Raising Thinking Horses

Utah Horseman Jim Hicks on how he trains his horses to handle the situations that might be uncomfortable for them.

I want to create thinking horses that respond, that learn to think their way out of the problem versus horses that react and check out. And so what I have found for myself is that in doing that I need my horses familiar with the things that I'm going to expose them to so that when I expose them to things that they're unfamiliar with, that they'll work with me and we can work through it in a positive way.  This was a valuable lesson that I learned on the horse that I took to Tom Dorrance was is when you allow the horses curiosity to work for you, it's more powerful and more potent for the horse because what happens is you go out in the pasture and you intend to catch the horse, you might just sit there and look at the tail end up because you're trying to catch them. But if you walk out in the pasture with a bucket of tools and you set them down and you start doing the job, the horses curiosity will draw them in.

That was Utah Horseman and clinician Jim Hicks.