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Two Young Horses
Articles:
Through a somewhat unexpected turn of events, I have ended up with two young horses to start under saddle. I am not someone with a huge amount of experience starting babies. I did start the TB mare that I had in college and I have spent a lot of time helping others with their babies, both with groundwork and riding them, and I have watched a lot of young horse starting and training. I worked one summer for a breeding farm where we started a lot of youngsters, but this was done in a very traditional way and we always had at least two people for most of the initial training.
So starting Rosie was a real learning experience for me. I followed the same progression that I had learned with the other babies and just added in the clicker. Some differences were that I also did a lot more groundwork and spent a lot of time making sure she was really comfortable with everything and knew a lot of cues before I ever got on her.
Now I had a chance to take what I had learned from starting Rosie and apply it to two new youngsters. The one difference I should point out is that Rosie is my personal horse and I knew who would be riding her (me) and what I wanted to do with her. These two horses are going to be ridden by other people and needed to have a slightly more conventional education. What I mean is that they are going to be ridden by people who might not know single rein riding and might not even be clicker training. So my job is to create nice riding horses that have all the basics (walk, trot, canter, good for light trail riding) and can be ridden by non-clicker trainers.
My hope is that by sharing what I do with them, it will help those of you who are starting young horses and want to use clicker training and some of the tools in Alex's toolbox ,but also want to be able to work with a traditional trainer or have other considerations that affect how much clicker training you do. In some ways, I hope the articles in these series will show how Alex's clicker work can be integrated into and how it connects to more traditional training exercises.
The two horses I have been working with are:
Finale: Shire Gelding born in 2001. We acquired him as an essentially unhandled yearling as a horse for my husband. Here I am riding him last fall (2006) after he had about 8 months training. I backed him in 2005 and rode him about 10 times before giving him the winter off. I started him again in March/April and this picture was taken in November. He is a big boy and pretty level headed but still learning to be coordinated in his body.
Red: PMU gelding (QH/Paint/Belgian) born in 2002. We acquired him from a local retirement farm who was selling PMU foals they got from North Dakota((it was a fundraiser.) Kira fell in love with him and he came home as her project. He had not been handled much (didn't lead, halter etc..), but was very friendly when we got him at about 9 months of age. Kira and I started him in 2005 and we had done some groundwork and basic ground manners/handling prior to that. Kira rode him some in the summer of 2006 and then he became my project in the fall.
I am going to come back and fill some of this in with more detail later, but I wanted to just write out the training progression that I followed for starting both Red and Finale.
1. Haltering and Leading. Neither horse knew how to do this so these were their first lessons.
2. Tying and cross-tying
3. Hoof handling
4. Other general husbandry (worming, shots, grooming etc...)
5. Ground work, starting with walking on a loose rein in the ring, and groundwork from Alexandra Kurland's Step-by-Step book.
6. Introduction of tack (bridle, bit, surcingle, saddle). This was done as a separate exercise but also integrated into the groundwork so the horses got used to different types of equipment.
7. Round pen work
8. Ground driving, lungeing, and short lining (walking at the girth with 2 reins to simulate being ridden)
9. Introduction of a rider. With Red, Kira mounted and I led him. We progressed to lungeing with a rider. With Finale, I backed him without assistance and went right into riding the same exercises we had done on the ground.
At some point both horses had some sessions on trailer loading and were taken for walks around the yard.