Building a Brave Young Horse - Gabi Neurohr

So I typically kick the episodes off by having the guests tell us who they are and what it is they do. Hi, I’m Gabby Noira and I live in Austria. I have lived though 13 years in France where I have worked as a full time horse professional, especially starting young horses doing lessons, unique long term working student program and at one point 2019 I started to provide online courses in online coaching and my speciality now is to guide horse women around the world, in the process educating their young horses using relationship based methods. So why young horses? Because I don’t know, I always had the passion.

Nobody with 12 years old. When I got my first pony, I said I want to become a young horse trainer. I don’t know why this was from the beginning. I don’t know my calling. And they got really obsessed on figuring out how to train a young horse.

That idea of a young horse who knows nothing is like a blank canvas to train that horse for riding and to be a friend for us. How is that done? That was my fascination as a teenager and I can get very stubborn about my goals. So I really went down that path and pursued it and yeah, really delve deep into that. So what does when you’re working with a young horse, what are some things that maybe surprised you or things that you didn’t expect when you first started versus now that you’ve been doing it for a little while?

I can’t really remember because it is so long ago. I think what surprised me was the fact that riding is obviously not normal for worse, because for us the picture of riding a horse is so normal and just go forward and drop and counter and steer and then that worse, nothing works. So you get on there for the first time. And when I’ve experienced it the first time, I was like, oh, now how do I teach that? Yeah, it’s always funny because I always say it’s always nice to have young horses in the barn as well as the older horses because with the older horses you can be really narrow minded and these things we’re going to just really work on this particular thing or with the young horse, we are just happy that you can turn right that day and it feels so exciting to just turn right where with the older forces, it’s OK, we need to do the center line 15 more times.

And you can think about improving your own skill, but with a young horse, you have to show up with a plan. You’d have to show up as your best. And this really actually boils down to having good horsemanship and horse teaching skills. So when you say showing up as your best self, what does that mean to you? Showing up as my best self.

So in my programs I try to teach people the mindset of a horse trainer because that is important to have when you have a young horse with all the horses. They know people, they have experience, they can compensate for our shortcomings at times. They can absorb when we have a bad mood or not on our best. But young horses, they reflect back much more honestly. They don’t compensate and they’re still very much emotionally also immature.

So we have to be the steady one in the relationship. So that means I have to bring a high level of emotional fitness. I have to come into the session with a plan. This is what I want to work on, but still be flexible to adjust how the course shows up that day. Because young horses are simply not level.

They’re probably one day they’re really good and chill and attentive, and then the next day, because the temperature drop or change the route and whatever, they’re suddenly distracted or really spicy or whatever. So I have to show up as a really good and steady leader for the horse. And what does that look like? What does being a steady leader to a young horse look like in practice? So I actually just had a workshop for my ODH members about the principles of connection.

And there we talked a lot about emotional regulation, emotional awareness for the human. And I think it starts there. We need to be aware about how is my emotional fitness level going on? Because as you have a young horse too, I think you’re familiar with, when the force jumps around, can’t focus on whatever our emotional fitness, we easily become frustrated. What we do now, we get desperate or whatever.

We need to be aware about that because we can’t fake it. And when we lose emotional fitness, our timing is off. We might react impatient, we get unclear, all these things and young horses are not very forgiving about that. So we need to be aware about that. Can I regulate it?

Can Do I know how to help the forest on that situation and myself or do a better pull the plug, bring the horse back, rethink overnight, collect myself and try again the next day? And this way I preserve the relationship and don’t make costly mistakes. So how did you find yourself like, because I think it’s when we’re working with horses and lots of horses on a regular basis, I think it’s easier for horse trainers to maybe make the connection of like when my heart rate goes up, I noticed that sort of the riding starts to go to crap or these things start to happen or whatever. But for people who maybe only ride their one horse or maybe only have their one horse and they’re not spending all of that time being able to make those connections. Like, how do you start to develop this idea of one kind of feeling when your emotions are not or out of regulation?

And to like developing a way to create emotional regulation when you may not have a lot of forces to get reps with. Yeah, I think you don’t need many horses to get repetitions in. It’s mainly a question of commitment and the decision. I’m going to really focus on getting my leadership skills up. All right, But it starts with us.

It really starts with our leadership skills and our ability to lead the horse to success no matter what the horse does. That is where I think the second point really becomes important. That is to have a plan, to have really clear focus. And a lot of people, especially people of young forces, and they’re not so experienced. Problems come along the way.

Unexpected situations are no more. And then when people don’t have a lot of experience, they get lost in the problem instead of keeping the focus on where they want to go, all right. That’s how they get desperate about solving it and they lose the quality of a leader and that is focus. I see. So they get lost in the emotional pit and that is what I try to teach my members.

Have a plan, have a clear focus, and they give them that plan through my program. Think that when do you know it’s time for a force to move on to the next thing versus getting bogged down in the struggle? All right. So do you know the 8020 rule? For any listeners who might not know, what is the.

So the 8020 rule is you need 20% of time to reach 80% of quality, but you need 80% of time to reach 100% of quality. And you don’t need to have things 100% perfect with a young horse, 80% is enough. You move on. If you don’t move on, young horses get bored, it becomes repetitive and they zone out. So a young horse really important to stay progressive, but then it’s still important to know what is good enough and my good enough.

I evaluated on the quality of the try, the quality of the response. For example, when I ask a young horse on the ground to yield shoulders, they’re really simple to yield shoulders. For me, it’s not about that they can do a whole lap, a whole 360° circle. I want to feel that when I put my hands on, I put my intention, the horse responds with softness and immediately does a good step. That’s good because if the horse has that good, try immediate good response without pushing or leaning first.

I know the horse understood, I know he got it, and I can build to have more steps as time progresses, but don’t need I can move on to another task. I don’t need to repeat until he pukes. Yeah, I think it’s so easy for riders and maybe I’m sure a lot of other people outside of riding, but riders in particular to get bogged down with this idea of perfection or. Big. Thing I know I do it for myself too.

Where this is the glory of having trainers, right As trainers can say, hey, get your head out of your ass, you’re good. Yeah, exactly. It looks better than it feels or whatever. I know that it’s so easy to get lost also in the why is something happening and I think with young horses. It’s over analyzing situations.

And like I was having this, I ride a lot of young horses. I don’t start them, but I get them once they’ve been started. And I had this one and he was always a little bit spooky. And in dealing with a lot of competition horses, my immediate thought is, oh, this horse is dysregulated. Everything to him is new.

He has faced really no adversity for the show horses. Sometimes training and competition can be adversity because it’s this new experience that they have to overcome or that we as a partner have to overcome. Get used to that and learn how to deal with that. Of course, and dysregulated at first. And I think it’s so easy to get lost in the wanting it to be good or wanting them to not spook or wanting them to perform a certain way.

And then you get lost in the idea of like progressive overload of giving them a little bit more and a little bit more. So I guess what is your relationship like with the young forces with pressure? It’s adding pressure or not using pressure or whatever. Because I think there’s a lot of talk today about the idea of pressure with training horses, whether that be from the positive reinforcement people, whether that be from escalating pressure people. Like there’s so many camps today that I think it can be easy to not know what the right angle or answer or question to ask the horse even is.

Absolutely. And I see especially people who own a young horse, they have very high values. They don’t want to make mistakes, they want them and do everything right. So I see so many of my online students so confused by these conversations. They barely dare to do anything with the forces anymore and they get totally insecure about how to do anything.

And so I’m a little bit alerted to those conversations. I have a very down to earth approach to training. If people ask me, are you a positive reinforcement trainer? I don’t use a clicker. If people ask me, are you a natural horsemanship trainer?

I don’t do dominance theory. I will not just use the four phases no matter what. No I don’t. You use negative reinforcement, Yes, but I don’t escalate pressure to a painful level. The horse gets scared.

I communicate with horses and you use the four quadrants of learning and I use reward as much as possible. My main aim is the divorce feels good after every session. We can make horses feel positive about working with us, not just with food reward. And actually, I always recommend to people with young horses don’t use food reward. It just makes it for me easier because it don’t get into the thing of maybe exactly creating anxiety about food.

Young horses. They’re still so unstable in their mentality that we really easily create such food anxiety. And because a lot of people also don’t have such a high level of skill and experience, use it the right way, then they’re themselves learning how to train a young horse. It just gets so much to do and I reward with happy praise horses. Horses Co regulate.

They feel our emotion. All right, So I always have a very happy, friendly, loving and achievement training young horses and they love that. So far, any young horse I’ve worked with, they absolutely love Nassif, all my heart. Hey, good girl, you’re so amazing. You got it right.

And they start to try harder and harder just to get that praise and affirmation. I touched them with a very special feel in my hand. I find out what the horse likes and appreciates for every horse is a different spot. And another huge factor for what makes young horses and choice sessions is to be successful, to find the solution, clarity of communication. And this is where we circle back to what I said before.

It’s so important to have a plan and the focus and it’s so important to know how to break things down to small steps, really small steps. But in possible enforcement they call shaping. So it’s the same thing. So small steps so the horse can easily find the solution from very simple to more, more difficult. So actually learning is never going to be difficult for the young horse.

If you do it right, it becomes something very natural. And yeah, always be successful. And that is my aim. And then I don’t need a lot of pressure like tactile. Q Can you try this?

Thank you very much. And of course, some sweet to set boundaries and then body walk. Let’s be really Stitch. Yeah, exactly. No, I think it’s, this is one of the, I talk about social media so much, but that’s one of the things that I think it’s great that people can get access to information that they maybe never would have found before.

But then there’s so much information out there that it’s so hard to dissect. Even I have one horse that had huge trailer anxiety and although as a competitive rider I use a lot of negative reinforcement or only because I AB like that means Gov deal, it’s not. I really don’t even ride with whips and spurs but. Yeah, I know what you mean. People here, negative reinforcement, they think bad.

They forget that leg aids are per SE negative reinforcement. Take it off. Yeah, exactly. But I had this horse with a lot of trailer anxiety and she was really the first horse that I did pure positive reinforcement with that one thing. And it’s one of these things where it’s even her horse can be so different.

And like when you’re how do you know there’s this idea in horse training or on social media that horses need to feel safe versus compliant? How do you know when a horse feels good doing the work? Answer is actually pretty simple and that is the horse asks me questions back. The horse is not distracted or looking out the window or trying to pull away. Engine is on me.

The horse looks relaxed. The horse is not tense. The horse often touches me with the nose. So many people are so obsessed about keep the horse out of your bubble. Never let him enter into your space.

Oh, the horse is mouthy and we have to stop him from that. Horses don’t have hands. That is very natural for them to use the nose to say, hey, are you here? Can I connect to you? Who are you?

And I always offer my hand when this happens. And this is actually it’s something very natural that comes now horses during groundwork, they always come and touch my hand with the nose. I have an exercise, it’s my favorite one to touch it. I ask horses from worktrodden candor. I develop circling from that stop an object and touch it.

And what that creates is the touched object becomes a place of mental readiness and connection. And at that place and the horse stops. They usually look at me like and what now didn’t do a good job. And if I have that, I know the force is with me because it is not forced, it is reinforced. It is created with praise and positive association because you reward the forces for stopping there with scratches and praise at first sometimes also treats and a horse thinks towards me.

Without that I force it. I know the horse is mentally with me and for a force to be mentally with me, that shows he’s enjoying to be with me. A horse doesn’t enjoy to be with the person in the arena. He’s going to look to the outside and wanting then respond delayed. He’s not going to ask questions to the person.

I have a horse who she was dealing with a lot of really bad saddle fit issues and so when you would. Association. Exactly. And it became a complete, she had a complete like somatic breakdown and in so we got all of the things sorted out with the mayor and now I stand there holding the saddle and she has to touch the saddle before I even put it. On before saddling shoulder saddle.

And a wrong board, yeah. Say attention is coming and only when they have to know straight like if they’re OK then I put the sad law. So every interaction with a young horse any worse with me is a conversation I show as this is OK. Some if no, I just take some more time. I don’t force anything on a worse.

It’s always in the conversation. It’s fascinating. Sometimes it goes back to something you said earlier with people don’t want horses in their space. I always laugh at this because I determine horses in your pocket, so I always say I’m in their pocket. I love just.

People want to be in the pocket of the world. Exactly. So I’m always like when they come and nuzzle with me. I love it and I I always think it’s so strange, this idea of respect. That gets thrown around.

The force needs to respect you. Sometimes I’ll be dealing with a horse who like I ride a lot about the track, throw runs. And so their baseline is sort of tension. And so when I get them into this relaxed walk and I go to ask for the trot, sometimes it takes them several steps to pick up the trot from when I originally asked because they’re trying to find there be and everything in this relaxed state. And sometimes I’ll be teaching a lesson on someone’s off the truck thoroughbred and the the horse baby came out tense.

And we do all of these things to get them relaxed before we even get to the trot. And then I go, OK, now ask for the trot and then they go trot. And then you can see the rider get insecure about the fact that the immediately. And I’m always like, it’s OK for things to take time. That I think in a competitive setting people get really almost claustrophobic is like the feeling that comes to mind of.

The performance pressure. Yeah, I’m like, I need. They say that I need to do my trot transition at A so I’m going to ask at A and they need and I’m like, I know it takes my horse 6 steps to get up to trot, so I’m just going to ask 6 steps before. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes in the show ring they pick up the trot immediately and you go, OK, now I know I can ask it I or whatever.

But yeah, I find this idea of giving things time and being this sort of overall safe space, like when I have a force who has any behavioral issues, I teach them to check in. With you scared, Yeah. Exactly. And instead of it allows them to break from that thing that they’re finding anxiety and even if they’re sometimes the check in is you seeing this and sometimes the check in is really. Short see so many horses to overreact or overly spooky because they’re scared of the reaction of the rider.

They’re scared to be punished and pushed on and so used to that the rider is totally unaware and just reacts with Sonos oh like this. So they swallow it and hold on really long until it’s too much and they give an overly big spook reaction. And that is why I think with young horses, if you want to create a horse that really trusts the rider, and I think that’s really important when starting a young horse, that immediately make the experience. The rider is my guide and protector when I get scared. So with young horse, really important to notice when they get scared and to always react with empathy.

I deal with young horses when they get spooked during groundwork from something outside the arena. I will always go and look out the window and just interrupt whatever I was doing to deal with that. This is so important that the young horse knows my human is not going to push. It’s not a big deal. We can let go of that and usually then it’s a deal of two minutes and we can continue and complete relaxation.

Instead, when I insist focus on me and pay more attention to me than on the outside because that’s respect and then I might get short lived obedience because of course bottles up the tension, but be it the next noise, so movement outside the arena, then I will have the big blow up and then I carry the tension on through the session. So I think that is a big thing with young horse that learned a trusted person so they can down regulate really quickly after this. It’s not about that they don’t spoke anymore, that they recover real quick. Yeah, that’s been the biggest thing that I’ve been trying to get out to people is that especially with the buzzword of dysregulation, of regulation now, like people think that a spooky horse is a dysregulated horse, and I’m like, no, of course. They’re wired for survival.

They’re going to react with sudden noise. It’s. When they don’t, it’s when they can only come up. That’s dysregulation. When there is no coming down or the coming down is hours after.

Because even in the wild, they’re going to pick up, they’re going to react. And then they’re going to settle. Yeah, exactly. And so it’s this idea of just because a regulated horse is a horse that can have that up, but then also have that down. Yes.

And I think so many times, and maybe it’s our own fear or our own insecurities, but when the horse comes up, there’s that emotional thing of we go either we’ve done something wrong and then we react in a negative space, or they’re doing something wrong by reacting to whatever and then we react in a negative space. That is where we come back to my very first point, beyond horses. We need to learn about emotional regulation as a leader. So the vending force goes up, we don’t follow in the up notice, and then we can be there as a safe haven anchor for the force. So we have to stay level and allow the force to react, allow the force to have the reaction, to feel the way he feels without feeling guilty, bad or wanting to fix it.

Just notice it now, be there. Support to the force can come down again. And that’s how we end up to be the safe haven for a horse. So when you’re working with a young horse, I know it’s hard to talk in general generalities about forces because they’re all individuals and all of that. But it’s there like a certain process that you tend to follow in terms of the groundwork, then the saddle work, then the mounting block work, then the what does that process look like and how we’ll start there because I’m sure we’ll get into.

So I actually have a very clear process and because the tasks of course needs to learn, they’re going to be exactly the same no matter what personality of the horse. It’s just the way how we teach it and how quickly we progress and how we structure the training that’s going to be slightly different from horse to horse simply because we need to adapt to the horse in form. But so I’m a very logical thinker. I can be very strategic, very clear, and that’s why I worked out a very clear pathway to follow. I have very clear set of grounded preparations I need any horse to before ever going to the mounting block.

So the horse knows already from the ground all transitions that I have already. But really even relaxed impulsion. I call that follow my energy because I want horse and I go breathe in. I increase my energy that they speed up when I relax and calm down. I want them to calm down.

So it’s always about that horse synchronizes with me. That translates super easy to riding it teach that on the ground and then I want the horse to know already leg and rein aids from the ground too with steady pressure just to feel. Imitate leg aids to yield shoulders high and quotas so the horse already knows that when I get on. Same with backup and all the rein aids on the head. I started horses always bit less.

I might introduce the bit later, but in principle start every horse bit less because I feel it’s so much easier. It’s a logical translation or continuation from groundwork to right. And I have a lot less defensive reactions actually that way. And of course, I always work a lot on confidence stuff that the force is already confident with all aspects of accepting the right leg, seeing something above, the change of eye over the back, noises above the back, and all these kind of things at the force. But it’s not desensitization, all right?

I don’t do the classical desensitization way. I really teach forces to engage and to look and to be there, to be present. It’s all about the engagement with me. I want divorce to be involved in every single process. It might stand still, but then I see the eyes on the blinking.

It’s just a small sign of worry. And a lot of people that think, oh, but he’s been standing still, but he was not relaxed. He was not engaged. They went that relaxation of the engagement. And the most important indicator is the eye.

If the eye is blinking, the next thing that will happen is in lower the head and look at me. That’s what I want to have. That tells me the force is OK. So I have very clear groundwork exercise that people can do with the forces as of two years old till basically do the first ride. I’m all pro starting horses.

Later somebody comes to me starting the horse at two years. Like what? Please wait. Here is my centre of exercise that focus on that for two years and then the horse is so well prepared that the first ride literally comes to the mountain block and picks him up. So I think a lot of people think when they start horses, there’s going to be this big thing that happens when they get on for the first time.

Is all of this groundwork that you’re doing not only mentally preparing the horse to deal with things, but like physically preparing the horse to deal with things? Because I know like I’ve had horses that were weird about Oh, it’s the act like the rocking of the body when you put weight in a stirrup or. Oh yeah, preparation prior to getting on. So prepare for it is so solid. I call it, I want the horse to be ground Grandma proof.

Like when I’m 80, I still want to be able to get on that young horse, you know, clumsy. That’s how tolerant they want them to be. So from the time and again, I know generality generalities, but say you have a 3 1/2 year old that you’re looking to start to get started. From the time you start the groundwork to the time in best case scenario maybe. What does the timeline look like when starting a horse like that?

I used to do for clients my whole process in two months. At first. I would also start 3 year olds in two months, but then was like, I really don’t that time pressure I see on the horse happening even though only to the session every second day. All right, I was like, I don’t like that. And two months was already, I was in France and they have a really famous guy there who has a method of starting horses in five days.

He does it in the stable in the stall the first time man, how can you do that? So for people in France have abused the horses started latest in a month, right? And I was there with two months and then I said I feel still feel this is long. So I started to say OK I only take horses as a four years of age and I prefer to take the horses three years for a month to do the pre start ground rock stuff in one month because I really know what to teach and how to teach it. I can really get the worse with the prep exercise so well that when it comes back the next year I take 2 sessions to refresh and ready to get on.

If it is an amateur, it takes a lot longer because they don’t have the experience, they don’t have the timing, they are usually not able to put in such consistent structured work. And I think that is where a lot of amateur owners have totally wrong expectations. They compare themselves to professional trainers, think they have to get results in that short amount of time. And usually amateur owners, they get the young horse when it’s a yearling, let’s say. So there’s already a lot less stress than for a horse trainer.

So why stress about I have to prepare my horse for getting ridden in a month? Take your time from two to four years to go for these prep exercises. Enjoy the relationship, go on walks, take your time. You don’t have to put the session so full anyway. You don’t manage with your own concentration.

And I think that is that I really try to take pressure off amateur owners or leisure owners. You don’t need to get results as quickly as a trainer and if other people tell you why you’re not riding a four year old, why are you not yet riding him? It’s my problem, it’s my horse forget. And for most young horse honours, at least my students, they’re leisure riders. For them it really is about enjoying the journey and the relationship with the farce.

For them it’s not about going to competition and going to three young horse classes so there is no pressure and still if they put themselves so much pressure on, I should be further along, I should make quicker progress. I must be doing something wrong. And yeah, there is very really wish to help them to. You don’t have to progress so fast. Anyways for young horse, any time to mentally, emotionally mature and to learn everything and also physically mature, there is no no real pressure.

Of course we need to be progressive certain degree, but you don’t need to squash it into one or two months. At all. Yeah. I think people get so obsessed with timelines and I know as a professional, like I don’t recommend young horses do any young horse classes even if they’re being ridden because the mental and emotional pressure that we put on them is insane. It is.

To me, the goal with competition horses is I think we want to have our horses happy and sound of competing for as long as possible and when you fry their brains as a four and five year like, it gets really tricky to keep them loving it for a long time. I love endurance riding, not the high speed endurance, but but endurance riding you enjoy with the words or travel all the miles in nature. And I got my horse Tara from a very famous breeder in France who rides on international level with horses and she has 10 folds each year. And she has a very nice way of bringing along her young horses. And to qualify her young horses in endurance, she only starts about four or five years old.

Most of her mirrors get to fall at four years and then she starts them at 5. She starts in all winter before they turn 5:00. And then in autumn of the fifth year, she takes him on the 1st 20 kilometer rides for the qualifications. And she does them in a herd. She always she trains them as the herd and then she takes them out on the ride in their herd.

And there’s always 1 old experience horse with them. We have 4 youngsters and one good uncle. I think that is perfect because these horses, they’re started late. They make the first experience of competition in the unknown herd with a good uncle they trust. They travel together with an experienced horse that gives them security.

I think that’s amazing. And then these endurance horses, they are feet and strong until almost 20 years. They go 160 kilometers, 100 miles and that is so different than those young horse classes at three and four years old. They’re so stressful that enforces to enter alone in the arena. Yeah, that’s I live in a sort of horse hub place in America.

And so we’re really lucky like this morning it’s a Wednesday and I took two horses to a competition this morning, schooling competition. And me and the owner took these two horses together and these we reserved ring time so that these two could go in together and they 1 is a little quieter than the other. And so the non quiet one I just put behind the quiet one and that quiet one trots around and I follow as each like today was their second experience. And you would have thought that they’ve done it 10 Times Now because they just were so mentally flexible because they didn’t have the anxiety of Oh my God, I’m leaving my friend. And then when it’s great to practice, like while the one friend goes and does his little course, we’re just standing in the middle.

But that ability to just stand there and chill while something else is going on. And it’s a big venue. And it was funny because when we were there last time, there was someone like putting up a security system in the corner of the arena. So that corner of the arena was of course, scary. And then today Sprinkler randomly went off like a water cannon while we were in the arena.

And but luckily, because one me and the owner didn’t really have any idea what was going on. So we didn’t really get nervous about it. But because they had each other, they were just like, OK, we’re just going to avoid that side of the arena. But I was like, if I had one of these horses in here by themselves and. It would be totally different.

So different and sometimes it can go if that hot horse was leading and had to face the water sprinkler. First Asian of horses. But it’s about knowing the forces that you have and. Making good combinations. And just understanding like these are herd animals and I think is somewhere in Europe in dressage classes for the young horses.

I know that they’ll have the they go with an older horse, they’re paired with an older horse. An older horse. The young horse classes for three and four year olds in dressage. They go in with three or four horses in one. They’re right behind each other, but it’s all the young horses, all the same class.

But it’s a really big transition. Then when they go from level A to LL is second level and L, they have to be alone. That jump for many young horses is quite a big one. So jump from 4 to 5 year old classes. But I think that is something nice to do in Germany that the young horse doesn’t have to go in.

Yeah, at least with these competitions, they decorate the jumps like it’s a real show, but it’s not actually being judged. And you can pick and choose what jumps your horses jump and you can get off and lower a jump and practice and then and I think in young. Horse classes it should not be about judging so much perfection of technique and skill of the works, but they should also evaluate horsemanship skill. How does the rider react when the horse Spooks at the flower pot? And I think they should give penalty points for any rider who gets pushy or doesn’t allow the horse to look.

And it should get bonus points if the rider. Encourages the words to look and takes time to rob the horse and even if that means he interrupted the test, I think with young horses that should be in there. Yeah. I think it gets so lost that we’re supposed to be developing these horses for the future versus for the right here, right now. And I mean, it’s easy when you see a quality young horse to just be like, wow, that thing is so nice, but look at its face, look at its back, look at all of these things that.

Scream tension. Yeah. And sometimes I think we get really nice movement when the horses are in that level of tension because they become a little more punchy and they become a little more up and then that gets rewarded. And it’s also going back to positive and negative reinforcement. It’s positively reinforcing for the riders.

That’s what you should be looking for. Yeah. And so I think there’s just forever conversation. My first priority is to have free flowing balance gates on a loose rein. I want the divorce Lawrence to carry him or herself in physical and emotional balance, in good impulsion before I introduce contour.

A horse can trodden candle on a loose rein on a straight line around the arena without spooking, going slowing down and know this horse is emotionally regulated and physically really well in balance. And this seems to be too easy, too non fancy for people. But that should be the foundation for any horse, no matter discipline, before they ever pick up the reins to ask the force for frame. Yeah. Otherwise they pick up the reins and they have a horse that’s not relaxed physically actually, and they always just fighting.

Riding on loose reins is done way too little and it really teaches people so much. Yeah, one of the biggest things I noticed too is I do a lot of hacking on young horses and. First, you should be. Out I always laugh because I grew up and my mom is a fox hunter and to me and the woods have never been a safe place for me so sometimes I feel like I can have more anxiety than the horses out on the trails. But anyways, I noticed that when I’m Hocking the young horses, I always have them on the buckle because I’m pretty quick.

But if something starts to go sideways, I’m pretty quick at being able to shorten my reins up or whatever. But I actually noticed that things happen less. Like you can feel a build up, but then they get to that thing and because you don’t have the pressure, they’re like, they can almost work it out more than being like, OK, I sense something and I was coming up, but then they shorten the reins and tensed up. And so then I feel like there’s something maybe I should actually be afraid of versus, as stupid as it sounds, waiting for the reaction to then react yourself. And that is exactly one point a lot of people are not aware about because again, it’s so normal for us to ride like that.

That is contact with the reins is very claustrophobic forces and is a huge trick up and they’re already afraid. It just increases tension because flight animal, if you restrict their freedom to move, put them in a tight situation, it triggers them like crazy because they feel vulnerable. I’m going to be eating now and This is why on the horse, it’s a little bit looky or insecure. If people shorten the reins because, Oh my God, they lose control. This is going to have a snowball effect.

Of course, if you’re a skilled person, you emotionally regulated, you can pick up the reins with a feel of let’s hold hands in the supportive. It has a different feel to the horse. All right. And this is also where I see a lot of things go wrong with amateur people. Never started a horse before Then ride a young horse for the first time because they’re unsure the automatic response is right with short rents and that immediately triggers a young horse.

And then they wonder, why does he not go forward? Why is he so tense? Why does he shake the head? Why does he pull the reins out of my hands? Once we’re trotting?

He’s rushing all the time and hard to stop. It’s all because just give the reins. Let him trot 1 rein at a time. Be confident to allow the forward. It’s a really important quality as a young horse rider.

Allow the forward give the confidence to the young horse. If the ride in any way as if I want to hold the horse back, it’s not going to work. The rider has to give the confidence to the young horse and to be 100% committed to allowing the forward and then miraculously you don’t have control problems. It’s always funny. It said paradox.

I always say especially with off the track thoroughbreds, because people get really nervous to send them forward because they’re like, they already want to go fast. And I’m like, yeah, but it is reverse psychology when you tell them. I don’t have so much experience with them. I had once a steeplechase extra work to ride for a while. They get actually written really well outside of racing and it’s like when it rains along, OK, relax, but then you pick up OK.

I have this one right now and she’s been in training and her mom has now started to ride her and the mom’s oh, the steering’s a little iffy or what? And I go out any issue you have out center forward, send her somewhere. She’s seeking that forward and she has such a big walk that it can feel like she’s going. Yeah. But I’m like, no, she’s got the power and you want to.

I would say you want to harness that power for good and not evil. But if it’s. Important like when you I think very clashes with human nature, human nature. Now we have a predator mindset, a predator on nature. What did on that?

Even vegans, I’m sorry but yes, whenever we feel something is out of our control, we want to control. Whenever we feel a bit unsure about the situation, we want to control, rein back, hold back. And that is so detrimental with the young. Worse. Worse is naturally has big gates in his forward.

The more we try to control, the more tension we create, the more resistance we get and the worse also the steering gets. And we have to get aware about this natural tendency because those breaking hands, shortening the reins, it happens automatically, even a little bit afraid. That’s again with the topic of emotional regulation. It’s always there. So we have to find the courage to allow that forward energy and we still need to feel a limit.

Is it still good forward energy or doesn’t get it now? Then we need to channel it, but basically we need to be open to allow that forward energy to flow. And then miraculous with young horses steering also works much better. Yeah. Yeah.

So as we start to wind this down, what is something that you would love to see either young horse owners or owners in general just like doing with their forces or see that you would like to see in the relationship or something that will help build the relationship? That is a big question. I think first of all, take the pressure off yourself. The pressure of performing, having to perform, having to show results towards others in the barn. Take the pressure off and once it pressures off, you’re going to be able to relax so much more into the process.

You’re going to be so much more relaxed in the sessions with the force. You’re going to be so much more happy to take it slow, to go at a horse’s speed. And now this sounds like I’m going to make very slow progress. But no, in fact, it is. Once we slow down the force speed, we don’t overwhelm the horse anymore and actually make faster progress.

It’s, again, the paradox. Yeah. The fastest way to go slow. Yeah. And then the horse will feel better in the sessions.

And that gives a better relationship, that brings more connection. And another thing is that I always tell my members when they plan their sessions at least one day a week where you do only relationship stuff. When you go to your horse, you have no agenda. Best is of course if every day you go to your horse you can spend 10 minutes just spending time with the horse checking with us you want to do. But really one day really consciously check on the relationship.

Check. What does divorce want to do? Don’t put him in cross eyes and pamper him. That is usually a human thing. Divorce is in joy.

It can be when the horse is in the past, you just go to him and you graze next to each other because that is what the force friends do, right? For a day into your forces world. Maybe your horse likes it when you find his itches. Maybe a horse in choice is when you take him out and you go for a grazing walk. Or maybe a forest is so confident, absolutely adores trail walks in the forest.

Of course, if your horse still unconfident, that’s not a thing to do in a relationship. There will be a training topic, different story. So you think about what is it the horse and choice and then invest time into that. If we want to be friends with a horse, we need to show up as a likable person to the force. It’s just like in any relationship, we need to work on it, and sometimes it can take quite some time to create that.

And we also need to give the horse the freedom to tell us he didn’t like that, not take it personal, and that’s the hard part. Thank you so much for joining me. How do people find you? Follow along with what you do. All of that good stuff.

I think the best is on my Facebook page, Gavin Nova Understanding Horses. That is the easiest way and otherwise if people want to learn more, they can get my book Understanding is the Key on Amazon, the chipping in English. I also have it in French for French people, but I don’t think French people are going to listen here just in case. Thank. You so much for joining me you’re.

Welcome. It was a pleasure.