He did not know what left and right was, he didn't know what a corner or 20m circle was and he didn't know what it was to be lead by a person. All the boy knew, was how to run in a straight line. He didn't know any of the aids either, so for the first couple of weeks all we did was walk trot transitions, combined with straight lines and corners (he regarded a corner as a stop street).
Some of the training methods we used:
- Walking on a lead - you have to walk next to his shoulder and use your elbow as a "leg aid", while you say to him: "walk on" (or whichever words you choose to use), until he starts walking or even just give one step forward, then you walk with him and praise him. Lots and lots of praise!!!! It's all about positive re-reinforcement. They also need to learn to respect your space - so if he rams into you just push him away with your elbow/shoulder. This is also the beginning of getting them to understand concepts like moving away from pressure - which will help you later on when you start using leg aids and doing basic dressage moves.
- Teaching him to turn: you "open and close the gate - which means that you need to open your inside rein as if opening a gate. As soon as you pull on the rein he just bends his neck and carry on in the direction you were going in.
- Slowly we had to start introducing the inside leg but we kept on opening and closing the gate for quite some time. You have to over exaggerate things a little bit with the green horses.
- In order to improve his balance we did a lot of transition work. 5 Steps walk, 3 steps trot. Walk the long side, trot the short side etc.
- We started introducing circles by doing serpentines. This also helps to improve their balance.
