Recognizing the "Try" in Our Horses

If you’ve taken a lesson, attended a clinic or watched any kind of training video you’re likely familiar with the phrase “reward the try” or have at least heard that said in some

context. We reward the horse’s try so they can start to understand what we are asking of them and build from there.

But what exactly does the “try” look like?

I have discussed this question a lot lately with my clients and at my clinics and it is apparent to me that many people are not sure what the try looks like unless its a huge effort on the horses part. I wish I could tell you it “looks like xyz” and that it was that black and white. However, that is absolutely not the case.

The try is going to look different every time, from every horse. Your horse’s worst try one day might look the same as their best try another day. It is our job as equestrians to learn how to see when our horse is trying for us and reward that, even if it might not outwardly appear to be on the path to our end goal (but I promise if you look closely, it is).

An example of this, and something that came up during a clinic that I taught recently, is getting your horse to do the rope gate (or opening any gate). This is a challenging obstacle for many horses and riders as it has multiple steps and requires a series of body maneuvers to complete.

For those who are unfamiliar with this obstacle- It consists of two posts and a rope that is fixed to one post and has a loop or handle that can be lifted off the other post. You ride up to the gate and stop your horse beside the post that has the handle, lift up the handle and hold it while you back your horse a few steps- making enough of an opening to walk through. Once your horse is halfway through you ask them to bring their hind end through and then back up to the post and place the handle back to close the gate.

It doesn’t look challenging from the human perspective, but many horses find the gate to be strange and confusing. Many are not comfortable standing beside it which makes even starting the obstacle a challenge.

People will approach the gate (or honestly any obstacle or task) with the mind set of “we have to complete this” or “if we don’t do it all the way it doesn’t count.” The only thing that mind set will get you is frustrated. Your horse will be frustrated and either shut down or try to leave and you will come away feeling like you’ve had a bad experience or ended on a bad note. In your horses eyes they were having a hard time and you weren’t there to help them, because you’re looking at the big picture. The horse doesn’t care about the big picture. They see things one step at a time, and if we are going to help them we need to look at things that way too.

In order to best reward our horses try we need to look at everything in small steps. If step one isn’t working, steps 2-5 are not going to work either and things are going to fall apart.

The gate for example- step one will be riding up to it with the gate parallel to your horse. For some horses that is hard. If they can’t do step one, we cannot move to step two. Your horses initial try might look like them just acknowledging the gate. If they are spooking or shying away from it, take that big picture in your head and throw it away. Your goal now is to let your horse get comfortable being near the gate. You can’t force them up to it either. If they’re telling you I can’t go near that thing, that’s fine. Guess what just became your new resting spot? That’s right, the gate.

If your horse shys from the gate let them and then turn that into an excuse to work some leg yielding, or maybe some trot circles! Whatever exercise you chose be sure you’re doing it in a productive and positive manner, this is not a punishment for the horse avoiding the obstacle. It’s simply an opportunity to work on something else for a minute. When they feel settled, point them back at the gate (or whatever they are avoiding) and get quiet. If they stop and stand ten feet away but are looking at it let them rest there. The more they acknowledge it the more curious they will get and they will eventually stop next to it no issue. This might take five minutes, or it might take 5 sessions. It depends on the horse.

For us to figure out what a good try from our horse is we need to break down whatever the task is we are doing into steps and figure out which step isn’t working and then see how we can fix that. In doing this the horse is going to feel like we are listening to them and noticing when they make an attempt at whatever they are asking.

Maybe steps one and two are going well, but things fall apart at step three. Maybe the horse can ride up to the gate (step 1) and stop (step two) but they can’t stand still for more than a few moments. So if that’s the case, forget the gate and work on getting your horse to stand still. This won’t look like forcing them to stand there either. If they want to move their feet we need to let them, but in a way that is productive and will help them relax. If your horse doesn’t want to stand still it very simply means they are not relaxed. A relaxed horse will be okay with being stationary, and anxious horse will not. We must also not confuse a relaxed horse with a shut down horse… but that is for another blog post.

For us humans to recognize the try in our horses we need to slow down and look at each piece of whatever it is we are asking for. Those individual pieces might have a few more even smaller steps to them. Once we can figure out those small steps we can then focus on rewarding the horses smallest efforts, and once we start doing that things will fall into place far more easily. This reward can be anything from stoping and standing to a food reward. Whatever method you chose its important to give the horse time to sit, process and have a release before moving on.

There is no cookie cutter answer for what the try will look like. It will look different each time. Your horse can do something really well for one ask, but then the next time it looks like they don’t even know what to do. Progress with horses is a lot of three steps forward two steps back, but the trend is always up. It is so easy to get discouraged when your horse acts like they have never been asked to do “xyz” before even though you know they did it really well yesterday. All you horse is telling you in that moment is that they need extra help. We need to approach each day and each session as its own individual moment. Don’t bring expectations with you. You can absolutely have a plan, but be okay with throwing that plan out the window if that’s what needs to happen. Your horse will thank you for it.

When working with horses we need to be adaptable and we need to be able to recognize when to slow down. If we try doing too much and it falls apart we know we went too far. Sometimes that needs to happen to learn where our horses threshold is. From there we can take a few steps back, have a breath and re-set.

If we as equestrians can look closely at things and slow down, those tries will be easy to spot.