Country Quest has always believed in very soft methods with horses. We ride bitless, our horses live a natural lifestyle and we maintain our horses welfare, both mentally and physically, our number 1 priority.
Recently we have started studying more about equine psychology and the learning theories and principals. Classical conditioning with positive reinforcement is scientifically proven to be the most effective way to train horses. What we like most about it, is that the horses really enjoy learning in this way too. It increases their confidence, they are very motivated and learn very fast. Clicker training is an incredible tool with horses and we are absolutely delighted to have found it!
In this infograph by Fair Horsemanship you can get the basic principles right.
In the future, we hope to host many workshops and groundwork clinics about the subject. Here in Portugal horsetraining methods and horse husbandry in general is still a little old fashioned and largely based on dominance.
