11/25/2025
It doesn't matter if you are starting a young prospect or training a horse in the canter pirouette, the horse in training determines the type of training they require. There are three approaches or types, Partnership, Leadership and Supremacy.
Before I get into these types, I want to be clear that bribing horses with treats is not a horse training method. While countless social media "experts" advocate for various forms of treat training, the truth is using treats to train creates a barrier or obstacle between the trainer and the horse.
Riding or driving horses requires a physical connection that in its highest form is unity of balance and motion. We don't have that when training dogs or other animals. Treat based training can be effective with many animals but not with horses because the treats become a distraction from the training process. The treats become an intermediary between the trainer and the horse when an intermediary of any kind, including the intense use of whips, etc. work to separate, not unify the relationship between the horse and the trainer.
Of the three types of training approaches, Partnership, Leadership and Supremacy, we begin applying the principles of Partnership. Horses, being herd animals, have an impulse to be part of a group. To accomplish Partnership, we access this herd impulse that horses can have between us and them. We access this by developing our own "horseness" while we subordinate our human impulses. We create a herd of two, us and the horse.
Developing our "horseness" means thinking and feeling like a horse. Horses have far fewer emotional or intellectual impulses compared to humans, so we limit these impulses in ourselves to meet them where they are. For example, we are not a horse's "mom" or any other human concept of human relationship. Instead we must become like them, physically centered.
This means subordinating our illusions of how horses relate. They don't want or need to be your child. They need instead to be taught to understand where they are in the pecking order of the herd. In a herd of horses teaching includes kicks, bites, threats and intimidating looks or sounds from fellow herd members.
In spite of these equine physical teaching methods, the herd remains unified for mutual protection from predators. Many amateur horse trainers reject the physicality of how horses teach other horses as being cruel. This rejection is a form of humans anthropomorphizing horses. Horses that are bitten or kicked into respecting the herd order do not pout and leave the herd. They stay and accept their position or rank in the herd according to the rules of horseness.
But not every horse that finds themself in a herd with a human trainer accepts the human as the leader. Many horses are genetically programmed to be the herd leader. They believe that you, the trainer as leader is incorrect. They believe they are the leader of the Partnership. With these kinds of horses, the focus of training must shift from establishing a partner relationship to a relationship of clear Leadership by the human trainer. And to be the leader of a herd of horses, you must have sufficient horseness in order to lead effectively.
Once leadership is established and accepted by the horse in training, we can return to a more partnership, fellow herd member connection.
Lastly, some horses are firmly committed to being the leader in their herd of horses and in the human-horse herd of two. What results, as in the pictures of the horses pictured at the bottom, is a contest of Supremacy of leadership. In my first paid training job, the head trainer, Chris Heinrich, told me never get into a fight with a horse that you cannot win. Losing that contest only teaches the horse to become a better fighter.
Most amateur horse trainers don't have enough hoarseness to win a contest of leadership using Supremacy. They shouldn't try. I am not going to explain this level of training except to say that the trainer must control the context of the training. And it doesn't hurt to know how to use a wiffle ball bat, a harmless child's toy, in training.
I hope that if you think this is a useful post you will share it. The quality of horse training is in decline as more people relate to horses primarily projecting human concepts of relationship onto horses. It doesn't occur to them that we must relate to horses as they are, not as what we imagine them to be.
