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Horse Training: Teach Your Horse To Use His Hindquarters
Wanna help your horse develop and use his hindquarters more? Ride him up and down steep hills. Before you do though, I suggest you have control over him. Thus, when you ask him to stop, he knows ... [Author: Andy Curry - Pets and Animals - April 18, 2006]
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Horse Training: Does Your Horse Have The Feel?


Horse Training: Does Your Horse Have The Feel?  by: Andy Curry

A while back I worked with horse trainer Aaron Mills while making horse training videos for http://www.SuperStarsOfHorseTraining.com

Aaron often used the term "baggage."

By that he meant, if you go to touch your horse's head does he flinch and move it away quickly nearly every time?

Baggage.

If you try to saddle him does he move off and not let you?

Baggage.

Later I hosted a horse training teleseminar with Aaron.

During this informative session, Aaron again talked about baggage.

We talked about how to work through it and to get the horse to trust that the baggage is not going to harm him.

We discussed the horse we filmed and how he did it.

Aaron transformed the horse from a "Don't touch or saddle me" scardey cat to an "Okay... you win...go ahead and saddle me - just be careful" horse.

How'd he do it?

As you watch the video it becomes painfully clear how patient you gotta be when you train a horse.

Another obvious thing is how much work it takes.

The next obvious thing is how often the horse does exactly as Aaron wants, then a few minutes later he doesn't.

That's just something you have to work though. That's where the patience thing comes in because you cannot realisticaly expect the horse to do what you ask every time once he's figured it out.

It takes repetitions.

You have to work through it because there's baggage.

You gotta go slow. You gotta look for the littlest cooperation and reward it.

When the video was done, Aaron had the horse following him like a shadow and was able to put the saddle on him and the horse accepted it and stood still with it on.

What a wonderful exercise it was to watch.

Here's a horse who's nature it is to flee and not trust yet Aaron had the horse following him and trusting him.

I don't care how many times I've seen it or done it, it's awesome to watch and exhilirating to accomplish.

About The Author

Andy Curry is a nationally known horse trainer and author of several best selling horse training and horse care books. He is also well known for finding, interviewing, and filming expert horse trainers and making their expertise available to horse owners who want to learn different horse training tips and secrets and how to solve behaviorial issues with horses. For information visit his website at www.SuperStarsofHorseTraining.com.