When people see my horses, they always want to know, what makes my training different? First, I train with the idea of making the training rewarding for my horses. Second, I have fundamental questions that I keep in my mind every day.  Why?  Why am I doing what I am doing? 

Training problems always arise. It’s part of the process. No matter the problem, I always ask why is my horse doing this? 

#1 I ask…  Is the horse in pain? I truly believe that more horses are in pain they we realize.  And that many behavioral problems stem from this fact more than we would like to admit. We have to remember that horses are prey animals and they will hide their pain as much as they can. It’s in their makeup. It’s our job to make sure the saddle fits, the bridle works, the bit is comfortable, they are sound in all aspects of their body and in their mind. This has to be the first check box we tick off when trying to problem solve. 

#2 I ask…  Is the horse able to do what I ask? Injuries( past and present), mental state of mind, the environment, confirmation, personality and previous experience can often get in the way of a horse being capable. 

#3 I ask…  Is the horse understanding what I ask?  Can I break this down into smaller steps so the horse can understand? What part exactly has them befuddled. Where are there holes in their training that we have missed? Can I teach it another way?  

#4 I ask…  Has the horse actually been trained to do what he/she is doing? Is this a result of previous training? Or is the owner causing or inadvertently training this.

Sometimes it does take a little experimenting… 

I had a horse that always wanted to walk ahead of me. I had the hardest time getting him to stay back with me while leading even though I knew it was due to nerves when he was in certain situations.  Still, it was important he learn to focus on me, trust me, take comfort being with me and letting me lead the way. I tried many different ways to change this. I tried exercises to calm him down and gain his focus. I tried walk and whoa over and over until he was really listening and paying attention. I tried tapping his shoulder with the whip when he started to speed pass me and stopping him, backing him up then starting to walk again when he was in the correct position by my shoulder. All perfectly suitable ways to address his walking past me but this horse wasn’t getting it. Finally, I had to give him a job to do. It started as teaching him to circle around me come back to the position he was in and then we would continue walking. Intuitively this didn’t seem right. It seemed like I was rewarding him for his bad behavior by letting him go around me. But it worked. He needed to move his feet and he needed a job that didn’t require him to stand still until he could mentally focus better.  Once I had his focus, then I could just stop and he would remember. Oh I’m supposed to stay by her side. Later, once I broke understood the fix, it developed into just putting him through the pattern a few times. Here the why was important!  While I wanted him to calm down, walk slower and stay with me the ants in his pants were just too much until I gave him an outlet where I still had control of his feet.  As he learned to look to me for guidance and trust I wasn’t going to make him stand still, he settled faster and faster.

I think many trainers stop asking why. They know a solution that has worked with many horses and they go directly to it. They stop really analyzing the horses behavior.  It takes one that so drastically doesn’t fit the mold to teach us that all horses are individual and the way they learn can be just as individual too. A perfect example is spooking. There are so many reasons horses spook. They are nervous, they are in pain, they are confused, they have been pushed, they are behind the leg or off the aids, they are fresh, they want to play games, they are bored or they have a now well established habit. The list goes on. If you don’t ask yourself why your horse is spooking, you might stumble on the right solution but probably very slowly and after much frustration.

To analyze how to change the spook, we have to know why.

• A fresh horse might need to be turned out or lunged before you ask them to work.
• A nervous horse might need more time to walk around and see things, some ground work or to teach calming signals. You also might need to back up the training and teach the horse cues to relax and settle. It might be performance anxiety and you actually might need to ask nothing at all. Sometimes we have to teach them they don’t always need to perform. Sometimes life can just be relaxing. If they are confused and nervous we as trainers have to back up and break the training down into smaller, easier steps with many breaks in between.
• If they want to play and easily get bored, we have to give them something fun but challenging to do. Change up the routine. Teach them something new.
• If they are off the aids, we need to slowly but deliberately ask them to move off the aids until we feel them loosening and able. This may start in hand at first or just at the walk.  Never add speed until you can have relaxation.
• If by some chance this has become habit, then a systematic approach to re-training will slowly erase the habit.  Of course, this requires the utmost patience. 

#5 I ask…  Is this rewarding or enjoyable?

Is my horse enjoying his job or is he miserably just complying?  Has his interactions with me been rewarding enough that I have enough in the bank to make a withdrawal?  John Gottman, relationship expert, advices that you must invest enough in the relationship daily so that when you need to make a withdrawal during tough times there is enough in the bank. You can’t draw on empty. I think about this whenever my horses training gets hard. Have I put enough into the relationship that is rewarding for them, to give them desire to push through this? I call it teaching horses to love learning. In a way it’s like giving them a desire to figure it out. It comes from tiny but steady daily rewarding habits you develop with your horse. They learn to trust you to have their back and then they will try hard for you in the tough times. Too often we ask, ask and ask of our horses without ever considering if they enjoy it. And so many horses perform because they are made to.

So I ask myself, what can I do to make training more rewarding for this horse? It will vary depending on past experience and personality; but it’s an important question to ask. One piece of training I am very consistent about it reward based training. I mix rewards into their training to keep them happy. This can take the form of food rewards, breaks in the training, rubs and pats, easy days, small workouts, play days and many more. It definitely requires you to know your horse and know what they enjoy.

For instance, for one horse a nice hack out in the woods with some play time in the water might be a nice easy play day. While another horse might find that stressful. The second horse might like a ground work day or a liberty day. 

When asked, what’s the most important aspect of my training? It’s that I’m somewhat of a horse psychologist. I have the desire to really understand my horse, how he thinks, what motivates him and how I can be his best partner.  Do I have their well being as my utmost importance?  Most of the time it’s just answering the simple question… Why?