In any sort of coaching endeavour, the exercises involved must be designed around a group of goals. Every piece of training must have a required result that’s to be attained. This truth is no less pertinent for the coaching of horses.

I like it the way a buddy puts it. This buddy, the world’s pre-eminent author on training, claims that “If you do not know where you are going, you never will know when you get there”. I find a great illustration of the reality behind this statement in the history of America. Going west was a dream for hundreds of thousands of people that basically had no clue where they were going. They were going west because they were seeking greener pastures, but they actually did not know what they would find and where they might find it. Many of them settled down because they found what appeared to be ideal spots, a few of them set down roots because they became incapable of proceeding any farther and a few of them decided on California as that was as far as “west” would go.

It continues to amaze me that so many folk begin to train their horses without clearly defined objectives. What is rather more superb is that a large amount of pro trainers are guilty of this oversight. They just do not seem to be aware of the potentially serious results their approaches can have.

You really need to have your training aims clearly set in 3 categories: the required end result; the factors for deciding when the result has been achieved; and the conditions that should prevail when the result has been achieved.

Let me give you a clearer picture.

When we discuss desired end results, we are talking about objectives like, say, a horse loading into a trailer without trepidation. When this is the objective, the pony is trained to get over its nervous tension about getting into trailers and accepting trailers as being harmless conveniences. The final result is accomplished when the pony loads without demur and without pushing and prodding.

The desired factors that have to be met include the horse loading without demur, without pushing and prodding, and without jumping or hustling into the trailer. Associated criteria would include the pony getting into the trailer with the lead rope tied at the neck, simply responding to a verbal cue. Obviously, you would have different criteria for different training exercises.

We now come to prevailing conditions. The quality of a performance can be contaminated or boosted by a set of abnormal circumstances. Taking the example of the horse loading into the trailer, is he doing it just when there is not any distraction. Is he capable of doing it when other horses around are showing laborious objection to loading, say after a show has ended? Is he equally at home with an open stock type trailer of 16 feet and a smaller trailer for 2 horses?

Obviously, you are covering all grounds when you know beforehand what the perfect end results which you desire are, what the ideal criteria are that decide their quality and what the perfect circumstances are that determine their effectiveness. That way, you can finely tune your training to just the sort of end results which you desire.

Horses are Heather Toms passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100s of articles with other horse lovers, like all things about circle y saddles