Welcome to the first in a series of articles that I call “Better Communication through Understanding".

I hope to help you to teach your horse what they, and you, need to know to make your time together more enjoyable.

My name is Walter Alzner and I acquired my first horse roughly thirty years ago, but I have been working steadily with horse and rider for approximately the last twelve years. I am an Equine Canada Certified Level One Western Coach and was very fortunate to have a fantastic, knowledgeable coach. I am very fortunate to have been personally influenced by top level horsepeople, throughout that time and still to this day. During that time, I coached at a riding school (all levels) for four years. I have also instructed future coaching students helping them to become certified coaches. I have worked with many students to help them prepare and show successfully in Western competition.

For the last seven years I have been going to barns (you call, I’ll be there) and have been working with horses and riders of all types, breeds and disciplines, helping to get the best from both, and specializing in problem solving (from in hand to under saddle) for horse and rider. My business name is "Eternal Dreams", which I named after my horse, Bingos Eternal Dream who has been a royal pain ....er, ah; just kidding. I meant to say a wonderful horse. Actually, anyone who knows him knows that he is a very kind, gentle and polite horse around people. He is a real sweetheart. However, he is a strong willed, independent type of horse who does not easily relinquish leadership, and will continually push his limits to improve his place in the human herd by doing little tests, which we will soon discuss. Does this behaviour sound familiar?

It’s important to point out at this time that we will NOT break your horses’ spirit or change their personality. The horse you start with will be the horse you finish with. The change will be in their manners and willingness to learn, their personality and sense of humour will remain, they may even become more personable and interactive.

The next thing you may be asking is, “why would I think this series of articles will be different?” Well, to start with, I think I will give you new insights into how horses think, behave and most importantly, react to our body language and how they perceive our reaction to theirs. A small or insignificant movement that we make or do which we do not think twice about, they interpret as altogether differently. For example, I always back out of a horses stall. Why? For one it’s safer, but when we turn our backs to them as we leave, they interpret that as  submissive behaviour. They think they have chased us out of their stall. That’s a very basic explanation and we'll touch on that later, but it’s something most of us don’t give a second thought to.

I will endeavour to give you the basic tools to teach your horse to build a foundation for all future lessons. I will also give you something simple that you can ask of your horse, that when everything is going wrong, you can ask them something basic, so simple that they can give you a “yes” answer. This will enable them to focus and pay attention and feel good about the work. However, the most important thing we will do is put structure back into our horse.

Horses, whether in the wild or in our paddocks, live in a very structured society. That’s how they live, and that’s what they expect from us. Anything less is confusing to them. With structure comes politeness, manners, a learning and thinking partner and a happier more willing horse, one that can understand our requests. This series, if followed, will make a better behaved, more responsive, politer, happier, thinking partner who can and will understand their position in our relationship.

So let us begin. First we must ask ourselves a few questions:

Are we trainer or teacher?
Do we have a philosophy?
Do we understand the psychology of horses?
In addition we will need some basic rules.

Trainers or Teachers

According to Webster’s:
TRAINER: to discipline or condition to perform tricks or commands.

Discipline = strict control, to enforce obedience
Condition = to develop a conditioned reflex or behaviour pattern.

Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but do you want them to do it because they know what an aid means or because it’s been drilled into them over and over until it’s a conditioned reflex?

TEACHER: to teach, to show, help to learn, to guide, to provide with knowledge, to cause to understand or accept a precept or philosophy.

Now, I like the sound of this a lot better. I would rather have a horse that understands what my aids are, so that if I need to ask for a correction, they will do it because they know what it means and can respond accordingly. Now, is it bad to be a Trainer...NO...but I think that the word Teacher really suits horse people better. In essence we need to teach our horse what they need to know because we can’t expect them to do something they haven’t been taught. All successful trainers are actually teachers and that’s how they think of themselves. The point that I'm trying to make is that how we perceive ourselves is important as are the thoughts and words we use to that end. Some examples are, “I can't", rather than saying, "I'm having trouble getting the hang of this" or "this is hard". We all know you can’t say “can't” in a lesson. Rather than say “kick with your leg", a better choice would be “bump with your leg". The list can go on and on, but I am sure you understand. If I think of myself as a Teacher (I can still call myself a trainer) I will achieve a lot more and probably quicker.

Philosophy
The love of, or search for wisdom.
(In our case) a particular system of principles for the conduct of life.

There are basically two philosophies when it comes to working with horses. One, you can force your horse to do things by means of restricting their ability to move by methods that range from gentle to extreme. Or secondly you can teach your horse by asking them to do something and then let them start giving you answers until they give the correct one and then reward them by means of a release of some kind.

I like to teach them, and I find that they respond better that way. They are happier, more trusting and respectful as they become a thinking partner.

My philosophy consists of a few basic rules.

One: I am the leader of the herd...it is not open for discussion, and it’s not a bad thing either, it’s just the way it is.
Two: I will be a good leader... I will not put you in harms way. I will not ask you to do anything I have not taught you. I will try not to confuse you and if I ask for something, I mean it and I expect you to not ignore me and to at least try
Three: Your job is to do what I ask, until I ask you to do something else. My job will be to teach you what you need to know in order to do it, and then correct you if you are having trouble.
Four: K.I.S.S....Keep It Simple Stu..., If I keep my requests simple and easy , it'll be better for both of us (I don’t know about you, but the simpler it is for me, the better).
Five: C.P.P that stands for... Consistent (I will ask the same way)...Persistent (I will continue to ask it)...Patient (I will be patient waiting for you to understand) With C.P.P you can teach anything to any horse.

There will be a few more basic rules coming later and they deal with specific requests.

Psychology...dealing with the mental and emotional aspects.

We need to develop a basic understanding of the following:
One: What they are....herd animals who live in a structured society
Two: How they think...they think of survival, and they use body language to communicate
Three: How they react...flight or fight (usually flight) with lightning fast reflexes
Four: How they behave...within that structured society, no one is equal (your either above or below in the herd) and they continually test their place in the herd

These are just basic explanations and as we talk more about specifics we will investigate them thoroughly.

Horses are a simple yet highly complex animal, there is always so much to learn about them and our relationship with them. I am a perpetual student of horses, and if you’re reading this, so are you. Horses are very intelligent and they sometimes have us trained before we know it!

The more we UNDERSTAND about horses the better we can COMMUNICATE.

Next month we will start with our first lesson and then continue in a natural progression of lessons.

Until then, Walter

If you would like to contact me, please do at, eternaldreamshorse@hotmail.com

Read Walter's second article on Natural Horsemanship