Starting Horses

Walking confidently and calmly with people is a very important thing to teach your horse. We want our horses to feel safe while they walk with us and to understand what we communicate to them. If it doesn’t yet feel safe to work with your horse in close proximity and/or your horse has a lot of excessive energy, you can also go to the next category, ‘work in the round pen’ and start there.

Working in the round pen is very useful for building communication with your horse at a distance and at more speed. It gives the horse freedom to express him/herself, figure things out, build understanding and find his/her own balance. If you don’t have a round pen, you can also use a small arena or square pen, or you can section off a part of a bigger arena.

Asking your horse to yield from your body language means asking him/her to move without having to touch him/her. This is a very natural way for horses to communicate. The aim is to be able to communicate about the movement and position of different parts of the body.

Yielding from feel means communicating with the horse about moving and positioning the body from physical touch. This could be guiding them with the halter/rope, touching them with your hand on the chest, belly or hindquarters or touching them with a whip.

In the environmental training we teach the horse how to respond to things in their environment that could scare them. It is very important to understand, that we’re not trying to get a horse ‘used to things’, but rather showing them that they can keep communicating with us and find safety with us when they’re triggered by something in the environment.

In these videos you will learn a progressive way of introducing lunging to your horse. It’s well worth spending the time to have your horse confident, relaxed and responsive here before you move on.

Giving your horse a good and safe experience with being saddled is very important for his/her future as a riding horse. With the right preparation and process this doesn't have to be stressful or frightening. Learn how to do it here!

In this section you find more exercises to prepare your horse for his/her first ride. Preparing your horse well is the key to having a good experience on your first ride together!

In this section you will learn everything about introducing the bridle to your horse. Teaching your horse how to respond to your aids on the ground will help eliminate a lot of confusion once you’re on him/her. If you prefer to ride your horse bitless you can skip the first video and simply do the rest of the exercises without a bit, the same general things still apply.

It's time for the first rides! Once you have gone through all the preparation above this should be pretty straight forward and relaxed. You can always go back to the basic exercises if needed.

Here you find additional videos about the starting process, such as first rides, first sessions and specific topics.