The common approach to horses centered around control leaves many horses feeling like they don’t have a choice and many riders feeling like they need to win battles with their horse. It also prevents horses from becoming self-controlling and learning at a deeper level. And even tho most horses tolerate being controlled, there are occasional horses that act up and refuse to tolerate it.
I experienced this with one of my mares. Even tho I had tamed hundreds of horses and learned how to do it properly by taking a horse trainer degree, regular training made her more and more unpredictable. It wasn’t until I discovered how it’s possible to give choices that I was able to retrain her from my own training and even ride her at liberty.
Something I never thought possible with this horse. This experience made me change the way I train horses. Which resulted in a method that makes it easy to train horses at liberty.
But did you know that liberty isn`t just liberty, there are at least 3 different ways of doing it. You can do liberty based on:
1. Choices
Providing horses with choices in a strategic way enables us to make our idea their idea. As horses develop self-control and learn in a deeper way than when simply being told what to do and what not to do.
When given the freedom to choose anxious horses calm down and the lazy ones find motivation, plus we can use our signals for communication not control.
2. Control
Controlling a horse at liberty requires some major riding skills few of us are possessing it also requires the horse to be extremely obedient to signals.
If you are clever at riding, you will be able to control your horse with small signals. You will not need the reins because you can manage your horse without them. However, this requires a whole lot of training.
3. Treats
Food rewards and clicker training are popular ways to get horses to do what we want them to without tack. Most horses become very motivated by receiving rewards, some will however become pushy others anxious and most (if not all) will think of treats when they see humans (especially if food rewards are used extensively).
I see the usefulness of positive reinforcement but I would certainly not rely on it as a main training method as there are things horses value over food, like the company of someone taking the guard (they are after all flight animals and herd animals).
Even if a horse knows how to do something in the exchange for treats he or she might not know how to do it without, which basically means that the horse only knows how to do something in certain settings, but not all.
A horse might enter a trailer to get carrots but that doesn't mean the horse knows what he or she needs to know to actually be able to trailer load. The same goes for ground work and riding signals.
Why is liberty important
I wasn’t initially planning on training liberty, it’s something that happened naturally when I gave horses choices. Once my idea was their idea it became easy to take the reins off and ride without them.
Liberty is however not something that requires us to constantly ride without reins or lead without lead rope, because we can give choices with tack just as we can train control based without.
Which means that if you are able to give your horse choices and make your idea your horses idea and use your reins for communication, not control, you are basically already riding at liberty with tack. And it's going to be super easy to take the reins off and ride without.
If you`re not really sure how to go about this (which by no means is your fault because what's taught out there is either control based or treat based) and want to learn a proven path to having a self controlling and connected horse, make sure to join our live training that teaches you everything you need to succeed.
Ang gives you the steps to become the treat when training your horse 🥕
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