Emotions in Training Horses

 Posted by on 15 May 2014 at 2:00 pm  Animals, Horses
May 152014
 

From natural horsemanship expert Clinton Anderson’s blog:

Human emotions have no place in training horses. If you try to deal with a horse based on emotions, you won’t get the response you want because he won’t understand what you’re asking him to do. You have to be able to correct your horse and increase pressure without raising your emotion. Losing your temper is bad because even if the horse does what you want him to do, you won’t recognize it because you’ll be too focused on the punishment. And if you don’t reward the horse for the correct behavior, he won’t understand what you’re asking him to do. If he can’t figure out the answer you’re looking for, he’ll get confused and frustrated, which will only make the situation worse.

Nothing teaches emotional self-control quite as well as training horses. Horses are very sensitive, and their first impulse if you lose control is to panic and flee. In that mental state, they’ll never do what you want. So are you frustrated? angry? impatient? Too damn bad, human! You’d better keep your cool and keep working proper training techniques, or you’ll soon have a neurotic and dangerous horse on your hands.

   
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