Getting Ready to Train Your Horse
Plan Ahead: If you pre-plan your exercises you can frame them to fit your time schedule. Review what you want to accomplish and how you will work before you enter the stall or the round pen. Your attitude will be relaxed but purpose-driven and your horse will be more willing to work in the same way.
Accept Small Successes: Horse training happens in baby steps. If you have a small success, build on it to the next step. If the next step eludes you, backstep to the last succesful lesson and work there again until confidence returns and you can try the progression again.
Don’t push past a successful end. Plan the lesson so that you can end on a successful maneuver. If things get difficult and he “just doesn’t get it”, retreat to the previous successful level, work there for a few mintues and then end the session.
Don’t get angry. Horses don’ t understand anger. They understand tension and translate it as danger. That kind of apprehension and nervousness is not conducive to learning.