Look for progress, not perfection.
When working with horses do you often find yourself expecting things to go just right? Often times when training a horse it just dosn’t go that way with every session, especially when working with horses that are very intelligent, sensitive, or performance bred. What we do with these special and talented horses is we focus on small amounts of progression over a period of time based on the horses developed understanding and physical ability.
What can you focus on to see the progress? Watch for the horses feet to step through, or cross over, watch for the horse to soften from the nose all the way to the tail, you will start to see willingness, you may begin to see elevation of the shoulder, elevation of the ribs, or even something as simple as an extension of the horses strides. These are just a few things to watch for while working your horse and understanding how we can control these things with subtle cues with relaxation throughout the horse.
Some sessions will seem less than desirable because the horses in training are often undomesticated animals and it’s up to us to work through their issues and find solutions to the problems. But always remember that there is always something good that comes out of each training session if you know what to look for, but we always want to be sure that we have worked through the issues that arise and end the session on a good note. This will set the horse up for a win.
Once you have acquired a trained eye for seeing the progress of the horse your working with, we want to encourage you to celebrate the smallest amounts of progress and focus on the little things. Celebrate both you and your horses accomplishments often, slowly build off of them. Learning to see the good in a horse, trainer, or a training session will help you progress to the next level. If have issues that you don’t have an understanding for yet, be sure to take advantage of our horse and rider assessment on our services page and we will be happy to help you continue forward.
