set up you're in case of emergency that means if someone finds you and your phone is on you they can look at your phone while it's locked and find your influence for emergency contact and actually call them along with obviously emergency services so of course i always hack out in high views and depending on the time of year will depend how much hives i'm wearing it's very hot today so i'll just be wearing my usual vest but if it's winter time woody will also wear his high those exercise sheet which i'm sure you've seen before and sometimes i'll have five years um bits on the reins and what else other high this pieces just to make us even more uh visible if i ever feel not sure about something or i'm on a horse that i'm not confident on or i'm not feeling confident that day or i'm going somewhere for the first time and i'm nervous i always wear my back protector under my hives i don't think there's any shame in that i used to hack out a lot in bag protectors on horses i wasn't sure about i hack out in a back protector when i take woody to open spaces just in case something goes wrong i think you're never gonna and i hate to put it this way but you're never gonna sit in a hospital bed and be like oh yeah i really you know i really wanted to look cool so i didn't know my back checked you're always going to be like i really wish i'd had it on so i always wear my back protector and finally i always have equilab the app on my phone it allows you to have a safety tracking feature so you turn it on when you're about to go hacking and you can give it to a contact of your choice and they can follow your hack see what pace you're going and see if you've gone say from like candy to stock and that will let them know that maybe something's gone wrong so those are the things that i do to keep myself safe when i'm hacking and they help me feel more secure about some of the common problems we see and the common fears we have associated with hacking one final thing i do want to touch on is you can't have control over your environments when you're hacking out but you have control over when you ride so not at super busy times in traffic for example who you ride with so people who have karma horses people who understand that you're a bit nervous people are going to make stuff people who are going to give you a lead and you have a choice over where you ride and of course all of this comes in varying degrees if you don't have good hacking if you only have certain people to ride with it can be difficult but i think what i really want to instill upon you is that you can set yourself up a lot for success with the equipment you choose to put on your horse to help subdue some of those fears of the unknown and also who where and when you choose to hack out and making sure that when you do those things you're making a strong evaluation of like what could go wrong how can i get as close as possible to preventing that from happening i think that's a really important element when you're hacking out so you have your safety equipment and you've made all of the decisions possible to make this hack as safe and as positive as possible so let's start with one of the most common hacking fears and in fact there's two they're sort of combined together one is confidence in cancer and the other is losing control in open spaces these two are kind of mixed together for some people they're separate for some people they're the same thing so let's start with confidence in canter before we get to open spaces so of course a fun part about hacking out and getting out there with your horse is being able to go for a little cancer but for some people this really makes us nervous and that's completely fine i think before you even think about your canter in this big open space with loads of horses and what could possibly go wrong i think we need to break down a little bit why there's a fear of cantering and there's things that we need to do before we get to an open space to see that we're safe before you even get to cantering out on a hack you should be really confident in warp chart and canter at least in the arena and usually a riding school will do a really good job of letting you know when you're at that standard of being able to canter on a hack but you should be comfortable and strong enough to be able to stand up in your stirrups and canter in a light seat in the arena and also being able to bridge your reins can be really helpful and putting them down on the next that you have them there together and you have the pull if you need it but you're not you're not kind of pulling on the horse's mouth and falling up and down like you should be able to keep yourself up in a light seat so i would personally always recommend that your first canter on a hack is in an enclosed space as possible so i always try and have a canter first time on a new horse in a sort of a good woodland path is nice with a sort of stop at the end or if you are in a field up a hill and the reason i do that is because there's sort of less space for things to go wrong if you're on a woodland path with a hard stop at the end or you're cantering up a hill the likelihood of you being able to stop and your horse not being able to go anywhere is higher than if you were just in a massive open field where there's a ton of space um so i would always recommend doing that and it's just a good way to see what happens with your horse and whether you have brakes how confident you feel the second thing that i would do for your first canter out hacking is go with someone you trust whose horse they know that they can stop and that horse isn't one that's gonna wind your horse up or get too excited and hopefully one that you can go in behind so a canter is always really really helpful if you're a bit nervous to go behind someone else whose horse you know will stop and he isn't going to kick your horse because then they're setting the pace and if they're a good friend and a good person to go with they shouldn't be going at a speed that is making you feel uncomfortable they should be checking in with you but it does mean that when you go into canter you have someone setting the pace they're your kind of they're your emergency stop right and ideally of course we don't want to go into the back of another horse but horses are herd animals which means when one horse pulls up another horse is likely to pull up it's not the same with every horse but in general when when your horses start to slow down they do start to slow down together so being behind someone else can just take the pressure off knowing that you'll be able to stop at the end it can also help because when another horse is in front your horse is less likely to spook at things because they're being led by another horse so it can just feel a little bit more comfortable so i would always say to have hacks in have have canters in enclosed spaces before you head out to a big open field now something that i am really passionate about when it comes to big open spaces and i've done videos on this before is manners it is so important that your horses understand that when they get onto grass or big open spaces they don't just associate those places with canter it leads to huge problems down the line of horses getting on grass and just wanting to go and that is a problem so a lot of this can be done preventatively so if you have a horse who does heat up on heat up who does hot up when they get on grass there's some work to be done there to keep bringing them back to that spot keep bringing them to these grassy spaces and not cantering it's so important um i rode a horse previously he was super hot on grass and i spent a lot of time walking just trying to walk and of course the horse is jogging but i in my head i'm like we're just here to walk i'm not even thinking about trot and i would say that until you can trot your horse bring them back to walk trot again bring them back to walk and do that without feeling like you're going to lose control in an open space you shouldn't really be cantering now of course if you're watching this and you're like oh that's all very well and good reba i'm already at that point okay we get to the grass the horse gets excited i can't do the walk trot thing cool so if you're in the moment and it's happening and you're like oh my god my horse is just gonna go again you shouldn't be in an open space with another person who doesn't understand that you are trying to keep your horse under control that you are nervous about countering that horse in an open space you should be making the decision to go out with someone who is going to have a horse that is going to be nice and calm a rider that is going to make you feel good and is going to understand that you want to take it a little bit slower is going to say do you want to be in front and behind is going to communicate with you is going to make you feel comfortable this is really important okay you can't control how your horse is behaving in the moment but you can control the setup that you've created so ideally you would have another rider who says that's okay i'm gonna walk like you get yourself under control and if your horse bolts off they will just pull up and wait and then your horse eventually might be like oh okay we've left them behind we need to turn around if you get in the field and your horse just bombs off circles can be very helpful pulling and releasing is very helpful if you're bolting in the moment again having somebody else's horse pull up making sure that no one else is galloping past you but as i said ideally what you want to happen is that you have a trot first you communicate with each other you do that a couple of times and then you go into canter before you put the gears up with a horse my friend and i did this recently i took woody in his first open space ever i've never taken him in a big open space with another horse her horse was quite hot but you'll tell i'll give you a little video clip we communicated with each other all the time it's flat by that wall or whether we want to just go up the side here it's probably right wouldn't it have a little trot yeah do we have control she's doing all right though you've got her i got her yeah did you pull up at the end of the strike yeah sure all right yep so it's really important that you go with someone who is going to communicate with you and ultimately you know it's not always fun to have a horse that's jogging and bouncing around but what can really help is having someone there to be like you're okay i'm here too my horse is chill we've got this that really helps and it makes a difference um and you might even find that if you're able to go on your own a couple of times your horse will be less excited and you'll be able to do more of that work where you can walk where you can trot where you can do a little bit of schooling a little bit 20 meter circles changing the rain treat it like a schooling session just get their brain engaged thinking about something else that is not gallop and keeping them keeping them under control so that's galloping in open spaces and confidence now if the issue is less about the horse and more about you for me it's just baby steps it really is i mean i still sometimes feel a bit nervous in open spaces i think it's like when you're in deep water and you look down and you're like you have that moment i sometimes get that when i'm out in the open because i think what happens if they bark what this this and this and the thing that brings me back to center is knowing that i have my reins i have my neck strap i have a good anchor my core is tight my heels are down i'm in a light seat but i'm up enough if anything happens i'm secure and i think keep thinking about your position set the pace in the canter that you want if your cat if you're riding with a friend say hey i'm feeling a bit nervous can we just take the take the pressure off a bit and have a bit of a slower canter if you're really feeling nervous sit to the canter have a really nice collected canter and ask your friend to keep it steady and if you're by yourself just take it easy there's no pressure you can build these things up you don't have to go galloping every time you go out for a canter if you go out one day and you're nervous and you just have a trot and two strides of canter and then back to truck great next time you might have four strides of canter and after that you might have eight it's all building up things that you feel comfortable with our horses don't care if every time we go out they get to gallop everywhere they don't care they're not built that way we put them out in the field they can canter around if they want to out there but what they will care about is whether their mum or dad or whoever's riding them is confident and feels good and is enjoying themselves and we can only do that when we start to think about feeling in control feeling in control of the breaks feeling in control of our position feeling secure having that next step if we need it feeling secure in who we've chosen to go out with these things are so important when it comes to open spaces okay let's talk about horses meeting dogs and meeting traffic the reason i'm sort of tying these two things together although i will speak about them separately is because this is a type of fear where it's the unknown it's meeting something and not knowing how it's going to react because it's an animal or it's a person and a car so let's start with dogs meeting dogs on horses can be a range of experience depending on the horse you're on some horses don't care some horses get very upset by dogs and to a certain extent there's only so much you can do and i say that not to frighten you but to actually make you feel better that you can only do so many things when it comes to these moments and then just react to them so the first thing that i always do when i'm riding out is i'm aware of what time i'm riding is it really early before work when people are likely to be walking their dogs is it you know a space where dog walkers are super common is it like is it a common is it a woodland where dogs are really common and just having that in the back of my head before i go out especially if i'm on a horse that is slightly nervous of dogs so with that in my mind as i'm riding along i keep an eye out for dogs and owners and i think be aware as well that some owners will walk along with headphones in their ears and even if they're not if you are riding through a woodland it's not always easy to hear that horses are coming so on occasion if i think someone hasn't heard me and they have a dog i'll just say hello i'm just riding behind you or hello i'm just on a horse and sometimes then people will be like oh i'll just get my dog and they'll grab them and i think i always try and wait and get give them that moment to get their dog on a lead so that i'm not continuing to walk forward and then the dog runs away and then i caused a problem you know so i think give people the benefit of the doubt i do want to read to you the bhs guidance if the worst happens and you're attacked by a dog you should try to stay calm protect young or vulnerable riders if possible and say and safe and distance yourself from the dog by riding away keep the horse's head away from the dog allow the horse to defend itself always carry a mobile phone when out riding so you can summon help if needed and make any note of identifying details of either the dog or the owner so the riding away thing is a bit of a contentious issue and it's actually something that popped up on one of my videos ages ago because i really think you have to judge the situation based on the dog's behavior and what the owner is doing so i've had situations before where a dog has sort of started running over but the owners called them back um and i i've then stood still because i've been like if i stand still we become less interesting maybe they'll focus on the owner they'll run back and then to a certain extent it's worked but in other situations you really have to get yourself away from the dog what i'm always afraid of with getting away is whether the dog then goes into kind of like play mode because now we're moving target um so that's just something i think you have to judge the situation on and all you can do is try and keep your heart your horse calm but i do agree with the guidance that you should let your horse defend themselves because you don't want your horse getting bitten either and actually a little a little kick to the dog or a tail swish or something might be enough to encourage that dog to get to go away and that's what you want so i think all you can do is stay as calm as possible if you have two horses try and protect as the bhs said a younger rider or a younger horse by getting in front of them but also be aware that when horses are shying you might just bang into each other or bang into each other's syrup so just be careful that you're not going to get tangled up in each other's things and keep an eye out for things like hidden ditches because if you're riding along a roadside and you've got a horse that wants to run sideways just keep an eye out where you are why are on the floor anything like that don't beat yourself up if these things happen you know everyone ideally would have a dog on a lead they don't always so you can only do what you can do in the moment okay traffic again traffic can be a really awful thing to deal with and i think if we all had our way none of us would ever ride on a road but it's just not possible in this day and age to do that so i'd like to talk about how you should be dealing with traffic in a normal situation what if something goes wrong desensitizing horses to traffic and those sorts of things so i think i think it's always best to try and put your best foot forward and be as respectful as possible so doing the things like if you're riding to abreast going in single fire when a car passes you um trotting if there's difficult if it's difficult for a car to pass you for an extended period of time and you can trot to get out of the way of that car i think being as polite as possible saying thank you wearing hi-veers i guess doing all of the things that you can to be a polite road user um is is going to stand you in good stead i think if you have a young horse going out with an older horse who even if you can't have them to a breast and have them shielding the old the younger horse just having them in front and again it's like it's like the dog walkers and it's like those decisions we said about who you choose to hack out with it's also where you choose to hack out at what time and i appreciate that you know a lot of us have jobs and places we need to get to but i think if you know that a specific road is very busy between seven eight and eight am on the weekdays and that's the only time you can hack out but you have a horse who's really frightened of traffic it's probably worth putting in the hours on the weekends on that road where you can meet one or two cars and your horse can start to build their confidence in that way rather than throwing them in the deep end on the weekdays because you want them to hack out because you think that's a good thing i think we have to weigh up you know yes we want them to hack out and get out and not just school but not at the expense of breaking their confidence or having a dangerous situation now if we meet a dangerous vehicle it's a really hard one it's very very easy to get angry i've done it for sure i think if you sometimes i've the most common sort of dangerous behavior i see is a car who doesn't really have time to overtake but nips in front anyway i think all you can do if that happens is ask a horse to stop just get out of the way because if there's going to be a collision it's going to be between the car coming past you and the car coming towards you you want to be as far away from that as possible the other thing that is really helpful is wearing a gopro you can capture footage you can capture number plates without having to scramble and you can share them with the police and the bhs actually has an app now where you can report incidents on the road i think it's really really important that as many of us as possible continue to report these incidents so that the police and the bhs and local authorities understand where and when these incidents are happening and again if you have a horse that's un un unsure on the road and you are worried about that kind of thing there are things you can do wear a body protector have a neck strap you know ride with an older horse and build these things up slowly don't jump don't throw yourselves both in the deep end ride when it's as quiet as possible ride with a quiet friend do as many things you can as you can to set yourselves up for success don't throw yourselves in the deep end unnecessarily okay final two topics let's talk about spooking and hacking out alone let's talk about spooking first because i think it's a slightly simpler issue and then we'll get on to hacking out alone where spooking sometimes comes in so spooking is a hard one because if they're going to speak they're going to speak i mean that is literally the answer i think all that you can do is be vigilant keep an eye out for things know that you've got bins coming up know that there's a napkin in the hedge know that there are pheasants around this area have these things in your mind and make sure that you're secure in your seat so work on that in your schooling work on having a good legs position a strong core have your neck strap if you're particularly worried about the idea of falling off on a road because your horse is spooky wear a body protector have your luggage tag with your horse's information give your route to someone have these things in mind and if you can hack out with a confident older horse who's going to give your horses confidence who's going to be able to give you leads i think if you can be as kind as you can to your horse give them lots of pats lots of praise uh and understand that they are prey animals understand where this is coming from they're not always trying to be you know naughty they are genuinely prey animals and they're like are these things gonna eat me particularly if your horse is in a new area so you can do it good boy when it comes to spooking i think make sure that you are secure in your seat because if you're secure it doesn't matter what the horse does because you're going to be you're right there hacking out alone so if you're looking to get started hacking out alone i think it's baby steps and i think it's getting to know your horse and if if you've never hacked out alone on your horse before you don't know that they that they can hack out alone i think it's just trying to pick up on other cues so are they generally happy being on their own in the stable or do they get a bit upset were they school alone are they nappy when it comes to schooling or do you have any other signs that they don't like being by themselves i think that's an important one um i think from there you can start to take things just day by day you can do a very short walk up the road trying not to turn around on the same road because we don't want to encourage horses turning back on themselves but doing a very short hack i think particularly if it's a hack you've done with a friend a couple of days earlier i think that can give a horse who's riding alone a lot of confidence when woody first came to the new yard even though he was fine hacking out alone or so i've been told he was i made sure that when i hacked out alone for the first time i followed the exact route that we'd done the day before with a friend so that he could feel a little bit more confident that he's done this route once and he knows where we're going and he can feel good and it worked he felt really confident he was looking around but i was like no we're cool lots of praise pushing him on so i think it's baby steps take it day by day and if you're not confident about getting on board and maybe take them for a walk around the route first if it's safe to do so and then jump on again body protector i never hack out alone without my tracker to let my partner know where i am i think that is very important when you're riding out alone in general but being having foresight to know if an area is busy if something is happening if there are likely to be things that your horse is going to get upset about when it comes to hacking out alone i think a lot of people worry about falling off when they're out alone and to that i can say you are never going to be able to stop that prevent that see it coming you just can't so the only thing i can say is wear a body protector have your luggage tag on your horse and have your tracker on yourself and that way you know that if you fall off you're less likely to hurt yourself because you're wearing your body protector if your horse runs off someone finds them doesn't matter because your address is on there your number's on there your ice number is on there and if you have a tracker someone is going to know that you've fallen off if you've done all of those things and you still fall off well you know it happens and if you're worried about not being able to get back on again you're never going to be able to you're never going to know where you're going to fall off okay i if there's a gate great if there's a log not okay great if you can't get on from the ground you're gonna have to walk for a bit but what a great story to tell at the dinner table i think to a certain extent there are some of these worries that we just have to say you know what i've done everything i can to prepare myself for this day i've made good choices about who i'm riding with or not riding with i've got the equipment i need to keep me and my horse safe we've done the preparations to make sure that my horse is confident and i feel good to be here today and the rest the rest is up to fate and all you can do is try and go into it with a positive mental attitude and say today's another day and if it goes wrong we'll try again tomorrow and i know that that sounds fickle i don't mean it too i just mean good preparation and try and enjoy it you know it's never going to be a perfect science but that's why we love horses because it's not perfect and we're constantly working on things i hope that you have enjoyed today's video if you did please give it a thumbs up feel free to share it with someone make sure that you're subscribed and again as always let me know what kinds of videos you want to see because i love hearing it um and i find it really useful for planning topics that are useful to you so thank you so much and i'll see you next [Music] week