Horse Training Expectations  30,60 & 90 Days Training

Part 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also read Horse Training Expectations 30 60 90 Days Part 2

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Customize Generic Foundations of Ground & Mounted Training Plans for your horse

 A lot of people search for a one-size-fits all training plan, kind of like a recipe for a cake that will guarantee fairly standard results if they just add the right ingredients and follow all the steps.  Please read; The Evaluation Diagnostic report for your horse will help you modify the master training plans to meet your goals and your horse’s needs.  Before a horse can will respect and trust us as the leader, we will have to offer him proper leadership starting on the ground and in the saddle that is easy to understand. It your leadership is appropriate and strong; the horse will be respectful and controlled. If the leadership offered is weak and confusing, the horse will start filling in for you, and take control. A kind and mannerly horse that has had consistent training and handling may fill in for you in a positive way, but an evasive horse, or one that hasn’t had any consistency, may take over in a negative manner becoming dangerous to handle or ride.  Regardless of how much training your horse has had the key to his behavior rests in how you handle him on a routine basis. This puts the burden of the responsibility on you and how you handle your horse! To override your horse’s natural flight or fight instinct and herd-bound tendency, you must become his herd and leader, and earn his trust and respect. And, if you want your horse to behave with consistency, then you will need to be consistent as his leader, enforcing the same rules, the same way, and all the time.  Training Plans must be progressive step by step and logical

The horse has to develop simultaneously physically, emotionally and mentally. Each and every day the trainer must decide where the horse is emotionally, mentally and physically. Then he or she can decide how lessons should be taught to keep the horse progressing so his development is balanced.

 

The horse has to progress step by step in horse-logical stages; exercises are arranged in proper mental, emotional and physical cycles on the ground and in the saddle.

If the trainer skips a step in his physically conditioning, we know he's likely come up with injuries or lameness down the line.  At a minimum, he simply won't measure. If he skips a step as he moves through the various exercises in his emotional and/or mental conditioning, he'll eventually hit the wall or fail to meet the job requirements, too.

Followed in the correct sequence, the steps in the training strategy methodically prepare a horse emotionally, physically and mentally to be ridden on trails or in competition. The training strategy has different levels that have to be mastered on the ground and in the saddle in sequence in order to achieve; relaxation, softness, suppleness, contact, rhythm, balance, putting the horse on the aids, collection, freedom of gaits, straightness, impulsion.

Not every horse is going to have the physical ability, the mind or need to be trained to the upper levels and a large percentage of the time, a horse gets limited by his rider’s ability level.  

No horse goes right through each level without a hitch because horses advance and regress. As the green horse learns to carry weight for the first time, he may think he’s got it all figured out. Maybe he’s a little crooked right now but he’s found a place he’s comfortable. And the trainer lets the horse go along and work freely and eventually the horse starts reaching for the bit and seeking some contact with the rider’s hands. Then the trainer asks him to start moving straight and the whole deal falls apart. All those compensations for the rider’s weight that the horse figured out to keep his balance don’t work anymore because the trainer is showing him something new, asking a different question. Maybe the horse even seems to go all the way back to start and loses his rhythm for awhile. That’s alright; you’ve got to think of regression as progression. As the horse’s muscles develop so he can carry the rider’s weight and stay straight in his body at the same time, all of the previous things he’s figured out will fall back into place.

 

 Common mistakes

• Lack of a proper plan your horse from doing something will usually lead to an argument (some horses love to argue, so when you try to make them do things or make them feel wrong for doing something you didn't want, it will create disobedience, it will create an argument; just say "I am not offended and then encourage him to do an exercise that is demanding.

• Not establishing a connection and maintaining the trust

• Pushing the horse to hard when he hesitates

• Ignoring tension

• Pushing /coaxing rather than waiting and allowing; forcing the horse to do something

• Not enough release of pressure

• Not waiting until the horse is calm

• Confusing obedience for willingness

• Too much repetition once the horse is confident

• Not establishing lightness and following a feel

• Bribing with food rather than using it for incentive

• Lack of creativity and imagination

• Too much physical exercise, lacking emotional and mental exercises

• Micro-management and Perfectionism not allowing it to develop too much demanding

• Asking for things before the horse is ready for it

• Asking for his all every time; over doing it, horse becomes dull and not responsive

 

Creating disobedience:

Not enough variety; you need consistency and variety for your horse

Not enough relaxation, balance and time Lack of flexibility in the training plan and/or the trainer

• Not enough consistency, too much variety too soon

• Not recognizing and addressing early tension

• Asking the horse do to something he wasn't prepared for

• Punishment/harsh corrections and/or lack of praise

• Too much discipline too early—preventing to process the information

• Asking for too much for too long, too fast and too quick.

• At some point we all hit a snag in our training and if you do; you’ll have to back up and go back to the level you missed or did to quickly and master that before the horse can make lasting progress again.  The training plan applies to everything you do with your horse, even when you’re not mounted. If you go to the barn in a rush, throw the tack on and hustle the horse to the arena, you may find you have a tense or spooky horse. You can go back to the training plan any time to help you analyze problems. Often when you’ve got a problem, it’s going to be something that was rushed or missed as the horse moved through the training sequence. The difference is that now instead of calling your horse stupid or stubborn or something else out of frustration, you have a way to back up, find what he doesn’t understand, and fix it so that he can be the best that he can be and the partner you want.

 

Master Training Plans

It is very important that we have master Foundation of Ground & Mounted training plans because I believe a "goal without a plan is just a dream".   The concept of cycles applies not only to individual workouts, but also to overall training over weeks and months. Personally, I prefer to train or ride my horses every other day.  For example, for a weekly plan, Monday may be an easier day than Wednesday. Wednesday may be the peak of the week and Friday will be easier – similar to Monday. The weekend can be used as recovery time, for the body to rest, rebuild, for the horse to be a horse and process what it has learned. On an even bigger scale, looking at a month or several months, the training should have cycles in which week one is easier than weeks two, three and four. By week five, you might be heading back down the scale.  Having a plan, and planning with cycles in mind, will ensure you have an aim each time you work your horse. Even if you only training on the ground or ride three times a week, you should use a training cycle.

 

Every horse has his own timetable

 The horse's age and health, his temperament, his current physical condition, his genetic athletic potential, his past experiences, his desirable and undesirable personality traits; all figure in when you develop your horse specific training plan as to how long it's going to take to train him to a certain level. The horse may progress faster or slower than you expected. If you plan to teach the horse specific things by specific deadlines, you're headed for problems. So you must work at the horses pace and not yours.  Some horses fly right through two or three levels and then get stuck for a while. Plateaus are normal, too. It’s the trainer’s job to make sure he or she has correctly shown the horse what they want. And if they have, then they need to give the horse whatever time he needs to develop mentally or physically enough to move on to the next level.  Consistency is really important in training, especially with green horses. You cannot bring any horse along in its training by riding them on an erratic schedule. You need to be working them at least three days a week. Now that doesn’t mean you’re going to be putting the ultimate mental and physical pressure on them every day. But you’re going to remind them of what they already know and every once in a while, introduce something new. In order for this work to carry over and become muscle memory for them, you have to be consistent. Once you have a trained horse, you can give him a week or two off and they come back fresh and haven’t forgotten anything. But a training a green horse is going to act like he never heard it before, he’s never seen it before and he has no idea what you’re talking about. His habits aren’t ingrained yet so it may take you a week or so to get back to where you were before you took time off.   

 

 Plan Training Sessions
From your customized training plan create cue cards for each training session on the ground as well as in the saddle.  What are your goals? Are you heading out on the trail, planning for a weekend of riding, or preparing for a show? Your schedule needs to take into consideration how much time you have to spend, your horse’s current fitness level and your availability.  Once these questions are answered, you can begin to form a plan.  Your training schedule is going to change depending on whether your horse is just being started or if you are preparing for an extended trail ride over a weekend, or a competition. The thing I want you to understand from this article is that no matter what your goal, there is still a cycle to the training.

 

 Measuring Progress

What I love about horse starting is that the progress is so much more tangible and easily measured than with later, more refined training. One moment the horse has never been haltered, and then it has. One moment it has never been bridled, and the next it chews away at the bit in her/his mouth. When the cinch has been tightened for the first time, when you take that first step into the stirrup – each is a marker along the way to getting the horse started. When a day’s work is done, you know what you’ve accomplished.  I think it is these very tangible steps that people find attractive, but you should have planned steps in place for every horse that you train on the ground or mounted. Whether your horse starting or riding the older horse, your training program should have a plan.

 Breaking down the Training Cycles
Consider a training schedule I used for one of my Arabian horses. Each workout consisted of cycles – a warm-up period, stressing (working) muscles, rest/recovery, and a cooling down phase. These are the components of each workout routine. During a long routine, the stress and rest periods will repeat multiple times.  For example, I would warm up with a walk and jog and by doing some bending exercises and moving his hips. Next, I would lope some circles, working on steering and speed control – the first stress cycle of the routine. Then we would stand and walk to cool out. Then I might work on his turn around, the second stress cycle and followed by cooling down. This horse was in shape and I use it during my clinics as well as in my demonstrations. He needed multiple stress cycles in her/his workout routines Intermediate and Advanced Levels. The routine for a young or out-of-shape horse will often have fewer stress cycles, such as Foundation of Ground Training Level 1 followed by light to moderate riding The Foundation of Mounted Training Level 1.

 Mix it up; you might be asking, “How do training cycles apply to me?” Well, let me ask you a question – has your training flat-lined? Is your routine the same every day? Consistency is good, but we need to remember to challenge our horses, emotionally, physically and mentally.  I often hear horses are like kids – if you don’t keep them busy, they will keep you busy. And that may mean doing something like bucking or generally giving you a hard time.  A horse that is ridden several times a week, with a routine that never changes, will often become more difficult because he has reached a plateau of fitness and is not being challenged either physically or mentally.  Your horse’s basic natural survival instincts dictate training cycles that it will easily accept, learn and understand.  For the first 3 sessions or so depending on the horse’s flight/fear level it is critical that the training cycles consist of doing something mentally easy, emotionally easy and physically easy basically at the walk or easy trot.  As your horse’s education progresses and its’ flight/fear level decreases the cycles will become more challenging Emotionally, Mentally & Physically.

 

 When to Add a new exercise

 I normally start each training session with at least five exercises that will be a mixture of old and new; after four times on your horse’s left side do 6 on its right side add then another and so for a total of five [remember the left side is the thinking side and the right side is the flight/fear side]!  Later on you can do any ground exercise that you feel will be the most valuable that day or for what is needed most at the time.  End on a good note that means the horse has learned something new! Start and end each session with grooming.  Also end the session with a treat in the bucket especially in the round pen or in an enclosed area or tied up in the barn.  Duration of each daily session should be approximately 1 hour to 1:15 in the beginning and longer up to two hours in the more advanced stages if the horse is physically fit.

 

Horsemanship Wisdom:

For a horse that is lethargic - begin and end all training sessions with sensitizing exercises; moving its feet backing up, lunging etc.

For a horse that is energetic - begin and end all training sessions with desensitizing exercises; do not move its feet; i.e. desensitizing to lead rope, training stick with string, plastic bag etc.

 

Arrange Training Sessions in Emotional, Mental and Physical Cycles/Lessons

Usually, we manage to gain some physical control of our horse.  That is until something causes her/his emotional level to rise.  The horse’s fear can so distract it that we lose the physical control we thought we had.  I see people before a ride lunging their horse on a line or free in a round pen for up to an hour, thinking the horse won’t buck or run away.  But all that physical exercise has not made a significant impact on the horse’s emotional level.  The horse can still get excited and run away.  Even if the horse's emotional level is not interfering, the horse cannot give her/his best performance until we control her/his mind; until we get it focusing and thinking about what we are asking.  Most horses, including highly trained ones, are not performing to their best ability because their minds are not engaged!  Using horse specific Foundation of Ground and Mounted training plans that address each horse’s needs requires understanding, using training cycles in order to keep both you and your horse progressing. The training cycles must address the Emotional, Mental and Physical aspects of each and every equine. 

 

Emotional Cycle - Is working with your horse using exercises and developing cues around one of the Natural Survival Instincts every equine is born with; it’s flight fear mechanism!  A low emotional level does not equal a good horse nor does a high level a bad horse.  However; how intensely they react to fear and how fearful they are will determine how long it will take to train a horse before it can be ridden safely and/or the skill set of the trainer, handler and/or the rider!  Differing levels means a different application of horsemanship training cycles on the ground and in the saddle.  Understanding and controlling your horse’s emotional level will help you achieve maximum performance.    The main ingredients that determine the emotional level of the horse is; breeding, maturity, possibly trauma, past/present handling, past/present training and personality!  

Mental Cycle - The Mental element is very important because it is the horse’s capacity for focus; that is, the horse’s ability to learn lessons we teach and its willingness to pay attention to us.  The emotionally state of the horse will impact the mental element.  No matter how calm a horse might be, if it is not focused or interested, then the training lesson will not be a success.  We do foundation training exercises to keep the horse focused on us.  One of the cardinal rules I have is that I never just hop on a horse to ride; particularly a strange one or a horse in training.  Groundwork is not about refreshing the horse on training cues or physically warming the horse up, although those are accomplished as side benefits.  Instead, it is a mental check-in with the horse before you climb into the saddle and is the most important thing you can do to have a safe and successful ride.  The exercises that do will get the horse mentally focused on you and on what you are asking.  They allow you to gauge where the horse’s emotional level may be for the day and it can differ day to day.  It gives us the chance to assess if the horse is emotionally and mentally ready to ride.  If not, we can do more groundwork, which gives us 75 to 85 carry over into the saddle.  The time frame for each exercise will vary from a few minutes to thirty minutes depending on the horse. 

Physical Cycle - It is important that we have calm and focused horses in order to be successful with the physical element of the horse’s training; the movement, direction and speed that we ask the horse to move.  In other words, the horse must lead without balking or pushing. It must walk up to; a tarp, a trailer and go right in without protest and without the use of any special aid. We must also have control of the horse under saddle, whether on the trail or in the arena. The horse must turn and stop and respond to cues when requested to do so.  To be able to communicate with a horse, you must be able to control its five body parts; the head, neck, poll, shoulders, ribcage and hindquarters.  The faster the horse moves the higher the emotional level and the higher the emotional level the less focused the horse will be; the more difficult it will be to control the horse’s movements. Firstly, consider; is the horse physically fit?  Training involves a combination of physical conditioning and task-specific exercises.  Asking the horse to do too much, too soon, can spell trouble. This is especially true for young horses and pasture potatoes that have had little in the way of regular exercise and are then suddenly expected to exercise on the ground and/or in the saddle on a two-hour trail ride. Regardless of the discipline the horse is used for, they should be gradually adapted to greater workloads over time. 

 

Intelligence of Horses

Too many people underestimate the intelligence of horses, believing equines to be dependent almost solely on natural instinct rather than actual cognitive ability. The irony behind this untrue perception is that it is generally the result of ignorance or misunderstanding on the part of the human, rather than the horse.

There is no doubt that human intellect has the capability of being unrivalled when compared to animal species, but that intellectual capacity can also be our downfall when we allow ourselves to feel so superior that we immediately dismiss the intelligence of various animals. Such flippant dismissal not only puts our own intelligence (or impartiality, at the very least) in question, but also proves to be a liability when attempting to train or work with our horses.

 

Anytime we fail to control or train an animal we are quick to blame the problem on the animal. "Well, if the dumb horse had any intelligence he would know what I want and do it!" But if you look deeper, who's really at fault for these failed confrontations? The "stupid" horse that doesn't understand the request or the "intellectually superior" human that fails to understand the horse?

In all my years of working with horses I have been constantly impressed with their overall ability to adapt to human environments and work out solutions to problems or challenges presented to them. Sure, sometimes you'll find a horse that comes up short in the intelligence department, but for the most part horses reflect the same qualities that we as humans do: intelligence, adaptability, mischief, playfulness, loyalty, jealousy, stress and many others.

 

If you take the time to learn a horse's language, you'll see they are anything but "dumb animals." It is unfair to the horse to cast aspersions against his intellectual capacity because we fail to comprehend his language or ways. Doing so is akin to calling a Spaniard stupid because you're an English speaker and simply do not understand the Spanish language! Before you can judge a person or horse's intelligence, you must first understand their language so you can adequately communicate your statements or desires.

Positive training and interaction are reliant on respecting the abilities and strengths (both physical and intellectual) of a horse. As an old belief state - in order to achieve the very best, you must expect the very best. If you don't take the time to honestly assess your horse's intelligence and abilities, you'll probably be unable to help him improve upon them further or overcome weaknesses.

Tests were conducted giving 20 pairs of patterns to look at, such as square versus a circle, circle versus semi-circle or triangle versus some dots, with a food reward.  Horses learned to tell them apart in every case [compared with 13 in donkeys and 10 in zebras].  Even more impressive was the fact after 12 months there was virtually no memory loss with 19 out of the 20 pairs of patterns identified.

 

ROUND PENNING EXERCISE

If the horse does not have a lot of behaviour issues, I begin with Foundation of Training Ground Exercises establishing a connection in hand on lead.  Round penning IS the first place I start, when I'm working with a wild mustang, a colt or an older horse with severe issues such as; dominant as in charging, kicking, etc.  I clearly would begin by using not use a lot of pressure to start a relationship with a horse unless the horse was very. At some point during the Foundation of Ground Training experience tells me that all horses and mules should know this exercise.  This exercise and the following steps will greatly improve the attitude of a horse, if it doesn't want to be caught it's a great way to get a lazy horse's feet moving forward or one that drags you around on lead.  Once the relationship is established if the horse is disrespectful or becomes aloof, evasive, lazy or hard to catch; I do recommend round penning!

These steps are the foundation for further lessons, like lunging, standing when being mounted, spook in place, disengaging the hind quarters, advanced leading lessons and many more. When teaching these steps, we will be concentrating on your body language, position, posture and on our equine’s head, withers and hindquarters. Your equine will learn that you will apply pressure when you ask it to do something. You will release the pressure when it responds correctly.  The mule or horse will learn that when you kiss or cluck to him, you are asking for movement; you may be asking to move his feet, his head, his hind quarters or any other body part you wish.  You can teach these lessons in one session or many. You can stop any time the horse or mule gives you a correct answer. If you are at a certain step and need to stop, but your equine will not give you the correct answer, go back a step or two and ask it for a correct answer, then stop.  A word of caution too much pressure or running your horse to fast and too long may result in lost of the bond gained on the ground because of the horse’s inability to escape is created from a dominant leadership pursuit.

Was my article helpful...........I would appreciate your comments.. Email me alphanaturalhorsemanship@gmail.com 

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