It’s worth it to learn the principles of training theory, so that you have the confidence to work with your horse whether it's your first horse or twenty first horse.

Objective:

I just want to ride my horse.

When I was in my teens it was my opinion that if you had to lunge your horse to ride you didn't know how to ride. 

Subsequently I spent a lot of my riding riding out the bucks and behaviours before the horses "settled in to work".

It wasn't until I started my professional career and backing horses that I truly understand the value of groundwork. 

Horses weren't born into this world knowing how to be ridden, someone had to teach them. They don't just have the resilience and emotional agility to confidently learn and navigate the stress of learning, someone had to teach them. They don't just implicitly trust a human - someone had to teach them why trusting humans are of value to them. 

They don't just know how to safely communicate things like pain, discomfort, misunderstanding, stress, fear, someone had to teach them. And quite often people don't teach them, they just expect the horse to know, resulting in escalated reactive behaviours like biting, kicking, charging, pushing, bucking, bolting and rearing.

And this was the problem I had. I had grown up riding educated horses that knew how to look after their riders in a riding school and just expected my horses to know what to do and look after me. But I didn't have the tools to teach that. They weren't taught to me in a riding school or clinics or pony club. 

It was when I started backing horses that I found out the biggest skill I was lacking was how to listen. It is in the listening we learn how best to work with our horses and we learn to listen on the ground. 

It is very hard to compassionately and whole heartedly learn to listen when we are on the horse’s back. When we are on the horse we want them listening to us! The fear, vulnerability, and potential to fall off makes riding the worst place to learn how to listen to your horse.

On the ground we can develop the psychological safety for our horse to tell us what it needs to take that instruction. 

• Does it need a clearer instruction, 

• Does it need more confidence to lead, 

• Do they need to practice working through their frustration? 

There is a lot required of the horse to confidently look after us on their back, balance themselves and us and take direction from us while physically being in the lead, taking direction from the application of metal to their mouth and whips and spurs on their body.

This is why our Holistic Horse Handling Program is key to develop a confident horse the enjoys learning, looks after us and asks to be ridden.

• We can negotiate the dynamics of our relationship 

• We can develop the psychological safety for our horse to say no and navigate how best to transform the no to a yes.

• We can develop other tools other than push them through it and escalate pressure.

• We get to visually see their body language and facial expressions so that we can better read the different types of resistances and why. 

• We can allow them to warm up and move their body before asking them to carry us.

• We can develop the type of relationship we want with our horse under saddle on the ground first and translate to the saddle. 

The program focuses on:

•  consent. Does your horse agree to the ask?

• congruence. Does the horse agree to the ask internally and not just because of fear of punishment and reprimand

• does the horse have the emotional maturity to navigate the inevitable internal resistance to work they will come up against (why would your horse want to work and effort in the first place)

• does your horse know how to seek direction and ask questions or tell you they don't understand (do you know how to differentiate behaviours that are work evasion and lack of understanding)

There is so much to learn about our horses on the ground. Even though you may just want to ride, you don't want to ride a confused, scared horse that doesn't know how take the lead into situations that make it anxious or seek direction and support from their rider. 

Do the work on the ground so that you have the horse you want to ride when it comes time to ride.