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The first and most important thing, if you are training your horse yourself, is to have the right attitude. You must stay calm and composed at all times and you must not give yourself the luxury of losing your temper. Decide that if you do feel yourself losing your emotional self-control, that you will STOP immediately and try again another day after you are more composed.
It is important to understand that you must break the training sessions down into very small increments. It is better to train well for 10 minutes than to train badly for sixty minutes.
Horses learn things very easily. We can say that their brains are only the size of a nut and we can say that compared to humans or dogs, that horses are comparatively unintelligent. That would be in error, because it wouldn't be giving them enough credit for how quickly they can learn. And once a horse forms an association, whether "good" or 'bad", it can be very difficult to train it out of them!
Be very specific about what you hope to achieve, before commencing each practice session. Make your objective SMALL. Follow the concept that you will build upon each small goal until you have a fully trained riding horse!
Intelligence consists of more than just the horse's brain. Individuals vary greatly from each other and are capable of most of the same feelings that we have, such as affection, anxiety and crankiness. As prey animals, they are very acutely attuned to the world around them.
The horse does not seek love, at least not like dogs. Merely giving a horse love isn't going to get the horse to perform a desired response for you in and of itself. You must also provide the horse with leadership; you must be, as I tell my riding students, "the boss mare." It is said that where leadership is lacking, someone will fill the gap and nowhere is this truer than in the company of horses. If you don't play the role of leader, the bossiest horse in the herd will, and you could get yourself hurt as a result.
However, your leadership must be fair! Horses need to feel respect for you but he also needs to know they can trust you.
Horse training is like making a contract with the horse, "Do as I ask, and I will let you have release of pressure. If you choose not to do the desired action, the stimulus will continue."
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Lil Peck is a horse trainer from Manhattan, Kansas. Horses have always been an important part of her life. She was born 'horse crazy' and is pleased that there are still hundreds of thousands of horse-crazy little girls in the world. She has won many awards at horse shows with horses she has trained. She enjoys helping other horsemen learn how to ride and train horses.
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A Basic Understanding of Training Horses