Training a horse correctly requires long-term commitment from both owners and trainers alike, often leaving many confused about the process or frustrated when encountering hurdles along the way.
Problems in training often stem from lack of patience and consistency in its implementation, thus this blog will outline their significance in creating trust between yourself and your horse and establishing effective communication channels.
Patience
Patience is essential when training horses, allowing them to understand your cues and make appropriate choices based on them. Furthermore, patience enables you to provide timely feedback that reinforces learning and results in higher compliance rates.
Understanding that horses are prey animals with instinctive responses that can be modified through patient, gentle guidance is key to creating an empathetic relationship between yourself and your horse. Trust will eventually form.
At some point during their training journey, every horse will face behavior or resistance challenges or resistance. Understanding that these are usually related to fear or uncertainty can help you work quickly and efficiently through these issues. For instance, if your horse repeatedly cuts corners of an arena without reason, first identify and address its cause (fear, frustration etc) before trying to correct his behavior – essential components of combination horsemanship that will allow for true partnership between yourself and your equine companion!
Consistency
Horses learn quickly, and with the right techniques can quickly make dramatic behavioural changes within hours or even minutes. But they form habits quickly too and without consistent encouragement from their handlers it can quickly revert back to old unwanted patterns.
This means attending training sessions consistently and practicing every day – not trying to squeeze an entire session into 20 minutes before leaving as soon as your horse is exhausted. Furthermore, taking your horse out into different environments such as lunge work in fields or trail rides is also part of this commitment.
Consistency extends beyond just your horse; it should also extend to your mindset as a handler. Maintaining a calm and patient disposition helps the handler remain flexible in his/her observations and flexible in responding to training cues from their horse, ultimately aiding them to feel secure while understanding training cues more readily and build trust between animal and handler.
Communication
Operant conditioning, the science that underpins all training methods, works on this principle: horses repeat actions that generate positive consequences and refrain from engaging in behaviors which produce undesirable ones. There are numerous approaches to horse training – some rely solely on positive reinforcement to elicit desired behavior while others use both forms of reinforcement simultaneously to curb unwanted behaviors.
No matter which method is employed, communication is of utmost importance. Your voice can act as the first line of defense; its soothing tone and subtleties allow horses to recognize its meaning instantly.
Consistency is another integral component to forging a lasting partnership with your horse. Being consistent gives your horse confidence that they can trust in you as their leader, while helping them understand what’s expected of them and making meeting those expectations easier as they know what awaits them from you.
Respect
Horses are prey animals that have evolved to be alert, sensitive, and cautious. Their eyesight, hearing, and sense of smell enable them to detect potential threats in their environment and this heightened vigilance can make them susceptible to being startled by unexpected stimuli that causes sudden movements or sudden stops.
Understanding our canines’ instinctive responses helps us approach them with empathy. Their behaviors should not be seen as personal insults but as survival mechanisms that can be adjusted with patience and gentle guidance.
Training horses requires striking a delicate balance between gentleness and firmness. Punishing misbehaving horses should not cause irritation; at the same time, acknowledging their responses and rewarding them accordingly should help teach desired behaviors as more desirable than undesirable ones. Doing this also prevents fear from associating with punishments made worsened the more challenging their training becomes.
