I believe all animals, two-footed and four-footed, have a kind of inherent hatred to learning something new. The best learning is comatose learning, of the sort a baby picks up from its ma. Conscious learning engenders negative reactions like indolence, psychological blocks, fear of failing, and anger at having to do something one would rather not. Apathy to learning gets worse as one ages.
The memories of my daughter attempting to learn new skills are still fresh with me. Though the abilities would benefit her throughout her life, she resisted learning them. When she was a small baby incapable of oral communication and deeper reasoning, she seemed to learn new stuff like crawling and grasping things all the time without effort and without negative reactions. As quickly as she learnt to speak orally and think for herself, the resistance set in. It seemed to take ages to teach her on how to eat without making a mess, to potty-train her. She would throw temper tantrums, and show great frustration if she was slow in picking up on something.
She learned best when she instituted something herself. At such times, her enthusiasm seemed to sharpen her abilities and bring faster success. She showed great pleasure at doing something for the first time, and would carry on doing it as if to assure herself that she could indeed do it as and when she wanted. She took some risks that had adults fretting which didn't seem to register on her at all, like when she began to climb the stairs all by herself.
Well, then: just what does the education of my girl have to do with the education of horses?
A great deal , truly. The perfect approaches to both kids and horses don't alter.
The first attempts at teaching a foal something new will show you its inherent reluctance to leave its comfortable zone and to learn new things. It'll display skittishness, doubt and sometimes fear or fury. It'll resist attempts to train it as much as it can. As a coach, you have to keep a pointed eye on the horse's reactions to your commands and try to maintain those reactions from becoming terribly negative as much as your are able to. Have patience, give the foal space to try to figure out precisely what it is you are trying to convey. If you are responsive to its reactions, you will be able to develop a strategy of teaching it without letting it become antagonistic to you. You will need both stick and carrot while training: try to employ the stick as little as possible and use the carrot as much as you can. The carrot will arouse better results.
Most horses show fear at something outside their zone of comfort. That fear regularly manifests itself as hate. You've got to work very hard to assure your horse you're not there to do it any harm. You've got to earn its trust the difficult way. It has been my experience that for the experienced coach, a horse's fear is really quite simple to cope with. The sensible trainer appreciates that fear is a natural reaction, and empathizes with the horse. It takes a shedload of patience, endurance and perseverance to bring a horse to some sort of mature acceptance, to break it to the saddle, to teach it gradually to walk, trot, lope, gallop or go flat out on command.
The key is to break the horse in slowly and give it plenty of time to get used to something new.
Fear, frustration and wrath are all related emotions, and not one of these emotions is conducive to pleasurable training sessions. You need to know how much you can push your horse and just when you have to slack off. Your foal can go from fear to frustration to anger in a flash if you aren't attuned to its limitations. If you find your horse learns better in short training sessions, reduce your session durations in an appropriate way. Your horse signals its fear or frustration by locking up, shutting down or getting temperamental. Quite often, your horse will show positive anger if you try and force it through some coaching. I have come across 1 or 2 horses that exploded into immediate anger, and these horses were the most unsafe to handle. Anger can manifest itself in little ways like pinning ears, or in more demonstrative ways like biting and kicking. The trick to good coaching is to shift a foal from fear or mistrust to calm approval that may slowly lead straight to real trust. You should at any cost keep the horse from crossing the line from fear to frustration and further to anger. Lots of horses have their own ideas of what they would like to do and what they don't, but consistency will overcome all of these obstacles to the extent where the horses soon really starts to look forward with expectation to their sessions.
Horses are in contrast, like most homo sapiens. They resist most when they're pushed most. They reply most positively when they are approached with velvet gloves. As time goes by, you. Will see that your pony starts to get over its natural insecurities and gets more trusting. I have seen a lot of horses that seemed to be too hostile to train at first; invariably, the soft approach got them into line. Soft does not necessarily mean weak, though: the experienced coach knows that there are occasions when he has to crack the whip, generally figuratively talking.
The memories of my daughter attempting to learn new skills are still fresh with me. Though the abilities would benefit her throughout her life, she resisted learning them. When she was a small baby incapable of oral communication and deeper reasoning, she seemed to learn new stuff like crawling and grasping things all the time without effort and without negative reactions. As quickly as she learnt to speak orally and think for herself, the resistance set in. It seemed to take ages to teach her on how to eat without making a mess, to potty-train her. She would throw temper tantrums, and show great frustration if she was slow in picking up on something.
She learned best when she instituted something herself. At such times, her enthusiasm seemed to sharpen her abilities and bring faster success. She showed great pleasure at doing something for the first time, and would carry on doing it as if to assure herself that she could indeed do it as and when she wanted. She took some risks that had adults fretting which didn't seem to register on her at all, like when she began to climb the stairs all by herself.
Well, then: just what does the education of my girl have to do with the education of horses?
A great deal , truly. The perfect approaches to both kids and horses don't alter.
The first attempts at teaching a foal something new will show you its inherent reluctance to leave its comfortable zone and to learn new things. It'll display skittishness, doubt and sometimes fear or fury. It'll resist attempts to train it as much as it can. As a coach, you have to keep a pointed eye on the horse's reactions to your commands and try to maintain those reactions from becoming terribly negative as much as your are able to. Have patience, give the foal space to try to figure out precisely what it is you are trying to convey. If you are responsive to its reactions, you will be able to develop a strategy of teaching it without letting it become antagonistic to you. You will need both stick and carrot while training: try to employ the stick as little as possible and use the carrot as much as you can. The carrot will arouse better results.
Most horses show fear at something outside their zone of comfort. That fear regularly manifests itself as hate. You've got to work very hard to assure your horse you're not there to do it any harm. You've got to earn its trust the difficult way. It has been my experience that for the experienced coach, a horse's fear is really quite simple to cope with. The sensible trainer appreciates that fear is a natural reaction, and empathizes with the horse. It takes a shedload of patience, endurance and perseverance to bring a horse to some sort of mature acceptance, to break it to the saddle, to teach it gradually to walk, trot, lope, gallop or go flat out on command.
The key is to break the horse in slowly and give it plenty of time to get used to something new.
Fear, frustration and wrath are all related emotions, and not one of these emotions is conducive to pleasurable training sessions. You need to know how much you can push your horse and just when you have to slack off. Your foal can go from fear to frustration to anger in a flash if you aren't attuned to its limitations. If you find your horse learns better in short training sessions, reduce your session durations in an appropriate way. Your horse signals its fear or frustration by locking up, shutting down or getting temperamental. Quite often, your horse will show positive anger if you try and force it through some coaching. I have come across 1 or 2 horses that exploded into immediate anger, and these horses were the most unsafe to handle. Anger can manifest itself in little ways like pinning ears, or in more demonstrative ways like biting and kicking. The trick to good coaching is to shift a foal from fear or mistrust to calm approval that may slowly lead straight to real trust. You should at any cost keep the horse from crossing the line from fear to frustration and further to anger. Lots of horses have their own ideas of what they would like to do and what they don't, but consistency will overcome all of these obstacles to the extent where the horses soon really starts to look forward with expectation to their sessions.
Horses are in contrast, like most homo sapiens. They resist most when they're pushed most. They reply most positively when they are approached with velvet gloves. As time goes by, you. Will see that your pony starts to get over its natural insecurities and gets more trusting. I have seen a lot of horses that seemed to be too hostile to train at first; invariably, the soft approach got them into line. Soft does not necessarily mean weak, though: the experienced coach knows that there are occasions when he has to crack the whip, generally figuratively talking.
About the Author:
Horses are Heather Toms passion and she enjoys sharing her
extensive knowledge through her 100s of articles with other horse lovers, like all things about horse fencing
extensive knowledge through her 100s of articles with other horse lovers, like all things about horse fencing
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