Rebeccafrier, you need to create a sweet spot, using the dually when your horse rushes react instantly by making him back up. The Dually lessons do show this, I think it's lesson 3, it is persistence & repetition as for the rearing I find that just keeping the tension the horse has created, on until they come down & they come up off the dually they do learn that it is uncomfortable. We have a pony that will rear every time she loads but it's half hearted, just her being an opinionated little madam, & she then loads straight in, but I keep the tension on whilst she's on end so she doesn't go right over. The cutting across will come right as long as you correct immediately, the horse will get the idea that he doesn't need to be in your space so much. It all takes time you don't say if you've done any Join Up/ follow up as this will help. Hope this helps, Stay safe & keep smiling as Monty & my farrier say.

Thank you! Will definitely watch again (and again!). I find it's the schooling and backing up which seems to invoke the rearing the most as he's quite opinionated about me doing that, but like you say (as long as I'm brave!) repetition is key.

Yeah some will, if he's like that I would just ask for 1 or 2 steps then give him a rub, lead him forwards again, and repeat, then do something else for a few minutes. I assume your using a lunge line, I know it's not ideal but lunge him to break the lesson up and give him something else to think about. Not knowing how old he is it might be a 10 minute session if he's a baby, they get mentally tired quite quickly, or longer if he's older & doing ridden work.

Your safety is paramount so don't try anymore than you feel comfortable with at the moment. Always try to end on a good note any progress is a step in the right direction no matter how small. Although we can learn from the uni it's not always as easy as Monty & his team make it look!

I agree with Tiggy, keep it short & above all, be very quick to give him a rub & release the pressure immediately he tries to do as you ask. Make much of his positive tries, even if he doesn't get it quite right at first, if he tried to do something, he's trying to work out what it is you're asking for.

All good advice, I would just add a couple more ideas, particularly about the cutting across - it's something I come across a lot with my clients. The key to preventing this is to step in much sooner so if his nose goes past your shoulder when travelling or coming to a stop, correct it immediately - I find most people wait much too long and the horse has already cut across. Also, use a lot of moving him backwards away from you which will help prevent the rearing. Another good exercise is to face him, get him to stand still while you move backwards away from him you while on a long line and then asking him forward towards you by dropping your gaze and relaxing your body and applying a very very light pressure to ask him forwards (you'll be surprised how little it takes). a lot of rearing happens when people pull to sharply on the Dually to bring them forward so they end up going 'into pressure' and thus upwards as there is nowhere else to go. Imagine a hoop round you and that is as close as he must come so use your energy and body language to control this movement and stop him within an acceptable distance in front of you. I find this is an excellent exercise for getting horses to focus on your instructions and it also means you can see where he is thinking of going and intercept it quickly. If his ear is pointing to the left or right of you and his nose follows trust me, his feet will soon follow that direction and before you know it he has scooted past you!! These type of things are much easier to show than describe - hope it makes sense!

Thank you all for your advice! Been trying some of these tips and he was really responsive on Monday...I would definitely agree that I wait too long to correct and give him the chance to cut across me.. Sometimes he is just very excited and rushing and not listening (7 yr old pure bred Arab) but I guess the more I ingrain all this the more he'll be listening to me..

Yes indeed, keep practising, he'll soon be wonderful & enjoy listening to you. I think you need to ask him lots of different things as you progress to keep his attention, Arab's are very intelligent & quick, so get bored pretty quickly, test your imagination to think up different exercises for him to do. Good luck

Glad you're getting an improvement:) Think mines in the process of rewriting his Mothers book:D

Hi Rebeccafrier great advice here and it sounds as if you are making real progress. Just lost a long comment re a difficult Arab that sounds like yours which I was helping to load on a trailer last week. Lots of rearing and lots of learned bad habits re evasion of halters and pushing into people with his shoulder. The dually and a long lead rope solved many of his problems and he was an incredibly quick learner but very excitable. I found re looking at the Horse and Country tv UK video series Horsemanship Essentials Episode 1 in which Monty and Kelly Marks load three very naughty horses who all rare to evade going on the float really helped so maybe you would find it helpful too. The Arab I was handling was terrified of floats - worse than the horses in this video but the dually and a long lead rope meant that I did manage to load him by myself but it did take almost 2 hours. Part of that time was just getting him accustomed to the dually and teaching him some basic principles about yielding to pressure as he was a very into pressure horse. Always hard when peoples expectations seem to be that you will go out and catch their difficult horse and load it all in no time at all. It apparently took 4 men 4 hours to load him when his owner purchased him and then he was driven in this very poor, rattly, small trailer with no padding in it for 4 hours. He must have bumped his head so many times as he was totally terrified by the trailer when in it. Wish I had Monty's easy in easy out trailer to try him with!! All the best. I haven't handled Arabs often but they do seem to be more easily stressed and excitable than other horses. Fortunately they are incredibly fast learners too which is a real plus. Have fun with yours and keep watching those videos with how to use the dually and the longer lead rope. Stay safe!

Hi Rebeccafrier and all,
Reading this thread I remembered Allan Hamilton's advice in Zen Mind-Zen Horse about dealing with a pushy horse. He suggests" Directional Reversal: If your horse is pushy and seems to be always trying to lead, allow him to slip slightly ahead of you. Let him start to circle around your shoulder toward you. Now simply turn sharply inside, rotate 180 degrees around to your left, and then head straight off-dead ahead."
This means that by reversing the direction, you're in the leading position again, all the pushing didn't give the horse any positive result. This will soon lead to a horse that is paying attention to your being the one to decide at what speed and which direction the two of you are travelling.
Should be fun to give it a try!
Miriam

Very interesting comment, Miriam. What often happens is that a horse is passing you, as you mentioned, then you turn 360 degrees (not 180) around ending in the original direction. This happens again and again and is difficult to manage. Your proposal to change the direction seems a good solution. I will try it the next time it happens to me.
Rudi

I like that Miriam!!!

Interesting Miriam thats a common technique we use in dog training for dogs that pull - "turnabout" I have used it a lot with dogs but not horses...will consider it :-0