Don Blazer has worked with horses for the past 30 years. see what he has to say below and at www.donblazer.com

Before anyone attempts to train a horse, they ought to spend more money on education than they do chaps or English breeches.….but seldom is that the case. Here’s an opposite; they try to teach something they haven’t yet learned.

Horse training can be complicated because it is so simple

Training horses would be simple if it wasn’t so complicated.

But once the complications are understood—the correct footfall sequence for a particular maneouver, for example—horse training becomes very simple. The rider correctly asks and the horse correctly responds.

Of course, the law of opposites continues to hold true…if you want the horse to learn quickly…..go slowly. The highest levels of performance result from the mastery of a single step.

The most unfortunate opposite is that confrontation is a requirement of learning;  therefore those who would train with only kindness and gentleness do the horse the greatest disservice. The horse does not learn from those he doesn’t respect.

Don Blazer has worked with horses for the past 30 years. We hope you enjoyed his column and will drop him an email with your questions or suggestions for other columns. You can visit his website at http://www.donblazer.com.

TRAINING A YOUNG HORSE. 

Diana Quintana says

Funny how things can get mis-communicated.

And when it comes to horses, it happens all the time.

Think about it.

Your horse doesn't know what you mean when you ask him to do something unless he's done it enough to know what you want.

When you first ask a horse to do something, he's more or less "guessing" what you want.

He's actually searching for a way out of the pressure you're putting on him.

And when the pressure's off, he kind of goes "whew!" and realizes when you do "X" then he's supposed to do "Y".

The wrong thing to do would be to quit the pressure when he's not doing what you want. That would teach him to do something you didn't ask.

You'd be surprised how often that happens.

An example is riding a horse and you ask him to go left.

But he goes right.

If you let him when you were asking him go left, then you just taught him to either do what he wants and/or to go right when you want to go left.

Thus, you might ask yourself if you're having trouble getting your horse to do something.

Is it because you're not "translating" it correctly?

But that's not the whole picture.

There's also the part that it takes about 30 days for a horse to learn a verbal cue.

So just because a horse just learned what "trot" meant doesn't mean that from here on out he's going to trot when you say trot.

It has to be reinforced constantly.

Not reinforcing it is not translating to his language.

One of the best ways you can translate to your horse is to have a good foundation on him.


When you work a horse and you're getting him going from one gait to the next, it should be smooth.

Not just "JERK!" into the next gait.

No.

It should be more of a smooth transition.

That means from going slow to going faster and from going fast and going back down to slower.

A horse needs to know he can go from fast to slower and do so without being excited and out of sorts.

You must "translate" to him that that's what he must do as with all your training, you must make it clear to your horse what you want from him and follow it through exactly as you want it until you both get it right - This is training.    

Remember whatever you tell a horse to do is your training of him - if you give up on something and put him back in his stable, or field you are training him - the next time you ask him - he may do the same thing - he likes being in his stable or field.  If you are going to train a young horse you must have the confidence and ability to enforce your requests and NEVER GIVE IN or allow any miscommunicated requests to go unresolved.

Whatever you are going to ask your horse to do - you must have the confidence and the ability to get the message to your horse.