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Proper horse training - best synthesis

I am a person who is handicapped, did not know that I had MS when I got my weanling colts, my green-broke just gelded Anglo-Arab, and when I retrained a ruined mare I had.

I never had many lessons back then, I could not afford to send these horses to a trainer, and I learned how to train by trial and error on my own horses.

You can do this. As I noted earlier John Richard Young’s book showed me how to go about training an untrained colt. The information I got from that book was simply invaluable and I wish I had bought that book several years earlier in my life!

For training for riding I followed Vladimir Littauer’s “Schooling the Horse” and Harry Chamberlin’s “Training Hunters, Jumpers and Hacks.” Littauer had cavalry training in Russia, Camberlin was in the USA Cavalry, and for any type of horse the methods in these books are simply invaluable.

Littauer’s book is probably a little bit easier for people who do not already know how to train a horse. It gives a common sense procedure of how to build the horse up through the months so the horse learns what to do in an unabusive way. Littauer’s process covers 9 months or so, while Chamberlin’s book is about the first two years of training, basically how to train the horse properly so the rider/trainer can go on to competition and have a decent chance of doing well.

“Common Sense Horsemanship” also by Vladimir Littauer has a great deal of useful information, it is the book I used when I got my first horse. Harry Chamberlin’s “Riding and Schooling Horses” is also good.

All the books I’ve recommended are available on Amazon, often used and not very expensive at all.

I commend to you Vladimir Littaur’s book Common Sense Horsemanship. In there he has a very comprehensive, seven month program to train a young horse who is broke to saddle to be a basic fox hunting horse. You might not be interested in fox hunting but the equine skills required in that discipline are extensive and useful in virtually all other equine disciplines. It’s an easy read and is free for download from several sources. Google it and you’ll find one that you can use.

Concur that gelding is the best program if you don’t have the infrastructure to deal with an intact stallion.

Good luck in your program.

G.

:slight_smile: . He is dark chestnut color