The Horse Whistler

Breaking in a horse's psyche is a simple matter of instilling your will as the rider into your mount, acquiring its trust and training its obedience. Horses are intelligent, noble beasts, so they should be treated with tenderness and a decisive and firm energy.

Mayer, the unquestioned authority in this area, emphasizes that when training one's mount a rider must eternally on the lookout for errors in the training itself. Every time the taming process ends in failure, the rider must look for the blocking error first of all in the his own actions, secondly in the horse's anatomy and only in a last resort by concluding the horse has a naturally difficult temperament.

Adhering to this principle protects one from undue punishments, which destroy the possibility of reaching an understanding between rider and mount and make it impossible to gain the animal's trust.