Come learn the nuts and bolts of communicating with your horse in his language, the only language he knows. 

Learn how to "read" your horse.  Find out what your body language is "saying" to your horse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every horse has fear when he enters this world. Man has never bred the instinct to survive, or to not be afraid out of the horse. Every horse will naturally be afraid until you give him a reason not to be. This is developed by the “approach” one uses with the horse. Horses are very smart. They know when you know, and they know when you don’t know.

 

So let’s explore how to develop the “know how” to help our horses over being afraid.  Think of your horse as a pure survivor. He is an animal other animals eat. So everything at first is something to be afraid of in your horse’s mind. This instinct has kept the horse alive for 50 million years. Only the strong and wary survived to generate the horses we have now. You’ll never take the instinct to survive out of the horse, don’t even try. It’s too important to him and is the way he’s wired by God.

 

When teaching my students, I’m telling them to treat their horse like his four hooves are yours. In other words, put yourself in your horse’s shoes and understand how he thinks. To the horse, anything can be a predator-the animal that would eat him. Your horse is always on guard, or he might be killed and eaten by the predator, in his mind. He’s afraid for ONE thing, his life.

 

Your horse is gifted with strong legs, lungs and the ability to run from anything that he perceives as danger. This flight instinct might be buried deep in a domesticated, well-trained horse, but make no mistake, it’s always there. 

 

If a person were to take the horse’s ability to flee or run from what he perceives as danger, by hobbling or tying him to a solid post, the horse will become afraid and CAN’T run, or if you push too hard or too fast in presenting your agenda in teaching him in a way he CAN’T understand, you will have taught your horse to fight. Your horse will bite, kick, buck, paw, freeze up or do any other unwanted behavior it takes to survive. Your horse won’t think. Your horse will only react through instinct. If you teach these types of things in this manner, you are teaching a horse to fight. No horse ever knows how to fight by nature. It is always human taught. Think about it, your horse NEEDS to move his feet to be taught anything. A horse will NEVER learn how to fight at my ranch.

 

Learning can occur only when you take the fear out of your horse. He can’t learn if he’s afraid. You have to overcome his instinct of fear first. Then his mind will be open, and you will be amazed at what he can learn.

 

The best time to take the fear out of your horse is at the beginning of his life. In time your horse can learn to trust humans, but that trust can be easily destroyed. Fortunately, horses are extremely forgiving animals. If someone is rough on a horse, rides him poorly, disciplines him wrong, the horse will still allow that person to catch and ride him, that’s a forgiving animal. You don’t want to betray that trust too many times. Horses are all such individuals. Some will keep coming back and continue to trust, others will never 'get over' one bad incident. The one that doesn’t 'get over it' just has a much stronger sense of self-preservation. It’s the way he is wired.