Give your horse a break..
Call me old school but I like to hang out on various internet forums. Some of these forums are completely bonkers and over the top. Others are more horse friendly. At least if one believe horse friendly means a gathering of horse people talking about horses.
Today I came across a forum thread where someone refers to their young horse as unwilling to work and shutting down in the middle of their training session.
Seems this is done by the horse just stops to work and don’t listen to the different aids that comes along in being a rider.
You know the weight, your voice, your leg and your hand.
Most likely there is also some kind of artificial aid involved in this package. Like a whip or similar.
How old is your horse?
Anyhow, the thread gets going.
The heat is on.
Some of the things people bring up is the age of the horse.
How old is it?
Good question, the answer turns out to be 4.
Others point out the horse may be tired and need to do shorter training sessions. Again, a good point. At least if one bothered to get any back ground information what these allegedly 20 minutes training sessions consist.
No one asked that question.
Neither is anybody making any comment about the natural aids of the rider. Does the horse understand these aids? Does the horse understand what is being asked of it?
If one have a 4 year old that “shuts down” after 20 minutes of training [what ever that means] something’s off! It’s that simple. Either the work one put in is wrong, or the horse doesn’t understand what it is being asked to do.
Incorrect work could be galloping for 20 minutes straight, or curl the horse up on a circle.
Not understanding the rider’s naturals aids could come down to bad education.
Cause 20 minutes of work for a 4 year old on the edge of turning 5 really isn’t that much some people in this discussion are claiming. Especially when the horse only seem to be ridden 4-5 days a week. Which is actually a quite sound pattern.
So something is off, and sometimes I really wish for people to read up on the topic via good old fashion books and also asking a professional trainer for advise in how to train their horses. That could save so much heartache for both horse and rider.
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