In this episode of speaking the horse language we cover what tools do I need? I'm going to just quickly tell you which tools that I use when I'm training horses, especially young horses, but I use it for everyone. Firstly, for myself, obviously, when you're riding a helmet, I always use gloves even for groundwork step, especially when I'm lunging. Even if it's a horse that I'm very comfortable with. I still always wear gloves. So the rope doesn't pull through my hands or, you know, I don't drop the horse or whatever reason but gloves I found very, very necessary.

For the horse, I use a rope halter. Yeah, and a very long lead rope. And my lead ropes usually have a small little latch on the end. The lead rope is about 12 feet long. If you are familiar with Pirelli or more Roberts all these natural horsemanship trainers, they use the rope halter because it applies a little bit of pressure on the horse's nose, if needed. So the lead rope has a little bit of a strong buckle as you can see, goes underneath the horse right here.

And I like it with a little bit of a strong buckle because I can get their attention a little bit if they're a bit naughty or speaking but also, if it's an emergency situation and I really need to get their attention, I have some control. Yeah. And then the reason that the lead rope is so long is that I can put my horse way out there very far away from me and I I'm safe you know, the further that they are from me, the safer I am. Another tool that I'll be using is a whip. Yeah, a long whip. This one is a bit sturdy.

Also it has the long rope and a small little lash and again It's just a tool that I can use. It's like, you know, an extension of my arm so I can move my horse around or I can get them far away from me, or I can correct them if needed. But that's really all they use any whip will work. This is just the one that I like to use. And the final tool that I like to use are dressage whips. I like to use the dressage rips because they're a bit long.

So again, I can be far away from the horse if I need to. And when I'm riding, you know, it takes some getting used to if you've not used one before, to not like accidentally tap your horse. I do like the dressage rips because it's a bit of an extension of my arm. So they're really handy when I'm doing groundwork stuff, you know, I can just kind of move my horse around, and I don't have to do a whole lot. A quick word about gadgets and when I say gadgets, what I mean is any tool that you might use to make a horse being a certain position or do a certain task. So for example, Martin gales, there's running Martin Gale standing Martin gales draw rains, running rains is all kinds of gadgets.

Even on the lunge, we have, you know, personas, we have certain goals, we have all kinds of gadgets. Now, gadgets are training tools. So if you are a trainer in your horse coach, and you know how to use those tools, yes, some of them have a purpose and a reason, especially with some horses more than others. So they do have a tool that there is a purpose behind gadgets, not all of them. You will notice that I on my horses today we're using bitless, bridles, and we're using halters and lead ropes. I don't like to use gadgets because I think training is more important than than gadgets.

Yeah, so if you can't get your horse to do it with training, then you're gonna have to, you know, hire a coach or somebody that knows how to do it without gadgets. You might need certain gadgets for certain things, but the whole purpose with gadgets so for example, you will see a video of of my Mo horse Lily. In the beginning, when I got her for jumping, she would get really excited her faces in the air she's part Arabian. So her faces in the air and she went full speed and a little legs are flying. So we put a little tiny funding Martin Gale on her, just to get her head a little bit back to where it belonged out of the clouds. And then the more that her training started working, you know, obviously we backed away from the jumps a bit started doing more polls, and the more training that we started doing with her, the more she naturally started to come down and you know what, we took those off, she doesn't need it anymore.

So gadgets are there when you need them. I'm going to say that for everything that we're doing today, you don't need any gadgets, you don't even need a bit. Obviously the whole gadgets topic. This applies to young horses or horses that have not been ruined yet. horses that are fresh, so you know, those horses I can start their training off correctly, and most likely they won't really need any gadgets if you're getting a horse which is 20 years is old and it's been in a specific bit or a specific bridle or specific gadget, its whole life, probably, you know, you're gonna have to keep doing that, because that's what the horse knows and that sort of training is. So again, you're gonna have to gauge and figure it out based on the training of your horse and your training.

You know, that's a whole nother conversation. So I'm talking more about young horses or horses that you're just starting or you know, maybe retraining a racehorse horses like that.