Top Tips, or Things You Wish You'd Learnt Years Ago

leg leg leg leg leg and if in doubt more leg, always use it before hand too! :)

be brave but not stupid

ask a mare!!!!!!!!!!

never ever let anyone rush you or your horse, it will end in tears and the person rushing you wont be crying.

believe in yourself or no one else will.


all sounds a bit chessy lol but the one i really like has already been used "experience is what you get 5 mins after you need it, i had one of those moments this morning after another rotten schooling session this morning! argh :rolleyes:
 
My late mare taught me my most important lessons.

1. Always give the benefit of doubt. If something is going wrong instead of getting emotional and reacting stand back and ask 'why?'.

2. Ride and handle with intelligence. If something isn't working try another way or a use a different method.

My old horse before her taught me...

3. The best means of defence is attack. To not freeze and to always sit up and attack a fence I was worried about. If I did that, he would jump anything. If I sat like a muppet he would slam the breaks on and dump me.
 
the most valuable thing my instructor has ever said to me is work hard hard and harder at home as thats the competition. you win your rossettes at home, you go to your competition to collect them.

also dont be pressurized into doing anything, it will most likely only end in tears. compete with yourself and yourself only. who cares what others think?!
 
Nothing really special, just things I heard and liked (however corny) or learnt the hard way...

Carrot and grain will buy you a friend, but real trust has to be mutual and can only be developed over time.

Pick your fights wisely, and only if you are sure you can win (especially when sitting on 16.2hh of tempramental TB)

Hard to explain but to get a horse to slow down with in a pace sit in the saddle and stiffen resist the forward movement with the lower back (NB not tensing) whilst maintaining driving aids with teh legs and steady contact. On a horse responsive to the seat it slows the pace whilst maintaining impulsion and you dont have to use the reins. Sorry, fairly badly translated and explained.

Breaking in youngsters - if they have and odd look in their eye or are funny to tack up there is nothing wrong with lunging for 30min before you get on, no matter how long it is since this was last nessecary or how well they behaved they were the day before (learnt the hard way)

Horses are far better at reading the body language of sheep and cattle than you so go with them and only interfere if you start to go the wrong way (i.e. back up the mountain).
On the same theme a good horse thats locked on to a bolting steer only needs you to sit quiet and keep you balance and it will over take and stop it on a 45degree slope littered with bushes. You can go back and collect your heat/stomach later. These last 2 are things I have learnt by being yelled at in Spanish by assorted huasos/gauchos (The instuctiones were more like: Leave the horse alone it can do a better job than you!) after I made the foolish mistake of attempting to steer and steady-up.

Not all horses have an excellent sense of direction (found out the hard way in pea souper of a fog on a large flat plain).

Oh and red flags are meant to be on the right! :o
 
Never lose your temper- frustration and anger comes from not knowing the answer.

As someone else said- never ride with a time limit- you will accept satisfactory or poor "movements" to get finished in time and undo a lot of hard work. your horse won;t forget overnight, but ride in a rush and you will teach him errors/confuse him
 
Everything that my instructor has taught me over the last few years, I would have struggled a lot less and my horses would have been far happier being ridden they way I ride now.

If the horse isn't working correctly it's mostly down to something the rider is doing, not always but 95% of the time. I never blame the horse I always look at myself first.
 
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Violence is never the answer when it comes to horses, a horse will react much better to a relationship built on trust. (something i knew even as a child and has been enforced by reading about the experiences of monty roberts)

:)
 
TarrSteps said:
Eek!:eek:


And, in keeping with the point of the thread, "Experience is what you get five minutes after your need it."

)
Click to expand...

I love this - still smiling ten minutes after reading it!

Not dissimilar to many other points made, but I firmly believe that, in riding, you are never too old or experienced to work on your seat!! Bad habits can creep in at any time and most problems in the horse's way of going are going to be down to the way you sit.
 
Patience.
Proceed at the horse's pace, not yours. You'll get there quicker in the end.

Understanding.
Just because you know what you want, it doesn't follow the horse does. Correct mistakes, don't punish them.

Training is simply a process of elimination. Allow what you are looking for, and block what you don't want.
 
Whips and spurs are aids not crutches

Nothing can pull against nothing, so don't pull.

Give one aid, get one response

There is no such thing as great talent without great willpower

Winners make things happen and losers let things happen

Don't fight with the feedbin.
 
Relax! This is my biggest one so much stuff works out once I relax.

Don't treat your horse like a child, if they walk all over you in the ground you are not in control when you ride.

Let the jump come to you, don't chase the fences.

You can put the strongest bit invented in your horses mouth but if he wants to go he will and no bit will stop him.
 
The not so good days are just there so you appreciate the good ones all the more.:)

And after todays elimination in the discovery :eek: ........

Never get complacent with an easy horse, they can always throw a strop when you least expect it :rolleyes:

Fighting will get you nowhere, if you offer nothing to fight against, they can't fight. Take the most basic option in all situations, its generally the best one to opt for first :)
 
One I was told this week was that:

'If you skin a horse, the skin that you take off with weigh a lot. However the horse cannot feel the weight of it's skin because it moves with the horse. Therefore to make it easier you should move completley with your horse'

Not the exact wording but you get what I mean ;)
 
"I'm not doing this to be horrible to you.. I'm doing it to *help* you.." thats a pearl my trainer uses fairly often.. to which she gets the reply "I know & I'm glad your doing it..."

Another one.. ."Trust me, Once you learn to sit properly... Everything else will be so much easier".

My Mum always used to say to me.. "Everyone else is just watching, waiting for thier kid, passing a bit of time... No one is 'watching' you... " when I got awful stage fright (still hate being watched)...
 
"Make the right thing easy and it will be"

"Reward the behaviour you want, not punish the behaviour you don't want"

"Whats in the brain runs down the reins"

"Throw your heart over (the jump) first and then follow it like b*gg@ry!"

"The best whip is in the corn bin"

"Good hands are born not made"

"Ride as though the reins were made of silk thread"
 
Someone earlier posted about 'don't try to be too nice...'
I read a great interview with Mark Todd who said always ask for perfection - otherwise it's not fair on the horse. How does the horse know that yesterday you were out on a sloppy hack and it didn't matter but today is a competition and it DOES matter. You must be clear and decisive all the time.
It seems a very fair point to me.
 
Practise makes permenant, my (super) trainer told me not long after i started going to him, made me think alot more about what i do every time i ride,

and to stop comparing myself with people riding/competing full time, and with people who don't have little children, becasue everyone's circumstances are different,
 
The diferences between inside/outside rein, self-carriage etc Still struggling with those a bit - poor horse :o :D

Light contact doesn't mean long reins :D
 
Don't try and do the horses job for them! Set them up, help them when they need it, but ultimately let them do their job.
 
If in doubt, sit still, do nothing and let the horse make the decision :o
And if everything starts to go wrong, stop, chill, sort yourself out and try again.
 
'The best clip's on Valentines day.' Told by a hunting woman, I poo-pooed the idea only to find myself admiring her horses coats. We clipped Valentines day next year and by golly, my pony's coat came through beautifully!

Some gems my horse's breeder's told me:

'You pay goodness knows how much on this horse, keep it comfortable, warm, fed and happy. You spend a lot of time picking up it's poop, so when you're up there riding her, as long as you're asking fairly she should give you something back!'

'Don't get complacent with mistakes, but don't always expect perfection.'

'It's your job to get them to the fence, it's their job to jump it.'

And when I had a crisis about how I was holding back my fab horse who has the potential to get to Badminton, my instructor just looked at me. "Do you think, given the choice, the horse would want to go round Badminton?!" Made me feel much better about taking her around BE100, as I can see she does love it :)

Edit: Oh and 'do thinks half-heartedly and so will your horse!'
 
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Some abfab ones here peeps, just been keying loads of them into my "fab quotes" folder on my phone.
i haven't got a sharp and memorable quote for it, but something along the lines of "the best state of mind to be in for training horses is calm and serene". I won't school if I'm angry, hormonal, or whatever. I owe it to the horse to start out from a position of total equanimity...
wish i'd realised this years ago too.
 
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