Don't Be Too Critical

Leon Harrel, the famous cutting horse trainer, once said," if you're always dinking with your horse, you'll have a dink for a horse." The line between not enough training and too much training is a thin line I think we have all crossed. When should a person stop or should they keep pushing for something more? I've seen folks at horse shows riding the horse around the pen for hours just see-sawing the horses head down. At the time, I wondered why the horse just doesn't buck them off. It's amazing what a horse will put up with. Setting a riding goal for the training session will help. Just recently I had a horse in for training that was 8 years old. The poor horse had a lot of human caused problems. There were a list of about 10 things I was hoping to help him with. If I picked on him on all 10 in the training session, I think it would have made him worse. Each day for our ride, I would pick one and ask him to do that one correctly. For the first 5 to 10 rides on a colt, I try not be too critical. It's been my experience that schooling a horse to soon takes away the bond you've made in reaching those first few rides.