How to get your horse to “join up” without chasing your horse into submission

As horse riders on the journey we are all seeking the moment of utter magic and joy, where our horse connects with us on a deeper level emotionally.

The moment where they stop arguing with us, pushing us around, trying to run away from us.

That moment of union where it’s like you are your horse move and think as one. 

Join up is often recommended to establish this connection. It is touted as the way to handle your horse without violence and to develop a bond. However, after years of breaking, training and playing around with different groundwork principles, I believe there is a better way.

What is join up

Join up is where you free lunge your horse in a round yard.

You keep the horse moving forward until you see loud, over exaggerated and multiple relaxation cues (Read more about relaxation cues here).

The premise being that when you horse shows these signs of submission they are ready to approach you and bond with you. When you are free lunging your horse you are wanting them to change direction by turning into you not away from you. This also encourages the join up process.

Why this works

It gets the zoomies out.

We honestly expect a lot more of our horses than we do of other animals. Because they are so big and we want to sit on them we expect a naturally flighty animal to be unflappable (get it cause they’re often scared of flappy plastic bags). We not only expect them to be cool, calm and collected in all environments but we also want them to be steady and balanced when they work no matter what kind of performance pressure we put on them.

Behaviours that are perfectly acceptable from other animals (i.e. the zoomies) are considered naughty when done by horses. Sometimes they just need a good run to get the spunk out of their system and then they can concentrate and work again. Join up can let our horses have a good run and a buck and warm their back up before settling into focus and work. 

Horses learn from the release of pressure. Whatever a horse is consistently doing when you take the pressure off them they will learn to do. So if you take the pressure of the lunge whip off when your horse shows relaxation cues, or calmly approaches you, they will learn to give multiple, loud relaxation cues and approach you calmly… eventually so they don’t have to lunge anymore.

So used correctly this can be a handy skill to have and know how to use but it doesn’t establish a bond with your horse. It can be a useful way to allow your horse to get its pent up energy out of its system so it can calmly approach you and better control its emotions. 

And a horse that can’t control its emotions, can’t control its behaviour. 

Why we don’t love it

It doesn’t teach horses how to process their emotions.

Just running the energy out of them so that they can focus doesn’t teach them how to shift their emotional state.

So if they are cooperating because they are scared, confused, frustrated anxious etc, it only teaches them how to process emotion (fight or flighty hormones) by running - which is not necessarily what we need to teach a flight animal. More so we are taking advantage of the horses natural way of processing fight or flight hormones by running. The fitter we make our horses the longer it takes to get those relaxation cues and we end up making our horses fitter than us. 

It works off the idea of submission.

While at equestrian movement we start with leadership (i.e. me boss you follower), we like to try and move quickly into a partnership.

We also establish leadership with clear, consistent boundaries and following through on our asks. Not chasing our horses until they quit (FYI this is also why join up works). You are clear and consistent on what you want the horse to do and what will happen to them when they do it. There are clear consequences to their behaviour and it is followed through on.

So what is thought of as a bond establishing it really is just the horse learning what to do with pressure and how to find the release (don’t believe me? Check out this study where they were able to get the same join up results with a remote control car. https://thehorse.com/118284/remote-controlled-cars-used-to-study-round-pen-training/)

You don’t have to chase your horse to establish a connection with your horse and get them to “join up” or “hook on”

Showing up as a good leader, establishing clear, consistent expectations, following through on your asks, being clear in your expectations and consequences and over time you will develop trust, respect and a relationship. Want to speed the process along? We cover how to establish the connection without join up in our Easy Peasy Liberty Module of Training trainability.

Connection training, hooking on and join up

This week I took a lesson with a student who hasn't worked with me for about 3 years.

Previously I had done around 1 years worth of handling work on the ground with her 2 year old arab mare.

And it was such a good reminder for me on why I don't like to do join up even though we do a version of it and asking our horses to hook on in our connection training.

My main problem with join up is that it doesn't clearly define to the horse what we want them to do.

So for horses who don't need connection training it is of no benefit other than as a free lunge but for horses that do need connection and relaxation training it doesn't adequately guide them through the process.

This is where it is important to be clear on your values and the purpose of the exercise you are implementing. The purpose of join up is ideally to help our horses self regulate and manage their emotions and stress and teach them how to approach us. Sending the horse around the round yard doesn't help them with this, they have to stumble across the answer themselves.

Now, I totally get all the building blocks are there for why this should work but at the same time, we're missing the real key.

Connection isn't forced, it's earnt.

And teaching a horse to learn how to self regulate and control emotions by running them only serves to get them more fit than you and dealing with high energy by running.

So we break it down and do relaxation exercises first, separate to, and before we do our send away and invite in exercises (ie free lunging). And we also teach them how to approach us separately by just giving them the invitation and rewarding them when they do. We also then do our hook on exercises by invitation and we think it's totally fine if they don't stay with us because that is an indication of the strength of connection and relationship we have with them and therefore we have to work on that more.

It does mean it can take a little longer to do it perfectly as a trick but it also means we focus on the connection first and the trick second so that the quality of the relationship and the horses ability to process their emotions is first and foremost and then we can challenge the strength of connection with how long they stay with us and introducing obstacles not the other way around.

Circling back around to my lesson…

I like to free lunge horses if I have the opportunity so they can have a run, stretch their back and have a buck if they want to, I don't force it of them if they don't want to. And what I saw as I sent her out on the free lunge was her energy come up and her body language became tight and tense so I quickly invited her back in - and because we had done this work previous to free lunging, I was able to do our relaxation and connection work to bring her energy back down and get her to focus and stay connected with me.

Instead of sending her around the round yard until she gave me relaxation and connection cues, I asked her to stay with me until she gave me relaxation and connection cues before I sent her back out.

And this is the real difference.

It is up to us to show our horses how to do this, not hope they stumble across the answer themselves. Because we are the ones that are creating the stress and the tension in the horse by driving them around a yard they cannot escape with a whip and no clear answer to what they are supposed to be doing.

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