These 5 Mistakes Could Be SABOTAGING Your Training

were you rubbing your butt on the fence where are you going where are you going what are you doing you're sassy so today what i thought i would talk about is some common training mistakes that we may face when it comes to working with our horses hello young man you want to join so the mistakes i'm going to be sharing are ones that i've personally dealt with myself and to be honest i'm still working to perfect my training techniques so i thought that this video would be great to do because maybe i could share my experience and help you avoid these mistakes that i have made so we're in the barn now and i'm going to be brushing tucker and tacking up so we can go ride but i thought i would take the time to share my first point on training mistakes that we make and that i personally have made the first one is just trying to move too fast with the training process you know i think that we have this outlook in the riding world where it's like we need to get on the horse as fast as possible and if you can start your horse the fastest you're the best but in reality i don't think that really gives the horse time to understand the concept of what they're being trained on i've noticed for me personally i've tried to rush through the process and get on the horse as fast as i can but then down the line it's clearly evident that something has been missed along the way when we try to rush through the process we're not giving the horse time to understand what we're actually teaching them and if we're rushing that means we're probably also missing a bunch of very important things that the horse should have a foundation on so down the line it's going to come back where the horse may have an issue and a problem and it stems from them not learning the actual concept during training tucker here is actually the horse that taught me all about just taking your good old time when it comes to training so when i got tucker um he was very spooky and flighty and sensitive and when it came time to put the saddle on him or even before that just to sensitize him to anything being on his back he was freaked out his eyes would be wide he'd gallop around bucking and it just you could tell he was not comfortable and so getting the saddle on him and getting him used to the saddle before i even got on i took about three weeks to do that i wanted to make sure that he was comfortable with the saddle before i then put a rider on his back that really taught me the process of like okay i need to start taking my time and make sure the horse is comfortable with all this before i move on another thing that people skip over with when they try to rush to get on the horse is they skip over groundwork and groundwork is so essential to the foundation of your training with your horse you know i want to make sure my horse respects me on the ground so then they can respect me under saddle and so that's a huge part that goes overlooked i notice when it comes to us just trying to get on as fast as we can so another training mistake that i know i have personally struggled with a lot is letting my emotions get the best of me and letting my emotions determine how i react in a situation and this is basically when i'm working with a horse and then the situation isn't going as i want it to and so i start to get frustrated and then i'm not communicating with the horse as well as i should because i'm letting my emotions get in the way so horses have a knack of being able to read our emotions and really kind of gauge their attitude based off of our attitude and the reason for that is as prey animals they're looking for any sign of danger so when they notice that we're starting to get a little frustrated and anxious they're going to start getting frustrated and anxious because in the wild you know if one horse sees another horse starting to exhibit certain behaviors they're going to because they're watching out for predators so that's the way that that works another reason why it's important to learn to control your emotions and i'm speaking to myself here around your horse is because then you're not going to be able to effectively communicate with them i'm going to let my emotions determine how i communicate with my horse which is probably not going to be the right way oh you want attention um just in terms of like your emotions will usually make you ask a little more harshly than you need to or if you're scared your emotions are going to make you not ask as confidently as you need to so ideally what i want from myself in particular is i want to be able to step out of the situation and not let my emotions be affected so even if i am getting frustrated and annoyed i don't want that to be shown to my horse like that's something that needs to be separate from the actual situation that's going on i think another common mistake that a lot of us make when it comes to working with horses is having too high of expectations when it comes to working with a young horse or just any horse in particular this can be challenging especially if you've been riding a horse that knows what it's doing to then go to a horse that maybe isn't as well trained or is still maybe young then we can have the expectation that they should act and respond and react as the very well-trained horse and that can be very dangerous to your training and to the young horse you're working with so the way i learned about this mistake is i had a horse named dolly when i lived out in oklahoma and she was a young arab quarter horse i think she was like three years old and she was a very different kind of horse like all the horses i had worked with up until that point had been super easy to start they were very well behaved and just kind of like passive personalities where dolly was a little bit more of a spitfire and she would challenge me a bit more and at the time i had tucker and i had him well started under saddle compared to dolly who hadn't been started yet so when i started her i had a very hard time with her she would just act up and i would get very frustrated with her because she wouldn't do what i would ask her to and after like a month i really hadn't gotten anywhere with her so i was talking to my mom and my mom said to me well you just need to stop expecting so much from her because my mom knew i had been used to working with tucker who was pretty well started compared to dolly who wasn't so you know the next day i go and i start to work with dolly and i just get rid of all my expectations and i'm like let's just have fun and it's immediate that horse changed from that ride on she was a completely different horse because i lowered my expectations and i didn't have the high expectations as if she was you know a well-started horse so the thing is if you have too high of expectations it's just going to lead to frustration and communication issues you're going to be frustrated that the horse isn't doing something as if they've done it a thousand times and the horse is gonna get frustrated because you're getting frustrated and because then you probably start asking them and you're getting mad and you're getting harsh with them if you're just starting a horse having very clear but low expectations like okay today i just want to walk around the ring without anything happening today i just want to work on steering and i'll steer the horse around these barrels and that'll be it and if the horse can do that they get rewarded and you're done so i'm on tucker now and i left my bridle at home so i have to go with the rope today the next mistake i want to cover when it comes to starting your horse is not rewarding every try so what i mean by this is when you first start teaching your horse something new even when they try in the most littlest form you should reward that the reason you should reward even the smallest try is because this teaches your horse to respond to the lightest pressure so i'm back down on the ground and the reason is i want to actually show you what i mean by this just because this may be a harder concept to understand so let's say i want to ask my horse to back up from the ground and i ask with a light pressure and then i increase my pressure because they're not responding so then i'm really pushing on their chest as soon as he goes to back up i release the pressure because that's a try so now he knows that when i touch his chest and push back he's supposed to respond so now if i do it and he responds to a lighter pressure i need to release even if he did the most tiniest little step like he just did and so this teaches the horse to respond to the lightest pressure so if you're not releasing and not rewarding the smallest try the horse isn't going to understand what you want and so in the long run it's going to take a lot more pressure to get them to respond correctly so the next training mistake i want to talk about is thinking that a one-size-fits-all approach works for every horse so basically what this means is that you think that you can train every horse the exact same way and they're going to turn out the exact same so as i mentioned with tucker and dolly you know two completely different horses dolly was a little bit more of a spitfire and a little bit more sensitive tucker was very willing to please even though he was a little bit more of an anxious horse so they turned out very differently i mean i like the way they turned out but it was a very different process on how i got there so basically the point of this one is that if you think that you can approach every horse the same you're just going to get frustrated every horse is different training techniques work for different horses i've learned this recently i started researching a lot about reinforcement training using the clicker i used to not like clicker training just because i thought oh you're just tempting the horse with food and stuff like that but after researching it further i found that it is very effective especially with maybe troubled horses or horses that are very untrusting and skittish and just working with tucker because he's more like that i've noticed that it is very beneficial for him especially in helping him get over things that he's scared of or he's anxious about so another mistake that i know i've made when it comes to training my horses is i haven't made the training fun for them so this means that instead of making it fun it's now works to them and they're not going to be excited about it when i go out to catch them in the pasture they're not going to be thrilled that i'm out there because they're going to be like oh she's just coming to work me so if you have a horse that's running away from you in the pasture this is something to think about because this may be why they're running away from you but i found if i'm not making it fun for the horse they're getting frustrated and then i'm getting frustrated so if i can make it fun for them and make it enjoyable they're going to be much more willing to learn and accept what i'm trying to teach them compared to if i'm just working them working them working them that's not the right mindset for them what are you doing so your horse may be getting bored with what you're trying to teach them if they just aren't responding right away or if they just seem like their movements aren't animated and they're not engaged if they're getting easily distracted by things around them that's a good sign that you know it's not interesting for them so a sign that they are interested in having fun is that their ears will be perked up their movements will be animated they'll be ready to go so i like to look for those signs in my horses when i'm training them and riding them and it's with everything i do from groundwork to riding i want my horse to be having fun and enjoying life i don't want them to be bored and you know just think of me as someone who sits on their back and makes them work if you're more at a place where you need to focus on perfecting your riding i have a video all about the top writing mistakes that we make so you can check that out in the description down below i also give good solutions to those mistakes to help you improve your riding but if you found this video helpful please be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos you

Channel: Equine Helper

Views: 26,821

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Id: -ujilKSrtYk

Length: 11min 33sec (693 seconds)

Published: Fri May 07 2021