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
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
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
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
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 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
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
If you watch a week-old foal playing in the paddock, you’ll see that he already knows how to walk, trot, canter, do flying changes, turns, spins, levade, piaffe, passage, extended trot/canter/gallop and every other movement you ever dreamed of. When we ride, the problem we have is to convince our horses to perform these movements … Read more
Back in the early 1970s, the Megalong Valley Gymkhana was a horse event not to be missed. The gymkhana ground was just a clearing in the scrub, about two furlongs (400 metres) in length and fifty metres wide. There were flag races, bending races, pick up races and other novelty events. The main events of … Read more
Every horse person puts human values onto horses in some way, shape or form. We think some horses are better than others and some are prettier than others. We become attached to our horses and then we think that they love us back. We think our horses love to work for us and enjoy competing … Read more