Image via WikipediaWhen you have a horse, it is very important that you understand several basic parts of horse anatomy to be sure that you are caring for your horse in the best way possible. You can do this through studying on your own or you can talk to your vet to learn the very basics.

First of all, you should know that laying down is very hard on your horse. Horse’s bodies are not meant to lay down for long periods of time, which is why you need to know that if your horse is laying down, there is something wrong with him. If a horse lays down for any amount of time they are risking damaging their internal organs, so if you see your horse laying down, you have to be sure to call your vet immediately, because it is an emergency.

Your horse’s legs are the most important part of his body. Not only do they carry all of his weight, and support him while he is sleeping or while he is awake, but they are very thin and are easy to damage. If a horse gets a broken leg, there is going to be a lot of problems because he won’t be able to lie down to mend it, which means that the mending process can be quite painful. What this means for you is that you have to be sure to always, always take care of your horse’s legs and feet at all times. This is very important as a horse owner.

Another thing that you have to be sure to take care of when it comes to your horse’s anatomy is his skin and his coat. These are things that you have to focus on because they keep out a lot of problems and keep your horse happy and healthy. This means that you have to be sure to focus on these things. You should be grooming your horse each day, and especially should be grooming him after each time you ride him. You always want to be sure that you are doing the best that you can do to care for all aspects of your horse.

It is also important to note that a horse has a very advanced heart and lung system that can allow them to keep running or walking for along time. This doesn’t mean that your horse never needs to rest; it simply means that you can exercise your horse more than you are going to be able to exercise yourself! Keep all of these things in mind if you own a horse.

Image via WikipediaWhenever you have little ones that enter your life or the life of your animal, there is going to be some excitement. Caring for fouls is a very important part of raising horses, and it is something that you should know a lot about right form the get go.

First of all, you have to make sure that you have tended to the mother before she gives birth. You want to be sure that you are feeding her a food that is going to help her maintain good health, and that you are giving her things that help her to gain the strength as well as the nutrients that she is going to need to be the kind of mother she should be. You are going to want to make sure that you talk to a vet if you have never taken care of a mother horse before, and you are going to be sure that you get a vet’s advice if you have never had a foul before.

When the time comes for the foul to be born, you want to help as much as you can, but mostly you want to stay out of the way. There are some circumstances where you are going to have to help, which is why it is important that you talk to a vet about what is normal for a horse giving birth and what is not normal, and you need to make sure that you understand how to tell what is normal and not. Then, you want to be there, but at a distance, and you need to be ready to help if the mother needs it. You should have prepared for this by talking to your vet and by having things on hand that you might need.

When it comes time for the mother to give birth, if you don’t ‘need to help you still want to be on hand just in case. Then, you should be able to witness her and foul and watch what happens next. With fouls, as well as with other animals, if at all possible you want to leave the mother and the baby to do the things that they have to do. Animals have been doing this for a long time and it will often go best if you let them alone. If you have to help, try to be as discrete as possible, and be sure to do only the things that you absolutely know how to do.

by Jan Dawson
President, AAHS
[reproduced from the Winter 2001 issue of Caution:Horses]

When we walk into the arena do we always know what we want to have accomplished by the time we walk out? This is a critical question, one that is easy for the well prepared, professional instructor to answer but difficult for the instructor who is flying blindly.

If the instructor has taken the time to write the program down lesson by lesson then s/he has a fair idea of what is on the schedule for each day. This does not mean that the instructor has no flexibility, or that s/he gets only one day on each lesson, or that each lesson can only be taught one way. It simply means that, just like a professional classroom teacher, or any professional teacher, she stays on schedule and on task with a specific focus in mind.

Lacking that specific focus is the fatal flaw in many a lesson. It is the difference between the lesson that is nothing more than a pony ride and the lesson where the student leaves the arena with increased skills and work to process for the next session.

Many instructors ask, “Why should I write this program down? I know it by heart. I have been teaching it for years.” One may have been teaching for years but when one attempts to put the program on paper, even with the help of a friend, one often finds that there are many muddled areas. What seemed so clear may suddenly be a bit confused. It is easy to say, “I really have this in hand; I just can’t write it down, but when I am in the arena it is all clear.” Is it really?

When we are in the arena, we have many ways to cover up the messy areas of our logic. We can postpone the exercise. We can go on to something else. We can blame the horse. We can leave out that step entirely. Or we can wait until the student figures the problem out for himself. How often do we hear, “Well, they are beginners, what do you expect.” Is the problem that we just cannot put the idea down on paper? Can do it in the arena but we just cannot put the ideas down the way we want?

Writing down a lesson plan is just about the best way to discover whether or not one truly understands the material. If the teacher has the material well under control it is no problem to write lesson plans and divide the plans into meaningful units with interesting activities and goals and sub-goals. If this cannot be efficiently done, then the teacher probably does not adequately understand the material.

If the material is understood, it should be possible for the student who just learned it to teach it to the next student in a clear and systematic manner. Of course, if the material was not presented that way in the first place then that won’t happen. Asking a student to teach something to another will let the instructor know quickly if s/he is making the material as clear as s/he thinks. This is a good test at any time to see if the students are learning what the teacher thinks they are learning.

Why not try it? First, try to write down the program from first mounting through first canter. Second, take any lesson and ask one student to teach what you have just taught to a new student or another student. Hint: If the teacher has to help…

Reprinted with permission of the copyright holder and the American Association for Horsemanship Safety.   P.O. Box 39, Fentress, TX 78622.

Image by Overmarslee via FlickrWhat About Discipline? by Jan Dawson, President, AAHS
[reproduced from fall 2001 Caution:Horses, Vol. 6, No. 3]

How hard should I beat my horse and how often? Sometimes I wonder if that is really a dumb question. The opposite might be this. How dangerous should I let my horse get before I do something about it?

I am always amazed at how far people will let things go with their horses before they draw the line. And I am not advocating corporal punishment for horses, far from it. But if the rider or handler doesn’t set limits early and stick to them then someone is going to have to explain things to the poor horse and that is what I really hate, because the horse doesn’t know what he did or that it was wrong.

It is sort of like a child: if Mom and Dad set limits, if the limits make sense, if the limits are consistent, the kids won’t go to reform school.

On the other hand if the limits are here today and vague tomorrow then the kids know it may be worth the effort to try to wear Mom down, or play Dad off against Mom, or wait for a weak moment to get their way. Maybe they will go to juvenile hall.

Horses are not much different. If they know the rules and the rules are fair, if the rules make sense, if the rules are consistent, then the horse will be soft and easy. If not, that dumb, hard-headed, son-of-a-gun will be a rogue. (That’s where Bubba stands back and says, “I knowed I never shoulda bought him in the first place. There was just sumpthin’ about him…”)

Horses do not deal with frustration well at all. They need consistency. Consistently bad is even better, in some cases, than inconsistent. They also need to respect us. We must be the herd leaders. You know the saying, “If you are not the lead dog the view never changes.” Or the other favorite, “When the lowest horse in the pasture kicks you, what does that make you?”

To some people this means that we have to “show’em who’s boss.” I think not, but we do have to gain and retain their respect. Do we need to punish them? Rarely. Punishment has never been shown to be much use in discouraging mistakes. It seems only to have a useful purpose when discouraging aggressive behavior and then only when the aggression was unprovoked. Punishment will sometimes be beneficial in discouraging unwanted behavior as a crack of the behind as a horse gathers himself up to rear up but that is about the only time. In most cases it would be a band aid. The rider would be treating the symptom rather than the problem.

So how do we gain this respect? In most cases we can do it the same way we do with children, often without their knowledge that it is happening. When the young child keeps getting into things he shouldn’t we have learned to redirect his behavior and give him something more appropriate to do. When a horse puts his head down to eat grass it is a mistake to rip his mouth with a severe bit when there are other options.

What other options are there? First we have to agree on the problem. To many of us the problem is not that the horse is eating grass. The problem is that he has stopped his forward motion and that he has taken his attention off the rider. Punishment is a band aid. Redirection is better. Just push the horse forward over his mouth and give him something to do.

I recently was in a barn with a young woman whose very nice horse was squeezing her up against the hitching rail. She pushed against him, told him “no” in a barely audible voice, then picked up a whip and gave him a bit of a tap. He fired at her and she ran. Now she was crying because he had kicked at her and he had learned that he could make her yield. The really sad thing was that this is not a bad horse.

There are lots of things that we could have done but the answer had to be one that would work for this owner and this horse, not for us with this horse. We recommended the John Lyons “Leading and Loading” video and taught her to use the method with another horse. We re-schooled her horse then put the two of them together. The horse now knows the rules. She knows that the rules have to be rules. Now the horse is relaxed and is not being nagged all the time.

I witnessed another case of “punishment” in the name of training. This was a situation in which a small woman was tacking up a large Oldenberg gelding. The tack fit fine and the horse had no back problems or any other physical problems but as soon as the saddle was placed on the horse’s back the horse began to fidget and when the woman began to cinch up the horse he started to paw. She took the bat she kept handy and gave him a good swat and he quit and she cinched him up tight right there in the cross ties. This was repeated for several days, sometimes even resulting in the horse’s raising a hind leg to the woman. He never kicked but each time he raised his leg she hit him smartly and jerked the cinch on up.

We had the horse in the barn for a couple of weeks before the behavior went away. We never laid a hand on the horse. He simply needed to be cinched up more slowly so we attached the girth and did other things. We tightened the girth in several stages and the behavior went away on its own. Now the horse can be cinched up fairly normally at home or at a show by just giving him a minute or two with a fairly loose girth to adjust.

I think the most common misguided punishment that I see is in the use of artificial aids. The problem is not that they are used but that they are used improperly. The whip and the spur are designed to reinforce the leg but all too often they are used to replace the leg. The result is a horse that not only does not respond to the leg but that is forced to accept the whip and spur as the regular aid. Unfortunately for the horse, the rider who makes the mistake of substituting the artificial aids for the natural ones rather than using the artificial ones to reinforce the natural ones is seldom skilled in the use of either

Lack of skill in the use of the artificial aids will often result in their overuse or unreasonable use. If there is nothing that the horse can do to make the rider stop kicking or using the whip, the horse will stop responding to either. At the absolute extreme the horse will sometimes refuse to move at all and may even lay down. Too often this situation is not recognized for what it is. It did not develop overnight. It developed because the rider did not make clear rules for the horse and stick to them. The rider also was lax in developing her own skills so that when the horse cooperated, she missed it and went on pushing. This severe a mistake will mentally destroy a sensitive horse. It can make them extremely dangerous. It is not an uncommon occurrence. Few horses are born aggressive. Some are made so. Many are made mental wrecks. All are accomplished by insensitive riders.

Gain a seat. Learn the aids. Listen to your horse. There isn’t much else.

Reprinted with permission of the copyright holder and the American Association for Horsemanship Safety.   P.O. Box 39, Fentress, TX 78622.

Image via Wikipedia

Anyone who’s honest with themselves and has been in the horse business for very long can look back and count quite a few mistakes. It’s the old “if I knew then what I know now” thing. Honest mistakes are OK. Everybody makes them, so don’t beat yourself up too much about the things you do wrong. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes.

Plute was a very smart horse. He was a short, muscular mahogany bay with a dished face, chipmunk cheeks, tiny ears and a big, wise eye. He’d been trained by Dale Wilkinson and had gone on to become a winning cutting horse. Then his owner sort of semi-retired Plute and turned him over to his kids to ride.

One day after a clinic I did for the Erie Hunt and Saddle Club, Plute’s owner approached me and commented that he liked my way with horses. He told me he had a good cutting horse that had gotten spoiled by his kids so he wouldn’t canter anymore. The horse was a Poco Bueno son, he said, whose sister was winning lots so he wanted me to get the horse loping good for a sale that was coming up. What he didn’t tell me was the reason the kids weren’t cantering him anymore was that Plute wanted to buck into the canter. If you didn’t let him buck, he wouldn’t canter.

I told Plute’s owner I didn’t know anything about cutting horses but he said that was no problem. He’d arrange for me to take Plute to Dale’s so I could learn all about cutting horses. So I hauled Plute to Dale’s place feeling pretty good about myself. Plute’s owner said I was good, I was holding an Arabian judge’s card and I figured I had a bigger business than Dale’s. In my mind at the time, all that made me a big dog.

Dale, on the other hand, saw a kid who needed a lesson and figured Plute was the one to give it to him. He sent me into a herd of cattle on the horse and when I asked Plute to canter, all I can say is that I survived. Ole Plute sent me up in the air and when I came back down, I was behind the saddle. He bucked again and I wound up in front. Somehow I managed to stay on board but it wasn’t a pretty ride.

While I was there, Dale asked me what my program was. It took me awhile to figure out what he meant. At that point in my career I was pretty much doing things as they came up. I hadn’t defined a series of training steps that would get me to a particular goal.

If I had a program at all at that point , I guess you could’ve called it “spang” training. That means you surprise the horse and the horse reacts and spangs back or sidewise or wherever. Then you know the horse is paying attention to you. And I thought if you knew how to punish a horse when it didn’t behave the way you wanted, you were a good trainer.

Now if Plute had been a horse that was flighty, or tried to fight me, or sulked, or tried to get even or had any other kind of dramatic reaction, I probably wouldn’t have learned as much from him as I did. Plute refused to spang. He’d just quit, put his head up in the air, roll that big eye and wait til I was done fussing. Gradually he taught me that a whole lot of fuss doesn’t really mean much unless you know how to shape it. And then he taught me that a whole lot of fuss wasn’t really very respectful of the horse. And it finally dawned on me that respectful got you a whole lot farther than spang.

I came to respect Plute as I might respect an older man as a mentor. I guess you could say we did some male bonding and became real buddies. He got me started on the program we now call heeding here at Meredith Manor. Heeding is about constantly reading the horse’s emotions and controlling or responding to those emotions in a way that changes and shapes what the horse feels. Respect and compassion for horses is necessary to train them but it’s not enough to train them. Heeding can take you from compassion to connection. Then you have to use that connection to create shapes that the horse can feel. Create the feel in the horse of any number of shapes you want him to take and now you have a trained horse.

We can all look back with regret at things we did when we first started working with horses. But if the horses can forgive us, we should be able to forgive ourselves, too, and move on. Just pay attention to what works, learn from your mistakes, count your horses as teachers and keep improving your program.

© 1997-2002 Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre. All rights reserved.
Instructor and trainer Ron Meredith has refined his “horse logical” methods for communicating with equines for over 30 years as president of Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre, an ACCET accredited equestrian educational institution.