
06/05/2025
💭 Thursday Thoughts 💭
Teaching a Horse to Think
When people talk about starting a young horse, the conversation often centers around the tangible milestones: accepting a bridle, wearing a saddle, carrying a rider, going on the bit, learning to jump. And those things are important—but they’re not the most important.
In my experience, the hardest and most critical part of training has nothing to do with tack or technique. It’s about teaching a horse how to think.
Before we can expect a horse to carry a rider or perform under pressure, we have to help them develop a thought process. We have to teach them how to solve problems without going into panic mode, and how to handle the very unnatural environment we ask them to live and work in.
Because from a horse’s perspective, our world makes very little sense. We expect them to accept restriction, confinement, noise, pressure, unpredictability—and to do so calmly and obediently. That’s a big ask for an animal whose survival instincts tell them to flee at the first sign of uncertainty.
And so, in my barn, the early work with any horse—young or otherwise—isn’t about obedience. It’s about communication. I want them to understand how to think their way through a problem. I want them to discover that they can find peace in pressure, curiosity in conflict, and partnership in process.
Once they learn how to think, the rest of the training is easy.
Bridles, saddles, jumping exercises, even the tension of competition—none of that is difficult if the horse has been taught how to think through pressure instead of react to it. But if we skip this foundation, everything else becomes harder, more fragile, and more reliant on force.
It’s slower this way. It takes more time on the ground, more moments spent simply being with the horse, observing, adjusting, and waiting. But the results are worth it.
Because when we give a horse room to think, room to answer the question themselves, they build confidence within themselves and confidence to trust that we will give them time, which in turn creates the strongest kind of partnership.