I recently watched a video of a trainer trying to handle a horse’s legs. The horse was seven years old and kicked quite badly when anyone attempted to pick up his hind legs. The trainer was obviously frightened of being kicked, so he flapped a rope around the horse’s legs to ‘desensitise him’. Though the horse kicked … Read more
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
When you ride your horse, many trainers would have you believe that the biggest problems to overcome are plastic bags blowing in the wind, umbrellas suddenly opening and a world covered in plastic tarps. The first thing these trainers do is frighten young horses with plastic bags, flags, tarps, umbrellas and goodness knows what else. … Read more
There’s a big debate in the horse training world about whether you should be the ‘alpha’ mare, the ‘lead’ mare, the ‘boss’ stallion or the ‘submissive’ horse. Trainers have allegedly camped out in the bush for months on end to study the behaviour of wild horse herds. They say that observing horses in their natural … Read more
My wife Christine always spent lots of time rubbing and scratching her horses. Our grey horse ‘Kip’ soon learned to come to her and present the spot that he wanted rubbed or scratched. Sometimes it was his rump, sometimes his ribs, withers, neck or head. He’d back up to Chris to have his tail scratched. … Read more
THE HORSE’S LAMENT By Neil Davies He puts a dreadful halter on, it’s made from rope and knots And when he jerks and jerks my head, it really hurts me lots He flaps a stupid flag each day, I don’t know what to do And though I try to please him, he hits me … 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
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
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
I grew up on a dairy farm in the 1960’s. We milked about 100 cows which was quite a big herd in those days. When I was eleven years old, one of my jobs after school was to feed the calves. There were about 20 calves fed by hand from the time they were a … Read more