Lunging/Longeing - Part Two
Lunge with the right equipment: splint boots with bell boots/wraps, a properly fitted halter, lightweight lunge whip and a lunge line you can work with in comfort. Boots will protect their legs from injury if they happen to have an about reach. What you don't need is for your own horse to injure itself after which remember the experience as being a negative one. The lunge whip by the way, is an aid only and not the primary training tool.
Try to lunge in a round pen or an enclosed area of some sort with rounded corners, and flat ground. Remember the goal is to keep control of your current horse at all times, so don't try this in an area without fencing.
When you start your lesson, always start with one direction and stick to it. If you choose to work on the left side, then always hold your own lead in the left hand with excess line in your perfect (and the whip as effectively, if you choose to use 1) and keep all body positions the same. You start to the left, pointing to the left, leading the horse's nose to the left and move your feet, swing your current rope end (or lift the whip) towards the horses hip to ask for forward movement. If you horse keeps facing you then guide them forward by swinging your own rope/whip toward their shoulder.
Ok, success, the horse is moving in a circle to the left. Move with him, staying in the middle of the round pen with sufficient line played out. Keep the whip low, or your rope end low and walk quietly. The thing you want to teach the horse is, that if The feet are moving, his feet need to be moving. Keep your current body behind his withers to ensure forward movement. If you get in front of the withers, your own horse will stop.
If your current horse does stop, calmly keep moving and touch the whip or rope end to his hind legs to keep him moving until YOU stop the feet. The major reason this approach will work, and work properly, is that this is totally normal behavior for a horse. Watch a herd in the field and see what happens when 1 stomps its feet and then moves off. The rest follow, they don't stop to ask questions, they simply go, and go at the same rate of speed set by the head horse in the pecking purchase. If you lunge in this manner, your horse will understand the body language almost immediately. First the body language, then add voice to the body language.
This page about Lunging/Longeing - Part Two Feel free to bookmark this page for future reference.
Don't forget to Twit Lunging/Longeing - Part Two if you find it interesting.
