What does it take to train a horse? Professional horse trainers have a routine and methodology they adhere to when working with a horse. They all have certain beliefs about what is the best way to approach problem behavior and they all have certain fundamental principles of starting a horse that are similar. What they also have in common, across the board (if they are truly decent horse trainers), is consistency and small steps.
There are probably many ‘right’ ways to start a horse just as there are a plethora of ‘bad’ ways. I’ve observed other trainers, helped with training horses, and have trained many horses so I’ve seen many ‘right’ ways (those that have positive outcomes like the horse progressing in his understanding, etc…) and many ‘bad’ ways (total chaos and confusion for the horse, regression from his current training level, etc…) and have done both myself.
No matter how one goes about it, the ‘right’ way of training a horse is 1) establishing a means of communication, 2) working in small progressions, 3) lots of positive reinforcement, 4) discipline that’s quick, to the point and then forgotten and most important, 5) consistency! Once a horse has acquired the fundamentals of basic training – being saddled and bridled calmly, accepting a rider without apprehension, knowing how to stop and move forward at the three basic gaits (walk, trot & canter) with appropriate cues, then he is ready for phase two!
Phase two consists of working on such things as suppleness, submission to the rider’s aids (legs, hand, seat, body) and getting consistency and straightness in forward motion then suppleness, carriage and collection. This can take a long time and can be fine-tuned to many levels.
Beyond this there’s training for specific disciplines. There are some trainers who start with training the horse to the specific discipline. Phase two isn’t necessarily forgotten, just tailored to the specific discipline. I guess this is okay, unless you decide to change riding disciplines then you need to train a whole new set of cues. What’s better is to establish a solid foundation of submission to hand, leg and seat cues and from there work on straightness, suppleness, bending, strengthening the topline and collection (which comes last!). In this way you assure yourself of a horse that can move into any discipline with ease as a solid foundation of body control and awareness has been established.
In coming blogs I’ll elaborate on my version of those initial first 5 steps of training a horse, the basic equipment that’s needed and my philosophy behind them. I’ll also talk about ‘different’ horses because no training plan that’s successful is one that is inflexible. In other words, each horse is different and what works on a majority of horses may not work on all. Some creative thinking outside the box is necessary in certain circumstances. How do you know what to do when in those circumstances? Well, if you listen and observe, the horse will often tell you what way will work for him.
I’ll also elaborate on Phase Two in coming blogs. However, a good site for information about this area is Meredith Manor. Their philosophy about horses is very good and they focus on progressing with small chunks. They also do a good job explaining the methods. There are also a lot of other great sites/trainers out there so be sure to do some Google searches! It’s been my theory that a good horse trainer is one that constantly strives to learn. Read a lot of articles, take from them what you want and need and leave the rest.
Until the next post…happy horse trails!