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Working with a rescue horse

There are literally thousands of rescue horses in need of good homes across the country. Unfortunately, many of these horses have been abused and abandoned, and have serious trust issues. As a horse trainer, one of the things I love most is working with a rescue horse to help make it more adoptable and give it a better, more trusting attitude.

With many rescue horses, knowing their backgrounds is almost impossible. Not knowing their backgrounds also means you don't really know what kinds of training issues they may have.

In the years I've spent working with rescue horses, I've found that the first and most important thing you should do is establish trust between you and the horse. Without trust, training a rescue horse can be dangerous for you and frustrating for the horse.

I start every horse — including rescue horses — in the round pen. This gives you a safe, controlled environment in which to establish leadership, communication, and above all, trust. I bring the horse into the round pen, let it get used to the environment, and then begin directing them to move. By controlling movement, the horse begins to respect you and see you as the leader. With a rescue horse, it's particularly important to go slow and not put too much pressure on it. You want the horse to see you as the leader and feel like being with you is the best thing in the world. Causing pain, intimidation, or just running the horse to exhaustion has the opposite effect.

Once the horse shows signs of submission — such as licking lips, lowering its head or turning toward me and inviting me in — I approach it very slowly and with my eyes down. I don't want the horse to see me as a predator, but as leader it can trust. Once the horse allows me to get next to it, I am very gentle, soft-spoken, and give it lots of attention and soft rubs.

With a rescue horse, don't try to hurry things. It may take several sessions in the round pen to build the level of trust needed to move on to further training. But once you have established trust in the round pen, you'll have a solid foundation for solving all other issues.

If you want to see my complete, and very effective, methods of building trust, I encourage you to order the 5-disc training DVD set. My DVDS feature easy-to-follow directions on how to work with your horse in the round pen, plus how to deal with many specific issues and problems. You'll learn how to make your horse a much safer companion in the arena, on the trails and around the farm.

Stay safe and have fun!