Schooling

Build Your Horse’s Confidence with jonathan field, natural horsemanship, exercises with horses, jonathan field dragging a log, horse confidence

Build Your Horse's Confidence - In the previous article Build Your Horse's Confidence Part 1, I demonstrated how to build confidence around a horse’s personal space bubble by dragging a post with my new seven-year-old Canadian Warmblood named Bellagio, or “Geo.”

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When we go to the gym we all know that a good warm-up session is essential when it comes to protecting against such injuries as pulled muscles or strained tendons and ligaments. There is no difference when it comes to your horse’s workout. Many horses spend 23 hours of each day standing around in relatively small paddocks.

Will Clinging, solving horse behavioural issues, overcoming equine behaviour issues, equine psychology

If I didn’t trust my own judgment about behaviour I would often take a horse down the wrong path. The corrections I make and the responses I encourage are all based on the assumption that I understand the intention behind a horse’s action. If I misinterpret an action, I could easily reprimand a horse for an unintentional action or inadvertently reward a response that was unwanted.

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With the green horse there is also a safety factor that is not always present with a schooled horse. If we do too much the potential for the green horse to react violently is very real, yet to continue learning there must be a challenge to improve every day. The amount of improvement will be different each day, but there must be some.

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I wrote about how many horses are developing different behaviour patterns because of the affection and lack of effective discipline they receive. I have been pleasantly surprised at the number of people I’ve heard from who recognize that their horse fits into this scenario. Recognizing the problem is the first step in resolving it.

Retraining Thoroughbreds, new careers Thoroughbreds, Barbara Sheridan Equine Guelph, Garry Westergaard, Priscilla Clark Tranquility Farm, thoroughbred career change, Jocelyn Inglehart, Wendy Muir, Jane Avril

Three-year-old Daisy had done relatively well at Hastings Racecourse in Vancouver, BC. She had won her first race that season, and had placed in many others. When she came home that fall, we decided to breed her. She would have some downtime before going off to the stud farm in early spring. But over the winter, I realized our smart, high-strung filly would need some retraining to reinforce basic manners not only for safe handling, but for her future as a pleasure riding horse.

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A rider can communicate confidence with her eyes and, of course, can pilot her horse much more effectively when she uses her eyes correctly. The eyes plan the destination and often the next stride of the horse.

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An inexperienced rider is in the process of learning to keep her hands and legs steady and working independently of each other. This makes her language “chattery” as she attempts to communicate with the horse and he will respond either by becoming oblivious to the rider or by overreacting.

Good Horse Rider Position

Q: My daughter has been taking riding lessons for some time now and at each lesson I hear the trainer remind her about her position – heels down, thumbs up, shoulders back, etc. When I asked my daughter the reasons for such attention to a rider’s position, she really couldn’t tell me more than “that’s just the way you do it.” Can you help this horsey mom understand?

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Although food rewards can definitely reinforce a riding lesson, in my experience the drawbacks of using food rewards far exceed the benefits. While it is important to reward horses to affirm every correct response, I feel there are other more valuable ways of doing so.

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