MISTAKES PEOPLE MAKE WITH YOUNG HORSES
TOP 3 MOST COMMON MISTAKES PEOPLE MAKE WITH YOUNG HORSES
I have a lot of fun helping people with their horses. People come to me for a variety of reasons but generally they come to me when they have problem with their horse they have struggled to solve with the help of their usual discipline coach. I am a coach that specialises in teaching people how to “re-boot” their horse, to deconstruct its training and to reconstruct it again in a strategic and careful way to resolve problems and glitches that appeared in their training. There is nothing more satisfying to help someone fix their own training issue, how empowered they become and see them head back into their disciplines and coaches with new insights and skills to ensure their horse can be confident and cool with what it is asked to perform. And that can be anything from a dressage test or an enjoyable stroll out on the trails. A lot of people I get to work with have young horses and whilst things started out okay with the horse things have deteriorated and I always take time to investigate the stories of the horse and its training history and I thought I would use this blog to describe the three most common mistakes I see in horse training that have resulted in performance or behavioural issues in young or green horses.
1. PROGRESS TOO FAST: This is by far the most common mistake that I get to see. This is where training has been progressed too fast before the horse really has clarity or confidence (mentally AND physically) in what it is being asked for. The horse’s foundation of understanding and acceptance of aids, confidence and balance in being ridden in all gaits was never properly cemented and instead stronger bits, nosebands, spurs and other gadgets have slowly been added to overcome the resistances the horse has presented. It should be remembered that resistances are the horse letting you know it is not cool with what is happening to it, it is not comfortable, doesn’t understand and is protesting or is not motivated or confident to respond so it is attempting to protect itself or escape from the pressure. Another way a horse can be progressed too fast is when performances have not been shaped, in other words broken down into smaller tasks that the horse can get confident and develop balance and strength at before being expected to do something harder. Therefore, the horse begins to experience more and more pressure and mental anguish that stress the horse so that it rides with tension and resistance. Some have been tipped over the edge by the pressure and tension and by accident discover alternative behaviours that brings it a moment of relief…whether that be bucking, rearing, spinning, shying, rushing, opening its mouth, getting its tongue over the bit, shaking its head, biting, kicking, lying down just to name a few that then become established evasions. These horses can also develop a negative association with being ridden and this negativity can spread to any activity the horse identifies as being connected to being ridden, so you can also see issues with catching, leading, tying up, floating, brushing, saddling, bridling and mounting.
2. INCONSISTENT CUE-PRESSURE APPLICATION: This is where the human communicates very poorly with the horse. There are 3 manifestations of this problem:
a. No consistency with cues or pressure - In this situation the person has no attention to how they actually ask the horse to do something. So asking the horse to go forward could be a kick, whip tap, cluck or multiples applied at the same time. The horse is then forced each time to work it out what their human wants and that is stressful. It also make the horse endure random whips, kicks or yanks in the mouth, it never allows the horse to identify a simple gentle touch or feel of the reins. These horses can get stressed by this lack of consistency or give up trying and become disengaged in their rider or handler and become distracted and difficult. They also struggle to progress their training as the communication is not precise enough for them to learn how to do more complex movements because they are having to work in a sea of unclear communication and random pressure.
b. Cues presented too fast – These people have a cue pressure sequence, so for example to go forward on their horse: squeeze with the leg, then give a verbal cluck and then a whip tap. Or a ground work example to send a horse onto a circle: they might point their hand, cluck and then use the whip. But what they do is rush the sequence….they are fast, not giving the horse the chance to identify the cue as the whip comes out before the horse has felt or recognised the cue. Again the horse can just give up, they feel no sense of control, no sense of being successful in their tasks and just get anxious. They feel unsafe, rush and can become reactive.
c. Delay or no follow through with the pressure – In this situation the person usually has a great presentation of their cue but when the horse doesn’t response they leave their cue on and start clucking and hoping and praying for the horse to respond. They are worried about using the whip, they worry about hurting their horse, upsetting it or dealing with the consequences of their horse getting upset by the whip! What these people don’t realise and what they normally end up with is really upset horses. With no follow through or escalation of pressure learning and reinforcement of a behaviour fails. So a horse can fail to learn or their motivation to respond diminishes as there is no consequence for ignoring the cue. These horses get irritated, they lose their try, become disengage and distracted and as a result reactive. These horses are nearly always misunderstood as demonstrating fear and worry but they are actually irritated, frustrated and annoyed and these horses can be at risk of becoming aggressive.
3. NO PROGRESSION: This is where the horse’s training is not progressed. I typically see people stuck in ground work or ground work and early under saddle training as they search for perfection. A lot of people that get stuck like this have typically lost their confidence with their horse and are chasing the belief that if they do enough ground work and make it perfect their horse will be bombproof and they will be safe. These people have misunderstood that good training and ground work means the horse has a great sense of control over what is happening to it and therefore confident in its job and as a consequence has lower anxiety and greater scope to cope with events or expectations when being ridden. Importantly, it also creates a foundation of focused and motivated to respond to you instead of other distractions but it does not and should not change the nature of the horse and turn it into a robot……well it can but that state is called learned helplessness where a horse shuts down and gives up and becomes very dull but that is NOT good training at all!. But typically staying in this one place, repeating and repeating the same exercises each time in the same environment becomes detrimental to the horse mentally and physically as the seeking for perfection or the unsureness how to progress results in the horse learning the exercises so well they can perform the tasks on only a fraction of their attention. They become more reflex actions with no engagement which results in the horse becoming resentful and irritated, distracted and as they don’t have to “think” to perform the task so their attention goes elsewhere and their anxiety goes up! The repetitive small circles of ground work or being ridden for long periods of time on a loose rein without any specific activity to ensure the horse develops a good posture, strength and suppleness to cope with being ridden also results in physical issues and discomfort which just adds to create a vicious cycle of anxiety and behavioural issues.
