During PLAY your horse’s brain is SO FLEXIBLE that he can very quickly learn new, even interspecific, behaviours.
This is so important and thus self-reinforcing for animals that the urge to PLAY (and learning new behaviours through play) is even more important than the urge to EAT. And that is making “training” so effective.
Usually, I don’t have much time, but this doesn’t mean that I’m in a hurry!
Usually, I have between 3,5 to 4h/daily for our 7 horses due to other responsibilities.
Now, you may think “this is not much” – for me It’s A LOT! Try playing with your kids and stay 100% engaged in it for 4h.
Here you can see my wonderful Furious Dancer in a Classical exercise Terre-a-Terre done at liberty, stright and without the support of the wall.
I didn’t need bit, or curb bit, or long reins, etc. to have it trained and performed at liberty right from the start… what I needed was to show my horse how to PLAY with this exercise and how to show with this exercise his real inner self and character.
