POINT OF VIEW
Starting Young Horses: A Message to the Elderly
This article is dedicated to riders over 50, like
me—or even over 30 for that matter—who need some scientific justification for the decrease in daring that comes naturally with age. Younger people can save themselves the time needed to read this article, because I know you won’t real- ly believe it yet. Perhaps you should consider ar- chiving the article and reading it in a few years.
W
hen I was young I too was not able to hear the voices of experience. For the young and athlet- ic, you can keep climbing on unprepared green
colts and get a little adrenaline high. Come visit us later after a few falls and whoopsies when your bodies don’t bounce so well any- more. We won’t think any worse of you for it! Now, let’s talk among ourselves, older and stiffer folks, about the exciting day when any of us has to sit on a horse for the first time. Not your first time, his.
Tightening their flanks when pinched (by spurs) or
“In a word, horses have to give up most of their instinctual behaviors when we ride them. That’s a lot to accept all at once, isn’t it?”
Instinctual Behavior On that day, most horses still have a very limited knowl- edge of humans, except maybe to be loaded in a trailer, led in and out of stalls and paddocks, or brushed. They are still mostly ruled by their instincts, which are geared towards survival and procreation. It is important to remember that all horses resist any contact stimulus at first, by either pushing into it or running away from it. Here is a (short) list of horses’ natural reactions and the resulting resistances to the likely pressures involved in handling and riding: Throwing their heads up when they feel aggressed
from their back. (The easy way for a horse to get rid of a big cat trying to kill him is to throw himself backwards.) That explains the resistance to halter pressure on the poll as a natural response that can be observed in practically all foals.
kicking when feeling the stick on their hind legs. Both ac- tions are another natural defense against the biting of pack predators (wolves, etc.). That explains why our legs/ spurs do not make horses go instantly (or calmly) forward without education and why they kick at the whip. Bracing their feet on the ground to push with their shoulders for the purpose of mating mares or fighting other males. That explains resistances to our hand and leg requests: every time we act on the horse, his first means of resistance is to brace with his feet on the ground. Con- versely, if the horse has a reason to stop his forward mo- tion, that will start with bracing the feet, which will trans- late into resistance to rein and leg actions. To add to the problem, the moment we get on the horse’s back, everything changes for the worse: Horses have to get used to
a threatening presence above them that instinctively reminds them of something planning to eat them or dominate them. They have to tolerate a
tight girth on their chest and yield to cold metal in their mouth, a hard rope on their nose
and spurs on their flanks. They suddenly have to carry weight and reorganize their balance and their gaits. They have to give up their self-determination of di-
rection, gait, speed and body position. In a word, horses have to give up most of their instinc-
tual behaviors when we ride them. That’s a lot to accept all at once, isn’t it?
Miracle One-Day Training Yet, you may ignore all that information and still decide to ‘get him rode’ today, just like the ‘miracle rider’ you watched at the Everywhere USA Horse Fair, who did it last weekend in his brilliant “Colt Starting Demo.” This meth- od, known as ‘Miracle Training,’ proposes to get on the horse after minimal preparation (consisting of social whis- pers, round-penning etc.) in the hope of (pleasant) results
Warmbloods Today 61
By JP Giacomini
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