Zen Horse

Training Tip of the Week:

Consistency is Your Greatest Ally
By Clinton Anderson

For the best training results with your horse, don't worry so much about how much time you spend training your horse, but rather, concentrate on putting your training days in a row. For example, when I only have three days to work with my horse, I make sure to work him three days in a row rather than every other day.

Why? It's a condition I call "Mondayitis." Every time your horse gets even one day off, the next day he comes down with Mondayitis. This means that the first day you work with him (Let's go ahead and use Monday for an example), your horse comes out and he's fresh, not paying attention, and thinking about his buddies and getting back to the barn. You end up spending most of that day's training session just trying to get his mind back on you. When you start on Tuesday, however, he's already thinking about you, so you can start making some real progress. On Wednesday, or the third day, you may even double the progress you make because of the learning momentum you have built by then.

However, if I work him on Monday and don't work him on Tuesday, then Wednesday just becomes another Monday! And if I give him Thursday off, guess what day Friday is? That's right - it's Monday again. So although you've worked with your horse for three days that week, all right, all you've really done is repeat the Monday lesson three times. It's very hard to make much progress when all you do is repeat Monday. So even if you only have 10 minutes a day to spend with your horse, put those days in a row, mate, and you'll be amazed at how quickly the results will start to stack up.

Happy Trails,

Danna