For more information  CLICK HERE

By David McMahon

More often than not you will hear about a horse behaving badly. Some examples? A horse crowds your space. Or maybe a horse chases someone around a pasture. Other bad horse behaviors include kicking, biting, bucking or rearing. Or maybe it won’t canter when you ask. While all of these issues sound different-they can all be traced right back to one and the same cause-the horse doesn’t respect you as his leader.

When a horse is acting like the leader of the herd, we assume the horse is behaving badly.  The owner calls this bad behavior and feels like he needs to correct it. In truth, its the human who has the issue-they have not established themselves as the leader for their horse. So what we need to do as horse owners is take a step back and learn how horses think. Then apply our new knowledge to make ourselves the alpha mare or stallion of the herd, rather than letting our horses fill that role. Where to begin? In this article I’m going to mention 7 easy to apply exercises that will help you become a leader for your horse.

1. No more treats for your horses while working

When you are working your horse, do not give him any treats. Period. Giving treats to a prey animal does not reinforce good behavior the way we think it does. Instead, it makes the horse think of you as a cookie factory. This in turn makes the horse want to take advantage of you. So throw away the treats-during training. Give your horse a treat after you’ve been working with him and you’re finished.

2. Do not use treats to catch your horse

All too often horse people want to just grab their horse and go ride. But the truth is you’re establishing the bounds of your relationship with your horse the second you walk out to the pasture to get him. Your horse is sizing up your body posture, how you walk, and if you can be intimidated. That is he is seeing who is the leader in this relationship! You cannot bond successfully with a horse that you have to bribe to come into you. Instead of wagging carrots at your horse hoping he will come over, learn to catch your horse using body language horses already know.

3. Learn to Lead Your Horse

Where is your horse when you’re leading him? Is he in front of you or creeping up on you? If so you aren’t leading properly. He is going where he wants to and not really minding you. Take some time to study proper leading of horses. Just by doing some simple leading exercises, you will find your relationship with your horse improves drastically.

4. Do Hook-On in the Round Pen

Longeing your horse in the round pen at liberty so that he joins-up or hooks-on with you is a great way to establish yourself as the leader of your horse.

5. Get (and keep) the Attention of your Horse

If your horse is not focusing two eyes on you, then he is not paying full attention to you. He is looking off with the other eye for threats or maybe things more interesting than you are. To become a leader for your horse, you need to have both eyes.

6. Do backup exercises

The alpha mare or stallion in a herd gets the other horses to move out of the way. We can use this fact to communicate with our horses just by moving them around. A great way to do this is using backing up as a regular part of our groundwork routine. Backup exercises are an excellent way to get a horses attention when he is behaving badly.

7. Look for Precision

When you are communicating effectively with your horse, take things to a new level by looking for precise backups. Instead of asking your horse to back up 10 feet, ask him to backup just a hair. Start with 2 steps and then ask him to stop with a “whoa”. When you have that down, ask him to backup a single step. Progress from that so that you can get your horse to shift his muscles backwards without even taking a step. When you establish that kind of precise control with your horse, you are not only communicating with him effectively but also establishing leadership. A horse you can control precisely on the ground is a better riding horse.

That concludes our look at 7 tricks to eliminate bad horse behavior. If your horse is being dominant in any way, apply these 7 steps and build the foundation you need for a successful horse-human relationship.

For more information on horse training and natural horsemanship 

                                           CLICK HERE  

Basics of Dog Training

It's essential for dog parents like you to know certain basic factors that determine your relationship with your Dog and can go a long way in training him effectively.

Before you begin training your Dog, it is absolutely essential that you build a loving bond with him. This is important as it helps you to understand his needs and instincts and also allows your Dog to have complete trust in you.

Let us see how.......

How To Bond With Your Dog

Building a bond with your Dog is the first and the most crucial step involved in training him successfully. As soon as you bring your Dog home, you must first try to develop a caring and loving relationship with him in order to win his trust and confidence.

When Dogs are secure in the knowledge that they belong to the family, they are more likely to respond better to their owners' training commands. Just like with any relationship, there must be mutual trust and respect between you and your Dog.

Trust takes time to develop and respect comes from defining boundaries and treating any breach of those boundaries with firmness and fairness.

Without enforceable limitations, respect can’t be developed. And when there is no respect, building a bond with your Dog is almost impossible.

4 Golden Rules To Building A Relationship With Your Dog :

Love Your Dog and He Will Love You back

Once you're succesful in building a bond with your Dog, you can rest assured that training him and teaching him new and clever tricks will be a cakewalk.

How Your Dog Learns...

Your Dog's learning period can be divided into five phases:

The Teaching Phase - This is the phase where you must physically demonstrate to your Dog exactly what you want him to do.

The Practicing Phase - Practice makes Perfect. Once a lesson is learnt, practice with your Dog what you have just taught him.

The Generalizing Phase - Here you must continue practicing with your Dog in different locations and in an environment with a few distractions. You can take your Dog out for a walk, or to a nearby park and command him to practice whatever you've taught him.

Practicing the learned lessons in multiple locations and in the presence of small distractions will help him learn and retain lessons better .

The Testing Phase - Once you're sure that your Dog has achieved almost 90% success....he responds correctly almost every time you give a command, you must start testing his accuracy in newer locations with a lot of distractions.

Example: Take him to the local shopping mall and ask him to obey your command. He may not come up with the correct response the very first time you do this, but you must not lose hope.

The idea is to test your Dog to see how he responds in an environment which is new to him. Set-up a situation where you are in control of the environment and your Dog.

There are only 2 possibilities:

Keep on testing until he succeeds. Follow the rule of the 3 Ps – patience, persistence, praise.

Internalizing Phase - Finally, comes the extremely rewarding phase where your Dog does everything he is taught to do even without your commands.

Remember:

Naturopathic animal health care

An experienced animal naturopath seeks to restore balance to the animal's health through the use of dietary changes, individually-prescribed nutrient therapy, herbal or homoeopathic medicines. Animal naturopaths also consider prevention to be an integral part of their work with animals – and educating pet owners about correct diets, nutrient supplementation and healthy environments is an important aspect of their profession.

Increase in natural animal health care

There has been an increase in consumer demand for qualified natural animal therapists to treat animals. This is probably due to the growing popularity of natural therapies in general and the increasing realisation that mainstream treatments do not always succeed. In addition, people usually want to try to identify the underlying cause of their pet’s health problems – not just treat the symptoms. Furthermore, people are becoming more educated in their own health and are realising that many pharmaceutical drug treatments can cause serious side effects and long-term effects. Consequently, more people are seeking natural therapies for themselves – often with great success. Therefore, it is only natural that many people also seek them for their animals. Many health problems in animals can be treated effectively with natural therapies. Conditions such as inflammatory skin conditions, degenerative joint conditions, recurrent ear infections in dogs, laminitis in horses, and many other conditions, including many being diagnosed as ‘untreatable’ can often be treated rapidly and safely by qualified animal naturopaths.

Qualifications of natural animal therapists

There are vast differences in qualifications between natural animal health practitioners. Many practitioners only have a diploma in (human) herbal medicine or homoeopathy and have not completed any training in animal health. This can pose a risk for the animal as it is important for practitioners to understand the physiology of each animal species that they work with as well as the potential side effects of certain natural remedies on each animal species. For example, using particular essential oils on a cat could prove to be fatal. Certain foods are unhealthy in some species of animals and not in others. In addition, there are particular herbs that should not be given to certain animal species and it is vitally important for practitioners to understand these factors.

HATO accredited practitioners must meet stringent standards for accreditation. In order to become an accredited HATO member, practitioners must have successfully completed approved training in the area of health they practice in. For example, many of the HATO animal naturopaths are fully qualified (human) naturopaths that have additional qualifications in the animal health field.

As mentioned previously, it is important to choose a well-trained animal naturopath as there are so many herbal remedies, nutrients and other naturopathic treatments that should never be given to certain species of animals. In addition, due to the unique anatomy of each of the animal species, dosages of herbal medicines or nutrient supplements can vary significantly from the dosage given to humans.

Why are natural animal therapy careers so rewarding?

Well-trained practitioners gain a lot of satisfaction using natural therapies on animals as, in many cases, they can be just as effective as most mainstream treatments but without the potential side effects. Not only that, an experienced practitioner will have the ability to identify the underlying cause of the disorder and treat it accordingly – not just treat the superficial symptoms. A large number of people seek naturopathic treatments for their pets when all else has failed. Therefore, it gives animal naturopaths a significant amount of satisfaction when they can help an animal, particularly when there is a history of a long-term illness, when no-one else achieved an effective cure.

The future of natural animal health care

There has been a dramatic increase in people seeking advice from professionals in the natural animal health field. Many people are realising that qualified natural animal practitioners can help them achieve their goals regarding their pet’s health - without the need for invasive surgery, drugs that may have toxic side effects or other potentially harmful treatments. This is why the natural animal field is growing so quickly and this is why it is really important for practitioners to be well-trained.

* Note: Please see your veterinarian for a diagnosis of the pet's condition before seeking treatment.