A special look at how horses re-learn to LOVE working with humans.

There are several reasons people send us horses for training. One obvious one is developing skill sets for higher-level competence in various arenas. Another might be simply boosting a horse’s confidence regarding trails, obstacles, and spookiness. But one big reason, often hard to explain, is re-association training.

Re-association training is teaching a resentful horse to learn, or re-learn, that people are safe and pleasant. It’s taking an un-thankful horse and helping them realize how good things can be. How working for, and with, a human can be amazing instead of scary.

Horses learn a lot by association, and sometimes it’s not exactly predictable. For instance, you might ask a horse to cross water and struggle, causing stress and fear. Now, the horse might associate water crossings with stress and fear. Or… he associates you with stress and fear. Or, he thinks all the way back to the trailer or saddle and links fear and stress to that. Sometimes it happens.

Some horses learn skills and maneuvers at amazing speed but secretly develop resentfulness from something slightly off. Maybe a sense of nerve pain the rider is unaware of. Or a new association with the equipment or an experience related to the rider. It often only takes one or two bad experiences to stack up, and the horse begins to hate their job, the cues, the tools, or people in general.

Re-association is, simply put, proving to the horse that what they thought was bad is, in fact, good. That means teaching riders to spend more bonding time and helping them map out longer programs to solve simple problems. Take saddling, for instance. If a horse resents the saddle, a long program might mean days and days of not riding but focusing only on placing the saddle on and off, repeatedly, with rewards, until a new association is formed.

That’s the key..., repetition and rewards. Less work, more play. It’s a hard pill to swallow because most performance riders flip it and feel like they don’t have time to fix it.

But the time spent fixing it is undeniably the best time you’ll ever invest in your horse. For them, it’s meaningful, albeit, slow progress. You may need to train new associations to people, tack, trailers, trails, showgrounds, bags, flags, whatever. In my opinion, it’s doable, and it’s fun. I can show you how on a personal level. Click Here

I want you to have a thankful horse this season. You both have a bright future if you can see the path forward.

Sincerely, Don

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