As you all know, our horses are bred in the most natural way we could provide, growing together in herds of young colts or fillies and living in open spaces where they can run, play and develope properly. We have been breeding for a long time (more than 30 years) and our experience is that this help them with their future careers and their sociability. So, we are not in a hurry to start their training. It will happen when they are physically and psicologically ready for it. Usually it happens between 4 or 5 years old.
I will try to explain you our system to train with new horses. I don’t think it is better or worst than others, but it is the one we use and it works for us! :) When we bring the new young horse to the stable we try to put him/her close to another one he knows in his past life and have him/her busy with nice and tasty food to make things easier for him. Usually we leave them quietly for a couple of days where they can eat, sleep and rest.After this we will start to teach them to lungue. We use the dually halter and they seem to understand it very well. We start we short sessions of 20-30 minutes of exercise that will increase with time. We introduce the saddle, the snaffle, the training boots… in the next 2-3 weeks. It depends a lot on the horses, some horses accept everything easily and sometimes they need more time to understand. The most important is to make the proccess the less traumatic than possible. When they feel confident lunguing with all the new stuff after a few weeks, the rider will start to jump on them, first after the work session inside the stables corridor (it is a quiet place, with the companion of the other horses and they use to bahve better) and with somebody holding them. Everything should be relaxed and smooth, a quiet young horse will work better in the future! When they accept this, the proper ridding will start. The rider will sit on the horse on our 10x10m arena and with the help of the groom who will hold the horse, will start to work a little bit of walk. A lots of stops, turning, pettings… In the beginning we start with both the dually halter and the snaffle, we beleive than pulling from the nose is a more direct effect and they understand it a bit better, untill they get used to be ridden just on snaffle. With time they learn to trot and canter in the small circle and then without the groom holding them… and one day, they go to the big arena (66x24m), it is a big day!!! But they are such a good boys and girls and they take care very well of our riders. It is always an exciting day because they will have plenty of space, other horses working in the arena and sometimes the colts in the paddock close to the arena start to call their old friends… they need to carry theirselves, to trot and canter in a slow rhytm… so many things for a young mind! But they are so clever and so cooperative! We could not ask for anything better! So pleased with our babies!
Leave A Comment