Читать книгу Geoff Teall on Riding Hunters, Jumpers and Equitation - Geoff Teall - Страница 30

1 Pet your horse. (Petting doesn’t do a thing for the horse’s nerves, but it can do wonders to relax the rider.)

2 Tell jokes.

3 Take a rest.

4 Eat lunch.

5 Don’t ride that horse for a few days.

6 Ride another horse.

7 Have somebody else ride your horse.

8 Dismount and take a walk.

9 Muck stalls.

10 Take a shower.

The first day I rode the horse, he was wild the whole time. At the end of twenty minutes, I got off.

The next day I rode him for twenty minutes. He was wild. I got off.

I did the same thing for two or three weeks. Whether he was wild or whether he was quiet, it didn’t make any difference: I rode that horse for twenty minutes, regardless.

After a while, he got used to only doing twenty minutes of work. He gave up being crazy because he knew the end of the session was never far away. Soon, the biggest problem I had with him was trying to keep him from getting too quiet.

When we eventually sold him, he was very quiet and very easy to ride. He still is.

Too often, people add stronger bits, more time, more work, and more gimmicks to a horse’s training until they finally run out of time, work, gimmicks, and tack. Then the horse is declared “no good” and that is the end of the story.

Some people believe that, over time, horses become more and more difficult to train. I think that the reverse is true. If you school a horse and work with him properly, training him should get progressively easier.