Young Horses
If you are considering young horses or a green horse then also consider that young or green horses are still learning.
If you have no or little experience with young or green horses then you are likely to have trouble. You should not ride and handle youngsters like an old pony you learned on. They are still learning and often too sensitive to deal with that.
You shouldn’t take your green horse home from the breakers, give it a month off, throw on a poorly fitting saddle and swing up expecting to have a great time.
You should not expect that you can do the things you saw at the horse expo or in a video without the practice it takes to develop the feel and timing and instinctual responses that are the difference between good horsemanship and poor horsemanship.
With green youngsters your confidence cannot be false confidence based on a less than frank picture of where your horsemanship is at.
The good news is that many people can learn to be good with a young horse and help it develop into a great older horse.
Those that seek ongoing guidance from people who are experienced and competent with a young horse and are willing to change themselves and how they operate are the only ones that have good odds of being successful.
If you had trouble with your old horse chances are, without some changes, you will trouble your new horse .
Our video series Groundwork For Young Horses is a great place to start.
It covers everything from hardly leading to picking up feet to float loading.
