Young Horses
|
Posted
by Mara at
6/15/2009 4:50 AM PDT
on Horse Barn
|
Working with young horses can be one of the most trying and also rewarding areas of horse training. It takes a great deal of patience, consistency and discipline to bring a young horse through the levels from basic handling to riding. The training that horses get at these early stages can play a huge part in their general attitude, trainability and behavior long term so it is extremely important that it is done correctly.
It was my three year old stallion, Brando that brought this topic to mind this week. He is 17.1 hands and full of spunk, always testing the boundaries. Being so large and a stallion on top of everything, it is very easy for people to be intimidated by him, including me. Of course, raising a horse like this requires quite a lot of sternness and disciplining as he needs to learn now that he has to respect people and that he is not actually the dominant one. One of the most important things I’ve learned through working with this horse and one of my instructors is that it is very important to also praise him when he is good. So often, we spend all of our time telling the horses what they shouldn’t do that we forget to reward them when they do something right.
Mara
