Equine Scare Training

Over the years, I’ve had to unlearn a lot of what I learned when I started working with horses in the 1950s. I’ve changed my training methods so completely that I consider myself a born-again horseman. I owe my conversion to the horses that were generous and forgiving enough to tolerate the rough and ready handling methods in vogue when I started training while I figured things out.

When I was launching my career as a hot shot trainer, I kind of watched what other trainers were doing and tried to put my own spin on the deal. I wasn’t big into listening to anybody else but, as time went along, I learned to listen to the horses. Eventually, they showed me that there was a much better, much more horse-logical way to communicate to them what I wanted.

In the beginning, however, my understanding of how to work with a horse was that the first thing you had to convince a horse was that you were the biggest, baddest one in the barn. Then if you yelled loud or startled them with the right timing, they’d do whatever you wanted. Throwing a scare into a horse wasn’t a very sophisticated communication system but it seemed to work and a lot of people told me what a really super trainer I was because I could get horses to do the stuff I wanted. And I believed them.

If memory serves, the horse that started me thinking there might be a better way to train horses was a pretty bay Arab mare named Rafsu that I’ve written about before. She was foaled May 24, 1955, and I still can remember her registration number. I traded a guitar for her when she was 18 months old.

At this point in my horse career, I was really good at using startle and bullying horses into leading and standing and whatever. Everybody told me that you don’t ride a baby horse until they’re two. So for the first few months I had her, I worked her in a round pen and used a lot of startle and really got on her case. Everybody said that Arabs needed a lot of that because of the way they were and I believed them. Pretty soon I had her doing anything I wanted her to do when I told her to do it by being quick and loud and varying what I did so the she didn’t get too used to any one thing. I had her really paying attention.

The day she turned two, I put a saddle on and rode her all day and she didn’t seem to mind so I figured I pretty well had her completely trained in one day. So I must have been a really super horse trainer back then. A few months later Christmas rolled around and I got the present I’d really wanted more than anything else, a nifty two-wheeled racing sulky and a new harness. I was really excited and I couldn’t wait to try them out. I took everything up to the barn, got Sue out of her stall and started fastening straps all over her.

Now Sue had been hanging out in the barn not doing very much of anything since the end of November but I didn’t think that mattered. She knew all about saddles and girths and bridles and riding. So why not just add cruppers and blinkers and shafts and a few other things? I reasoned she was fully trained so she ought to just accept whatever I was putting on her because I was telling her to do it. Every time she started jiggling around, I just jerked her into paying attention and standing still again and reminded her I was the boss.

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