Thanks for all the suggestions! I will check in to them. I’m familiar with Tristan Tucker from his hilarious comedy routine, but didn’t know he offered a structured training program. Anyone who has the skills to ride a horse like that is definitely worth taking a look at:).
Just fyi, I found early Clinton Anderson DVDs to be better than the later ones. Same with Parelli. Seems fame crept into the process
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One problem I have seen with so many trainer, especially NH ones, is that they feel they have to structure the training for students, rather than teaching all manners of skills to apply as the horse presents each day.
When that happens, they go from asking a horse and then asking a different way and yet another if the horse is not understanding, to asking a horse and then escalating the energy to get a response, any response and then dealing with the many times unwanted response a confused horse, that only knows you want a reaction, but not what, offers.
When asking a horse to move over and the horse is stading there thinking or wondering what you want, some trainers escalate to asking harder and even swinging and stinging a horse into reacting, Clinton Anderson is very bad about that.
You then get horses that are jumpy and resistent or become dull and stand there with half closed eyes, giving up on humans, feeling that no matter what they do is probably going to be wrong.
Traditional trainers take a big dose of patience and ask and move over mentally if that didn’t get a response and ask again and again until they see the horse is getting it.
Their horses don’t become defensive.
I have the first Parelli 7 games video, a perfect example of that, horses scooting around and trowing their heads up, not understanding what they are supposed to do and when they by chance do it right and the picking at them quits, I am sure they are thinking “what kind of crazy stuff is that?”
I brought that up with PP himself once and the response was, “we want a horse doing what we want no matter what it takes at first, refinement will come later.”
Really? Why not start asking without fireworks from the start, helping the horse understand and cooperate without needing to go the rough way first and maybe having to correct later the problems that can bring?
There are good trainers in all disciplines and ways of thinking.
Being a real horseman that horses seem to work for well is like watching paint dry.
Maybe that doesn’t make for fun, exciting videos, why some trainers spice them with horses bucking and doing all sorts of things they later can “re-train” them from.
I think your daughter can learn from any of those.
Depending on who she is, she too may like the more active training, or be the kind that the art to watching paint dry when training horses is immensely interesting in itself.
I expect either way your pony will learn some more consistent good citizen horse manners.
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I will suggest John Chatterton. 10 commandments.
This! I love all of this! What prompted me to write my inquiry for resources in the first place is that we took my daughter’s pony to an equine massage therapist yesterday to try to deal with some pain issues we have been having. In doing so, it brought to light some of the ground manners that she/we have become lax on. Part of the reason we have become lax is because we have allowed his pain issues to become an excuse for less than good behavior. The therapist, tactfully, suggested that we could use a little work with our handling of him. While I truly appreciated her suggestions, some of them were more in that “escalate” quickly camp than I’d prefer. Additionally, our pony’s go-to response to too much pressure is to get defensive. In piecing together his past, it has come to light that some too harsh techniques (in the name of NH) had been used on him, and when they caused him to escalate in his defensiveness, the people decided he was too much horse for them to handle. The therapist suggested we get some CA videos, but since I wasn’t a hundred percent on board with her suggestions, I thought I’d ask here for some resources in a different vein of training. I don’t want to push him into a place where he feels he needs to act out defensively towards us, but I also don’t want him to end up being a pushy, poor mannered horse. Neither situation is good or has a good outcome for the horse. So I want to get ahead of this (like I said previously, he really has pretty good ground manners, but there are a few things that need polishing up). I feel the best and kindest thing we can do for our horses is teach them how to be well behaved. But, that involves teaching, not fear and bullying.
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Thanks, I’ll check him out.
I think it’s great that you’re encouraging your daughter to find and learn from different resources. Although in person trainers are really valuable (I personally find the easiest way to learn is face-to-face with a mentor), sometimes we get stuck in our own training bubble, and discovering outside sources can really expand your knowledge and affect your perspective on horse training. Have you looked into positive reinforcement based training? A lot of equestrians roll their eyes when they hear this, but it’s really just training based on basic psychology, same as pressure and release! There are tons of positive reinforcement resources out there, but I find that www.thewillingequine.com explains it in a way that’s really easy to understand.
Researching how animals and people learn in general would actually be really helpful, because you can use that information with any training style you use.
I also really like Equitopia and Art2Ride, and I recently discovered CRK Training. These aren’t necessarily positive reinforcement resources, but focus on improving the communication and relationship between horse and rider. Art2Ride is especially great for teaching your horse true collection and how to move in the healthiest, most correct way, no matter the discipline.
One last thing - dogs and horses are most definitely very different species and require very different lifestyles, but all animals learn the same way 
if you can train a dog, you can train a horse!
A horse in pain will have adverse reactions.
You need to read and understand them.
Part of the reason we have become lax is because we have allowed his pain issues to become an excuse for less than good behavior.
If you know the horse is in pain, you should fix the pain first prior to putting the horse back into a position where he’ll feel the need to misbehave.
«Beating » a horse who’s in pain isn’t fair.
The therapist, tactfully, suggested that we could use a little work with our handling of him. While I truly appreciated her suggestions, some of them were more in that “escalate” quickly camp than I’d prefer. Additionally, our pony’s go-to response to too much pressure is to get defensive.
How good is this massage therapist?
Also, understand that some massage therapist can put lots of pressure, so with your pony’s pain history, his reactions could be quite normal.
Maybe some smoother or less invasive massage could be in order?
What I would truly suggest is a thorough vet check and some pain management/cure.
In piecing together his past, it has come to light that some too harsh techniques (in the name of NH) had been used on him, and when they caused him to escalate in his defensiveness, the people decided he was too much horse for them to handle. The therapist suggested we get some CA videos, but since I wasn’t a hundred percent on board with her suggestions, I thought I’d ask here for some resources in a different vein of training. I don’t want to push him into a place where he feels he needs to act out defensively towards us, but I also don’t want him to end up being a pushy, poor mannered horse. Neither situation is good or has a good outcome for the horse. So I want to get ahead of this (like I said previously, he really has pretty good ground manners, but there are a few things that need polishing up). I feel the best and kindest thing we can do for our horses is teach them how to be well behaved. But, that involves teaching, not fear and bullying.
The polishing will only come when he’s pain free.
I understand not to let horses becoming dangerous under any circumstances, but I also believe in not putting them into situation where they will react badly.
I don’t allow horses to misbehave, but I try my best to read them, so they don’t feel the need to misbehave.
On the ground, my « go to » technique in all crazy instances, is to put the horse’s head down. At my knee height, and wait a few minutes. Horses usually regain composure pretty quickly as blood flows back to their head, lowering their heart rhythm.
I then proceed with whatever is appropriate to do at that moment. If it means putting the horse back to it’s stall, so be it.
Quiet, calm, firm but fair. The techniques you will choose should follow those lines.
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Actually they are not. If you understand the concept of “energy” in handling dogs, the same is true for horses.
If you have seen the early Cesar Millan videos on how dogs behave when their owners are around, then that will illustrate how your “intent” translates to a horse’s behavior.
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The thing I like about John Chatterton is if they 1 out of 100 look like to doing the right thing you drop pressure. I praise. It works wonders.
The thing I find with groundwork is that other than the first day teaching what I want, I do not do ground training separately.
I handle that way all the time, everytime and consistency is the rule. So catching, the horse must approach me. They walk at liberty to the tack shed. They stand still while being groomed and tacked. They lead to the mounting block.
So the horses are not played with games in a round yard every day like NH which seems to sour a lot of horses.
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Look up Equitation Science. Their books: “Horses Hate Surprise Parties” and “Academic Horse Training” are hard to find, but easy to process. There are also considerable videos available if you google Andrew Mclean or Equitation Science.
The reason I like his methodology, is that it is science based, so they have studied training methods while considering the welfare of the horse (monitoring heart rate and such), and it is based on proven learning theory. It is simple and straight forward and non-exciting. I wish I had found it sooner.
Unlike NH, it is not just based on theoretical studies, and assumptions on why horses do with what they do. They have actually done the work to see how different methods affect the horse psychologically, rather that just based on training “success”.
Andrew is both a scientist, and also a successful equestrian in various events.
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Thanks for the resource suggestions! I have watched some of the CRK training stuff before, but will check out the others you mentioned as well.
Yes, I am quite familiar with positive reinforcement training with dogs and have started to play around some with the horses. I have a decent grasp of different learning theories, the quadrants of learning etc., and it definitely helps me understand the whys behind what I see our trainer doing and also helps me reason through some things on my own. However, my lack of experience with understanding and observing horse behavior and some of the fundamental differences between the motivations (ie. drives) of horses and dogs limits my ability to completely transfer what I know between species. For example, the basic difference that dogs are predators that have prey drive as a motivating factor that can be harnessed in training is quite different than a horse that is prey and most often is motivated to flee. So even though I have some knowledge in the way animals learn, I still feel so inadequate when it comes to our horses!
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Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll take a look at what he has to offer.
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The day to day handling and reinforcement of training is the way our trainer handles things too and makes sense to me. However, it is consistency that we’ve been lacking. And an understanding of what to expect. I think part of our problem is that the horses we have all came to us later in their lives. So we aren’t always certain what they know or how they were trained to know what was being asked. So sometimes we don’t know if the horses aren’t responding correctly or if we aren’t asking correctly.
You could research more about understanding horse behavior, it would come in handy regardless of what training method you try. Understanding horse behavior helps to decipher the difference between a behavioral problem (on the ground or in the saddle) that’s actually a training issue, or really caused by emotional/mental/physical discomfort in the horse. I don’t know what ground manner issues your horse has, but say he has an issue with standing still in the cross ties. You might think that he’s impatient, or that he doesn’t know that he should be standing still. But understanding horse behavior might lead you to discover that he’s displaying signs of anxiety, or stress, or pain. There are many different methods of training humanely and effectively, but they will never truly work as long as the underlying cause of the behavior is there. Once you locate the underlying problem (pain, stress, anxiety, fear, discomfort, etc), training becomes a lot easier. Just a suggestion for something you could add to your research list!
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Great suggestion! You may be hitting the heart of the issue. Any good suggested resources on horse behavior?
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https://www.thewillingequine.com/single-post/Are-You-Listening-part-one
The Willing Equine has a series of blog posts called “Are You Listening?” that interprets equine behavior and includes videos, which are really helpful, as well as a post called Fear vs Panic that’s really interesting.
https://equusmagazine.com/behavior/horse-body-language
This is also a good article to get you started. If you find that you’re really interested in it, you could look into the research of Dr. Jaak Panksepp about the seven emotion systems of mammals that are responsible for behavior. The Fear vs Panic post explains this pretty well, and it might help you understand motivation too!
Thanks! I’ve come across Panksepp and his work in the context of dog training, but haven’t read his work personally. It might be time to do so!
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When you have a horse that has been trained before then it is harder to retrain than it is to train.
The other thing is that horses learn extremely quickly. Riders on the other hand, both in the saddle and on the ground take a lifetime to learn.
That is why there is a saying that ‘you wreck the first horse you own’.
Each horse you own after that starts with a better rider, so each horse you have will be better than the last one was and you learn something different from every single horse.
Consistency is still the key. Hubby started off with a horse I had taught to stand still. The horse tests him all the time and hubby is not consistent so he has a horse that walks off even with a halter on and dragging thevlead rope…
On the other hand when my horse arrived as far as he was concerned if I let the leadrope go that meant to walk off. I am consistent every single time and he now stands still for everything, anywhere, with or without a halter and is such a pleasure to work with that hubby wants him.
How long would it before for Stars to no longer stand still if hubby takes him over?
CarrieHH --I bought all my CA DVDs used on Ebay as they are very, very expensive to buy directly from Down Under Horsemanship. Again --I find them useful and clear and well sequenced. Biggest problem I have is CA is a big man and I’m a little old lady. When he turns to his horse and discusses respect --well, his horse sort of stands at attention and says, “Yes, Sir.” My horse looks over my head and says, “Make me.” But, there’s something about persistence and having an oppose-able thumb that eventually works --even for me.
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