Overwhelming Your Horse Can Cause Naughty Behavior
Let me tell you a little story about my ‘youngster’, Corbell. Actually, maybe showing will give you a better mental image. Yeah, that’s my two boys in the middle of a thorough dust bath AFTER…
Training
Posts and Articles related to the training of horses.
Train Your Horse by the Brain, Not the Bit
Once we see our horse as an equal, instead of an object for our selfish use, we’re met with a new blessing and challenge. The horse’s brain. Yes, I know it’s a reach to think…
Putting Your Horse At Risk is Bad Horsemanship
My number one, numero uno, de facto is that I never ask my horse to put himself in harms way for me. But not all equestrians follow this motto. Quite to the contrary, many put their…
The Equestrian God Complex
It’s tough to admit you don’t know. That you’re only guessing. That you are, in fact, human and not a god. [12:12] Now I’ve been sort of banging on about this for the last couple…
Beware Willful Ignorance in the Horse Industry
Willful Ignorance, noun. (idiomatic, law) A decision in bad faith to avoid becoming informed about something so as to avoid having to make undesirable decisions that such information might prompt. In 2005 I moved cross-country…
Visual Lesson: Eitan Beth-Halachmy on Training Your Horse to Dump You
Clinicians are a dime a dozen in today’s horse world, and often they give out really useless information to help wheedle you into paying for a clinic or training or to hock some new gadget…
Finding Balance In Dressage
It can be easy to lose balance in Dressage and end up pursuing one extreme trait of the discipline or another. Perhaps you’ve been working hard to perfect your lateral work and forgot to notice…
Visual Lesson : Signs There are Holes in Your Horse’s Training
What does it mean for there to be holes in your horse’s training? It means that somewhere along the line his training was incomplete, like he missed a day of school and never got caught…
I Have a Suggestion
If you were at one of my clinics the very first thing I would say to you would be: “All that we ask our horses to do for us is based on our human goals and desires. I will go further and suggest that many of those goals are at the expense of our horse’s safety and well being.”
You’re Confusing the &*#! Out of Your Horse
You asked for your horse to go left – well you thought you asked anyways. You thought you pressed your right leg to his barrel and applied a direct left rein; but can you be sure? You probably thought nothing about how you caught your horse either, while you approached him head on like a predator and yelled at him for running away. You can’t figure out why he won’t lead properly without running his shoulder into you sporadically. He doesn’t stand still for mounting or walks off as soon as your leg is over his back. He leans on the bit or shies away from any contact, spooks and is either dull or too sensitive to the aids.
Guess what? These aren’t training problems, they’re communication problems.
10 Trust Building Exercises for Equestrians
But don’t forget that we also lose trust in our horses! Unfortunately for us, the only way to repair our own lost trust is to work in gaining the horse’s trust rather than looking for a horse to build our trust. There are definitely horses which help boost our confidence, but without working through our own trust issues we’ll eventually see that confidence weaken and our old trust issues come to the surface again. Much better to be proactive!
Using Your Indoor Arena Voice
Sometimes when I get wound up, excited or nervous my voice will rise and rise until I am nearly shouting and don’t realize it. This was a big problem when I was a child and…
The Importance of Critique For Equestrians
I’m not perfect, and I avoid expecting perfection, although I do aim for “personal best”. As equestrians and horseback riders we give critique constantly, while often being oblivious to the critique we’re receiving. From the moment we…
Association Is More Powerful Than Reward?
Many times as equestrians we overlook the habitual actions we make with our horses. Even more common is to behave in one way with one horse and another way entirely with another. We lack personal consistency and self-awareness to our actions and that inhibits our ability to understand fully our own horses’ reactions and actions.
Our History Predicts Forceful Horsemanship
We see political leaders make the same claims – it is always some other factor which dictates why their decision was forced rather than their own inclination. Horse culture has inherited this long-standing tradition, afterall we are only human; and it is not new. It still trickles down that we are a “dominant” species over the horse – therefore we are all wise and knowing and the horse should respond to our directions as a result of his lesser intelligence.