John Lyons

May 13, 2008

CLOUD 9

HORSE CARE AND EQUINE MASSAGE

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I was delighted to receive an email from Keith Hosman, Certified Horse Trainer requesting permission to feature Horse Training Articles 101 on Cloud 9 Horse Care and Equine Massage. Of course I said yes, my viewers get the best. I am a syndicated publisher for John Lyons Horse Training articles.

HORSE TRAINING ARTICLES 101

featuring the methods of John Lyons.

Written by his son Josh Lyons

and Certified Trainer Keith Hosman

Keith Hosman: If your horse won't speed up, slow down, stop or turn, you missed the latest training methods from Josh and John Lyons. Have you lost your confidence? Want a horse to brag about? Invest one weekend to make big changes with John Lyons Certified Trainer, Keith Hosman. Keith is based near San Antonio, TX and is available for clinics, private sessions and training. He frequently partners with fellow Certified Trainer, Patrick Benson for clinics and demonstrations — with nearly 30 on his 2006 schedule.

No part of this article may be reproduced without the express written permission of Josh Lyons and Keith Hosman. To contact us regarding reprints or syndication of our articles (in print or online), please contact us via Horsemanship101

Four Things You Need To Train Your Horse:

Motivation, Spot, Direction, Reward

Training a horse is pretty simple. It's four things: motivator, spot, direction, reward. That's all training a horse is. First, motivation. Do you have a job? What if I asked you to quit your job? What if I said I was going to hire you and give you two bucks an hour. Would you do it? Working with a horse is very similar. You're asking the horse to quit his job and come work for you. Their job is to get out of that arena as fast as they can, or to get back to that stall or to their buddy horse or find food. They have all kinds of jobs – and their jobs keep changing.

Our job is to create a motivator that tells the horse to quit his job and come work for us. Quit trying to get out of the gate; quit trying to get to the other horse. Quit trying to pick up your left lead and come work for me. Some horses you can hire for two bucks an hour and some horses you have to pay forty an hour. That's just the way it happens. Some horses you really gotta motivate; you gotta say, "No, I really want you to come work for me."

It's important that you understand that I'm not asking them to come work for me. I'm not thinking that they "want to" or they "should." They don't want to; I can promise you that. They'd much rather be left alone. So, I have to find a way to motivate them.

The second thing I'll work with is a spot, a part of the horse. Not the whole horse, but a specific part of the horse. If I can control that particular part, then all of a sudden the feet start to follow. The third part of training a horse is direction. Where do I want the horse – or that part of the horse – to go? Each part of the horse can go six different directions: right, left, forward, backward, up and down. The fourth and final thing when training a horse is reward. When the horse finally moves the correct direction, how do I say "Yes, that's what I want"?

You have to keep horse training just that simple. What makes training hard is when you let everything else interfere, other people, other horses, noises, moving objects, etcetera. It gets hard when you let anything else take your attention away from training. Don't let that happen. You've got to stay focused and actively riding your horse. The moment you look up and look at another horse, you're riding that horse, not your horse. If your horse acts up and threatens to buck, the moment you look at the ground and stop riding, then you've chosen the spot where you'll hit the ground. You must ride your horse.

How To Get Your Horse's Attention: Recognition, Response, Control

A "give" is three things: recognition, response and control. First, a horse has to recognize the signal, which is pretty simple. It could be anything: it could be picking up the rein, it could be putting your leg on the horse. That's your signal, your "cue." He first has to recognize that. Second he has to respond to it – and third, he has to give control of that part of his body over to you. Remember: Recognition, response, control.

I could walk by my horse all day and he doesn't have to even recognize that I'm here – and it would be a waste of my time to ask him to do anything. But if I took a stick and started poking him, then all of a sudden it becomes a whole lot more important to the horse that "I'm here." When you ask a horse to do something, a lot of other things are going to draw his attention and it's important that you become more important, no matter what it takes. The horse has to fully recognize that you're there. That's important, otherwise, you can't get to the next step: You can't get him to respond in a certain way.

You've all heard that you want to get your horse's attention first. That's nonsense. We don't care about the horse's attention; we really don't. I don't expect the horse to think about me before he does something. Have you ever been on a trail ride with your horse when the horse did everything you wanted him to do? What were you doing? You were looking around, talking to people, enjoying the ride. Did you care for even one moment what your horse was thinking? No, you didn't, because he was doing exactly what you were asking him to do. You didn't care what he was thinking because there he was, walking down the trail, turning right when you asked him to turn right, stopping when you asked him to stop. You didn't care at all what he was thinking. You care when the horse either does – or does not – stop when you ask him to stop or turn when you ask him to turn. Getting his attention is a bi-product of training, of improving his performance. The better your horse stops or turns when you ask him to, the more of his attention you get and the more control you have.

When you first go out to ride, you're not going to have your horse's attention. Your horse is going to be looking at all the other horses and looking around the arena. You're not going to have any "attention" whatsoever. We don't need his attention; we need his performance. We need him to turn right when we ask him to turn right and to turn left when we ask him to turn left. Concentrate on making those turns better because, again, as the turns get better you'll get more "attention."

An Exercise When You Can't Ride:

Teach Yourself What a "Give" Feels Like

To train your horse correctly you first need to know what a "give" feels like. To do this you have to raise your expectations. A horse can only ever be as good as we expect it to be.

Take your halter attached to your lead rope and throw the halter portion away from you onto the ground. Throughout this exercise imagine yourself on your horse's back: You're going to pretend like you are riding. Take your left hand and hold the lead rope as if it's the left rein. Pull the halter slowly toward yourself.

Concentrate. Feel how much pressure it takes to bring that rope toward you. You should feel on your pinky how many ounces it takes. Throw it back out and do it again. This time close your eyes and really concentrate. If you get this lesson, horse training gets a whole lot easier. Really focus on what it feels like. How many ounces is it taking to bring that halter back to you? Think of a specific number. How many pounds? How many ounces? One or two? 5 pounds or 5 ounces?

How would you like your horse to be that soft? A pound or two doesn't seem so bad, does it? Actually, it's terrible. Having to put a pound or two of pressure on the rein to get it to "come back to you" is just terrible. Take the halter off the lead rope now and throw the rope back out, snap end first.

Do the same thing, drag the snap back to you. How does that feel? It feels pretty light, right? You feel a big difference. But that's still terrible. Now take the lead rope and throw the opposite end out, the end without the snap. That feels really light. It feels like nothing. It's still terrible.

The reason it's terrible is because when the horse really gives to you, there is no pull, zero. And it's not just neutral that you feel, but energy and movement coming back to you.

Now take the snap end of the lead rope and throw it back out. When it hits the ground, add as much pressure as you can to the rope – without moving the snap. Now a "give" is when you feel energy come up that rope. You don't pull back, you wait until energy comes up that rope. You feel energy come up that rope, and you let go. That's what you're waiting to feel when you're riding. You'll put pressure on your horse and when you feel energy come back to you, when you see a loop in that rein, that's when you let it go.

To make my point, think of it this way: When you reach to shake somebody's hand, what's the first thing the other person does after you put your hand out? They put their hand out. What if you asked somebody to raise your arm, to raise it up and down, away from your side – but you resisted? Is the exercise tough? The exercise itself isn't tough. The "toughness" is caused by the resistance. The exercise is easy. Keep that in mind when you begin an exercise: your horse is going to be stiff.

For more free horse training tips, or to find trainers living near you certified by "famous horse trainers" like John Lyons, Pat Parelli and Richard Shrake, visit Horsemanship101.

To find trainers living near you certified by John Lyons, Pat Parelli or Richard Shrake - or to get more tips on training difficult horses, visit Horsemanship101.

How Long Should You Ride Your Horse?

A person is able to keep his attention span for about 20 minutes before something else enters his head. The coffee pot he left on will come flying into his head. A saddle sore, his wife, something. So the best amount of time to ride a horse is for about 20 minutes, then give yourself a 10 or 15 minute break and ride for 20 minutes again. If you know you're going to work for 20 minutes, then you can focus and stay working hard for 20 minutes. But during that twenty minutes, you want to make something better. Ask yourself "What can I make better?" Find one thing and work to make it better.

The key to training is to find improvement in what you're doing. That's what keeps you going, what keeps you wanting more. You should never be satisfied with what you've got or what you've done. "Satisfied" is another word for "content" and that's another word for "quitting." Then you can't go any farther. So never be satisfied and you'll find that there's always more to it, there's always more to want.

Always raise your expectations. The whole time you're riding, you need to be looking for the moment when you can begin asking for more. You're looking for something to make better. Not everything, just something. Say you're starting off and you're just kind of moving around. You're just out there changing directions. You don't care how it looks; you're just changing directions. After awhile you should begin staying in one direction till you see the nose start to go down, or you feel it start to soften up. Then build on that. Always ask for something to get better. Either he stays going the same speed, or his nose stays bent to the inside, or he softens up… something has got to get better. Stay there holding your horse until something improves, then release him and change directions.

The more the horse has to think about, the more chance the horse has to think, like trying to get to the other horse or trying to get out the gate or thinking about that back. The more you give him to think about, the less choices he has so give them something else to think about. Pick up speed, slow down, change directions. Soften his nose up, drops his ears, raise his ears, change direction, break at the poll.

Why You Should Use A Snaffle Bit To Train Your Horse

The snaffle bit allows me to work his head side to side and get him to begin to utilize his neck. The difference is that, with a snaffle bit, if I pick up the reins and I putt ten pounds of pressure on the rein, that's exactly what the horse feels, ten pounds of pressure. It's pound for pound. If I pull a pound here he feels a pound there. With a leverage bit, if I pull 1 pound he feels 10 pounds down there. That's a big difference. When I train my horses, I'm always using a snaffle bit. Do I ever ride in a shank bit? Yes, because I show my horses and when I show it's required.

What a leverage bit does is give me the feeling of having more control than I actually have. But it doesn't. The bit doesn't give me any more control than any other bit. If I have to pull 5 pounds to stop my horse on that bit, I still have to put 5 pounds on this bit. Except I'm only pulling about a pound's worth, because a pound from me feels like ten down there because of the leverage this bit creates. It makes me feel like I have more control. It makes me feel like the horse is softer and more responsive, but pretty soon the horse will start pulling on this bit, if I allow him to, just like he does on the snaffle bit

A leverage bit will allow me to teach him to keep his head straight and break at the poll – but that's about all I'm going to be doing. I do use a leverage bit, if I want to work on keeping horse's head in position or to keep him square between the reins. But while the bit might be keeping his head correct, it's my body, my seat that's telling him where to go. For instance, if I were riding toward you and I tell the horse to take his hips to the left and his shoulders to the right or the left, then it's my body that's telling the horse how to move, not the bit. The bit is just keeping him "in frame."

The reason that I don't train in a curb or leverage bit is that I can't work the horse side to side; I can't work him vertically and I have no way to correct him. If I'm using a leveraged bit and the horse doesn't move off my leg, I'm not able to pull his head off to the side and correct him. All he feels when I put pressure on the reins is pressure on both sides of his face and he'd keep driving his head down.

Regarding snaffle bits: It makes no difference what type of snaffle bit you use. You can use an O-ring or D-ring or full cheek. If it's an O- or D-ring, use a chin strap to keep it from pulling through the horse's mouth if you were to pull and it was to open it's mouth too wide.

Some horses will panic when they feel that sort of pressure. So, in that respect, a snaffle bit will actually get a horse to calm down faster because the bit doesn't scare them. I do work with a leverage bit about one day out of each week so that when I show my horse he doesn't panic from the pressure. It's a different type of pressure because it applies pressure at different points of the horse's head, and it's a lot more severe because of the leveraged effect. With a snaffle I can pull like crazy and the horse will just lay on it. But, if I can get a horse light in a snaffle bit, then I put a leverage bit in their mouth, the horse is much more sensitive. It gives me a little extra edge in the show ring, in my stops for instance.

More cool articles below. A "must read".

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Horses That Pull Back or Won't Stand Still.

AFFORDABLE HORSE TRAINING

What To Do With Horses That Want To Bolt, Buck or Blow Up

Let's say your horse decides he want to blow up or have a wreck. Well, the nice thing about a snaffle bit, is that it lets you pick the place you're going to have that wreck; that's all it does. There's nothing magical about the bit; it doesn't stop the wreck from happening. If your horse says "I'm going to blow up here and buck you off," you can say "Uh, no, the ground here doesn't look soft enough. I thought I saw a softer spot over there." And so you ride over a few feet and your horse says "Okay, now I'm going to buck you off." But I say "Nope, I was wrong, you were right. That spot over there was a whole lot softer. Let's ride back over there."

So I ride back to the other spot, and I just keep changing directions. I keep asking and he keeps saying "Alright, alright, we'll have our wreck over here." I just keep riding him around and pretty soon, he decides it's too much trouble to blow up. But if I pick up on two reins and try to control that energy, then I guarantee you I'm asking him to blow up. No, I tell him to go – and to keep going.

Nothing else matters at this point. It doesn't matter if other riders are near you or where the horse wants to get to. Your safety is important, and you've got to ride your horse. The more the horse wants to think about something else, the more I'm going to give him something to think about. This is not punishment, don't see it that way. See it as learning: Your learning that you can avoid a wreck - and your horse is learning that acting up is just too much trouble. Look at it this way: What we're doing is finding ourselves a nice soft place to land if our horse decides to blow up.

Bottom line: If your horse bucks, if he bolts, whatever he does, as soon as you look at the ground at where you think you're going to hit, that's where you're guaranteed to land. So stay on top of your horse, look at your horse, ride your horse. Don't be a passenger. Work. Ask him to do something. Ride

Make Your Horse Stop

I won't ask my horse to stop. I just quit riding. If he doesn't stop then I go right back to work. I go right back to working on something I needed to work on. The more excited the horse is, the more important it is for you as a horse trainer to do this. You gotta work hard; you've got to pick up the reins, move the shoulders, soften that nose up, make something happen. You want to make sure that your aggressive, you're assertive. You know what you're doing and where you want to go.

As soon as the horse does something I don't want him to do, I'm going to replace that action with what I want. I don't discipline for what he did as much as, in my mind, think about replacing it with something I do want. If I don't want my horse to stand here and paw, then I'm going to ask him to move. If he wants to fight with his head, then I'm going to wait for him to soften up. If he wants to paw, as soon as I feel him even think about laying down, I'm going to ask him to move.

When he decides he wants to stop, then I'm going to stand here and wait. But if he decides to move, I'm not going to stop him, I'm going to ask him to move do something else. I'll become a more assertive trainer, I'll ask more out of my horse. I can't stress enough that, the more nervous, the more excited the horse is, the more important it is for you as a trainer to become more active. Put energy into it and make the horse sweat. Make something happen. Don't wait

Your Horse Is Going To Spook - Are You Ready?

Your horse is learning a movement when he's doing it wrong, not when he's doing it right. That's the funny part. It's when he's doing it wrong that he's learning it. If you come out pick up the reins and the horse just accidentally stumbles upon what it is you wanted him to do, then the horse doesn't really know what he did to that was right. But if he pulls for an hour, pulling up, pulling down, speeding up, slowing down, doing everything he can think of, then he finally finds, when I release, that he's found the answer. What he's learned is that all the mistakes he made are not the answer. The longer it takes, the better he'll have learned it in the end.

We all get into bad habits. And it's going to take awhile to break the bad habits that you've picked up over time. If your feet get behind you as you ride, then there's nothing to stop you from flying forward if the horse stops quickly. If we pull our arms out as we ride, extending them out far from our bodies, then we have no strength to pull. It's simple mechanics.

When we ride, we want to keep our hands in close, always close to our belly buttons. That allows you to use maximum strength when you pull. If you pull off with hands far out to the right or left, then you've minimized your strength and you're off balance too. The more off balance you get, the greater chance you have of getting thrown off if that horse jumps or spooks. He'll see his shadow and put you on the ground. The whole idea is to stay up in that saddle. So, keep your weight in your stirrups and keep your feet in front of you.

It's not a matter of "if" your horse spooks, it's "when." It's not a matter of how broke your horse is. Sooner or later it will see something that makes it spook. You can't control your environment so you can't blame your environment. If somebody comes up and throws something at your horse or drops something in front of your horse, and your horse spooks and you get bucked off, it's not their fault and it's not the horse's fault. The first thing you do may be to blame that person – but it's not their fault that your horse bolted or spooked. It has nothing to do with them. It has to do with the fact that you lost control of your horse. It's your fault. Because if you put your safety in their hands, you're guaranteed to get hurt. It's your responsibility to train and ride your horse correctly. Too many things can happen.

People who don't know anything about horses may come around your horse. Your horse has to be trained to keep them safe. Other riders will do things around your horse that doesn't bother their horses. Maybe they're not bothered by things coming up suddenly behind them or hitting their horse. They'll do things that they and their horses are used to – without a thought to whether your horse is "used to" it or not. Their horses is broke to this kind of stuff and they'll assume yours is too. But when all of a sudden something happens to scare your horse you can't blame them after you went and placed your safety in their hands. It's your job, your responsibility to make sure that you have control of your horse no matter what somebody else does around your horse. It's your safety, don't ever put it in somebody else's hands, because I promise you you'll get hurt.

How To Get Your Horse's Attention:

Recognition, Response, Control

A "give" is three things: recognition, response and control. First, a horse has to recognize the signal from the trainer, which is pretty simple. It could be anything: it could be picking up the rein, it could be putting your leg on the horse. That's your signal, your "cue." He first has to recognize that. Second he has to respond to it – and Third, he has to give control of that part of his body over to you. Remember: Recognition, Response, Control.

Horse trainer or not, I could walk by my horse all day and he doesn't have to even recognize that I'm here – and it would be a waste of my time to ask him to do anything. But if I took a stick and started poking him, then all of a sudden it becomes a whole lot more important to the horse that "I'm here." When you ask a horse to do something, a lot of other things are going to draw his attention and it's important that you become more important, no matter what it takes. As the trainer, the horse has to fully recognize that you're there. That's important, otherwise, you can't get to the next step: You can't get him to respond in a certain way.

You've all heard that you want to get your horse's attention first. That's nonsense. We don't care about the horse's attention; we really don't. When I ride, I don't expect the horse to think about me before he does something. Have you ever been on the trail with your horse when he did everything you wanted him to do? What were you doing? You were looking around, talking to people, enjoying the ride. Did you care for even one moment what your horse was thinking? No, you didn't, because he was doing exactly what you were asking him to do. You didn't care what he was thinking because there he was, walking down the trail, turning right when you asked him to turn right, stopping when you asked him to stop. You didn't care at all what he was thinking. You care when the horse either does – or does not – stop when you ask him to stop or turn when you ask him to turn. Getting his attention is a bi-product of training, of improving his performance. The better your horse stops or turns when you ride out on the trail, for instance, the more of his attention you get and the more control you have.

When you first go out to ride, you're not going to have your horse's attention. Your horse is going to be looking at all the other horses and looking around the arena or objects on the trail. You're not going to have any "attention" whatsoever. We don't need his attention; all we ask is his performance. We need him to turn right when we ask him to turn right and to turn left when we ask him to turn left. As you ride, concentrate on making those turns better because, again, as the turns get better you'll get more "attention."

This article is part of the "Ask a Horse Trainer" series. To read more, or to find a clinic or Certified John Lyons horse trainer near you, visit horsemanship101.com.

Horse Veterinarians of British Columbia | House and Horse Sitting Services | John Lyons Training Articles|