TRAINING TROUBLESHOOTING

PRINCIPLE: ‘SEPARATE. ISOLATE. RECOMBINE.’

Text | Shelley Wolhuter

There is a famous old saying that goes, “Methods are many, principles are few”, and this is certainly the case when it comes to training ponies. This means that there are many different ways (methods) to get something done, but only a few ‘rules’ (principles) that underlie all of these methods. So whilst there are many successful trainers in the world, many of whom would disagree with each others’ methods, when you get back to the basics of a method, most of them use the same principles. In this series of articles, we will look at a range of training principles that can help you and your pony find success.

The training principle in focus in this article is called ‘Separate. Isolate. Recombine.’ It is a wonderful tool to have in your horse training toolbox and can be applied to any situation! Let’s begin with ‘Separate’…

Separate

When you run into a problem with your horse, the first step you should take is to separate the problem or exercise into smaller parts. To demonstrate this, I will use the example of a horse not standing at the mounting block. To ‘Separate’ the problem into its smaller parts, you could consider the following as ‘steps’:

1. Standing still once tacked up.

2. Approaching the mounting block.

3. Stopping next to the mounting block and waiting.

4. Mounting without walking off.

5. Waiting at the mounting block once mounted, until asked to walk on.

Isolate

In this step, you pinpoint where the issue, breakdown, or confusion is in the process. To do this, go through the steps above and find out which one is proving tricky for you and your pony. Now that you know which part is going wrong and causing the problems, you have something to work on. For our example, let’s say your pony has a problem with Step 3 – Stopping next to the mounting block and waiting. This is something we can practice in isolation until the pony is good at it. If we are not successful, we then Separate Step 3 into even smaller steps: leading, stopping and waiting. After this part has been clarified and your horse can perform these elements easily, we move on to the last step: ‘Recombine.’

Recombine

‘Recombine’ means to put something back together. The last step is then to Recombine all the steps listed above to mount the pony perfectly. If another problem pops up, simply go through the process again until each part has been addressed and your pony is confident and capable of all aspects.

Take-home

The most powerful thing to remember is that this principle can be applied to any training situation and that solutions are only limited to your imagination! In other words, the more creative you get in ‘Separating’ the steps to find the problem or clarify what you are trying to say, the more options you will have to ‘Isolate’ and fix it.

Shelley Wolhuter

Libratum Equus

shelley@libratumequus.com

0711896938

@shelley_libratum_equus