If you like horses then one of the most exciting experiences you can have is to train a young horse. If you are going to train a young horse, you need to have consistency, patience and tenacity.
Regularly a horse owner isn’t aware that they need to work with both the mare and foal for young horse training to be successful and typically just focus on training the foal. But, it is vital that you don’t forget the mare when training the foal because they are biologically and emotionally associated.
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Grow a Relationship
There are many parallels between a human infant and a young horse. Any infant species requires a relationship to be started as soon as doable. Young horses start to develop relationships with other horses aptly away in addition to any humans that are around them. The trainer needs to focus on developing this relationship as soon as the horse is born.
A excellent training method to consider is natural horsemanship, which focuses on transparent interaction with horses. Through this horse training method, a trainer can improve the effectiveness of their training by improving their ability to communicate with the horse. Foal imprint training the most run of the mill method that trainers use.
This is essentially a process that involves bonding young horses with their handlers the same way a mother imprints on her horse baby. The best way to develop a relationship with a new horse is by spending as much time as doable with them.
Early Halter Training
Training a young horse should focus on developing a foundation for future horse training. The main method of interaction for a mounted rider is difficulty. To help a young horse know difficulty from the very start you should start halter training sooner.
This can also help show a foal that you cannot get away when something scares them. This can help a foal to confront what scares them since the trainer can help establish boundaries.
Introduce New Things
When you train a young horse, it is a excellent thought to try to introduce them to something new each day. It doesn’t have to be something major, but can be something as small as taking them to an unfamiliar area, using a different brush or introducing a new horse or human to the area.
Some larger introductions you can make include a bath, picking the hooves, running clippers near the ears and trailer loading. Any of these activities can help a foal become desensitized and help them become less frightened with new experiences. By doing this the foal can start to learn that the trainer doesn’t want to harm them.
Go Slowly
At some point in your life, you have likely veteran sensory overload. Trainers need to know that young horses can experience this as well so it is vital not to push a lot of new sensations and experiences at once otherwise you will delay the training process.
Rather you want to limit the training to just fifteen minute increments. If a horse doesn’t accept the new experience within this time then you should come back to it the next day. Once a your horse turns a year ancient, you can increase training session durations to a half an hour.
Basic Horse Training Aids To Help You Get Started
All horse training is serious business. The average animal outweighs the trainer by an impressive margin, and the horse training aids you choose can help prevent serious injury.
Rope Halter
The most basic of horse training aids is the halter and lead rope combination. A rope halter will facilitate tying and leading, and works better than a flat halter because it will prevent leaning while at the same time being comfortable for the horse. The halter is placed on the animal’s head.
Lead Rope
The lead rope is attached to the halter and used to direct or “steer” the horse. In many ways this horse training aid is like a leash.
Lunge Line
The term lunging refers to the set of training skills used to teach a horse direction, posture, and how to yield or move off pressure. And the lunge line is the training aid used to accomplish this.
Progress String
In most cases, this horse training aid is a thin, braided rope with an eye splice at one end and leather “popper” at the other. This device is used in many ways.
You can apply a progress string as a visual aid. For instance, to let the horse know when he is in your space.
Also you can use this tool to make physical contact from the saddle. The progress string is not heavy enough to cause a horse any pain, but the popper end make s a distinct noise when applied, and can work in place of a crop.
Large Rubber Ball
Perhaps a less traditional horse training aid is a large rubber ball, like the kind you can buy at any toy store. This aid is great for conditioning the horse’s nerves.
You can roll the ball around in front of the horse, and even roll it gently into the horse’s legs. Also, while in the saddle, you can direct the horse into the ball and gently guide the animal to move the ball around with its legs.
This sort of training will help you desensitize your horse to unexpected movement and objects, thus decreasing the likelihood of getting spooked.
Plastic Tarp
Another tool for developing the horse’s courage, a common plastic tarp is an inexpensive and effective training aid. Start by laying the tarp out in the training area and leading your horse over it, or even asking the horse to walk over the tarp on its own.
As you know, a tarp can get pretty noisy when walked on. And it will create the illusion of strange footing.
You could even slowly work into an exercise where you place the tarp over your horse’s back, possibly completely covering him or her with the tarp. This not only develops the horses’ trust in you, it also simulates noisy brush and other riding situations and helps desensitize the horse to such conditions.
This list of horse training aids will give you plenty to work with in the beginning. Of course as training progresses you will need more advanced tools and tactics.
Training your young horse can be a wonderful experience and is simpler to do as you gain more experience. Handlers need to realize that mistakes are going to be made the first time, no matter which training method you choose to use. Once you find the aptly training method, you can continue to use it and start building on your experience.
