{"id":169,"date":"2010-05-04T19:50:08","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T01:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/?p=169"},"modified":"2010-05-04T19:50:08","modified_gmt":"2010-05-05T01:50:08","slug":"horse-training-tips-is-your-horse-half-brained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/general\/horse-training-tips-is-your-horse-half-brained\/","title":{"rendered":"Horse Training Tips &#8211; Is Your Horse Half-Brained?"},"content":{"rendered":"<link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/trustjacker\/css\/authover.css\" media=\"screen\" \/>\r\n\t       <link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\"http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/trustjacker\/css\/simplemodel.css\" media=\"screen\"\/>\r\n\t          <script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\n\tsrc=\"http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/trustjacker\/js\/jquery-1.7.2.min.js\"><\/script>\r\n           <script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/trustjacker\/js\/jquery.simplemodal.js\"><\/script>\r\n           <script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/trustjacker\/js\/authover.js\"><\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n\t\t\t\tvar jq = jQuery.noConflict();\r\n\t\t\t\tfunction openPopup(url,width,height,delay,useajax,iframe,exitt){\r\n\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\talert(url);\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\tauthover.configure({\r\n\t\t\t\t\tiFrameAttribute : {\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\"name\" : \"autFrame\",\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\"id\" : \"authFrame\",\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\"src\" : \"http:\/\/wikipedia.com\",\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\"height\" : \"100%\",\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\"width\" : \"100%\"\r\n\t\t\t\t},\r\n\t\t\t\tmodalContent : url,\r\n\t\t\t\twidth : width,\r\n\t\t\t\theight : height,\r\n\t\t\t\tdelay : delay,\r\n\t\t\t\tpopupUseAjax: 0,\r\n\t\t\t\ttargetUseIframe: iframe,\r\n\t\t\t\tpopupIsRedirect: useajax,\r\n\t\t\t\texitAlertText: exitt\r\n\t\t\t\t});\r\n\t\t\t\tauthover.triggerModal();\r\nreturn false;\r\n\t\t\t\t}\r\n\t\t\t\t<\/script><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/woman and horse.jpg\" alt=\"Horse and rider\" width=\"200\" align=\"left\" border=\"3\" height=\"300\" hspace=\"8\" \/><strong>&#8220;Is Your Horse Half-Brained?&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I remember being called &#8216;half brain&#8217; when I was younger.<\/p>\n<p>The reason for that was my &#8216;not so smart moments&#8217; in life like when I forgot to shut the front door as I left the house or a dozen other things.<\/p>\n<p>[With my kids in the 12 &#8211; 18 year old range I call\u00a0 it the &#8220;teenage minds of mush&#8221; syndrome. \u00a0Relate?]<\/p>\n<p>Believe it or not, horses are half brained much of the time and it can work against you if you&#8217;re not aware of it.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what I mean.<\/p>\n<p>As you know, horses have an eye on each side of their head.<\/p>\n<p>The right eye can see what&#8217;s going on towards the front of him, to his right, and behind him on the right.<\/p>\n<p>His left eye takes care of the other side.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, one eye can see what&#8217;s happening on one side of his body &#8216;independently&#8217; of the other eye.<\/p>\n<p>Us humans do not have that ability.<\/p>\n<p>Do you know what that means?<\/p>\n<p>That means &#8216;half&#8217; of his attention is assigned to one eye. \u00a0The other half of his attention is assigned to the other eye.<\/p>\n<p>That means half of his brain is with one eye and the other half is with the other eye.<\/p>\n<p>Why is that important?<\/p>\n<p>Because when you&#8217;re working with your horse and you&#8217;ve only got one of his eyes on you&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>You Only Have<br \/>\nHalf Of His Attention!<\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t have his attention, you don&#8217;t have the horse.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s curious to me is a lot of people don&#8217;t understand this. \u00a0Or if they do, they don&#8217;t seem to mind the horse doesn&#8217;t give them full attention.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s crucial to have it if you&#8217;re going to teach your horse something.<\/p>\n<p>Not only that, I find it totally disrespectful to NOT have someone&#8217;s attention when I&#8217;m talking &#8211; and that goes for horses too!<\/p>\n<p>Have you ever had a conversation with someone and as you talk they look away, or act uninterested, or keep looking at their watch?<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s rude!<\/p>\n<p>Although I can&#8217;t do much about a person being rude, I certainly can with a horse.<\/p>\n<p>And when a horse isn&#8217;t giving me his attention, it&#8217;s rude.<\/p>\n<p>After all, I&#8217;m not asking them to give it to me all day.<\/p>\n<p>They have 23 hours a day to eat, meander, run, etc&#8230;.but when it&#8217;s my time &#8211; I want &#8217;em giving me attention.<\/p>\n<p>And if I only get one eye, then I&#8217;m not getting ALL their attention.<\/p>\n<p>Now there are many times you won&#8217;t always get both eyes.<\/p>\n<p>After all, if you&#8217;re lungeing a horse you&#8217;ll only get one eye because he&#8217;s circling around you.<\/p>\n<p>BUT!!!<\/p>\n<p>He can still focus most of his attention on you while lungeing.<\/p>\n<p>And he should.<\/p>\n<p>But remember, a horse&#8217;s attention span isn&#8217;t all that long and they have to be reminded to give it to you.<\/p>\n<p>The younger the horse, the shorter the attention span. (Generally speaking)<\/p>\n<p>How do you get your horse&#8217;s attention back on you if you lose it?<br \/>\nMake &#8217;em move.<\/p>\n<p>Create a little pressure.<\/p>\n<p>Now why is this important?<\/p>\n<p>Well, a horse ignoring you is bad manners for the horse.<\/p>\n<p>A horse, like kids, must have good manners. Giving you attention is part of good manners.<\/p>\n<p>But also, to train a horse you must have his attention.<\/p>\n<p>If he&#8217;s going to be responsive to what you ask him to do, you have to have his attention.<\/p>\n<p>What I just told you about how the horse&#8217;s brain works and how getting both eyes gives you both sides of his brain&#8230;which gives you his attention&#8230; is a significant part of understanding the horse.<\/p>\n<p>If you have ever wondered to yourself, &#8216;Why does my horse do X ? &#8216;, then it may be there&#8217;s something about his nature you don&#8217;t know&#8230;but should.<\/p>\n<p>In all my encounters with horse trainers, there&#8217;s one thing (among others) that we consistently agree on.<br \/>\nAnd that is&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;To be successful with horses,\u00a0 you must understand their nature.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Makes sense, really.<\/p>\n<p>After all, if you&#8217;re going to be a surgeon, you must know how the body works so you can repair damage and keep it working.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re going to be an auto mechanic, you must know how engines work to fix them.<\/p>\n<p>If you make engine repairs that are inconsistent with how an engine works, you will fail.<\/p>\n<p>Training your horse is much the same way.<\/p>\n<p>You MUST know how it works, thinks, acts, reacts, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>There are lots of books on the subject if you want to read and study up on it.<\/p>\n<p>Jesse Beery figured this our real early when he was learning horse training and developing his training methods. \u00a0You can see more about his training course here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/beery.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.<wbr><\/wbr>com\/beery.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Or, you can take advantage of many of our excellent training videos by one of our professional trainers here:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/DVD.html\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/horsetrainingresources.<wbr><\/wbr>com\/DVD.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Remember&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The more you know about your horse, the better you&#8217;ll be.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the big difference between people who are mildly successful versus those who can get their horses doing amazing things.<\/p>\n<p>Knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>It begins with understanding the nature of your horse.<\/p>\n<p>Ok&#8230; that&#8217;s it.<\/p>\n<p>Stay safe out there with your horses.<\/p>\n<p>Charlie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Is Your Horse Half-Brained?&#8221; I remember being called &#8216;half brain&#8217; when I was younger. The reason for that was my &#8216;not so smart moments&#8217; in life like when I forgot to shut the front door as I left the house &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/general\/horse-training-tips-is-your-horse-half-brained\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,30,5],"tags":[77,7,191,33],"class_list":["post-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-training-tips","category-horse-training-videos","category-horseback-riding","tag-diana-quitana","tag-horse-training-tips","tag-horse-training-videos","tag-horseback-riding-lessons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horsetrainingresources.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}