Horse Articles

One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make in their relationships with horses is failing to pay complete attention to the horse they are handling. That’s why heeding is the best program I know of for working with a stallion.

Trailer loading is not a BIG deal. It is just heeding. When you step forward, the horse steps forward. When you stop, the horse stops. Your horse stays by your side always and that includes walking next to you into a trailer.

Loading a horse into a trailer is a test of how accurately the horse responds to the step cue you put on him by heeding. Trailer loading isn’t a separate skill you and your horse must learn. It’s just applying the step cue you taught your horse with basic heeding to a specific task. When the horse understands your step as an cue, meaning he is to follow each of your steps with a step of his own, you can use that cue to ask him to enter the trailer with you.

Loading a horse into a trailer is not a separate skill that horses and their handlers need to learn. Loading is simply a response to the step cue you’ve taught your horse through heeding. The horse that has learned to stay at your shoulder, trust your consistency and trust that he’s got your full attention whenever you’re with him. He has learned that your step is a cue for him to take a step. So he will match you step for step and walk right into the trailer. The step cues are the same and the horse’s response to them should be the same as if you were asking him to walk down the barn aisle or into an arena. When the horse understands heeding, walking into a trailer is just one step away from what he already knows.

Some people make a big deal out of a horse’s gender and say that people should handle horses of different sexes different ways. We work with every horse, regardless of gender, the same way. We communicate with the horse the same way regardless of its sex. The sequence of skills a horse learns as it progresses up the training tree does not change with its gender.

The first horse I ever bought for myself was a registered Arabian mare. Her name was Rafsu and after all these years I can still remember her registration number. She was one of my two favorite horses ever and she survived my early attempts at breaking her, which was how people perceived training back then. She just forgave all my mistakes and kept on being a nice mare despite everything I did wrong.

Ground control precedes horse control. Before you snap the lead rope onto a horse’s halter, you and the horse need to start communicating in a meaningful, horse-logical way.

Heeding is a horse communication system that proceeds in small, horse-logical steps that never create fear or antagonism in the horse. It requires being consistent in the moves you make around the horse, introducing just one small bite of information at a time, and making sure that new information is just one step away from what the horse already understands. Heeding builds a solid foundation that the horse and trainer can use to play reining or show jumping or dressage or any other game they decide to play.

Ground control precedes horse control. If a horse doesn’t heed its handler on the ground, it is never going to listen when that person swings into the saddle. A lot of horse people mythunderstand ground work. They think it just means snapping on a lead rope and pushing or pulling a horse from the barn to the arena or from the stall to the crossties or hopefully into a trailer. One of the ways to make people think you’re magic with horses is if you can control the horse from the ground constantly and consistently for the purpose you want.

Years ago, I had a client with a two-year-old Arabian colt that she wanted to keep as a breeding stallion. The colt was argumentative and constantly challenged anyone handling him. I got along with him fine but he was more horse than she could handle. She was scared to death of him. The only time she was even brave enough to pet him was when I was holding him in his stall for her. She finally decided that gelding him was the best course of action.

As the horse progresses in his training, you begin layering new things on top of what the horse always knows. If you have a problem, you go back to where the horse last accepted everything and start over from there.

When we first start working with a green horse, we get his trust by working with him in a relaxed and rhythmic way whether we’re catching him, grooming him, or doing some groundwork with him in some kind of pen. You want the horse to be comfortable with your presence and with the general pattern of what you’re going to do today, based on what you did with him the day before and the day before that and the day before that.

As our baby horse progresses up the training tree, we’ve given him a solid base of trust. We work with rhythm and relaxation doing anything we do from catching him to grooming him or putting on his leg wraps or giving him some play time before we put his tack on. He’s comfortable with us and the general pattern of the work we do together. When we first got on his back, we allowed him to move with complete freedom, never interfering with or restricting his natural gaits. The next step is to get him working with freedom of gait while seeking and accepting contact with the rider’s hands.

We get halfway up the training tree before we introduce the concept of straightness to the horse. We spend the first months of a horse’s training working on rhythm, relaxation, and freedom of gaits. In this early phase of training, we want him to feel comfortable carrying the weight of a rider. In the second phase of his training, we start to develop the quality of his forward movement. We ask him to accept the contact between the bit and our hand. Toward the end of his first year of training, we put our focus on straightness.

Balance is one of those terms in the horse industry that is so misused that it’s become mythunderstood. All it really means is that the horse is distributing his weight equally on all four feet. We want him carrying as much of his weight on the ride side of his body as on the left side. We want him to carry as much weight on his two front feet as he does on his two back feet.

A lot of horses that intend to play the higher level games can get along in life quite nicely if they get this far on the training tree. If a horse has rhythm, relaxation, and freedom of gaits, if a horse accepts contact on both reins, can move straight, and is balanced, then that horse is farther along in his training than 90 percent of the horses out there. He’ll do OK at lower level competitions and be a real pleasure as a trail horse.

Suppleness is another "mythunderstood" word in the horse industry. Suppleness simply means the ability to bend without stiffness. We want the horse to have loose, pliable joints: his hocks, his hips, his knees, his shoulders, his poll and his jaw. There are other joints that must be flexible, too, but generally when we talk about a horse’s ability to bend, we’re talking about one or another of those major joints.