Teach Your Children Well

One of the best ways to turn a child away from riding forever is to start the child when she is too young.


In only the rarest of circumstances should a child began riding before she can eat solid food.

What Do You Teach?

A riding instructor's life would be much simpler if he only taught kids to ride and only taught kids that had an unquenchable desire to ride. But the reality is otherwise. Teaching those riders is the most enjoyable thing that an instructor can do. Teaching those riders is the easiest thing that an instructor can do.

Teaching those riders is also the least important thing that an instructor can do.

It is the child who is afraid, the child who is reluctant, the child who openly displays anxiety at the horse lot and secretly confronts it in every other aspect of his life that needs to ride even more than the one who loves every moment of being around horses. That child is difficult to teach. There is little pleasure in teaching that child. It would be simpler to encourage such kids to get another interest.

At times I allow my mind to wander to consider having kids "try out" for our program the way they have to try out for sports team. If I only kept riders that made the team the quality of my life would sky rocket. Some of my most dedicated riders have encouraged me to take that approach and only focus on those that live to ride.

An instructor should never do that. I know what happens to kids with anxiety disorders that are not dealt with early on. I know that drug addiction, alcoholism, and depression are possibilities for young people whose disorders go unrecognized and untreated.

Those are the rarest of cases. However, even kids with no disorders that do not learn to overcome fear learn to be trapped by it. The unfortunate truth is one will fail with many of these kids, but that is no excuse for refusing to keep on trying.

The reality is that a solid program does not teach riding.

It teaches living.

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Encore A post from 2009

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Encore: Now we play old time and bluegrass music. I play 6 or 7 instruments, though I am not great on any of them. My brother Joseph plays four...

The Importance of Quiet Time

Nonchalance is the most important French word for one to understand when gentling wild horses and starting colts. A studied projection of not caring if the horse gets nervous, jumpy, or even hostile can be the most important step in keeping some horses from becoming even more nervous, jumpy , or hostile.

When one despooks a horse one must not use body language that tells the horse that the monster really is dangerous. The exact opposite is true. Last week I watched my intern, Samantha stand idly by and make constant contact with a terrified horse. She betrayed no more emotion that she would have had she been sitting with a sleeping cat in her lap.

The horse learned as much in that hour as she would have in three months of training with a person who was:


1. Afraid of her
2. Afraid of failing in her training
3. Afraid of doing something wrong
4. Afraid of being embarrassed in front of other people

or:

1. Upset that the horse was learning too slowly
2. Upset that the horse was not responding to gentle treatment
3. Upset with anything else in her life to the degree that the horse felt that tension.


Make every interaction that you have with a horse in training tell that horse three things. I am not afraid of you. I am not going to hurt you . And I will stay here all day long until we get some sort of improvement on what we are working on.

And make sure that you are very nonchalant when you let your body tell the horse these three things.

(Younger Samantha is shown above working her 1/2 Corolla, Legacy.).

this Post is from 2008

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Chincoteagues: We are often asked where Chincoteagues fit in with Corollas and Shacklefords. I suspect that around the year 1700 they would have been pr...