Education of By JP Giacomini
A series that follows the training and development of a young stallion.
Toti The
Regardless of the discipline one intends for the future of a young, athletic sport horse, most trainers will agree that the early years of work are focused on the basics. Although there are many roads that can “lead us to Rome,” this column will present the ongoing education of the 2012 Warm- blood stallion Totil Hit, also known as “Toti.” From backing to his debut in competition, trainer JP Giacomini will present the tech- niques he uses for Toti, working in hand, on the lunge and long lines, free jumping and under saddle.
A future dressage competitor, especially a stallion, needs many skills beyond a shoulder– in in a beautiful trot to advance his career. In the near future, Toti will need to relax in all kind of strange situations: travelling, going to indoor shows with lots of noise and lights, strange footing, misbehaving geldings, aggressive stallions, mares in heat, running dogs and more.
30 July/August 2016
Training Journal #7 A Productive Day
with him. F
Desensitization We decided it was time to work on some further desensitization. We have already done some of that work before Toti was first backed (paper bags and milk jugs hanging from the saddle—see the column in the September/October 2015 issue). One cannot possibly prepare a horse for all the circumstances he will meet, but we can give him a system to deal with the unknown. Horses need to pay attention to what has an intention (our aids), and pay no attention to what has no inten- tion—except when it can be dangerous for horse or rider. This is not such a simple equation: aids have to be heard over all the “white noise” surrounding horses, but at the same time horses need to keep a degree of initiative to survive and save us occasionally. All fears are not equally negative. Essentially, a smart, relaxed horse must know the difference
between a noisy exhaust in a distance and a truck rolling right at you. The horse has to be alert to see what is coming, but also have a “go to” calm emotion when things get scary. Our aids must work in all situa- tions (the horse remains sensitive to us) and he needs to prefer to be relaxed instead of stressed. Horses are actually designed to deal with short-duration stress: they may run away from a supposedly scary object, but they must return quickly to grazing to achieve their daily energy load. We achieve that by applying my Endotapping method. Using an Endostick (a stick with a soft foam ball at the end of it), we tap the horse all over his body in a fast tempo until relaxation sets in. Eventually, the head goes down, the mouth chews, the eyes become soft and the horse becomes calm in previously worrying circumstances. The more often we do it, the better and the faster it works. We use it before we first saddle, during the first backing and in every new situation after that.
ortunately, our farm has lots of dogs, cats and goats roaming through the barn, as well as broodmares being bred and foal- ing, so Toti is used to all of that. But there is still more work to do
Shelley Giacomini
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