Horse Training for Dummies

[JRW]

All of my horses, donkeys, mules and hinnies are challenging!! I have tried a lot of different approaches. Here is one that I did a couple of years back.

http://www.dinetahtrails.com/Equines/HT4D/

In retrospect, I can't tell you if using Judy was a good thing. It didn't solve the problem.... but later I found a way to work with this particular horse. He can still get a little bit snorty, but he is keen to work now and mostly acts like an elderly ranch horse.

What finally got him turned around was training with positive reinforcement. I clicker trained him to put his ears forward when I was on him. Sounds ridiculously inane, but hey, when you don't know what else to try because it's all failed, it's worth a shot.

Yrs,
JRW

[red]

Don't try this at home. I tell ya. JRW. Do you know why it didn't work? Just wondering..

[Mares Tales]

Perhaps this horse had trouble seeing things from above it, most horses have some concern at first.

IMO,
Teaching the horse to pick the rider up from the fence might have avoided problems like this and might have gotten the horse comfortable with seeing things from above. Also, perhaps this horse had a problem with changing eyes as well, which would have been much helped by teaching the horse to pick the rider off the fence, from both sides, along with a few other easy exercises.

When a horse bolts and the rider comes off, it scares the horse and influences further rides. One should remember that a horse learns what it lives and if by bolting the horse learns it rids itself of the scarey thing and that it works for them, then the horse has found himself a release, and it confirms the idea that what he feared in the first place was justified. Horses being what they are; prey animals, generally have a concern with seeing things from behind them. To a horse, objects can seem to jump from one side, through the blindspot and suddening appear like a whole new scarey thing in the other eye, startleing the horse enough to want to go to their first defense; to flee and "get the heck out of Dodge". If also from up above, (from where they instinctively feel the cougars are lurking to jump down out of the trees onto their backs, pull their heads up to break their necks and enjoy a lunch of equine tar tar), then if not properly prepared with trust in the rider (who also sits above the horse and whos legs, hands, bodyparts and equipment, at times, seem to jump from one side of the horses vision, through the blindspot, to the other), things could get very western in a hurry.

[JRW]

Mares Tales,
That's very astute observation on your part. That was in fact one of his problems. He was rescued from an Indian reservation where he was kept in a little pen with a bunch of older stud horses. The horses were all about starved to death and the neighborhood kids like to sit on the fence and throw fire crackers at the horses. So, yep, he was nervous about people being above him or on the fence. Oddly enough, when I did teach him to pick me up off the fence, he preferred to pick me up from his right side, which was the side he was most spooky on when we started out. Changing eye meant really big trouble to begin with, but eventually he got past it.

As to why Judy didn't work out for him.... well, I think he needed more feedback from the rider. He needed to build up confidence through getting direction. He needed to be deprived of an easy way to get adrenalized. He needed leadership and bonding.

Here is a video of him taken several months later:
http://www.dinetahtrails.com/Equines/JemezDancing/videos/theRide.MOV