Yielding the Hips, Part One

Posted in: Ask A Pro, Featured, Horse Training, Ranch Life

Yielding the hips is one of the most important things you can teach a colt to do. In the first video in this series, you’ll see Zach Ducheneaux working with a 4 year old mare. She’s not particularly tight. However, she’s not tuned into, or looking to the human to help her or give her direction. She’s also not exceptionally soft through her hips, so he works to teach her to yield her hips.

Throughout these videos, you’ll hear Zach talking to our Ranch Intern, Azzam. What started as Zach simply walking behind this mare to get her to change eyes, get round and yield her hips, turned into a great lesson. Zach was willing to take however long it took to help this mare get free through her hips, but Azzam wanted to know what you’d do if you didn’t have time, or patience to do it Zach’s way. This series is the result of that question.

Teaching a young horse to yield their hips and tune into what we’re asking is one way to stack the deck in our favor when beginning to ride them.

As we’ve talked about before – yielding the hips is where lead changes, and everything fancy we’ll want to do on our horses begins! We like to get them good at it from day one.

Hopefully this series will help you with the young horses you’re handling!

Happy Trails!

Posted in: Ask A Pro, Featured, Horse Training, Ranch Life


About Jenn Zeller

Jenn Zeller is the creative mind and boss lady behind The South Dakota Cowgirl. She is an aspiring horsewoman, photographer, brilliant social media strategist and lover of all things western. After a brief career in the investment world to support her horse habit (and satisfy her...

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