What is the biggest mistake we can make when training?
What is the biggest error we make with our horses?
One of the biggest human errors I believe that we make with our horses in training is expecting a certain task is achieved to our expectations. That success is only valid if the horse performs to a particular, pre-determined level.
Going in to a training session with this as our goal posts is a sure fire way to get ourselves in arguments with our horses, turn our horses sour and get stuck in our training. Or even worse create big, dangerous behavioural problems.
Having a task achieved to our expectations doesn't factor in whether our horse is trying, giving us yeses or nos or is an active willing participant in our training.
It doesn't tease out whether our horses understand or can do what we're asking or if they have an underlying issue that needs addressing.
Rather than setting our goal posts to whether or not we achieve a certain task to our expectations we should be structuring our training session around our horses yeses. When our horse consecutively says yes to our ask we are setting our standards and rewarding for willingness and their active engagement in our training session.
Long term this means that we don't need loads of pressure for big challenging asks, because we've already geared our horses to be agreeable with what we are asking rather than getting the yeses through intense pressure and stress.
It also means we can trouble shoot the “no” before it becomes a bigger problem.
A lot of horses have legitimate reasons for their no’s, and when we address them we can unravel some big behavioural issues and solve them quickly so that our horse is a lot happier to work with us.