Hello, and welcome to the world of high-performance horse training! First things first why the f*ck should you listen to me?

Completely fair question, read on and I’ll tell you.

Let me introduce myself, my name’s Bethany Didtrek and I started this series to share all my hard-earned knowledge with young and green horses. My goal is to help you fast-track your success with your equine partner.

Some of my credentials so you know I actually know my sh*t: I’ve backed/broke more horses than I care to count. One day I actually fell off 3 times in a row and seriously had to reflect on my life choices, so lets just say I haven’t always gained knowledge the easy way. Most of my experience with young horses comes from my time spent on a breaking & pre-training yard in England. That’s when I was thrown into the deep end but I definitely learned A LOT. And I carry that knowledge with me into the world of sport-horses.

These days, I usually go a slightly less intense route and have 1 to 2 young horses in my training routine at any given time. Usually, warmbloods that are bred to perform at the higher levels of our sport. My goal is to always give the horses a positive experience and start them with a great comprehensive foundation for any rider to then take over or work with me to have great success! Learn more about my training philosophy.

The only thing I know for sure is there’s always more to know so I currently train under some of the best in the industry in showjumping and dressage and I put in the work. I spend about 3-5 hours 5 to 6 days a week riding and training jumpers and young horses.

So now that we’ve established that I actually know what I’m talking about let’s dive into part one of Green horse training!

Firstly, for the purpose of this post, I’ll be talking about young green horses. Not green horses that are older and haven’t been in any kind of training. Many of the same principles will apply to any green horse regardless of their age but there are key differences when approaching an older horse with little to no training. So for this post I’m going to focus on young green horse training. I’ll definitely do a post on starting older horses so sign up for my newsletter to make sure you don’t miss it!

Beginning Training with a Young Green Horse Step1: Establishing the Basics

Young horses are some of my FAVOURITE horses to work with. I find it very rewarding when you see them figure out what you’re asking them.

Beginning training always comes down to building the basics. It’s imperative to break everything down into simple elements to let them think each thing through.

Put that saddle down, because before you even start putting a saddle on a young horse you need train the basic groundwork. This is all about establishing training principles and building trust with the young horse that will carry through every part of your training moving forward. If you skip this phase I PROMISE you, you’ll regret it.

Groundwork a Young Horse Should Know Before You Start Anything Else

• The should not run away from you when you try to put a halter on, if they’re head shy to start then this is the first opportunity you have to work through something with them.
• How to walk in hand – staying at your shoulder and actively paying attention to you. ie. you stop, and they halt immediately beside you, shoulder to shoulder.
• Understanding how to yield to pressure- they should move away from your hand if you apply a little pressure, ie. you ask them to back up by putting pressure on their chest they back up yielding to the pressure you applied.
• Introduce vocal cues- I really don’t care what words or sounds you choose to use but make sure you decide and stay consistent, ie. Woah equals slow or halt.

You can also begin familiarizing them with tack at this stage. As far as I’m concerned it’s never too early to let them sniff a saddle pad, have them get the feeling for one on their back etc. Just play around with exposing them to new things. Take it slow though and always end on a positive note whenever possible.

Step 2 of Young Horse Training: Build Trust

Now I know you may be thinking, “Bethany, shouldn’t this be step 1?” I would say it goes hand in hand with step one. If you lay down the basics for your horse then trust should already be building between you and your equine partner.

So lets move on to the 2 elements I would argue are the most important when it comes to earning trust with a young horse. Both sound simple but are not. So, even if you feel disheartened when you’re starting a young one, commit to these and you’ll see success over time, I promise.

1. Schedule Consistency
2. Emotional Consistency

Schedule consistency is fairly self-explanitory. Pick a schedule to work with your young horse and stick with it. If you’re an experienced horse person you already know that horses are creatures of habit. So, create a new habit of training with your youngster through a consistent schedule.

This isn’t always easy and if you miss a day here and there you wont be thrown back to square one with most horses but you need to commit and try your very best to stick to a consistent schedule with your horse. I recommend in the early stages of training that you need to be handling your horse every single day. Establish the basics, build the trust. Doing this daily is imperative to the success of your training and you’ll get a lot further a lot faster.

However, this doesn’t mean I’m suggesting hard core hour long training sessions every day. I simply mean handle them every day. Some days all you’ll be doing is bringing in your horse in for their daily feed, pick their hoove, do a quick groom and toss them back out in the field with a scratch and a little carrot.

Then plan days where you’ll work through some basic training principals allowing for extra time to let your horse learn in case they don’t get it right away.

When I first start with a young horse I usually only do about 3 days of longer training sessions and the remaining 4 days of the week are reserved for just a nice little munch and groom to build up our trust with each other and relationship.

Emotional Consistency is a little more difficult to achieve. I know we’re all human and we’re not always going to be having a good day but if you take away anything from this post it’s that you can not allow your emotions to rule you when you’re working with horses. If you do, that’s all good but training young animals is not something you should be doing, hire someone else to do it or get an older more experienced horse.

Everytime you go to work with your young horse you have to have a steady and calm mindset. Your horse is learning all these things for the first time and they’re going to mirror your emotional state so, staying calm and working through challenging reactions from your horse is imperative to the success of your training.

The way I achieve this is sinking into a meditative mind state, some also refer to this as a flowstate but i guarantee if you can master your emotions when training for anything, your success with be exponentially faster with better results.

Step 3: Lunge it out baby

I feel like this one is a natural progression, once you’ve got your basic ground work and the start of a trusing relationship with your young horse its time to up the difficulty. Putting your young horse on a lunge line.

Now if you’re daring to start and work with a young horse I’m going to go ahead and assume you already know how to lunge a horse. All I’ll elaborate on is take your time to establish basics with this as well. If you have a round pen then using that is going to be easier when you begin but you can also start with just hooking them up to a lunge line in a safe space that’s fenced in.

You’ll have to start on a tighter circle, explaining to your young horse that you want them to walk around you and keep an even distance from you. The easiest way to explain this to a young horse is for you to stay in one spot and have them walk around you on the lunge. Don’t start walking in a wider circle, you’re likely to migrate and mve your circle making it more confusing to the horse.

Once you get this established and you have have them walking at a decent distance from you (doesn’t have to be the full length of the lunge line, you’re circle can be as small as 5 feet away from you but they shouldn’t be falling in and making wobbly circles around you in either direction) then you can begin asking for a trot. Depending on how quickly your young horse picks up on this you may be able to do walk trot canter on the lunge in your first session or it may take you a few or even more. Take your time, make clear rules and stay consistent. Make sure you keep training them to respond to vocal cues this will make your first ride on them SO much easier.

Step 4: Tack it Up Baby!

So, by this point your horse should be responding well to vocal cues, is good to catch, brush, pick out their feet, you’ve exposed them to some tack and played around with them. You’ve built up a good amount of trust and now its time to get them used to tack

This is just simply taking it step by step, saddle pad(s), saddle, girth and then eventually bridling them. This I find I can usually get a horse fully tacked in two to three sessions and have them comfortably going on the lunge in full tack but this will likely take longer if its your first horse. My main suggestion for this stage is just take your time and stay in tune to the reactions the horse is giving you. They’ll likely be a bit freaked out by something going on their back. Go slow, give them scratches and treats when they do let you put on the saddle pad for the first time, same with the saddle.

When you go to do up a girth for the first time be prepared for your horse to get a little freaked out. Again take it slow but don’t drop the girth if they begin moving around. Keep the pressure on as light but consistent as possible until they calm down and you can do it up loosly.

Remember always end on a positive note. Go as far as your intuition tells you you can that day and then leave it and start again during your next session.