What exactly is lunging a horse?
Lunging is working a horse on a long line. The horse runs in a circle around the person and the person asks for walk trot or canter. Since the person is often 15 feet away from the horse, a lunge whip is sometimes used to help the person convey their wishes. A horse can be lunged with just a halter, bridle or fully tacked. Lunging is used to exercise the horse in bad weather, when other exercise is not feasible, as a training aid to get the horse used to the bit or other training aids. Sometimes horses are lunged over small jumps or cavalettis (so long as posts are not used with the jump) to get the horse used to the jump before jumping under saddle. Horses are sometimes lunged before work under saddle, to ‘get the energy out’. Here is a video example of lunging. The canter work is not really good and this horse probably shouldn’t be cantered on a lunge line, but it does show lunging.
