How do you evaluate how much training a horse has had?
What do you do to see exactly how much training a horse has had?
Any information would be great!
Obviously I worded this wrong…
If you have a horse who has been sitting in the pasture for years, how should you go about seeing how much training it has had
10 minutes of ground work can tell you a lot. See how well the horse lunges, turns, and backs. All of those things can give an idea to how sensitive to pressure the horse is.
I always like to pick up all four feet – surprisingly most horses aren’t cool with that in some way.
I also like to play with the ears, rub by the eyes, play with the nose, and rub my finger along the teeth on the inside of the cheek. Those things are easy to do on a horse that has been handled a great deal, but much more difficult on an untrained horse.
If I am allowed to get on the horse I keep it simple. Walk, trot, righte turn, left turn, and backing. If they are hard to deal with doing those things, I know they won’t do higher end stuff well, so I don’t even bother.
One thing I can definitely tell you from experience as a horse owner and trainer…. Never take someone else’s word for how the horse is trained. Odds are that they are exaggerating or painting far too pretty a picture.
How much, in days… eg, 30 days’ professional training, 45 days’ professional training, 60 days’ professional training. Or also in rides, such as 10 rides, 50 rides, 500 rides… usually you just guesstimate when you get up into the higher numbers.
Otherwise you just go based off of what the horse knows. If the horse hasn’t learned anything, it’s unstarted. If it’s learning, it’s green. If it knows all commands, it’s fully broke, and if it’s really really well broke to the point where it knows commands without always being told to do them (such as a horse who gets auto lead changes) then it’s a schoolmaster.
If you mean, how do you tell how much training the horse has… well you just hop on and see what happens! If you get a horse whose history is unknown, always assume it’s unbroken and treat it as such.
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if you are an experienced avid rider you could ask your horse to do some advanced things that you know, but if your aren’t sure how to, have your trainer ride him/her and they should be able to tell you what they can do
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10 minutes of ground work can tell you a lot. See how well the horse lunges, turns, and backs. All of those things can give an idea to how sensitive to pressure the horse is.
I always like to pick up all four feet – surprisingly most horses aren’t cool with that in some way.
I also like to play with the ears, rub by the eyes, play with the nose, and rub my finger along the teeth on the inside of the cheek. Those things are easy to do on a horse that has been handled a great deal, but much more difficult on an untrained horse.
If I am allowed to get on the horse I keep it simple. Walk, trot, righte turn, left turn, and backing. If they are hard to deal with doing those things, I know they won’t do higher end stuff well, so I don’t even bother.
One thing I can definitely tell you from experience as a horse owner and trainer…. Never take someone else’s word for how the horse is trained. Odds are that they are exaggerating or painting far too pretty a picture.
References :
(EDIT – For the thumbs-downers, I am curious as to what you thought was wrong with my suggestion. Not rough enough for your tastes? Of course, we all know what opinions are like, both mine and yours, but if you feel I deserve a thumbs down, I’d appreciate knowing why. Thanks!)
Start off assuming the horse knows nothing at all, and start asking it questions.
Do you know how to enjoy being skritched on the shoulder? No? Then that’s where we will start.
Yes? Wonderful! Now what about
Letting me pick up your feet? Good horse!
Can you follow me on a lead, walking beside my shoulder? Thank you!
Do you know how to show me where the itchy places are? Here, let me scratch that for you.
Will you please step to the side so I may pass by? Thank you!
What do you think of a saddle pad?
The cinch tightening around your belly?
Standing next to a mounting block?
Responding to walk and whoa cues from the ground?
Accepting and responding to the bit (or bitless)?
How about me getting on your back?
Standing still while I adjust my stirrups?
Calmly going forward when I ask?
And on and on, up to whatever level you are capable of evaluating a horse. If you’re an Olympic dressage rider (you wouldn’t be asking this question, but for the sake of argument, if you werrre…) you could tell if the horse was trained to Olympic levels. If it is an Olympic horse, the best I could establish is that the horse knows a whole lot more about dressage than I do! But I’d see if we could exchange stories – I’ll take the horse out on the trails, and it’ll teach me the right way to ask for the higher maneuvers.
(as if…)
Point being, start at zero and ask, ask, ask the horse what it knows and where the holes in its training are. This way you won’t suddenly find out on the trail that no one bothered to install brakes on this model, or wind up in some other disastrous situation. Be prepared for the first ‘no’ answer you get. It might be something subtle, so pay attention to the horse’s general attitude – don’t miss the warning signs that s/he is not liking what you’re doing. You don’t want to miss the horse’s "I’m not liking this" and keep pushing it until it has to shout "Go Away!" at you.
If the point of what you’re doing is to evaluate, this is not the time to push the training agenda. If the horse says "NO, you may NOT touch my legs!", you can make a note of that and start planning a training strategy. You don’t need to start in with all the macho harassment of "moving tis feet to make it respect you" at that moment. Much better to build an understanding with the horse, and do your training when you’re calm and have decided on a plan for fixing the problem. If a new horse said I couldn’t touch its legs, I’d probably hang out with it for a while, grooming and establishing some good rapport, then introduce a length of soft foam pipe insulation. Pet and stroke the horse with it, and gradually work my way down its legs. If it kicks at the insulation, no harm done, I just keep stroking with the insulation until it realizes there’s no need for getting worked up.
I believe this approach results in a better relationship sooner, because you’re not setting it up as an "I win, You lose" situation. The horse realizes that you aren’t someone it needs to fear, or challenge, or worry about, but rather someone who will ask and even insist on certain things, but you also allow it to think about and understand the requests you make.
(I guess that went a little beyond the scope of the question, but hey, no extra charge!)
And please use a riding helmet at all times, but most especially when getting acquainted with a new horse. More than once I was glad I’d put my helmet on, when doing ground work with an unknown horse! A shod horse rearing over your head is a real attention-getter, lemme tell ya.
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36 years of buying and starting green horses and rehabilitating spoiled, sour horses
Start with ground work. Touch the horse all over, pick up all four feet, keep a firm hold of the back feet incase they try and kick out, it’s amazing the amount of horses that don’t like their feet being picked up because probably the only time they are is when the farrier trims them (which is why so many horses are problems with farriers). Feel ears, eyes, forehead, have a look at teeth to see if they’re alright with you sticking hands in mouth. Feel over back, put some pressure on their back, run your hands over flanks.
Try and lunge the horse, most of kid horses that are very experienced, well trained, allrounders, don’t lunge (kids either don’t know how to/aren’t bothered to/don’t see the benefit of, and then just simply give up when there horse won’t, I’m not saying this is all of them, just in my experience it’s most, I’m the only kids at my stables that lunges my horse and I know others can, they just don’t bother). A horse should lunge both ways. Ask them to back up and ask them to move their hindquarters away from you (like a forehand pirouette on the ground).
Under saddle you want to see how they turn (how much rein you need to turn them, well trained horse you should be able to bend around with your legs). How well and smoothly they transition. Collection and extension of trot and canter. Do they get correct canter lead 100% of the time. Try all this with bit work added in if that’s how well the horse is trained. Do they do flying changes (I wouldn’t expect a race horse off the track for a few months to be doing 2 beats down the arena or anything)? See how well the horse response to leg aids, flexion, any leg yielding done?
Have they jumped? How well they approach the jump (do they hesitate? bolt? refuse? run out?). If the owner says that they can jump 80cm, jump them 80cm to make sure (Alot of people exaggerate, ‘friend’ bought a galloway that supposedly jumps 1.10m courses, aha no way would it clear 1m let alone 1.10m courses!).
When riding a horse to evaluate really just hop on and see what they can do, try a bit of everything out.
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