3 Great Exercises to Build Trust with Your Horse!

A relationship with your horse is important because yours and your horses experience will be more relaxed and enjoyable when built on trust and a mutual connection. With a strong bond, there will be no fright involved, no dread or a lack of trust!

These are the 3 exercises we recommend to build up trust with your riding companion;

Be predictable!

Your horse will not come automatically equipped with the skills and abilities to understand humans. You should keep a consistent level of energy, emotion while around your horse. You should be constantly communicating with your horse, always sending and receiving messages the same way so your horse will get used to this communication and learns to understand you.

Being predictable is comforting for your horse, it will help you both grow in confidence and it allows for better learning moments. You shouldn’t be thinking about other things like shopping next week or your hair appointment tomorrow! You should only be focusing on the horse and riding, what you should or shouldn’t be doing, is your timing right or is it off? You should be able to drive to the barn, grab the halter and open the stall doors to your horse waiting for you, not thinking of anything else!

Your horse will be trying to read your intentions, energy and body language. Do not be disconnected when you are riding, as your horse will pick up on it quickly and be very confused. If you are unpredictable, you are only making it harder for your horse to trust you.

Be a good listener!

All humans are verbal communicators whereas horses communicate through body language, eyes, ears and muzzle expressions. This could all be overlooked if you are not paying attention to the horse or riding. You should be spending time with your horse, do this by; listening to them, go out without any expectations, allowing the horse to make choices, grooming them  or just going for a long walk together! You will understand who your horse is in these special times. This is time spent not training your horse because it is important to have time where your horse isn’t training and you two can just relax together.

You can also figure out what motivates them and when you do, do this more! If you have a horse that just likes trotting round a field, let them do this with freedom of choice.

Curiosity is key!

Curiosity will open up a lot more possibilities and it is also a sign of confidence! If your horse is curious, it means they want answers, they want to explore and they want to learn something new!

We all want to train our horses meaning we want them to try and learn to do new things they’ve never done before! A horse which is trying new things on its own is exploring and testing, and doing this will lead up to having a horse full of motivation and confidence!

Sparking a curiosity relates to trust, watching your horses feelings and reactions but also keeping it safe, guarding them while they explore. It really does take more than just training to create a relationship full of trust with your horse, no matter what experience level you or your horse are or what riding style you prefer.