You need to teach your horse HOW to learn

Horses aren’t born into this world knowing how to be ridden.

They don’t know appropriate and safe ways to interact with humans.

They don’t know what’s expected of them.

In some cases, such as where they are weaned early, kept separate from other horses or go through poor living conditions such as dogger pens and feed lots, they don’t even know how to socialise with other horses – they only know how to do their best to protect themselves.

Our most common tool for training is negative reinforcement through pressure from halters, bits, spurs, and whips. Horses don’t automatically know what these pressures mean and what the appropriate response to those pressures are. Expecting them to know this is like a person starting a new job with a completely complex computer program, being shown their seat and left to figure it out – they are either going to try and fail, try and succeed, look for help or break down and quit.

Is it any wonder that horses become “naughty” if teaching them to learn isn’t done well?

Horses first need to learn how to process pressure and what it means. They need to know that pressure isn’t pain and isn’t there to hurt them, but is there to help them seek the answer.

Which means we need to know how to use pressure & release correctly to teach this.

The first and most important lesson you need to learn to communicate more effectively with horses:

“You can’t beat understanding into a horse”.

If a horse doesn’t understand what you want using the whip, spurs, halter or bit, using them harder and harder and harder doesn’t make them understand any better.

A lot of times, when a horse isn’t doing what its told, it’s classified as a naughty horse and you are told to be harder and stronger with them. However, in my experience if a horse isn’t doing as its “told”, it’s more commonly because it doesn’t understand, or can’t do what’s being asked. So they “act out” or are “naughty” because they resort to instinctive behaviour or past experiences to respond to the ask – and their instinctive behaviour when confused, intimidated or scared is to fight or run away.

There are definitely times when horses will challenge you and your authority but that’s not with the intent of being naughty – it is with the intent of testing if they can trust you. Are you strong enough and confident enough to lead them and keep them safe? If they decide you aren’t a good leader, they won’t feel safe doing as you ask and will react with the intent to protect themselves.

This is the one situation where being heavy handed can work. However, it’s not the best nor is it the most effective tool, especially if you’re already working with a bold, strong, confident horse. You need to be a really…. really… reaaaaally good rider to convince these horses with a heavy hand because their responses can escalate to big dangerous behaviours and it is hard to not get hurt in these situations until we get submission.

That is why we should teach discipline through consistency and following through with our ask, then rewarding for EFFORT, not necessarily the best most correct behaviour. We first condition how our horses mentally and emotionally process the ask before we get them understanding what the ask is. This may take a little longer in the outset, but sets us and our horses up to learn easily down the track.

When there is a clear pathway of consequence, our horses start looking for the right answer, interacting and engaging with us and enjoying the learning process.

Train your horse to be “trainable” with our Training Trainability course - an online training program designed to support the overall learning capabilities of your horse and based on simple exercises that reinforce affection, trust, respect and communication. Click here to learn more.

Who Wouldn't Want To Train A "Bomb Proof" Horse?

Ok - so first let me preface this with:

we don’t like the terminology “bomb proof”.

Often when I see horses described as bomb proof, they are malnourished or shut down.

Even when we are working with the truly quiet horses, I believe the term bomb proof puts us in a false sense of security that increases risk of accidents happening.

My experience has been active in training horses to be beginner riding school horses, so we need to get them as quiet as we can. For me it is important to have our horses in peak mental, emotional and physical health as well as a clear understanding of what is expected of them and their cues to be considered “quiet”.

School horses are truly special horses as they need to look after riders that are unbalanced and can unintentionally hurt them when they lose their balance, don’t understand complex aids (the horse knows they can get out of work at any stage) and aren’t strong enough to “bully” them into submission.

In my experience, the quiet “bomb proof” horse isn’t created by sacking them out and desensitising them.

They are created by proving ourselves as competent and trust worthy leaders, building our horses confidence and their understanding. This can make any breed and any temperament of horse “bomb proof” - as long as we rule out other considerations such as pain, medical conditions, ill fitting gear and the like.

Outside of pain or discomfort, the reason a horse might NOT be classified as “bomb proof” include:

• The horse not understanding what is needed of them

• The horse can’t do what we are asking of them

• The horse does not have the confidence in themselves (or their rider) that they are safe/will be kept safe, and this can include any past traumatic experiences.

• The horse does not understand how pressure is being used as a tool of communication. (This often starts with the rider/trainer not understanding the timing of pressure/release for the horse to understand it)

• The horse doesn’t feel understood. (This is the most common issue I see. Our horses try to communicate with us what they need and we often miss the subtle cues and the horse ends up overreacting and being considered dangerous)

• The rider/trainer not knowing when to back off and when to push for more, or expecting too much of the horse

These principles are our guiding factors in establishing the training that Equestrian Movement offers in our online courses:

• First do no harm. Ensure that any of the training you are doing moving forward is of no detriment to the horse.

• Create a safe and stable learning and living environment.

• Create a relationship with our horse where they trust us that not only will we not hurt them but we also won’t put them in a situation where they could be hurt.

• Teach them how to learn and understand what we want.

• Teach them how to process their emotions and think rather than react.

• Teach them confidence

• Make learning fun

• Make moving fun

• Make being ridden fun

Curious to know how we do this? We cover all these in our course Training Trainability.