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A while back I worked with horse trainer
Aaron Mills while making horse training videos
for http://www.SuperStarsOfHorseTraining.com
Aaron often used the term "baggage."
By that he meant, if you go to touch
your horse's head does he flinch and move it
away quickly nearly every time?
Baggage.
If you try to saddle him does he move
off and not let you?
Baggage.
Later I hosted a horse training
teleseminar with Aaron.
During this informative session, Aaron
again talked about baggage.
We talked about how to work through it
and to get the horse to trust that the baggage
is not going to harm him.
We discussed the horse we filmed and how
he did it.
Aaron transformed the horse from a "Don't
touch or saddle me" scardey cat to an "Okay...
you win...go ahead and saddle me - just be careful"
horse.
How'd he do it?
As you watch the video it becomes painfully
clear how patient you gotta be when you train a horse.
Another obvious thing is how much work it
takes.
The next obvious thing is how often the
horse does exactly as Aaron wants, then a few
minutes later he doesn't.
That's just something you have to work
though. That's where the patience thing comes
in because you cannot realisticaly expect the
horse to do what you ask every time once he's
figured it out.
It takes repetitions.
You have to work through it because
there's baggage.
You gotta go slow. You gotta look for
the littlest cooperation and reward it.
When the video was done, Aaron had the
horse following him like a shadow and was able
to put the saddle on him and the horse accepted
it and stood still with it on.
What a wonderful exercise it was to
watch.
Here's a horse who's nature it is to
flee and not trust yet Aaron had the horse
following him and trusting him.
I don't care how many times I've seen
it or done it, it's awesome to watch and exhilir-
ating to accomplish.
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