Top 5 horsemanship tips I wish I learned a lot sooner
This is a list of 5 things I wish I could have picked up on and put into practice earlier in my horsemanship journey and career as a horse trainer. They aren't exactly in chronological order but they sort of count down to my number one which I personally feel is perhaps the most important. There is a common theme throughout the list that more or less boils down to patience. I feel in putting my thoughts down that I'm preaching to myself as much as sharing notes with others. I've been aware of these ideas for a while but hadn't always realized their full value, perhaps I still don't.
#5 Ride the horse you have.
I think it's important to recognize where your horse is at at this moment in time and not make the mistake of asking him for too much or for things he's not ready for. This part ties in with #3 but perhaps is equally as important, we need to recognize each horse’s strengths and weaknesses and not try to make the horse fit the mould we have in mind. Remember, not all people are cut from the same cloth and neither are horses. Perhaps the horse that we had hopes and dreams of entering up in a futurity may be better suited as a ranch horse or trail horse. Trying to make a Percheron into a reined cow horse would be as much of a disappointment as trying to make a plow horse out of a 14 HH cow bred horse.
#4 Pick your battles.
This one also goes hand in hand with #3. A horse can only learn one thing at a time. As training progresses, you may be able to work on more things at a time but especially when starting young horses you need to be carful not to get caught up trying to fix everything you think is wrong. One horseman told me one time to pick the very worst problem I was having with that horse and work only on that one thing until that was working for me before working on everything else.
#3 Take baby steps.
The key to training horses is being able to present things to our horses in a way that they can understand. Thus, the more little steps you can break things down into, the easier it will be to help your horse understand. If you can make 1% improvement every day, over 100 days, you'll get 100% improvement! Sure beats trying to get 2% and having to go back and do damage control for a few days. Having said that, it's been my experience when running into trouble, it's usually not a bad idea to take a step back and reevaluate what isn't working and spend a bit more time on the basics.
#2 Get them with you mentally.
I personally feel that a big percentage of problems we deal with working with our horses are either a result of them not understanding or not being mentally with us. Getting them mentally with us is a biggy because even if our horse understands what we are asking of them, if they have their own agenda, it's important to recognize that or we may end up trying to fix a symptom of the problem as opposed to resolving the problem itself. For example, a horse falling out of lead may be a result of them wanting to go to the gate. If we focus on the lead issue instead of the mental magnet, we may not fix either. However, from past experience, I've notice getting a horse mentally with you will often resolve a lot of other issues I thought I was having.
#1 Give them time to think.
This one is my number one simply because I feel it has been the biggest struggle for me. It's really easy to get caught up trying to get through a lineup of horses in a day and go through the motions without giving them enough time to process what we are trying to teach them. One of the hardest things for me to learn was how to be efficient with my time and still give the horse enough time, but there are plenty of ways to be creative with your time to give the horses more time to absorb the information we throw at them. For example, you may feel like something isn't working but instead of drilling them on an issue, perhaps it's more beneficial to both you and the horse to find a good spot to quit, put him away and come back to him later in the day. You might get something else done while he's learning. I've seen it happen plenty of times where I've come back to him later and they were a lot better.
So that in a nutshell is my top 5 tips. I'll dig a little deeper into some of these topics separately at a later date but I wanted to start out with jotting down these ideas I've been thinking about lately and share them with others who may be struggling with some of the same things.
Till next time, take care and God bless,