Rural Heritage October/November 2025

While there is much debate over positive and negative reinforcement in animal training; I find that time (and by that I mean specifically stretching it out and making things take longer) is the best way to keep the pressure light and the training fun for all involved. Work slowly both in asking for a specific thing, and in setting goals for overall progress. This is why we chose to start with a young animal. As long as the animal remains calm and happy, there is nothing we can’t work on tomorrow. While there is a lot of learning involved for the horse in all this; allow for the fact that you are learning as well. If a horse doesn’t move when you ask, or doesn’t go where you want, or stops to graze, these are all examples where you can refine your technique to give a better, clearer “ask” that gets the results you are looking for. You may need to learn to give more pressure to move or direct the horse. You want to remain calm and relaxed, but you also need to be focused and forward, making your desires and intentions known. These are valuable skills that you will use throughout your working life with horses. Trotting even a short distance with a horse in hand is not for everyone; it will get tiring very quickly. Don’t worry if that is not a thing you want to do. Regardless of how fast or slow your horse learned this variety of moving and standing skills, if it has remained calm and relaxed throughout this training, it is ready to move on to harnessing. As I suggested in the beginning, this work could be compressed into a few days by an experienced teamster with a slightly older horse, but that wasn’t our goal. My goal was to drag this out over weeks and months. Learn from it and enjoy it and share it with other beginning teamsters that are here on the farm. Really some of the most important work of training this horse is done now. In Part Two we will talk about how to harness it, drive it and hook to something for the first time. Follow up note: We were making great progress harnessing and driving Duke for the first time, and I was excited to write the second part of this article when in July he got a bad injury by being kicked by another horse. Being a young horse, there is plenty of time to continue his training in the near future, but my next Duke article might just be about wound care.

Finally, we come to the stopping and standing. Remember, we are not “teaching” this or “demanding” it. We are allowing it. Allowing it means looking for the time when the horse is completely calm and relaxed in motion and then picking the best place to let it stop. When they are standing still for a moment, we can practice a few simple things while the horse is calm and relaxed as a result of the movement he has just been doing. Here are some simple things to work on while standing. First, stop in the shade if it is hot. Find a place to stop and stand on gravel, if the desire to eat is strong. Start with the simplest things you may have already been working on. Groom the horse. The lead rope can hang down from their head or be tossed over their back; slowly work your way around the entire horse so you can touch all parts and be standing directly behind it without the horse walking away. From here, you can move to picking up all four feet while they stand loose in the driveway. Laying the rope across the rump is a nice little cheat that keeps them from “getting away” if they start to walk away. Again, we are teaching the horse that they can be still while we are moving around them. We will be remembering these steps when we begin to teach the horse about logging and standing while we set a chain on a log. These are the same skills that will be repeated in many different situations in the future. Additionally, it is nice to teach (or practice) while standing and putting its head down and backing up. Just remember if at any point in these standing exercises you find yourself working to keep the horse still, just return to more movement. Go back to leading up and down the driveway. Perhaps some more trotting and lunging in circles. Some final points for Part One of training a young horse. I always use a “pressure and release” method when asking the horse to do anything. While this is not the only way to teach a horse to do something, it has worked well for me. It is something horses seem to readily understand. This is the same for asking a horse to put its head down, back up or walk down the driveway. Applying the lightest pressure necessary is the “ask,” and the “release” needs to come quickly with every effort the horse makes to give what you asked for. Lots of little asks are usually better than one big ask.

October/November 2025

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