Credit Where Credit is Due

** Disclaimer: No one I mention and/or recommend in this post is paying me to do so. **

Recently, a few people have been interested in trying the training techniques I use with Gambler on their own horses. It surprised me a little, but I am more than happy to help in any way. I do need to be clear though, that most of these techniques aren't truly mine. I can't take all of the credit.

 Firstly, I owe a lot of the credit to my wonderful horse. I'm always a little taken back when someone praises me for Gambler's progress. It doesn't make sense to me when I hear "You're doing such a great job!" I won't deny that Gambler and I have worked hard to learn more about and understand each other, but it's been a team effort. He deserves just as much credit as I do, if not more. In fact, in many ways I have held back his progress.

Gambler is the first horse I have ever trained (unless you count the pony I tried to play Parelli seven games with when I was ten. I was pretty clueless). Because I am so inexperienced and new to the horse training industry, it would be easy to give up and hand over Gambler's training to a professional. However, everyone has to start somewhere. Since Gambler already has some training, but desperately needed a refresher, he is the perfect horse for me to learn with.

Secondly, I owe credit to Brian Tracy. My mom is obsessed his philosophy (if you don't know who he is, I suggest you google him, and then read at least one of his books). Every time I drive anywhere with my mom, we have to listen to Flight Plan or Eat That Frog. Initially, I was super annoyed, but when I actually started to listen to what he said, I realized how much it applied to what I was doing with Gambler. One principle from Flight Plan hit me particularly hard. Tracy said that as business people we need to continually increase our value (loose paraphrase). This means that you should always learn more and more about your field. For instance, a riding instructor should keep taking lessons, in order to better teach his own students.

This rang true for me regarding Gambler, because I am training him myself, without direct help from a professional. In order to train him to the absolute best of my ability, I spend hours and hours everyday researching training techniques. The internet is a beautiful tool. Without it, I would have to learn by trial and error. Now with youtube, blogs, and websites, I can soak up an enormous amount of information in a small amount of time. There are just as many crappy training techniques out there as there are good ones, but if you take the time to determine which are which, you can learn so much!

So thirdly, I owe credit to all the sources of information online. The majority of my training techniques come from Parelli Natural Horsemanship. They just put up a really helpful youtube channel that you can check out here. You can also check out their website: http://www.parelli.com/. When I saw Parelli at an expo in April, he encouraged the audience to use a little bit of his training, and a little bit of their grandfathers training (again, loose paraphrase). His point was the same as Tracy's: the horseperson (or any person) is never done learning. There are a lot of people who do what I do, mixing Parelli with other natural horsemanship methods. Pony Pros is one organization doing just that. Watching their videos of young children and young ponys communicating clearly is truly inspirational. Another youtuber who uses a mix of natural methods, including Parelli, is Kathryn Barrett, especially in her To the Heart of a Mustang series.

I don't just watch youtube to gain training techniques, I also read a lot of blogs a lot like this one (except better). I really recommend reading Tear Drop Winken from start to finish. It is a truly inspirational story. Although she doesn't use Parelli, she does use other natural horsemanship techniques and emphasizes the importance of groundwork.

As you can see, I'm not an experienced trainer (yet), or a horse whisperer, or anything like that. I just do a lot of research and try a lot of different things to see what works for Gambler and I. The advice I have for anyone who is in the same situation as I am, training their own horse, is to use more natural methods like those I have listed above and never to underestimate groundwork. The better you communicate with your horse on the ground, the better you will be able to communicate with your horse in the saddle.