When most people decide to get a dog it is for a companion animal. Some dogs are expected to perform certain duties like barking at intruders, playing with the kids, entertaining their family with funny antics and maybe compete in agility or obedience. Many new dog owners will invest in at least basic obedience classes to insure their new family member has some manners like peeing OUTSIDE and staying out of the trash.
The family dog is an animal that spends the majority of its day with you making teaching it fairly easy once YOU attend classes and learn how and what to teach it. Most owners accept that it takes 6-8wks, one class a week, to teach not only the dog but also themselves. And with it taking at least two courses to gain control and up to 4 to advance to a level of rewarding control of the dog. In fact, I have not met one casual dog owner that would go to the instructor, hand over their new dog, tell the instructor to make a finished obedience dog in 6wks and expect to get back a dog that flawlessly obeys every command the owner chirps out. It would be unreasonable to expect of the dog when it should take upwards from 12wks for an expert to get a dog from nothing to a finished obedience dog.
Yet, people ask that of their horse and horse trainers. I see all too often a new horse owner who knows little about riding and nothing about training expecting to ‘train’ it themselves. They run into issues, the horse gets the upper hand and learns all types of bad behaviors and their ‘horse friends’ tell them to send it to the trainer for a month to ‘fix’ it. They expect the trainer to produce for them a cookie cutter horse that will respond with perfection to their every command. I have found that while it might be possible to perform such magic on some horses, it is not the horse that needs the 30 days training.
First ride on her newly started horse taking the time to learn proper communication skills.
When someone talks of taking a horse to the trainer they are thinking in terms of number of months or days. They need to be thinking in terms of issues or cues they are wanting to have taught to the horse AND themselves. I talk myself blue in the face about how I will have no problem getting a horse to perform all that the owner wants, but it will do them no good if THEY do not learn to change how they perform around the horse. What takes me a month to teach the horse can take the owner a week or less to remove.
On average it takes 2000 repetitions to break a habit and 2000 repetitions to create a new one. It takes an average of 10,000 repetitions to make an action an unconscious act. When you look at it this way you will begin to understand how important it is for you to learn with your horse, the new behaviors that will keep you headed in the right direction. You also understand how long it can take to ‘change’ you and your horses’ responses to situations. Where most people will commit to spending 20mins a day on each obedience lesson with their dog it is much harder to get that commitment from horse owners. Reason being, the dog is in the cool/warm house while the horse is outside in the cold/heat. Many horse owners find the ‘basic’ horse training boring when compared to riding on trail whereas they are thrilled when a dog will just walk next to them without pulling.
Many horse owners would not believe the amount of success they would achieve if they would stay focused on themselves and their horses learning one lesson at a time by merely spending 20mins a day on that lesson. Starting with basic obedience, yes walking on the lead without pulling. While the horse does not sit, it can stop and stand in a proper position as well as learn to release to pressure, stand tied, lead in a proper position, and so much more. These lessons will not only teach a communication start for horse and rider, it will transfer to saddle work and make the horse a safer and more enjoyable partner to be around. There comes a time when the owner will want to be out working and spending time with the horse making the bond tighter and more rewarding.
