"over" - lateral movement from the ground

[maggie555]

Hi all,
my gelding Oskar and I are learning in leaps and bounds in our ground work. He will move forwards, back up, stand, yield his hind end, all kinds of good stuff. There's just one thing we have trouble with, so I strongly suspect I'm doing something wrong: I have problems moving his front end away from me, either for a turn on the hind legs, or to move him sideways. Here is what I do:
Say, I'm standing on the left side of him, and want him to move to the right, moving both front and hind legs equally. I hold my left hand up about where his cheek is, and place my right hand where my leg would be when riding, put gentle pressure on and say "over". Usually, he will either turn his back end away from me while bringing his head closer (yield the back end), and/or start to walk forward. So I end up putting my left hand where his neck meets the cheek and try to push his front end over with the back end, or end up holding on to the cheek strap of the halter to stop his forward movement. In any case, I think he is confused about what I ask.
Same thing if I try to just move only his front end away from me. I put my hand behind his cheek, the other on his shoulder and ask him to move over, but all he does is lean into me, or at best swing his neck over away from me, but leaving his feet planted.
At the same time, I can back him up without touching if I stand in front of him, and make him swing his back end around with just one look. So I don't think the problem is that I can't move him at all.

Any suggestions where I might be going wrong? Thanks!

[HeatherL*]

I found this the hardest thing to teach Bella too. I found it easier if I stood her with her nose to the fence in the school to block any forward movement. I then found it easier to teach her to move her front end a step followed by her back end a step and so on. Once she had mastered that moving all of her sideways followed on quite easily but I still needed the fence in front of me for quite a while otherwise she would just walk forward.

[maggie555]

A quick update: with a lot of practice and persistence, we can now do something like and "over" from the left side. Sometimes with an additional step forward or backwards, but I reward anything where his front legs cross over. From the right, it's still hit or miss, sometimes it works, more often he does something different. He's definitely a "lefty"! I found the fence not to be very helpful, as it makes him back up. I think once he's a bit more solid on the left side, I'll start trying the "over" standing over a pole and see if that helps getting more steps in a row.