Clinton Anderson's training tip of the week 1/13/10

It wasn’t until I started attending clinics and apprenticing under Australian horseman, Gordon McKinlay, that I realized that horses are just like humans – they don’t learn perfectly. When you first introduce a new lesson to a horse, he’s going to get confused, frustrated and maybe even agitated or nervous. And you know what? That’s absolutely OK. Horses are allowed to express all of those emotions when you’re training them. It’s your job as a trainer to learn how to help the horse understand in the easiest way possible what you expect of him. After working with literally thousands of horses, I realized that they learn best using a step-by-step system. They’re smart creatures, but they can’t process everything at the same time. I soon realized that if I took the time to break a lesson into steps and introduced each step to the horse separately, he caught on to the lesson a lot quicker and progressed through his training at a faster rate.