Monty Roberts Equus Online University | Monty's Horse Training Post: The Lazy Horse

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Watch Monty's horse training videos to learn how he demonstrates communication through horse training techniques that the amateur and professional alike consider to be the trainable skills of a horse whisperer yet Monty calls it horse gentling.
Monty's horse training techniques are non violent with intelligent natural horsemanship. In addition to video instructions, Monty has written many books related to natural horsemanship. Monty trains safe horses for nervous riders called Willing Partners. Monty trains world class race horses for sale.
“I am very proud to be a part of Her Majesty’s horse training and her passion for their welfare. I believe she is the leading monarch for the advocacy of horses in the world. She is a thought leader in this field. Her Majesty's horses are trained using the Dually Halter, making a difference in the training of sensitive animals by giving the horse the choice to partner in the training.” ~ Monty
“I communicate with a horse in what I call the Language of Equus; a silent language of gestures that is discernible, predictable and effective. Now you can learn from my videos, audio and notes to help you understand the horse as I do. This language is really quite simple, but simplicity becomes its greatest strength.” ~ Monty
Monty Roberts is a renowned horse trainer known as the man who listens to horses and the original horse whisperer. Monty's horse training instructions are accepted worldwide.
Monty has helped thousands of people globally through his Monty Roberts Online Videos to learn how to Join-Up with horses, training young horses, spooky horses, horses that bite. His mustang , Shy Boy , is his most famous horse.
Join-Up methods help horse and trainer to establish a bond of communication and trust. “You must somehow understand that we as horsemen can do very little to teach the horse. What we can do is to create an environment in which he can learn.” ~ Monty
Monty says, “We hear that ‘actions speak louder than words,’ but generally we do not live by it too successfully.” Now Monty has taught thousands of people worldwide how to build trust in animals through our actions and body language.
Monty’s principles really amount to common sense and immense patience. He believes that children and horses have the same behavioral patterns. They are both naturally “flight” animals. "If you frighten them and resort to confrontation, you’ll lose their trust." ~ Monty
"Simple one-on-one reassurances and praise reap long term dividends that can all be undone with the quick slamming of a book on a desk or shouting back." ~ Monty Roberts
"No one of us was born with the right to say 'You must or I'll hurt you' to any other living thing, animal or human". ~ Monty Roberts
"My life's goal is to leave the world a better place than I found it, for horses and for people too". ~ Monty Roberts

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University Suggestion Box

The Lazy Horse

By:

Kim

Date:

2010-Apr-26 at 12:19PM

I would love to see a video on getting energy from a more lazy-type horse. I have read about the giddy-up rope, but I would love to see it in use. Thanks.

Kim 2010-Apr-26 at 12:20PM

Oh, I forgot to mention that I think this would be really helpful as many people turn to what I think are abusive practices when faced with this problem.

trejansi 2010-Apr-27 at 08:49PM

Hey Kim, what a great idea for a lesson. For some inspiration might also be worth looking at www.whisperingback.co.uk. On the info pages there is an article on 'The self propelling horse'. I can confirm it works like a treat and all pain free!!

pam nz 2010-Apr-28 at 12:02AM

Horses are never really lazy they just tune out on their riders, usually because of conflicting aids or repetitive aids that dont really mean anything.
Horses are incredibly perceptive to our movements, thats how they communicate with each other, whereas humans have language so we have lost a lot of our body lanuage skills.
So just by moving around them and being humans we are bombarding them with unintended communications that we are not mostly ignorant of. So just to be able to get along with us they have to tune out most of what we say, (rather like a guy with a nagging wife). So we have to learn to be totally clear with what we say to them and that what we say is what we want them to do. They will do exactly what we say, not what we think we said. So with you lazy horse, make sure you body isnt saying whoa, when your legs are saying go. Use phases with you aids, but be sure to give you horse time to understand a light aid before getting stronger, and reward the response not matter how slight it is, then go back to the light aid. You will be amazed how light horses can get, then the trick is to be a good enough rider to cut out all the unintentional chatter.

elodie.belz 2010-May-31 at 08:11PM

I agree with what you say pam. But I still think it would be good to see it on a video, because it is not always easy to be aware of what we do wrong or right. And I have seen examples of what Kim said, that people faced with this problem have the tendency to turn to using whips and spurs agressively. One of these people is a friend of mine. She owns a very big horse that do not react when you throw a rope at him or raise your hands to send him away. He just stands still and look at you. In the round pen, I managed to make him trot but I had to throw the lead rope many times, to use my voice a lot, as well as to send him away "with my whole body" (which means I had to walk after him and constantly encourage him to go on, otherwhise he just stopped to look at the horizon). My friend was impressed, because her way to make him trot like this was eventually to hit him with the rope or the whip (not really hard though !! but to me it is already bad). I think she just get pissed off because he does not react, and as she does not know what else she could do, she turns to a more agressive way. I was not able to tell her whether I did the things correctly with her horse. I had the impression to just overwhealm the horse with signals until he eventually accepted to trot. That is why I would like to see what would Monty do in this kind of situation :) We see far more videos with spooky and sensitive horses than with "unreactive" ones.