Calm, consistency, and praise.

Three key words in my world when it comes to training a young horse. It’s important to keep in mind that when you start training a young horse, it’s not just about teaching various exercises; it’s fundamentally about teaching the horse how to learn. This means that the horse needs to learn to find calmness in a training situation before you begin teaching more specific things. This applies to 99% of the horses I work with. For me, the initial focus is on integrating training into the horse’s everyday routine. I ensure that, as much as possible, the environment around the horse is calm so that even before the actual training begins, I have already worked on creating favorable conditions for a productive session. The horse needs to learn, over time, to be able to ignore distractions around it, but you also need to set the bar according to where the horse is. Many of the horses I work with have very little focus on the trainer to begin with, so if there are a thousand distractions, I don’t make it easier for the horse to focus, which would mean I’d have to be more assertive and give clearer signals at a time when the horse already feels insecure and out of its comfort zone. It might be necessary for me to step up regardless, but there’s no reason not to set myself up for success as much as possible or make it harder than necessary for the horse. Once the horse trusts me and understands the signals I give and can find calm in them, it will automatically also find calm when I place it in new situations.

This is why consistency is also an essential part of creating a harmonious and well-balanced horse. Almost all young horses that come into my hands have a lot of tension in their bodies, which often affects their minds. Just like with us, when we need to release tension, it’s really hard to succeed if you only practice yoga twice intensively in a week. Initially, to get the body to cooperate, it needs to be done frequently – as the tension eases, the amount of training can be adjusted. Similarly, if you need to learn to stand up straight, you have to be reminded constantly at first, but as new muscles and habits are formed, it becomes less necessary to be reminded all the time. The same goes for the horse: once you have reset and dealt with old tensions, negative behavior, etc., you can begin to adjust the training load based on the actual energy the horse has on any given day.

Additionally, it’s important to remember that the longer there is between training sessions, the harder it can be physically for the horse to get back into it. You may have more excess energy to work through, which means the horse becomes more burdened (with young horses, it's especially important to consider that they are still growing and not everything is "in place" yet), or you may need longer sessions to achieve the same amount of training, which can ruin the young horse’s desire to do anything because it’s simply too exhausting to be fun. For me, the main focus when training a young horse is to opt for regular training, where the goal is to improve a little bit each time, so the horse doesn’t become sore or overworked and consequently say no to the next session because I was too eager. Most horses fundamentally want to please, and it’s easier to make a training session enjoyable for the horse if it’s already engaged with the task from the start.

A third extremely important factor is praise at the right moments. The horse remembers the feeling it had during a training session, so if you make it a truly pleasant experience for the horse to have a rider, that’s the feeling it will associate with the rider. The same goes for everything else in training, whether it’s the saddle, bridle, etc. However, it’s important to remember that for a horse to accept a reward, it needs to have a positive respect for you and be attentive to you. As with so many other things, it doesn’t help if someone praises your work if they can’t hear you – just like you can only see what your eyes are looking at. A horse wants a "job," and most horses benefit greatly from being stimulated – the key is just to be mindful of saying no on behalf of the horse, meaning that you need to know your horse and understand where its physical and mental boundaries lie when you try to expand them. This way, the horse doesn’t have to say no itself because either it’s too physically demanding or it has no chance of understanding what you want because you may have skipped some intermediate steps along the way.