January 12, 2023

Ingredients for Success:
Respect, Trust, Leadership

Respect, trust and leadership are a trinity of concepts that you have to have as your base to make any training successful. But let us break down each element into the concept of it, how it bares on training your horse and some tools to help you establish the element in your relationship with your horse.

First thing you need in your relationship is Respect.

The concept of respect is a two-way street on your horses side the side we need to establish is we are asking him to respect our authority as the leader. This is vital because a horse will not try to bite, kick, trample or maul their leader. So this is for your safety as well as your horses peace of mind. The leader makes the tough decisions, when to run from danger, when to be scared, where to go a submissive horse gets to relax a little there is someone to look to and fallow because they respect their leaders authority.  On our side when a hose respects us and follows our direction we have the responsibility to make sure we don’t ever ask our horse to do anything where we know they will be hurt. This is the foundation of a team. Three big things to help you establish respect:

Backing up: Horses only back away from a horse with more authority, because turning their quarters is disrespectful and offering a threat to kick. They don’t want to get into a battle for dominance unless they are sure they can win. By backing a horse up even if they do not respect us yet helps establish it. Horses who are dominant by nature will offer up resistance like rearing, biting, pawing, pushing back. If you are having trouble with your horse and find yourself nervous enlist the help of an experienced horse person who has a lot of confidence and that you trust. What needs to happen is that your pressure increases gradually and becomes more aggressive until your horse’s feet move.

Move their Feet: By moving a horse’s feet by lounging, sending (strait line movement) backing while we move as little as possible is taking a horse’s space. We are moving them off the piece of ground they are trying to claim and be the dominant partner. As the boss we own all the ground and can move our horse off any particular area into another area or to move out. Horses will only give up their ground to a dominant partner otherwise they will fight for it.

We will get into a driving position (the side of your horse so your driving arm in the back can ask for movement and the leading arm in the front can lead the direction.) Your driving arm gives the pressure i.e. swinging lead rope, lounging whip wiggle, stick and string swinging arm slapping your leg or chaps, coiled rope slapping your leg. All of these are driving pressures find the one that suits you.

Once you are in position at the side give driving pressure until your horse moves off around you it can take a few tries before your horse will make a full circle around you they will often try to turn and face you, change direction run backwards. Your one job is to give a firm leading arm and continue to pressure with the driving arm until they move off and them stop the pressure. We will discuss the troubleshooting of lounging later.

Changing direction: Once we can move their feet we can change your horse’s direction. This is a powerful tool because it forces your horse to pay attention and can really drive home the point that we are in charge. A dominant horse can change the direction of a submissive horse. I use this when a horse is really fighting me on moving their feet. I will transition directions every half a circle or quarter of a circle. This helps me drive home my dominance and it does not harm the horse it works with how a horse’s mind works to begin with.

Next up…  

 Trust:

Trust comes after respect it comes after your horse has been fallowing your direction and you have not hurt him and none of your choices (like where you ask him to lounge, where you back him up, the tools that you may be using) have hurt him.

We are establishing trust every time we work with our horses. So trust is built by repetition and time. I like to start every session with a horse with first something I know the horse can do well already. Simple warm up exorcises like lounging at a walk or easy trot, I review the lessons we got started last time to continue to develop on those skills. Like backing without my moving with them, sending out in a straight line away from me and asking them to come back and sending out the other direction or whatever we have been working on.

After I get some head way with these ongoing training items I like to challenge the horse. I have built up their confidence, gotten some progress on working concepts now I want to make them think and really engage with me. This can be introducing a new tool, a new training obstacle, a new item I want to desensitize the horse to ect.

With this I am going to introduce the new item and first need to get the horse desensitized to this new item. (there will be more on how desensitize later) Then when I can approach the horse with this item I can start asking them to do trust me. I can send the horse out to ‘touch’ the item or use it as a lounging obstacle, ask them to go under it, over it.

Developing trust is developing a relationship you are building a solid base for your horse to fall back on when things get rough. Like with a solid foundation of trust and respect that lead to it when I am riding and an animal goes crashing through the bushes next to us my horse will fallow my calm lead and stay relaxed instead of not trusting me and bolting, bucking or rearing. They will have all these experiences from us working together and nothing harming them to trust that when my body and voce tell them it is okay not to react to this scary situation that nothing bad really is going to jump out of the bush and attack them.

And we lead right into the last piece of the trinity…

Leadership:

We have established respect and trust to some degree but those two things are useless without a strong leader. Your horse deserves a strong confidant leader to guide them. You deserve a respectful, trusting horse to lead. So how to you become a leader? For some of us it is natural, you need strength, purpose and a plan. To help show your horse that you are a leader her a some simple exorcises to do either in the ground or in the saddle.

Point to point: pick a point in your working/riding area make it something easy to focus on like a tree, fence post, rock ect. See your plan of action, how you’re going to get there. Then go there. Walk in a brisk purposeful stride or turn your horse and point them at your point and ride to it in any gait you choose. You having a purpose and a plan on how to get there will make you a leader your horse will pick up on this and follow your lead easier. It can take some practice for people who are not naturally leaders.

Follow the Leader: This is done on the ground with or without using the reins or a lead rope to lead them depending on where you are in training with your horse.

If possible I like to loop the lead rope or reins up out of the way and do this at liberty. I start in front of the horse just like I was leading them normally and I start out to a point with my shoulders back head up looking where I am going with purpose. Your horse should fallow right along with you either at your shoulder or behind you, however you have been training your horse to lead. Once you get there you will not stop and reward your horse like you normally would but pick another point and walk to it allowing your horse to fallow you.

If your horse warders off just circle back around and briefly tug on the reins or lead rope to get them back in line following you and start off again to your point. Once you get your horse to follow along well start making gentle circles, figure eights, cut backs, zig zag patterns progressively getting more challenging for you and your horse. You will hit a level that becomes too difficult and you will know where to work up too and start working on next time.

Another element to add to this game is stopping your horse should be paying attention to you and stop without passing you or running into you. Then start backing up, the goal is for your horse to back up with you staying behind you or beside you. You may need to give some gentle pressure backwards on them at first to help get the concept down of what you want. After this becomes easy start adding speed changes like you jog or run and your horse has to trot or lope to keep up, then slow down, stop change direction. It can be really fun and rewarding to play like this and builds leadership easily not matter what age or whether or not they are riding yet.

Leadership is the final piece to the puzzle that makes training much more successful and enjoyable. These are three things that ever horse owner or rider can work on no matter what.