Teaching The Using Horse

*CHAPTER ONE*

Teaching your horse while you’re on the ground.

PARTS OF A HORSE AND FOOT

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT TO ACCOMPLISH BY UTILIZING THIS PUBLICATION

REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOU ARE STARTING YOUR HORSE, OR IF YOU ARE GETTING YOUR HORSE EDUCATED BY A PROFESSIONAL TRAINER. – LEARN THE TRAINING PROCEDURES.

"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.  John Wooden

Three hundred years before the birth of Christ lived the Greek historian and exceptionally skilled horseman for all times Xenophon, who wrote; Be firm but not harsh and never lose your temper when working with horses.

When teaching your horse to do anything, use the teaching ladder one step at a time, and don’t try to jump to the top of the ladder in one jump but take it one small step at a time.

Neither horses nor dogs are pets, and you should never treat them as such, a horse is a herd animal.  And a dog is a pack animal, and both need a leader (leader, in this case, is not someone who goes in front but rather a one who tells them where to go and where not to go, usually the stallion or the most dominant animal in the herd.  The one who leads them away from trouble is usually the most flighty, or an older mare who knows all the trails.

A horse is comparatively like fire; he makes a great servant but a terrible master.  You need always to be in the leadership position of the individual horse.  In the leadership position, it is your responsibility to treat your horse fair, gentle and firm.

You should never overtrain, or overfeed your horse:

Training: Teach your horse one thing at a time and as he gets to learn a bit of it, give him a break and give him something easy that he already knows how to do.  Always use short teaching sessions, and each session will compound your teaching until the horse knows that phase of his training perfectly.

Feeding: Horses are born grazers, and they need to eat small amounts at a time and very frequently.  Keep your horse in good shape never too thin or too fat.  I like to have my horses lose a little weight each year and pick it up again, and this seems to keep them at the top of their health.  Be very careful feeding grain, too little is better than too much.

The teaching of a horse never stops.  When you are walking amongst, leading or riding horses you are either teaching the horse advantageous habits or undesirable habits.  The good habits you will enjoy.  The annoying habits you will regret as you live with them, and the bad habits keep getting worse.

You should teach your horse to stop on verbal command, start on verbal command and move away from pressure, sideways, backward, etc.

Never let your horse get away with a refusal.  When teaching put your horse away on a good note; in other words, put him away after your horse has done something a little better than he did it the last time you worked him.

I believe that the impatiens in training with trainers for futurities (in the Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred industry in North America) cause a lot of physical and mental harm to a lot of young horses.  And this creates the theory that horses are expendable; money is spendable, it’s everything for the almighty dollar, and the horse pays.

I also believe that harm, physically and mentally, caused to young horses in the English type training.  One of the common misconceptions is that the lighter the saddle when starting a horse, the better for the horse's back.  And this, however, is not true when a rider is in the saddle.  The very small saddle sits in the center of the back, and with a rider in the saddle, this puts pressure on a short area of the back.  The large Western saddle, while heavier, spreads that weight over a much broader area using more vertebras to hold the weight.  In my experience, I have seen some older, 'sway backed' horses that, were usually, caused by riding them barebacked when they were too young.  The mental part is when a horse is asked to check its head past the vertical and as the eyes are placed on the side of a horse's head in such a way that they cannot see the ground in front of them from this position.  Also agitating the head and the horse (being up into the bit) to the point where a normal 'wet mouth' becomes a foaming, slobbering drivel.

TEACHING TIPS

When teaching your horse any new discipline, you should use the ladder of instruction; one step at a time.  Don’t try to jump to the top of the ladder in one jump take it one small step at a time.

It is important to you or any horse trainer/teacher to understand horse physiology.  You must understand how the horse learns and present your thoughts to the horse in such a way to make it easy for the horse to understand.  In this way, you can solve learning problems and come up with your own solutions as the needs arise.

There are many ways to teach a horse the same thing; the methods I used and stated in this book are but one way and are never the only way.  However, remember you never need to hurt your horse.  Making him uncomfortable with the things you do not want him to do and comfortable with the things you do want, and you will find this will always get you good results.  If you understand how the horse sees, hears and perceives things you are well on the way to teaching your horse anything.

Not all horses are the same, and you may need to adjust your teaching to suit your horse and to allow your horse to progress at his particular rate.  Never rush into, or through, an educational session and never try to rush your horse.  Always finish each teaching session on a good note.  Never be in a hurry to reach your goal.  Just work at it methodically and slowly and remember to compound, building his learning a little at a time and compounding on what you have taught him and you will steadily get closer to your goal.

You will be surprised at how quickly your horse can learn if you teach one thing at a time and compound it until he gets it right down pat.

Previously learned responses and habits are what compounding is all about, so keep the habits right and the teaching positive, and your horse gets better and better.  These patterns and responses and how you use them can make your teaching easier or harder.  While all horses are not the same and you can make slight changes in your teaching; the teaching principles are always the same and do not alter from horse to horse.  Because horses are a herd animal and have ingrained instincts for thousands of years and these instincts, have allowed them to survive in the wild.  And so keeping this in mind, you must teach your horse using the horse’s abilities.

Predators need to plan ahead imagining where the best place to catch their prey.  Only predators develop these skills, and their likes differ from horses.  Horses, through their generations, being prey animals did not need reasoning skills.  It is, now believed, that this can explain why horse’s brains have not developed a prefrontal cortex believed to be responsible for the thinking abilities in humans and other predators.  It, therefore, indicates that horses have little or no ability to plan ahead, consider or visualize a future incident.  Instead, their behavior is supposed, controlled by learned responses and habits.

The horse remembers a fear response that triggers flight; as the flight having saved him from the danger.

In the wild; running and being in a herd, was to the horse; This can save me from certain death by the jaws of a vicious predator.  And this type of existence has shaped the evolution of the horse’s brain as they needed an excellent memory for the location of their food and areas of danger.  Also, they must remember where they have been able to find water.  And this is why a horse will spook at anything that changes, a branch that has fallen, a rock moved from the last time he was there or a dark spot or shadow on the ground.

In the wild, it was vital for the horse to notice these things as they could indicate the nearby presence of a predator.  Horses also needed a very highly tuned sensory system which allowed them to detect sights, sounds smells and any movement that might indicate the approach of a predator.  The horse through time became very proficient at learning by association.  If the noise of rustling in the bushes produced the sight of a predator and the horse ran away.  The brain would then associate rustling with a predator.  Therefore, the next time the horse hears rustling his mind would say predator, run! And this is why; the horse will shy and run when seeing, or hearing, something strange, to him.  The sight or sound which triggers flight is a response ingrained by thousands of years into the horse’s brain and needs a lot of gentle calming with a wide variety of calming devices.  And every time your horse now spooks or runs he believes that this is what saved his life.

With all of the training procedures done by clinicians all over the country these days, all of the so-called different so called ‘training methods’ can all be broken down into three systems.

Habituation:  A decrease in response to a stimulus after repeated presentations, and compounding your teaching through steady applications.

Trial and error learning: There can be lots of things learned by trial and error, some good and some bad.

Conditioning:  Pavlov’s conditioned response is a multi-page document with many books written on it.  But it can be summed up in two words; ‘pleasant and unpleasant.'  Always make what you want the horse to do pleasant to the horse. And what you don’t want him to do unpleasant, in the horse’s perception.

Any animal learns to perform a behavior more and more skillfully by repeated rewards for properly doing that particular action. And you will compound the horse’s learning of it by increased teaching sessions.  And the horse will learn to avoid actions that he finds unpleasant consequences from his decisions.

With the teaching of any animals get them to want to be with you and follow your instructions.  Keep the education interesting and make it enjoyable.

Most young horses off ranches in the West today should start their training early.  You should be able to handle them in the halter, lead and have their feet dealt with by the age from birth, weaning to two years.  They can then be hobbled, bridled, saddled and lightly ground driven.  You should never lunge a young horse in tight circles.  The damage to the joints and ligaments of these from the jar on their legs of the light undeveloped limbs of these young horses are, entirely, irreparable and will show up in their future.

Horses have a pecking order.  The most dominant are also the leader.  That is they dominate the others and set the rules.  The more submissive the further they are down in the pecking order.  When humans start handling the horse, he (the human) must take over the leadership position.  The lowest in the pecking order is the easiest to train, and he sees you, the handler, as being the most dominant and his leader, and as long as you are a fair, honest leader, he will be an avid pupil.  And this is why the younger you start working with a horse, the easier they are for you to take control over them.  The most dominant in the herd will be the hardest to convince that you are the leader and, therefore, more difficult for them to follow your instructions and will always try to get higher in the pecking order.

If the human does not take control early on then, the horse will.  From the horse’s perspective, every herd of two or more must have a leader.  And either the human takes over as a leader and maintains the Right to Rule or the horse (even the most submissive) will try to take over, at least, part, of the leadership role.  And as I’ve stated before a horse is like fire A great servant but a terrible master.

As the lead horse gets too old to maintain the Boss Hoss leadership position, another will take his place, and this goes continuously through the pecking order where individuals regularly check to make sure the horse above them is still qualified to be there.  Horses also do this with their human handlers.  So the handler must constantly be on his toes to keep the horse in line and inside the discipline boundaries which he has set.  For a horse to feel secure, he must have strong leadership, and if this is human leadership, it must be reliable, gentle, fair and consistent.

The inconsistent leadership on the part of the person can make a horse insecure and on edge.  If someone reprimands the horse for something once and then lets him get away with it another time the insecurity increases immensely in the horse and builds to the point where he feels he has very weak leadership.  If you are teaching a