Quite often I am approached by horse owners asking for help to fix a specific issue. Some examples, “My horse spooks on the trail’, “My horse bucks..”, “My horse wants to kick out at other horses..”, “ My horse runs over me..” and list goes on and on. So, we correct that one specific bad behavior only to have another bad behavioral issue surface. More than likely here, the root problem is poor foundation training.
There was a time in my life when everybody was very eager to give me advice on training horses. Being equally eager to learn, I would always listen with intensity and try to absorb as much as could. The problem, I soon discovered, was that every person who, with good intentions, gave me information, was only able to provide a small piece of the big picture. It seems that way too many times, a horse is rushed through training due to time, money or ability constraints or the owner is just in a hurry to do whatever they want with the horse so they figure, if the horse isn’t currently bucking them off, everything is good, maybe !
Training horses is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. If you get in a hurry and only get a portion of the pieces together, those pieces you left out will more than likely show up at some point down the road.
With all horses, especially young horses, provide them with good solid foundation training with ALL the pieces in the beginning. The extra time, money and effort spent here will save you much more time and more money later…and maybe a trip to the emergency room!
