Helping horses and helping people who love them. Lesson 4, Session 4

While starting a horse under saddle you have to be able to read the emotions and differentiate how the horse is communicating during the process. Kali has worked through the important fundamentals of training such as giving to pressure, working through flight or fear, building confidence, softening to her cues, along with extra exposures to help the young filly settle in.

When starting a young horse under saddle be sure to go back to what the horse has learned in previous sessions before continuing forward. If the horse has retained the knowledge of what is being asked it is then time to advance. “Chanelle” is bred to have a natural self carriage and has accepted Kali’s low pressure training methods in stride!

In this session a saddle pad was added as well as the saddle. Remember that you can not give the horse enough experiences of adding and relieving the pressure until it stands patiently and quietly accepting the pad and saddle. This is horsemanship, not like training techniques used in the old west. It about building a trusting relationship.

Sometimes to build trust you have to work through fears and resistance as horses naturally respond using fight or flight, and fight is always fear based as well so we really need to help them through this. Kali soon added the saddle and went back to a short ground work session before attempting to put a foot in the stirrup. There are a lot of preparations to make leading up to the first ride and the horse accepting the rider and eventually as we start other horses under saddle we will go more into detail…

Channelle and Kali were soon walking and trotting around the arena without issue. We noticed good form, eagerness to work, gentle transitions, and a long list of qualities that the horse displayed on just the first ride! She is going to be the good minded kind that didn’t miss a step throughout the process. Be sure to watch for Channelle as she proves herself to be a horse that will be well suited for a number of disciplines and riders. She comes available in the coming weeks under our available horses page, or contact levi@sellslake.com