Training at Liberty

At Red Horse Ranch we recently began saddle training two of our geldings in a sort of non-traditional manner. One was Navegador a Lusitano/Arabian who has performed in public since he was about nine months old. “Gator” was already a reliable exhibition horse when we introduced him to under saddle work. He had been worked in a surcingle for a couple of years so introducing the saddle was uneventful. Within minutes of being initially mounted, he volunteered some nice steps of Spanish Walk and then promptly walked to a pedestal and stepped up--carrying his human was just another variation in his work. At Imagine A Horse, we like to say that our horses’ minds are finished before they are started which is backwards from traditional training methods.

Our foals are educated as they mature, not when they mature. Remember the television ad that states, ”A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste”? Amen and ditto for the equine mind. Letting a colt go relatively untrained for two or three years until he gains enough physical maturity to be saddle trained wastes a lot of valuable time. Our young horses are well educated by the time we introduce them to saddle training. If one of our young horses were to be subjected to the traditional join up method it would probably frazzle his/her mind.
Traditional horse training usually requires the horse be attached to the human, be it with a lead rope, a lunge line or the reins while under saddle. The Natural Horsemanship movement has been instrumental in increasing the popularity of round pen or loose schooling usually used with rough stock, untrained or unhandled horses nearing physical maturity. Colt starting demonstrations that culminate with the young horse being saddled and ridden in a short period of time take place in round pens. Although the horses used in these demonstrations are at liberty (no ropes attached) the usually very quick decision by the horse to go along with the human’s plan is most likely due to an instinctual attachment mechanism at work and not so much to do with the talent of the trainer.

A horse after being taken away from his herd companions is usually in a survival mode and is inclined to buddy up with even a strange human. Without the attachment mechanism such demonstrations of colt starting would probably prove less than useful. By using quick join up and saddling methods many clinicians infer that it is OK to allow young horses to mature with little to no training because they can easily be tamed with a minimum time spent. While these theatrical demonstrations are fun to watch, short cut methods just don’t make sense for horse owners whose goal is to have a companion horse that is also a performance horse.