When Your Horse Gets Worse

Welcome to your next issue of "Horse Class," your how-to source for equine tips, tricks and solid foundational training brought to you by horsemanship101.com and John Lyons Certified Trainer Keith Hosman. Note that articles (as credited) in certain premier issues were co-written by Josh Lyons (John's son) - and much credit is due to Josh's amazing insights. Did you "teach" your horse to pick up his left lead two months ago - but he still misses and picks up his right? Is he great at home - but a pain in the show arena? Horses go through learning stages - and the two just described probably skipped a few steps. This issue's article "Good Now Bad Later" teaches you how to make your training stick. Plus: Is your horse gettin' jigging with ya out on the trail? Does it dance around, just looking for trouble? Take a quick five minutes to read our second article - and then teach your horse to use his power for good, not evil. - Good Now Bad Later: Why Does This Happen? - An Easy Way To Look At Training: Redirecting Pressure Both articles are sampled below. To read each in its entirety, simply follow the links provided or visit Horsemanship101.com/Articles. And remember, our earlier issues can be found 24/7 at Horsemanship101.com/Articles.

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Good Now Bad Later

When you train your horse, both of you have to sweat. And you have to stay focused. Keep Flicka going on a specific exercise(s) and keep her going consistently until you see improvement. When you get on your horse to train it, you've got a job to do. It's your mission to see some improvement, no matter how small, before you get off. After all, if you're training, you're not joy riding. Joy riding is when you're walking down the trail, laughing and hanging out with your friends and your horse is traveling on a loose rein. Joy rides happen after – and because of – your training and hard work. It's all the hard work you do that gets you to the point where you're safely able to go out and trail ride or show your horse. How long should you train when you do climb up there? The simple answer is that it's not the amount of time spent that trains your horse; its' the quality of time. It's not a matter of riding your horse a certain number of times per week for a particular amount of time. It's how consistent you are when you ride. "Consistency" means you don't stop after two minutes and talk to friends. It means you maintain your concentration. It means you do the exercise, pause a couple of seconds, then repeat it... over and over and over. read the rest of this article

An Easy Look At Training

Your horse is like a garden hose. Pressure, or energy, flows through it from one end to the other like water through a hose. To stop the water you wouldn't simply crimp the hose in half – and to stop your horse you wouldn't simply pull back on both reins. You won't stop the water and you won't stop the horse. You'll get leaks. Until you teach your horse to deal with the pressure. Crimp the hose and you get leaks, pull back on both reins and your horse "gets leaks." He'll leak that energy. Body parts will shoot out to the left, to the right, up or down. He'll jig to the right or left, bolt, shoot backward, buck or rear. keep reading this article