Friesian Horse Training: Mateo's Assessment Before Re-training Begins

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This is Mateo’s first day being here at my facility. Before I begin working with a new horse, I do an assessment. My assessments are equivalent to an IQ test except I’m not interested in his intelligence. I’m interested in knowing what he’s learned and how he’s learned.

This is my first step to getting to know a horse, what makes them “tick” – are they relationship oriented, aloof, food or safety oriented, scared of whips, pressure, and most of all what self-preservation mode did they choose to cope.

Most have so many layers and years of protection (self-preservation) it can takes months to peel away the nurture, what they’ve learned, and get to the real horse, who their nature is.

My assessments involve evaluating a horse holistically so I can determine how healthy, or not, they are emotionally, mentally, spiritually (spirit level) and physically – are they balanced inside and on the outside.

99.5% of the thousands of horses I have assessed fail this test of mine. That’s why I developed it. Horse after horse was a wreck, from yearlings to grand prix, reining horses to racehorses and everything else in between – except the wild horses. They were by far the healthiest and most balanced, inside, and out.

So, this month we are focusing on one of the riding horses here for re-training and rehabilitation. His name is Mateo. He is a 5-year-old Friesian gelding from the Netherlands.

Supposedly he has been trained to second level dressage and he drives a carriage. For God’s sake he is only 5. Why he needs to know and do all of this is because of two things: tradition and attitude and money.

I have not seen any pictures or videos of his dressage training and I have seen a photo of him hooked up to a very fancy carriage. He looked horrified.

He’s also had some horrible lunging where he was made to run and was scared by the whip. All this did was create tension. In classical dressage, relaxation means everything to being successful in achieving upper-level movements. This young horse has not been classically trained, not by my standards.

Like JJ, he has chosen the self-preservation mode of freezing to protect himself. He checks out all the time and gets hooked on dopamine. Dopamine is not a healthy high. It is like endorphin, which is the healthy high and feel-good chemical released through the nervous system. But dopamine is another animal and is equivalent to a heroin high.

While JJ also checked out, he went catatonic which is why he would explode. Mateo just shuts down and gets really sad and his eyes glaze over. It takes a lot to get him out of this mental and emotional space.

I’ll explain more in the videos as well as show you how I help him learn to let go, trust me, and gain confidence in himself and me.

If you would like to learn how to re-train, rehabilitate and create the ultimate riding partnership and foundation with your horse, click here https://www.taoofhorsemanship.com/mas....