I’ve watched a lot of his videos and have not gotten remotely that message from any of them. He does advise to lead with a fair amount of slack in the rope, vs. a death grip right under the chin.
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A reward does not have to be a food treat or a click. You teach them that good boy or girl means whatever you are doing now is what I want, keep doing it. The dressage reward is to give the inside rein. This doesn’t have to be massive. It can just be between horse and rider and it is immediate to what you want. It can be stroking the neck. I turn the dressage whip upside down and stroke with it in walk breaks.
So everyone keeps saying leg on until horse moves, take leg off means quadrant whatever.
That is not what I do. The squeeze for forward is asked for and let go and then horse responds. I squeeze knees for halt and it is left on and not taken off in the halt. I use knees off and seat forward for forward and that stays like that until I halt.
On the lunge the whip is not used for transitions. I use voice alone. The whip thumps the ground for collecting with a voice aid , hand lowered and slower walking. I hold the whip ererct for forward, with a voice aid, other hand up and me walking faster. If the horse breaks the whip is used on the ground behind until they go back into the gait before. I say halt for halt and swap the whip to the other side and facing back under my arm.
For leading I click and the horse walks forward. I say halt and the horse halts. I place a thumb with no pressure on the chest and say back, always two signals for back, and they back.
What quadrants are all of those?
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I abolutely love this. It’s how I feel about pressure/release training, but I couldn’t find the words.
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One of my horses spent two months in training at an NH barn, before I bought him. On one hand, his ground manners are excellent. He never runs into your space, he walks like a perfect gentleman alongside you, stops immediately when you stop, backs off a light aid. On the other hand, they couldn’t do anything with his ridden work. You might think a barn that has hosted Mark Rashid clinics and purports to follow his style of training would produce a lovely ridden horse. They did not. When I bought the horse, he did not steer at all, and he was scared when ridden in arenas, and his previous owner told me that the trainer said he had “temper tantrums” in the school and thought he should be a “trekking pony or a therapy pony.” (obviously those are important jobs, but it sounds as if it was said disparagingly, like the horse could never be turned into a ‘proper’ riding horse, and for the record, he would be terrible at both… far too sharp!). Yet there was something about him I liked. For the first six months I had him, I did not ride in the arena at all, hoping time would uninstall some of the faulty softwhere. I just hacked out and did a bit of groundwork. When I thought he was ready, I started back in the arena from scratch, as if he was a four-year old. I’m not a genius horse trainer by any means, but I gave the horse time and patience and tried to keep him below freak out threshold. He’s an ex-feral and doesn’t always understand humans, so keeping things calm, simple, and easy feels like the key to producing him. Unlike the pro, I have the luxury of time, and I haven’t published books about my training techniques, so I’m not wedded to any ‘system.’ Whatever works with any given horse!
He is really starting to enjoy the focus of dressage, and he’s very light and forward and responsive.
And about that groundwork…he’s foot perfect so long as you’re asking for things he knows. But if you’re putting on a little pressure in order to train something new (i.e. sidepass from the ground) he gets worried and will frantically cycle through his existing repertoire of behaviours – back up, circle, spin his hind end around. I suspect that the trainer was one of these NH people who’d give a horse a pretty sharp shank with a rope halter when they gave the ‘wrong’ answer.
I use tons of +R with this horse. It helps to get him thinking about being given a treat when he gets it right, rather than being anxious about getting his face jerked off when he gets it wrong. The biggest risk of +R in my experience is to my washing machine. I end up stowing horse cookies in pockets and forgetting about them. Not ideal.
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I taught my horse a trick to touch my hand with his nose to guess which one is holding the treat. He’s usually pretty good at it but now every time I have my hand in front of him he touches it with his nose then looks at me expectantly. He’ll also go through all the carrot stretch moves if he thinks he can get a treat by doing them. He’ll dive down between his front legs, touch his sides, etc. It’s very comical.
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Although this is a strong possibility, don’t discount the fact that there are some horses who are so married to getting things right that making mistakes upsets them into a frazzle. It’s like they think they should know the answer instinctively and when it turns out they don’t, their little brains start buzzing uncontrollably.
Last leftover candies of the day go into night feed. It took me a while to train myself to always dump out my pocket, but my horse helped me, “Where’s my top dressing? There are no mints on top of my soup. This is WRONG! Fix it immediately!”
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There’s this woman…not natural horsemanship, but she has that kind of training in her personal history. Slowing it down, waaay down, does make a big difference with mustangs. Allowing them room to leave and having interactions with them be at their choice. If they stick around for a training session it’s because they WANT to. So much more gets done that way. It’s an inside job…
I love where this thread has gone and know you all would enjoy watching Mustang Ride which is a fabulous docu about the Wilson Sisters (and two friends) of New Zealand and their adventure flying into the US, buying a used truck and trailer and picking up 5 mustangs for training.
You can watch it for free by signing up for a 14 day free trial through UP Faith and Family:
and here’s the trailer. What I love about the Wilson Sisters is their commitment to their horses being happy and ridden out where their minds are stimulated. They are also quick to say horses with poor behavior are trying to communicate. Also highly recommend their TV series on Horse and Country TV. They had a show called Saving the Kiamanawas (or something like that) about them saving stallions from slaughter.
Here’s the trailer for Mustang Ride:
Unfortunately Horse and Country TV no longer carries the docu which is why I did the free trial at UP.
