Understand how to be fair to your horse?
Whether you view yourself as a “trainer” or not, the fact is that anytime you handle your horse, your horse is learning from you! Understand how to be fair to your horse. Be consistent!
Be fair!
there are five important things that are required in order to successfully train a horse
- Patience
- Consistency
- Feel
- Timing
- Dedication
These things are difficult to learn from watching videos. Trainers will usually either naturally possess these qualities or have learned them through experience.
In this article, I would like to touch on Consistency!
I’m sure all of us have experienced an authority figure such as a supervisor or parent give us instructions to do something, then the next day, we’re instructed to do the same chore differently and sometimes even get reprimanded for doing it the way we were originally instructed! When this becomes frequent, frustration starts to set in. Well…your horse is no different.
Once you have the horse’s respect you now need to be a fair leader!
It is unfair to ask your horse to respond to direction a certain way, then the next day you ask in a different way. Then to make things worse, you reprimand the horse for not responding the way you feel he should! Hack horses are notorious for misbehaving because they get so many instructions from so many different riders in so many different ways they become unresponsive (dull) or become so frustrated they start kicking, bucking etc.
Whether you view yourself as a “trainer” or not, the fact is that anytime you handle your horse, your horse is learning from you! Your horse is watching your subtle body language (sometimes not so subtle) and is trying to understand what you want. Always be aware of how you communicate with your horse and make every effort to be consistent. If you are clear and consistent when you ask your horse for something, you should have much more success! I’ve found that once a horse is willing to follow you as a leader, they are always looking to do the right thing for you.
It is your job to be fair and do the right thing for your horse!