If you've ever taken riding lessons, you can relate to your horse when it comes to being corrected for something you didn't do quite right. Maybe the instructor just got a little sarcastic. Or maybe she raised things to the level of a good scold. Maybe you messed up big time and got yelled at big time. Or maybe to prove her point about what you did wrong, the instructor got really stern and made you do whatever it was over and over and over to drill into your head.

Whatever happened, as the instructor got louder or pushier or stricter you probably didn't feel very good about what you were doing. Your first reaction was probably a knot in your stomach. Or you got nervous or afraid or grumpy or mad or resentful. Even if you knew you earned the dressing down you got, going through it didn't make you feel very good about riding that day.

Worst of all, you probably didn't learn much of anything except that going back into the arena with that instructor wasn't something you were looking forward to.

That's why we teach our students that there are three times you punish a horse for doing something wrong--never, never and never.

The first goal in every training session is to make the horse feel positive about himself and the whole experience he has when he's with you. Heeding teaches handlers to concentrate on their horse, to methodically apply horse logical pressures only to the point where they shape the horse's behavior, then to consistently apply and release and reapply those pressures to shape and direct every stride the horse takes. When everything is horse logical and no more than one step away from something he already knows, the horse learns to trust that nothing bad is going to happen when he's around you. That trust leads to relaxation. And relaxation and rhythm are the foundations for anything you're going to teach a horse.

When a pressure gets "louder" either physically or psychologically, the horse feels that as something he wants to escape from. Whenever he's running away from a pressure, the horse is not learning. Whenever his current rhythm is abruptly interrupted, he is not learning. So if you jerk on a lead rope, make a sudden move around his head, yank on the reins, kick him in the side, smack him with a crop or gig him with a spur as "punishment" for something he didn't do right, the only the thing horse has learned is that it's not safe to be around you. His trust goes away. Any positive feelings about the training session gets cancelled by that breach of trust.