I received an email from someone asking for suggestions on keeping her horse's attention. They said they deliberately keep their session to only a few minutes because their horse can't focus for more than a 5-10mins.
There is a lot of mainstream training that is purposefully designed to make a horse hate work. It is derived from the old adage of “make the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult.”
I’m going to talk a little about cleaning the sheath of stallions or geldings. I don’t relish discussing this topic, but I keep coming across people who believe it is an important part of horse husbandry.
When we think of ways we create worry in our horse we tend to think of pressure that is too big or ill-timed or a release of pressure that is inconsistently timed. These things can cause a horse’s cup of worry to fill very fast. But what about an event that we don’t recognize as causing worryy?
People sometimes get cranky with a horse for stuff he does because we think “he should know better” or “he knows not to do that.” But if he knew better he would not do it.
