8 Reasons to train your own horse

Have you ever looked at your trainer riding your horse and wondered ‘why can’t I do that’? Or wanted your horse to do something, such as load on to a trailer, only to have to get someone else to help you?

If so, the problem may be the fact that you are not training your own horse. Here are 8 reasons why you should:

You are responsible for your horses’ welfare

Owning a horse means taking responsibility, not only for its maintenance such as providing food, water and shelter but also its welfare in more general terms. Looking at the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, freedom from hunger and thirst and freedom to express normal behaviours and freedom from disease, are covered in how you choose to manage and care for your horse. However, the three Freedoms pertaining to freedom from discomfort, pain, injury, fear and distress are influenced by how we interact with the horse. How we train the horse can determine whether or not these basic welfare requirements are met.

Training that involves pain, discomfort, fear or distress is, sadly, not unusual. It is important to look critically at each new training method you encounter. The International Society for Equitation Science (ISES) has a set of Training Principles that enables you to assess any lesson or method. Click here to see the principles: https://equitationscience.com/equitation/principles-of-learning-theory-in-equitation.

Learning how to regulate your horse’s emotional level

Training is all about being able to raise and lower the emotional level of the horse. You need to know how to do this, not the trainer. How does your horse react when you raise the emotional level too high? Or, when the emotional level is too low? How can you tell when your horse is in the engagement zone?

When training goes wrong, when the horse gets anxious, tries to escape or simply nods off in the middle of the lesson, what has usually gone wrong is that the emotional level has been too high (anxiety) or too low (falling asleep). Training doesn’t require a big increase in emotional level (see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0174313) but it does require some to engage the horse with learning. It is only by training a particular horse that we learn just how that horse’s emotional level varies and where it is ideal for relaxed and engaged learning.

Working in the engagement zone

When you train your own horse, you are developing what I call a ‘bubble of communication’. This means you are constantly communicating with your horse with pressure-release and response-reward patterns. Your horse is attentive and responsive to your signals. The engagement zone is like a bubble because a bubble is fragile and must be cared for to maintain and strengthen.

A horse in the bubble of the engagement zone is relaxed and listening, unlike the anxious or distressed horse. When you lose this relaxation, you know your horse is no longer in the engagement zone. Learning how to get your horse into the engagement zone, where the horse is a little more emotional that it would be if it were standing in the field but not so emotional as to be anxious, is the real art of training. By learning how to get your horse to such a receptive state and keep it in the engagement zone while working, you become your horse’s best possible trainer.

Building a bond

When you train a horse, according to the ISES Training Principles, you build a strong bond with the animal. Your training develops patterns of pressure-release and response-reward in the horse and teaches the horse to relax and look for answers when learning rather than seeking escape options – a response to confusion, distress or anxiety. When using evidence-based, ethical training methods, the more you teach your horse, the stronger this bond becomes.

Locating training holes

Your horse’s education rarely progresses on a perfectly linear upward trajectory. At times, especially as training becomes more complex and challenging for the hors