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The Wonders of Horse Training

 

             Someone once told me that you must train a horse as if it were a 9-5 job. This statement I decided was false. When you train a horse they need to be rewarded just like a child would be when they were just learning to talk, walk, or crawl. In all honesty, it isn't the time spent on the horse, but the way you train it. .
             One key element in training a horse is positive reinforcement. This means that every time the horse follows a command that you have been training it correctly, you give it a treat or pet him/her, depending on how well the command was accomplished. This is easier said than done, frustration often takes over more times than none because a horse needs to learn before it can obey, so many forget the positive reinforcement after a few times of failure.
             Many people overdue themselves as well. Terry Nowacki, a trainer that I once worked for made a wise old, but true statement to me once, "three times is great, two is good, and four is bad." He was talking about how many times you should make a horse follow a command in a row when they are doing it well. His theory was that if you make a horse do that command too many times in a row, it will get board with it and ignore/avoid it when you want to use it. Three times only you ask. That's right, less than expected? Well, this is why it isn't a 9-5 job. You move quickly through things that have been trained before for a little refresher course each day, and then you move onto something new. This way the horse doesn't get board with you, and you both get more interested in each other in the wonders of what's going to happen next.
             A lot of people out there also think that you must train a horse seven days a week. Wrong. Six days a week is the best. This means that you as well as the horse get a well deserved break from the previous week of hard training and sometimes frustration. This doesn't mean that you don't go out to the barn and see the horse.


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