There are two ways to look at horse training.
It is a long slow process including a lot of work - and this is true.
But you can also look at it as a heck a lot of fun - which is the more positive way.
And you can make it easier and more fun using another horse.
Using another horse is especially helpful when you are training young horses.
Let me give you an example how I do that.
Training foals I have a pretty set way of going forward.
After they are used to being handled and touched I proceed to having them wear my hat.
I do this for several reasons.
First it is de-sensitizing the head and the ears.
Second it is a pretty big and dangerous looking object - and they have to learn to trust me.
And finally when I hang my hat on one of the ears, it impairs their vision - more trust building.
It probably would be a long ways to go without the help of the mare and other horses.
My horses are turned out in a herd, so they all hang around when I get in there.
I will put my hat on every horse the foal can see and loudly praise everybody - though they do not really care.
This accomplishes two things.
The foal watches and since nobody cares or shows any sign of fear the foal gets the impression that this must be perfectly fine.
At the same time the foal hears that everybody gets praised - and by then they have learned to appreciate that.
I once brought in four Morgan mares from Montana.
They were just halter broke and never handled any further than that.
I put them in a paddock and had another paddock next to it for my training.
It was the easiest job ever.
I would bring in a trained mare and e.
g.
pick up all her feet, clean the feet and so on.
Then came the untrained mares on after the other.
It was amazing - the last one picked up her front foot before I even touched it! At first I had to go in the paddock and pick the next mare for her training.
After a week they were all piled up at the gate like "I am next".
Using another horse as an example can make things real easy and fun.
The horse you really train can learn a lot by watching.
It gives the horse an idea what to do.
You can do this by yourself.
But if you use someone to handle the "demonstration horse", make sure this person makes a lot of fuss praising the horse.
This is a really great way to make horse training easy and fun!