Nine Ways to Create the Perfect Partner
You can have the perfect arena, the best program, and the most eager market, but there is one thing you absolutely can’t teach a successful beginner lesson without: an exceptional equine partner.
Not every horse can be a school horse
It takes a special nature, with a generous and forgiving spirit. If the horse doesn’t have this, no amount of work will make them safe and happy partners in your business.
We’ve acquired several horses over the years that failed to adapt to the busy riding school life and had to move on to quieter, single-owner homes.
A horse that hates the job is a roadblock at best and a liability at worst.
Even horses that do have the mental makeup for a school horse require some careful teacher-training
Life as a school horse is HARD. No matter how hard you try to protect them, accidents happen, and at some point they’re going to get pulled in the mouth and thumped in the side. They’re going to have stiff, crooked bodies on their backs that are not in sync with their movement. If business is good, they may work long hours, and some of those hours are going to be pretty boring.
Throwing an untested, unprepared horse into this job is a recipe for disaster!
We think it is worth the time it takes to give your school horses a thorough orientation. This might take days, weeks or months, depending on the horse’s temperament and previous experience.
This preparation helps us keep an important promise to our horses:
We’re not going to ask a horse to do work he isn’t comfortable with, and we’re never going to ask a beginner to try something we don’t know for sure that the horse can handle.
Just like teaching human students, this is a process that can’t be rushed. Remember that you are essentially teaching the horse a new discipline, and that just because they are trained to a certain level with skilled riders doesn’t mean they’ll perform the same way with inexperienced students!
Here are some essential skills we need our school horses to master:
-
They need to have impeccable ground manners. Pulling back when tied, nipping, or pawing can lead to a liability nightmare - so avoid horses who default to these behaviors when stressed!
Can they be touched everywhere? Can they be led on a loose rope, even if there is tasty grass nearby? How will they react when a kid inevitably breaks the rules and pats them flank first, or tries to stand under their neck? -
They need to stand still at the mounting block. If your horse has trouble with this, rule out all pain and tack-related culprits before committing to remedial training.
This skill is extremely important for safety: We once had a thirteen-year-old boy descend into an unexpected, full-blown panic attack halfway through the mounting process - complete with screaming and a frozen right leg digging into the horse’s hip. It took five minutes to get him calm enough to unlock his legs and dismount. The horse was able to self-regulate and stood like a saint. Would your horse do the same?
-
Since crazy stuff is going to happen occasionally, they need to be able tolerate all kinds of mistakes. Yes, ideally our horses would all be sensitive to the aids, but from a safety standpoint, we prefer lesson horses who have learned to tune out conflicting information from their riders.
The best horses are the ones that learn to quietly shut down activity until their rider gets it together. Teach your horses that things are going to get uncomfortable, but if they stop, you will make sure things get better. -
They need to be relatively "bombproof." Siblings running and screaming outside the arena? Mom accidentally set off the car alarm? Escaped plastic bags blowing in the breeze? A school horse needs to be able to keep a level head, no matter what.
We test prospective school horses to see how they respond to plastic bags, tarps, umbrellas, beach balls, noisemakers, whips - you name it, we try it. (Turns out that one of our veteran school horses is terrified of children on hobbyhorses!) Again, patient training can help your horse learn to “spook in place,” or come to a standstill when they are afraid.
But keep in mind that spookiness can be caused by a number of factors: diet and lifestyle, hoof balance, ulcers, saddle fit, etc. Support your school horses through a species-appropriate environment that promotes horsey mental health, and you may find that they become remarkably less reactive. -
Make sure your desensitizing includes arena equipment. If you’re going to use flags, barrels, buckets, etc., let your horses see all of it before a beginner picks it up.
Beginner horses also need to be able to walk, trot and canter calmly over ground poles - no accelerating or wild leaping allowed! -
They need to be reliably steady on the leadline and/or longe line. Not all horses handle as well on the off side as they do on the near side, and many horses have holes in their longeing education. Know your horse’s strengths and weaknesses, and make time to practice.
We recommend lots of in-hand transitions between the walk, trot and halt. Make sure you can perform them with both eyes on a rider! On the longe line, patiently build the horse’s confidence and fitness until they can walk/trot/canter in balance.
There are a few other skills we really want our horses to have, but can live without if the horse passes the previous tests with flying colors.
Ideally, we’d like our horses to…
- Play nicely with others. You can work around a horse with space issues, but it’s going to make group lessons twice as challenging, especially if you have a small barn or arena. Some horses never lose the hostility, but many horses are aggressive due to inexperience working in close quarters and improve with practice under a capable, confident rider..
-
Be easy to catch. Some horses and ponies can be tricky in the pasture, but we also know that an uncatchable horse can thoroughly derail a tight lesson schedule. If a previously easy lesson horse suddenly becomes difficult to catch, consider this a red flag. Investigate possible causes, such as pain or burnout.
If you suspect the evasion is due to problems in the past and not a commentary on the horse's current situation, devote short training sessions to catching and releasing, with positive reinforcement. Make sure the horse is brought in for good experiences, like grooming, hand grazing and relaxing hacks, not just lessons - and consider how you can make the lessons less aversive as well! -
And in a perfect world, they’ll have three nice gaits. You can’t fix all aspects of conformation, which means you can’t make every trot beginner-friendly to sit. But you can certainly improve a horse’s way of going with consistent rehabiltation and flatwork.
If a horse is only ridden by walk/trot beginners, he may lose fitness and default to a raggedy, unbalanced canter - so hop on as frequently as possible, or schedule time for more advanced students to school your beginner mounts. A horse that knows how to maintain a rhythm in self-carriage is going to be easier to ride, and those inexperienced seats will thank you!
School horses are the heart of a riding program – and if you’re starting beginners, those horses are a solid 50% of the teaching partnership. You want new students to stay, which means you want them to fall in love. Helping your horse become a lovable solid citizen is one of the greatest investments you can make in your lesson business.
Of course, once you get your horses to this level, it takes some careful management to keep them there!
Learn more about strategies for school horse maintenance in the blog post linked below.
