{"id":17853,"date":"2014-12-03T09:09:45","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T22:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=17853"},"modified":"2022-02-14T15:42:49","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T04:42:49","slug":"principles-of-horse-training-with-andrew-mclean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2014\/12\/principles-of-horse-training-with-andrew-mclean\/","title":{"rendered":"Principles of Horse Training with Andrew McLean"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"andrewintrographic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Andrew McLean is widely known \u2013 as a rider, a trainer, a re-trainer, and a prolific author of articles and major books.<\/p>\n

Andrew\u2019s international reputation is steadily growing and recently he was invited to contribute to two text books, \u2018Equine Behaviour \u2013 A guide for Veterinarians and Horse Professionals\u2019 by Dr Paul McGreevy, and \u2018The Behavioural Biology of the Horse\u2019 by Dr Daniel Mills.<\/p>\n

He was also invited to contribute entries to \u2018The Encyclopaedia of Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare\u2019. Last year Andrew presented a paper \u2018Learning Principles \u2013 the missing link in Equitation\u2019 at a conference in Italy, and in October he is off to Glasgow to present another paper on training psychology.
\nOver the next few months in The Horse Magazine, Andrew will detail the Eight Training Principles that apply to all disciplines of horse training, in hand as well as under saddle.<\/p>\n

Talking with Andrew McLean about working with horses is always comforting on one level, because it always relates back to his golden basics of stop and go. So is it boring? No, because Andrew is always expanding his thoughts from his basics, and so adding to the ease and enjoyment of handling our horses day by day.
\n\u201cAll equestrian work, whether it is in hand or in any discipline under saddle rests upon sound basics of stop and go. Dressage represents the most sophisticated development of stop and go and the quality of the training of these basic responses is the foundation for a relaxed, problem-free horse. The less the rein and leg aids mirror the horse\u2019s responses, in the full spectrum, the more confused the horse becomes. From the viewpoint of any animal undergoing training, the more it can give consistent responses to the variety of signals, the more the animal\u2019s world becomes predictable and controllable. The deeper that animal\u2019s knowledge of training in terms of consistency of response, the greater the rapport between the trainer and the animal, because of the absence of stress afforded by predictability and controllability. This is the reason animals are able to learn cues, mild signals and aids in the first place. Horses are no different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the time of my PhD, I studied the works of the most pre-eminent people in the behavioural sciences over the last century or so. People such as B.F. Skinner, who wrote over 400 papers on animal (and human) learning, C.J. Hull who measured and configured mathematical relationships in animal learning, and other remarkably innovative thinkers such as Pavlov and Thorndike. As a horseman and competitor myself, I couldn\u2019t help but be impressed by the reality of their theory in equestrian performances that you see in a great cross-country, jumping and dressage performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe core of my interest lies in teasing out what it is, in objective rather than subjective terms, that makes great trainers and riders so great.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>http:\/\/www.hannoveraner.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIn all disciplines, when training is good, the performance looks effortless, aids are invisible – it seems like magic. That\u2019s how the myth of horse whispering arose.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause most horse riders tend to deal with horses that already have some reasonable responses in the basics of stop and go, they are rarely aware of the proper order of horse training in terms of animal learning. So often you see and read about training various parts of the horse such as the head, neck or body before the legs are properly trained to go and slow. Yet most behaviour problems show up that the horse is not on the aids \u2013 the legs are under little or no control. I think it is essential that trainers realise that the primary training of the horse is of its legs \u2013 its mobility. The position and relaxation and suppleness of the head, neck and body are largely a consequence of the how clearly and consistently the horse\u2019s legs are under soft yet direct and diverse control. From eighteenth-century French equitation comes a saying \u201cthe neck is a consequence of the legs.\u201d This maxim is still taught by the last contemporary and friend of Nuno Oliviera, Michel Henriquet who is in his eighties and still teaches just outside Paris. Of course, some horses with poor neck conformation or well entrenched bad habits need some training in this department. And here too, I\u2019m not talking about the benefits or otherwise of the \u2018deep and round\u2019 outline, I\u2019m just talking about training and retraining the basics and being always able to return to longitudinal flexion in a self-maintained rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially the control of stop (slow) and go is via the reins and the legs, and then a lot of control is transferred, via the learning process called classical conditioning, to the seat and weight aids. The sequence and quality of this transference is critical, and is where a lot of horse people go wrong. They begin to rely too early on seat and weight aids before the horse is clear and through enough on reins and legs. Another thing that goes wrong is that as training progresses, riders tend to use the reins (and legs to some extent) for too many other things without the original rein response \u2013 slowing \u2013 and the horse loses its slowing to greater of lesser extent. It becomes heavier in the mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same thing can happen when leg and rein are used simultaneously. Some horses can cope while others develop serious behaviour problems. As riders and trainers, we don\u2019t always notice because horses don\u2019t yelp and scream, they just show conflict behaviour. As humans, we often interpret that as \u2018naughty\u2019 behaviour. Perhaps one day it will be part of every horseman\u2019s tool box to identify conflict behaviour in all its forms and see the horse as an entirely blameless participant in the training process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe key to fixing such horses is to go back and fix the dysfunctional stop and go aid\/response relationship, then build up again toward your goal. It is possible to train the horse to do all the things you want from the reins without deteriorating the stop button one iota. Same goes for the leg responses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the conference in Italy last year, I put together a list of Eight Training Principles that account for successful training, and that are important for the horse\u2019s welfare. Keeping these principles in mind makes it simpler for the horse to learn – this means more horses can learn it and fewer are excluded. It also means that training will be at its most efficient. What it doesn\u2019t do is turn you into Andrew Hoy or Ricky MacMillan. Training is half the story, correct riding skill is the other half and those who achieve at elite level tend to get both sides right.<\/p>\n

Go to Principles of Training – Part 2 <\/a>where\u00a0Andrew describes the mechanism and the relevance of the first of the principles, the pressure\/ release principle.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in the July 2004 edition of The Horse Magazine<\/p>\n

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All equestrian work, whether it is in hand or in any discipline under saddle rests upon sound basics of stop and go. Dressage represents the most sophisticated development of stop and go and the quality of the training of these basic responses is the foundation for a relaxed, problem-free horse…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[831,834,832,836],"class_list":["post-17853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horse-care-and-health","tag-andrew-mclean","tag-equitation-science","tag-horse-training","tag-principles-of-horse-training"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17853"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62304,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17853\/revisions\/62304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}