Young Horse Training

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"Steering Your Horse," Issue 1, part 5 of our FREE monthly newsletter

From our Young Horse Training Series:

"If you get too much of a slingshot action with the horse's head, where you pull it back and they give but immediately throw it forward, then you need to move your hands a little slower. Hold on longer, move slower to give back. Make them hold a little longer, until they really soften up, then slowly give it back and change direction.

Why Am I Doing This Again? Practical Uses
Your horse "powers himself" from the hindquarters. Being able to "disengage" your horse's hips will allow you to unplug that power or use it to your advantage. You can move the hips to discourage your horse from bucking or rearing. Want to teach your horse to direct rein? This exercise gives you a terrific way to initially teach direct reining or to reinforce your direct rein when your horse misses a turn: Pick up the rein and say "Uh, no, we're going THAT way."

Keeping The Following In Mind Will Help You
A horse always has one good side and one bad side. The problem with that is that it keeps changing. The left side might be the good side now, and the right side is the bad side. You'll work on that for fifteen minutes – and all of a sudden the right side is the good side and the left side is the bad side. It'll keep going back and forth. Smile, it's just part of training.

Common Mistake:
Doing a U-Turn instead of insisting that the tail pivot around the shoulders like the hands of a clock. Watch that inside shoulder until it stops – that's when you're moving the hips correctly. Remember to time your release in order to let the horse know that that's what you've been looking for.

Don’t:
Ride in a straight line: You shouldn't spend more than one or two steps max going straight, then you should be turning. You don't want to be going straight. Getting your horse to travel straight is a perfection of going left and right. If I can't get my horse to travel straight, it's because he's either going left or right. If he's going left when I'm asking him to go straight, that means he's not responding to my right cue. (That is "turn right.") So what you want to work on is going left and right. The more you work on left and right, the easier "straight" is.

Do:
Make sure you sit up. Don't get too hunched over. If your nose gets beyond that saddle horn your body will get out of position. If he stops hard or does something, your body will have a tendency to fall forward. If you're kicking and that horse isn't moving, you keep bumping and pick up that rein. If you bump and he's not moving…"

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Lyons Training 101 Issue Number:  One Get Control of Your Horse written by Josh Lyons & Keith Hosman

Issue One, Part 1 of 5

Four Things You Need to Train Your Horse:
Motivation, Spot, Direction, Reward

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If your horse frequently controls you (instead of the other way around), if you've reached a training plateau, or you're starting a colt or training a true performance horse, then this article is for you.

Training a horse is all about control. The trick is to take control of one body part at a time and to be an active, racther than reactive rider. Remember: You don't build a house in a day. You build it brick by brick. So give your horse—and yourself—time to digest the information that follows.

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Training a horse is pretty simple. It's four things: motivator, spot, direction, reward. That's all training a horse is. First, motivation. Do you have a job? What if I asked you to quit your job? What if I said I was going to hire you and give you two bucks an hour. Would you do it? Working with a horse is very similar. You're asking the horse to quit his job and come work for you. His job as you begin training is to get out of that arena as fast as he can, or to get back to that stall or to a buddy horse or find food. They have all kinds of jobs – and their jobs keep changing.

Our job is to create a motivator that causes the horse to quit his job and come work for us. Quit trying to get out of the gate; quit trying to get to the other horse. Quit trying to pick up your left lead and come work for me. Some horses you can hire for two bucks an hour and some will cost you forty. That's just the way it happens. Some horses you really gotta motivate; you gotta say, "No, I really want you to come work for me."

It's important that you understand that I'm not asking them to come work for me. I'm not thinking that they "want to" or they "should." They don't want to; I can promise you that. They'd much rather be left alone. So, I have to find a way to motivate them.

The second thing I'll work with is a spot, a part of the horse. Not the whole horse, but a specific part of the horse. If I can control that particular body part, then all of a sudden the feet start to follow.

The third part of training a horse is “direction.” Where do I want the horse – or that part of the horse – to go? Each part of the horse can go six different directions: right, left, forward, backward, up and down.

The fourth and final thing when training a horse is “reward.” When the horse finally moves the correct direction, how do I say "Yes, that's what I want"?

You have to keep horse training just that simple. What makes training hard is when you let everything else interfere, other people, other horses, noises, moving objects, etcetera. It gets hard when you let anything else take your attention away from training. Don't let that happen. The trick is simply to stay focused and actively ride your horse. The moment you look up and look at another horse, you're riding that horse, not your own.

End of Issue One, Part 1

Read next article: How Do I Get My Horse's Attention?

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