Horse Training Information

As a student of the horse, I am learning everyday. The horse teaches me, I teach the horse, we communicate. Here are some thoughts to consider
every time you touch a horse, because EVERY TIME YOU TOUCH A HORSE YOU ARE TEACHING THEM SOMETHING, what you are teaching
may be FOR YOU OR AGAINST YOU depending on what you do. Remember, it is the RELEASE THAT TEACHES. For example if you stop doing
what you are doing while the horse is bucking you have taught it to buck, if you stop while the horse is pacing you have taught it to pace, if you stop
asking while the horses foot is in the air you have taught it to pick up it's foot. Now consider the characteristics of the particular horse,
OBSERVE, REMEMBER, and COMPARE the information and do the appropriate communication for the horse that showed up that day.
Simple? It is like raising kids.

Keeping all of that in mind I train my foals. If I am lucky enough to truly be present at the moment of birth and do all the fifty repetitions
that Dr. Miller suggests for imprinting, I do it, otherwise I remember that it is the release that teaches and I go about my daily work,
interacting with the foals/weanlings/yearlings multiple times a day and try to imprint something positive each time I touch them. It may
be to ask them to yield their forehand to me or their back end or simply back up. Backing up teaches a horse respect, (think of the
lead mare that simply puts her ears back and it will stop another horse in it tracks) obviously you cannot do enough of
that. Their first year or two, depending on the horse, that is all I will do, but doing just that is huge and not practiced
very often in the horse world. I am trying to emulate the Mama, she starts the language, I continue it.

By age two they already know the ground games, which are all the games horses play with each other naturally.
They ask each other to go right, left, up, down, forward and backward. I ask them to do the same with the same
language as their mother. At age two I can become very specific on how I ask and what I expect in return. I can start
asking them to yield the forehand while keeping the back hand still, the start of a reining spin. I will start working at
transitions on line. Then they begin doing the games with obstacles on the ground. This helps build confidence
on the trails, water will be less threatening, ravens that are hard for horses to negotiation because of their monocular
vision (this is critical to a prey animal to be able to see all around them to detect danger, but not so much in helping
with depth perception) are no big deal.

When age three hits and the saddle goes on, it is just another day in the horse's world. They are SMARTER,
CALMER, BRAVER from all the handling prior to the saddle. Now the patterns become important in
continuing their journey and reinforcing all they have learned prior. Horses are prey animals, they start
learning as soon as their feet hit the ground. It is a must in order to survive. They learn thru the
process mentioned above and by patterns. Think about a horse who knows which bucket has their
feed, they know the route to the water and usually wear a path to it, if you stop at the same spot
for lunch on the trail, they know which tree is theirs and will stop there. You get the idea.

A horse started here at the ranch and sold at the ideal time would have a solid foundation for the new owner/partner. Above all the horse is safe and
has a basic knowledge of walk, gait, canter on one rein, rope hackamore, or bit and two reins; can side pass both directions, do a neutral lateral
rein for emergency stop, direct and indirect rein; is beginning to work more off the body than the tools; can turn on the forehand and backhand, do
circles, and back up. The horse has experienced and is calm on the trails in the front, middle or back of the pack. Stands for shots, farrier, worming
(without halter), loads and unloads in the trailer without the owner in the trailer. What may or may not be fully developed is the horses gaiting ability.
A lot of that will depend on the individual horses natural ability to gait. That is what we breeders want but do not always get. The work will be begun,
the purchaser will have to continue.

Of course the purchase price will be reflected on where in this process the horse is at time of purchase. Any horse can be purchased at any stage
of the development the price will be reflected. The least amount of training, more done by you, the lower the price. This also gives you a guide for
the skill level of other horses for a comparison during your search for the right horse.

Natural horsemanship is not new and these ideas are not mine. I just think they make sense to me and to the horse, life is easier and more fun.
That gives me more time to play with my horses on the trails.

For more information on Natural Horsemanship read the books by Pat Parelli, Tom Dorrance, Ray Hunt, or Ronnie Willis to name a few.