The Art Behind Schooling Your Pony
I think all animals, two-footed and four-footed, have some kind of implicit aversion to learning something new. The simplest learning is comatose learning, of the sort a baby picks up from its mum. Conscious learning engenders negative reactions like slackness, psychological blocks, dread of failure, and fury at having to do something one would choose not to. Boredom to learning becomes worse as one becomes older.
The memories of my child struggling to learn new talents are still fresh with me. Though the skills would benefit her through her life, she resisted learning them. When she was a little baby incapable of oral communication and deeper reasoning, she appeared to learn new things like crawling and grasping things all the time without trying and without negative reactions. As fast as she learned to communicate orally and think for herself, the resistance set in. It appeared to take ages to show her on how to eat without making a mess, to potty train her. She would throw outbursts, and show great disappointment if she was slow in picking up on something.
She learned best when she initiated something herself. At such times, her eagerness seemed to sharpen her abilities and bring greater success. She showed great joy at doing something for the first time, and would keep doing it as if to guarantee herself that she could indeed do it 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 child have to do with the education of horses?
Quite a lot , actually. The best approaches to both children and horses don't vary.
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 comfortable zone. That fear frequently reveals itself as wrath. You have got to work very hard to persuade your horse that you are not there to do it any harm. You have to earn its trust the tough way. It has been my experience that for the experienced tutor, a horse's fear is actually quite straightforward to handle. The wise coach appreciates that fear is a natural reaction, and empathizes with the horse. It needs a wagonload of patience, endurance and perseverance to bring a horse to some kind 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 child struggling to learn new talents are still fresh with me. Though the skills would benefit her through her life, she resisted learning them. When she was a little baby incapable of oral communication and deeper reasoning, she appeared to learn new things like crawling and grasping things all the time without trying and without negative reactions. As fast as she learned to communicate orally and think for herself, the resistance set in. It appeared to take ages to show her on how to eat without making a mess, to potty train her. She would throw outbursts, and show great disappointment if she was slow in picking up on something.
She learned best when she initiated something herself. At such times, her eagerness seemed to sharpen her abilities and bring greater success. She showed great joy at doing something for the first time, and would keep doing it as if to guarantee herself that she could indeed do it 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 child have to do with the education of horses?
Quite a lot , actually. The best approaches to both children and horses don't vary.
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 comfortable zone. That fear frequently reveals itself as wrath. You have got to work very hard to persuade your horse that you are not there to do it any harm. You have to earn its trust the tough way. It has been my experience that for the experienced tutor, a horse's fear is actually quite straightforward to handle. The wise coach appreciates that fear is a natural reaction, and empathizes with the horse. It needs a wagonload of patience, endurance and perseverance to bring a horse to some kind 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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