Horse Training: Teaching a Horse to Perform a Rollback

The final maneuver we see in most horse activities is a rollback.
That is where a horse stops, turns, and then has a lead departure.
We need to think about it in three parts.
so that the stop is a separate part,
the turn is a separate part,
and the lead departure is a separate part.
We've taught all of those maneuvers and it's a matter of just putting them all together.
So if we're just walking this horse around
we'll simply stop the horse
drop our hand, give them release
turn the horse, give them a release
and then ask them to go.
So there is three separate maneuvers in it.
Now, when we get to a lope, it may look like it's all one, but it is three seperate maneuvers.
So we're going to ask the horse to stop (whoa)
turn
and then ask for a lead departure right out of the turn.
Stop
turn, and lead departure.
Now, one of the best ways to teach this
if you've taught your stop, that's easy,
and you want your horse always to stop straight and be relaxed,
so stop, and then turn around
two or three times
and then find the rhythm and ask for them to lope.
That gets the horse over the idea of jumping out of a rollback too early
so if he stops, turn around a couple of times
and then ask for a lead departure,
then when we get ready for a real rollback,
we can just add a little bit of quickness to it
and it looks like it all happens at one time.
But there's actually three different sections to it
and if the horse starts jumping out of it too quick,
again, we'll go back
and ask him to turn around two or three times,
and then lope, and get him to wait on us just a little bit.
So for the rollback, basically we put three things together,
the stop, the turn, and the lead departure
and if we do it smoothly with our hands, smoothly with our feet,
it becomes an easy and automatic maneuver for the horse.