Imagine that when you were in school you were forced to do nothing but write and recite the alphabet repeatedly every day for an entire year. Doesn’t sound like much fun, right? In fact, after you’d learned the alphabet and could write it and repeat it out loud forward and backward, you were ready to move on to a new, more complex lesson. Being made to repeat the same lesson over and over would bore you to tears.
“When I bring this scenario up to people in my clinics, most of them readily agree that a school life of focusing on nothing but the alphabet would be horrible. However, most of those same people do the exact same thing to their horses. They get stuck in the Fundamentals level of the Method and never move on. As a result, their horses are bored listless and often get cranky. Who could blame them!” Clinton says.
If you’ve taught your horse the Fundamentals, move on to the Intermediate level exercises, and then the Advanced exercises. Don’t keep laboring over the exact same exercises every day for years.
“When we’re training horses at the ranch, we have a four-day rule for introducing exercises and dropping exercises out of the rotation. This “rule,” as well as training the horses on the trail and over the obstacle course, keeps their lessons interesting and new. A horse that is engaged in what you’re teaching him will make progress, while a horse that is not challenged or bored will become resentful and cranky about working with you,” Clinton says.
If you’re a No Worries Club member and would like to learn more about Clinton’s four-day rule, log on to the NWC website and read “The Four-Day Rule” article in the spring 2013 No Worries Journal.
