Train the Horse for the Rider

I taught a very interesting lesson a couple weeks ago that I wanted to write about, as I think it shows a really fundamental shift in the way that I'm approaching my training of horses now.

I don't normally like talking about my students in any detail on this blog, since this is my blog and not theirs, so some elements of this story have been changed just for privacy's sake.

Sunset on the way to my house the other night!

For some background, my student is a good rider but has been struck down a bit by fear from a semi-recent accident. It was pretty bad, she had some time off and is just now getting back into the swing of riding again while dealing with this new fear element she hasn't experienced before.

She's riding a few horses, which is great! This one was a new one for both of us. I had never met the horse before and this was my student's third ride on her. The horse is a bit spoiled, but a nice mover and has some good training in there under the spoiled attitude.

TC would like to be more spoiled please

My student longed her first and I thought she was a nice mover, though we both noted that this horse is one of the bigger movers my student rides on a regular basis. Once as horse and rider were united, I could tell things might be going a bit sour pretty immediately.

The horse was a bit lookie, which made my rider sit a little tighter than I'm used to her sitting on her personal, much more chill, horse. She told me that the horse could really spook and bolt and described her tendency to get into the landau reflex.

Sure enough, the horse is lazy hot. Spooky and reactive, but to get out of work rather than due to anything in particular. Sometimes she'd pass an obstacle in the arena and spook at it, other times she wouldn't. It was all due to my student using her leg to ask the horse to move forward, not the actual object itself.

We're doing a lot of walking in the water to get
him to use his butt in a different way, I dunno
if that's valid but it's been fun

Things were about to spiral as the horse threatened to buck and I could see my student fighting her fear. Previously this wouldn't have bothered her. I said hey, I can get on and work through this if you want.

Now, I have my own fear issues. This is a horse I don't know, I don't have my back brace or regular boots... but I clambered on. Immediately she threatened me with a TC-like basilisk move and even threatened to rear at one point. I was fine though, being fit has really allowed me to have way more control over my nerves!

So, if this had been TC, he would have gotten a right spanking and I'd be prepared to sit some shit. But he is my personal horse. And while one day he will be for sale, we can go through a week of him trying to launch me (hey we did that two weeks ago, and this week looks good for a launchy week too, yay fall weather).

BUT this is a client's horse, which means two things. One: my student is there watching me, if I smacked the horse and she erupted into bucks, my student's fear would increase. I needed to work through it without pissing off the horse. Two: I am only down there twice a month, I needed to make sure that I used aids and exercises that my student could use on her own. She's not going to give this horse a thwack with the whip when she starts to be obnoxious next time.

Never been obnoxious

So the only punishment I used was popping her one in the mouth with the bit when she went to snake her neck. My student could easily do that while holding onto the mane. Instead, I used mostly praise. She got scratches on the neck for going forward from my leg aid.

I broke it down, had her walk more forward and then slow down. She got praise for walking more forward from my leg. She got praise for slowing down. Soon the spooking stopped, I got an ear on me. From the very forward walk, it was harder for her to slow down than it was for her to trot, so I asked for trot and immediately praised and walked. Forward walk. Trot. Praise. Walk. Soon I had her trotting on a loose rein around the arena.

I put my student back on and we worked through it with her on board too.

Definitely not trying to bite my foot

At the end of the ride, my student was grinning. We worked on her posting mechanic to get her more confident riding such a big mover, worked on transitions within the walk to prepare the horse to trot from a lighter aid, and talked a lot about using reward to get the horse on board with the rider's plan.

Could I have gotten on and popped the horse with the whip and fixed it immediately? Sure. But that's not what I would have considered good training for this particular situation. Does this mean that I lost or that the horse won? Absolutely not. Training is not about winning or losing or showing the horse that they can't get away with something. I simply started to reward the behavior I wanted and make the bad behavior more difficult to perform than the good behavior. And most importantly, I wanted to do it in a way that my student could.

In another situation, maybe punishment would have been helpful to really squash the bad behavior immediately. But this was not that situation. I'm a big believer in not just training the horse to the best of your ability as a trainer, but also to look at the situation as a whole, which includes the rider too. At times you see trainers training horses for the sake of training the horse, not training the horse FOR their rider. And sometimes that can erupt into trainers getting their riders to put the horse in full training with minimal lessons, pay for the trainer to show the horse... until the rider really doesn't get to ride the horse at all.

Wandering around in the evening one day

That's just not my clientele. So I tried my best to set my rider up for success with the way I schooled the horse. Maybe I'd make more money in this business if I hadn't done that though, lol!