Finding the "YES"

With this approach our horsemanship is a learning process that builds confidence and understanding within our horses which leads to trust in us, our partnership, and our journey.

We want to ask our horses questions that they know the answer to, and that answer is YES, setting our horses up for success that builds confidence in the process. The long and short of it is our horses do what they have been prepared to do. Having the expectation that the horse will understand the answer to a question that they have not been exposed to and prepared to handle is a risky proposition. You might get lucky once but we not training for luck, or for once, we are preparing our horse to be consistently successful.

We can only train one thing at a time, as we can only release and reward for one thing at a time and that process (release/reward) is how horses learn. Our partnership and communication should not be challenging by allowing our end goal to override the process, creating a win / lose situation. We should be on our horses’ side allowing the time it takes for them to confidently make progress. As we take this approach step by step we build on the “YES” answers they have learned as we move consistently toward our end goal which can be an exercise, maneuverer, or obstacle.

Within every training exercise there will be a minimum of 5 to 10 steps based on the complexity of what we are out to accomplish. IF our horses are not finding the YES answers then we need to break it down into more steps, allowing them time to grasp the learning and make positive progress.

With this approach our horsemanship is a learning process that builds confidence and understanding within our horses which leads to trust in us, our partnership, and our journey