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Building Blocks of Training
By Joyce Fahrni

Imagine you are watching a child learning to count to 10. She has been given 10 numbered building blocks to make a tower and they must be in numerical order. She starts to put the blocks one on top of another, sometimes being very careful, sometimes just dropping the block on top of the last one. As the child gets to the seventh block, the tower starts to get a little wobbly and while trying to put #8 on top, some blocks fall down. Now she has to figure out which numbered blocks are still standing and which of these are solid enough to continue adding blocks on top. Let’s imagine that everything fell down except for 1,2,and 3. #1 is still square and in place, but #2 and #3 are not centred and therefore need to be adjusted to be solid. After squaring these up, which won’t take long, the next block that must be added is #4. She cannot add #8, even though that’s what she was working on when things fell apart. The blocks must be added in numerical order again, making sure every one is solid before adding the next one, so the tower can be completed.

When training a horse at any level, the building block parable must be used. All training should follow a sequence that makes logical sense to you and the horse. One exercise is built upon another to get a more advanced exercise and fortunately for us, all of the advanced exercises are based upon the fundamentals. Sometimes as we teach an exercise the horse seems to catch on quickly and we move on to the next exercise without really getting the previous one solid. Or perhaps we get bored with the exercise and move the horse on to something more interesting for us before the horse is ready to advance. When the horse has trouble with a movement, you must back up through the exercises that led to that movement to find out which one the horse is really having trouble with Then using repetition and consistency, work your way up through the exercises again until you reach what you were working on originally.

Occasionally when things fall apart and time is a factor, you may not get back up to the exercise you were working on during that same training session. You may have to work on the lower exercises for several sessions or whatever it takes to help the horse more fully understand what you are asking. Forcing a horse into an exercise will cause future problems.

There are also other factors that affect how your horse is handling the exercises. One factor is attitude on the horse’s part. This is a definite unwillingness to try. He’s full of himself with excess energy and doesn’t want to settle down to work. Once again, the answer is to back up through the exercises to very simple movements that you can work on until they are perfected. The horse may argue at first, but be firm, kind, and consistent!

Another factor is the horse is simply going through a bad time that only patience and repetition will win out in the end. Even people go through these bad times, like getting out of bed on the wrong side! Once again, you must back up through the exercises to make your goals easier to accomplish so the horse has a successful lesson.

A factor that we forget about, but is very important, is our own attitude. Are we letting emotion get involved? Are we experiencing anger, impatience, or frustration? If we are feeling any of these things the best thing to do is put the horse away and take a personal time out. Then when we are mentally ready, simply start on more basic exercises and work up. Not only will you accomplish great things, you will regain your confidence to tackle the problem exercise.

A question that’s often asked, is ‘how long is this going to take me?’ The time involved for each exercise differs with each horse and rider. What counts is that the horse understands what is being asked and is willing to perform the exercise before moving on to the next step. Repetition is the homework required in all things! Sometimes learning an exercise will take ten minutes, but perfecting it will take hours or days or months.

You need to have a lesson plan each time you are training, not only for a day, but also for a week and a month and a year. Give yourself and your horse realistic goals and work towards them. A real good idea I encourage is to keep a journal of the progress of both you and your horse, including your feelings of how things are going, whether good or bad. This is great to look back on in the future to actually see how far you’ve progressed.

Remember, keep exercises in logical sequence and get each exercise solid before advancing to the next one. Even though you think this will take longer to reach your goal, I guarantee, the more building blocks you put in each exercise and perfect, the sooner you will reach your goal.