Читать книгу Finding the Missed Path. The Art of Restarting Horses онлайн

31 страница из 72

In some worst cases, the horse is eventually deemed “hard-mouthed.” Severe bits and heavier hands soon come into play just to accomplish something as simple as a stop, turn, or back-up. With a bigger bit being used, the level of discomfort rises, and the horse usually begins offering additional unwanted behavior, such as hollowing his back and throwing his head in an effort to get some relief. This, in turn, often causes the rider to add even more pressure and/or equipment, such as a tie-down, draw-reins, and the like, to keep the horse’s unwanted behavior under control. Of course, this only causes the horse more discomfort, usually creating even more behavioral issues, which causes more strife between horse and rider, and so on.

In these examples, as well as almost any others that might be used, the problems actually stem from a lack of understanding on the human’s part of what the horse is learning during training. It’s a very common occurrence for us to think we are teaching one thing while the horse is actually learning something else entirely. Unfortunately for both horse and handler, this is usually the very type of thing that almost always leads to unwanted training issues that end up with the horse needing to be reeducated later.