Horse Training Tips

Sometimes you just need a different perspective when training your horse. There are some easy horse training tips that can help.

• Having training problems? Step back emotionally, and put yourself in your horse’s shoes. What are some reasons that your horse might not want to do what you ask? Possibilities include physical discomfort, boredom, fear or nervousness, and lack of understanding. Notice that “bad attitude” and “sheer cussedness” are not on the list.

• Is there a way that you can break a training problem down into smaller, simpler steps? For example, if your horse can never seem to learn flying changes, check that you can swing the haunches from side to side while trotting in a straight line. If not, then make it simpler: can you do a haunches in at the trot? How about at the walk? If the answer is no, can you do a turn on the forehand at the halt, where the hind legs step to the side while the front legs stay in one place? Until you can do those baby steps, it’s unlikely that the flying change will fall into place on its own.

• Is your horse heavy on the aids? If so, remember– it takes two to lean. Your horse probably thinks you’re pretty darn heavy on the aids as well. Always offer the lightest feel possible when you first apply an aid. That doesn’t mean your horse will respond to it, but if you don’t offer, then there’s a 100% chance that he’ll NEVER respond to it. Also, you should never accept leaning. Escalate the strength of your aid gradually at first, but always be ready to use a strong enough aid to discourage the horse from leaning… then release IMMEDIATELY. It’s the release that teaches the horse what you wanted; that’s his reward.

• Train yourself, then train the horse. While it can be done, trying to train your horse to do something that you’re only just learning how to do is the slowest, most inefficient way to make progress. If you have no idea how a proper leg yield is supposed to feel, then you’ll struggle to explain it to your horse in a way he can understand. Take a lesson on a horse who leg yields really well first. Look at it this way: a rider experienced with lateral work can get almost any horse performing a few steps of basic leg yield in ten or fifteen minutes. Do you really want to spend the next three weeks– or three months– trying to figure it out on your own?

These horse training tips are meant to give you a different way to think about your training problems. If you liked the tips listed above, click the button below to follow Deer Run Stables on Twitter, and get more useful horse training tips and info.