Practice Safe Horsemanship
These are the most crucial lessons in learning good horsemanship. Any training program that causes you, your horse, or others around you to get hurt should never be used. These basic horsemanship tips and skills will help you to stay safe when working with horses.

Setting Goals and Journaling
Setting reasonable goals and keeping a training journal are two of the largest factors of success when training a horse. Focusing on smaller, easily attainable goals on a daily basis will allow you to reach your larger goal (the big picture) quicker and more thoroughly, without leaving out any pieces of the puzzle. This article will show you why and how to do this efficiently.

Patience, Consistency, & Attitudes
Ahh yes... these are the attributes we tend to avoid like the plague! Yes, they are hard for most of us, but it's extremely important for us to continually develop these skills so that we can make it easy for our horses to trust us and learn to respond to our requests.

Herd Dynamics and Leadership
A horse cannot be trained successfully if he thinks he's higher in the pecking order than his trainer. Understanding how horses view their own herds and the leader within their herd can give you a very important edge when attempting to tackle training issues. Leadership is not about aggression, it is about proving to your horse, every day and in every situation, that you are worthy of being his leader. The result will be a horse who wants to be with you and work for you.

Understanding Equine Body Language

What is Your Horse Saying?

What are You Saying to Your Horse?
Horses do not know how to speak our language. They speak the only language they have known since birth... horse. They communicate mainly by using body language, physical contact and vocal noises. The first step to being able to communicate efficiently with a horse is to understand these actions and sounds a horse makes and what they mean. Once you understand how horses communicate with each other, you can learn how to use their language to talk to them in ways that they already understand.

Training Motivators
In order to teach any horse what you'd like it to do, you first need to have a motivator. Horses won't learn or perform without good motivation. And, the motivation that you provide must be a greater motivator than any other stimulus that your horse is exposed to.

Sensitizing and Desensitizing
Every single movement you make near your horse is either desensitizing him or sensitizing him. "Sensitizing" is when you teach your horse to give you a specific response to a stimulus or cue (for example: giving to the bit). "Desensitizing" is when you teach your horse not to give a response to a stimulus or cue (for example: sacking out or spook-proofing). Horses are masters at reading subtle body language, so it is important to learn how to use these techniques to support every aspect of your training. These concepts help you to create more or less response from your horse, wherever you need it.

The Patience Game
This game is one that is based on the sensitizing and desensitizing concepts from the article above. Horses learn to play the patience game, starting from the day they are born. Many of them have become masters at it. Learn how you can become a master at this game to get consistent and responsive performance from your horse.

Avoiding the Training Roadblocks
Nearly every horse person has at some point stood in their own way to receiving better training and responsiveness from their horse. There are many, many things that can unknowingly cause us to prevent success. Time, experience, egos, gadgets, quick fixes, ability to select a proper trainer or teacher. The list can be endless. Many of the lessons I had to "learn the hard way" are outlined here, to help you learn them the easy way!