Patience Please! Howdy horse lovers! This is the very first installment of the Saddle Sense training tips. Because this is the first I thought I would start with a bit of theory that might help sort of set the trend of good training. So let’s get started!

I recently gave a clinic at the Wilmington Equestrian Center located at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio. The clinic was set on the premise of finishing the performance horse. Since this is a bit more information than can be conveyed in an hour I decided to start at a point after the horse has received about 90 days of training. In other words the horse is “Green Broke."

While doing clinics I like to ask a lot of questions of the people who are attending. In dealing with this issue of the green broke horse and asking questions I soon came to the conclusion that there are a lot of confused horse owners everywhere. Let’s face it, there is a lot of information available these days and most of it is good information. The trouble comes when trying to mix training philosophies too much. Add to that some impatience and viola, “you got problems”.

Let’s talk first about impatience. What I find is horse owners often change training techniques when one doesn’t work. This obviously is a good thing to do “IF” the technique is clearly NOT working. Often times the technique is not working because of some other reason, for example, the technique was not properly applied, or the particular horse does not respond as quick as another horse. This is where patience comes in. If you were to ask the average horse (and if that horse could answer you) if he wanted to learn how to, say, lope western pleasure slow. More than likely the answer would be a solid “NO”. Horses are not born with any propensity toward learning anything that humans want to teach them.

Okay, it’s not that hopeless, the upside is that horses are very trainable, it’s just that we have to take it slow and let the horse come around to us. This brings me to the main point of this article, not giving up. In my experience a technique does not work mostly because of human error either because we just don’t fully understand the basic idea and how it effects the horse or simply can’t execute it’s basic movements. This is where patience comes in. We have to fully learn the technique from theory to execution if we have any chance at all of pulling it off.

Some tips:

1. Find a trainer you like. Someone that you connect with, whether they are someone that you know or some one that you have seen on cable or one of the horse fairs.

2. Learn all you can about the trainers philosophy.

3. Learn how the techniques effect your horse, movement, mind.

4. Practice, Practice, Practice!

Remember, stick with it, don’t be so quick to change techniques, learn the technique thoroughly and give your horse a chance to come around to you.

Thanks For Visiting Saddle Sense.com God Bless