Setting goals with our horses

As we look back upon the year and look forward to the new, thoughts of goals and more riding are swimming through our heads. Did you accomplish your goals with your horses this past year? Give up after a few months? Thought you rode quite a bit but its not reflected in your riding? How about your horses behavior on the ground and in the saddle, see any improvement?

One way to keep better track of how often we work with our horses, and what we work on, is to make a simple Excel spreadsheet. Here is what I do. For each month I have a new sheet, across the top are the names of the horses, down the left column are the dates .  I use a simple legend, R=Ride, TR= trail ride, GW= ground work, GD= ground driving,  TW= trailer work, W= worming, S= shots, T= trim, etc. Each day that something is done with a particular horse, I put the appropriate letter under their name on that date. If I did something noteworthy, or reached a certain goal, I will write a little note over in a column to the right called 'Notes'.

I also have a separate packet of papers that has a list of the tasks I would like to complete with each horse that comes in for training. With most horses I have three months to complete these tasks, and all might not be complete because it depends on the horse, but small goals lead to the bigger goal of turning out a nice, safe riding horse.

Having a record of our training program makes it really easy to look at the facts of how often we are working with our horse. It can be a reality check of how little we work with our horse and why we are not achieving our goals.  At the end of the year we can look back over our spreadsheets and see if we reached those goals and if not, what becomes part of the future goals, what needs to be broken down into smaller goals, maybe add a new goal.

Keeping a written schedule helps to see the reality of how much we work with our horse, and helps to develop and keep track of a well schooled training program. I hope this idea, and a new year, helps you start your own horsemanship program so you can improve your horsemanship and the relationship you have with your horse.

Happy New Year and God Bless!

Amy Allen