When you first teach a horse something, it’s a concept lesson. From there, you’ll work on perfecting the exercise. Each time you work with the horse, you’ll look for a little more improvement. From that point on, you won’t end a training session before the horse has shown some improvement from the day before. On the second day of practicing backing up, you’d expect him to back up four steps with energy in his feet. When you accomplished that, you’d quit and move on to something else.
What you don’t want to do is get your horse softer and responding better and then keep drilling on him. If you do, you’ll just discourage him. That’s hard for human beings not to do, though. We’re greedy creatures. When the horse is doing well, we want more. If he takes three energetic steps backwards, we want to see six, and then we end up frustrating the horse because he doesn’t feel like he gets to win. So always be conscious of rewarding the horse when he’s doing well. Remember, a little try today turns into a big try tomorrow.
