Teaching the Horse by Ed Thornton

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"THE TEACHER AND THE STUDENT"

Ed Thornton

SAFE HORSE SAFE RIDER THROUGH EDUCATION By Ed Thornton

You, being a horse owner, are a trainer. Simply by the habits you repeat every time you meet with your horse. You do the same things over & over again pretty much the same way. The horse being a conditioned response animal will learn your habits and develop his own set of automatic responses to your cues if you repeat them consistently.

Think of your horse as if he were a kindergarten student. If your child told his teacher that 2+2=5 would you expect the teacher to swat him and tell him he was just being obstinate or stupid? You would pull your child out of that school and find another one. Well, some "Trainers" do similar actions with horses. The horse picks up the wrong lead and the trainer beats the horse for making that mistake. The trainer says," I taught you how to take the correct lead, and you are just being stubborn, you did it right before." The truth is if the horse knew the correct answer he would do it . Let the horse tell you when he has learned the lesson. Be a teacher not a trainer.

SET GOALS:
Be specific with you're training goals. It is necessary for you to evaluate your goals and define them clearly. The more vague the goal, the harder it will be for the horse to understand what you want him to do. You should write down your goal, & include every detail. Find a staring point. Remember, "a general request will get a general response". Don't start with your goal. That would just be a wreck.

Think about the goal, and break down every step that the horse must do to achieve it. Now look at the first step and decide if it needs to be broken down even further. If a step requires several things that the horse has to do, it may be too much to ask of the horse. Make it as easy as you can for the horse to understand each step. Pick the first component of your goal that you want the horse to do and this will be your beginning point.

TRAINING IS NOTHING MORE THAN A SERIES OF QUESTIONS:
Develop a lesson plan with many steps where your horse can give you "yes" answers. If you ask the horse "can you go left?" the horse has to guess the answer. He will not always give you the correct answer until he has made several wrong attempts. Set up the lesson plan so he has choices with the "yes" answer as one of them. By process of elimination, the correct answer will be selected. As a teacher, realize the correct answer is always more obvious to the teacher than it is to the student. Continue to repeat the step until the horse has it mastered and will give you the correct answer 100% of the time. Then you can go on to the next step in the lesson plan toward your goal.

Once you have achieved your goal you must practice it continuously to maintain that level of training. If your horse does not respond correctly at any time after you have taught it to him you must go back in your lesson plan to a step that the horse does give you the correct answer and YES teach it again. This time it will not take as long to teach. "DO NOT SKIP ANY STEPS!"

Contact: Ed Thornton
57980 Cortez Dr.
Yucca Valley, California 92284
Phone: 760-365-2269 / fax 760-365-3245
Email: info@edthornton.com
Website :www.edthornton.com/home.htm

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