Neil Davies
There are about 23 million people in Australia and about 75 million sheep. If you drive out into the countryside, you’ll soon see sheep in the paddock. It’s common to see a flock of sheep heading across the landscape. One sheep starts off for a drink or a feed and a hundred others follow blindly. … Read more
Due to bad handling and bad training, thousands of horses never reach their full potential. Many horses don’t make it past the ‘breaking in’ stage. Many others are ‘blown up’ by the use of too much pressure and too much force during their training. These days, trainers everywhere chase horses with flags, ropes and tarps. … Read more
Over the years, I’ve always read everything I could lay my hands on about horses and horse training. Many authors make horse training sound very complicated. Sometimes I can’t make head nor tail of the complicated explanations of how and why horses do certain things. Countless books and articles talk in depth about the anatomy … Read more
Many horse trainers make lots of money selling all sorts of gadgets and widgets. You can buy ‘special’ lasso ropes to catch your horse and ‘special’ halters to make him ‘respect’ you. There are the ‘special’ sticks with magic powers, all sorts of bridles to solve all sorts of problems and halters to ‘cure’ a … Read more
The first thing I do with every horse is go to him and rub his head. I teach him that life is easy and pleasant when he has his head with me. This is the most important thing you can teach any horse. Next, I teach her to stand and keep her head with me … Read more
Many horse people like to think they are at one with nature. They feel it’s perfectly natural to chase a horse in a round yard. They have a warm fuzzy feeling about being a member of the horse herd. When their horse eventually faces them or follows them, it appeals to their ‘inner spirit’ to … Read more
When you work with your horse, you must be very careful which behaviours you reward. It’s very easy to reward undesirable behaviours without even knowing that you’ve done so. At a recent campdraft, I watched a lady trotting her horse around in the warm-up area. When her horse slowed down to look at a garbage … Read more
Training horses isn’t easy. When you set out to train a horse, the plain fact is that you’re going to have problems at some point. Different problems will arise at different stages with different horses. No two horses have the same experiences and handling. Every horse will react slightly differently in any given situation. You … Read more
One way to communicate with your horse is to apply pleasantness or withdraw pleasantness. Another way to communicate with your horse is to apply pressure or relieve pressure. When you think about it realistically, these are the only tools we have and the only tools we need, for every training situation. When you use these … Read more
When a horse pulls back, the first thing someone does is yell ‘Whoa boy, whoa’. When a horse bucks or takes fright you hear the same thing, ‘Whoa, boy, whoa’. When a horse falls or becomes tangled in a fence, you hear it again, ‘Whoa, whoa, settle down’. You’ve probably heard this a thousand times. … Read more