But, she is not like a Ferrari. She isn’t super sensitive. She isn’t lazy. She isn’t spooky or rushy or dull. She can be all those things, but they are not who she is. They are who I made her through my training and our shared experiences together.
I was once asked about my thoughts on winning and losing when it comes to training horses. The question came from another trainer who believed that you should never let a horse win.
The way a horse is can always be attributed to two things, nature, and nurture. Everything a horse does, how it responds, and what it understands, is a combination of what it learned from its life experience and what it inherited in its genetic makeup.
But behavioural problems in training often stem from our misreading of a horse’s nature and our ability to compensate and adjust our training. It begins by appreciating the true nature of our horses and understanding how that should influence the way we work with them.
