Horse Training

For our purposes, we want the stallions we ride to be accustomed to a lot of different things going on around us. We’ve exhibited in many different and strange places, so we definitely want the horses to be okay when conditions change.

Our covered arena at home is a replica of Maestro Nuno’s arena. The openings on the long side are very important because breezes come through and help with the Texas heat. However, it still gives a lot of protection through the hot summer or rainy days.

It’s also important for the training of the younger horses that need to learn to concentrate and pay attention to what they’re doing. The open arena is a lot larger and provides a change of scenery.  Consequently, half of the work is done outside and the other half on the inside.

Lightness is essential to the beauty and training of a horse. And when this is accomplished, there’s trust and when you have trust, you can do a lot of things you otherwise couldn’t do. For example, when we did a series of performances one day for a PR firm in Chicago, we had to ride in seemingly scary conditions. They wanted to bring attention to a Horse Festival, so we were asked if we could take the stallions to downtown Chicago and perform during the lunch rush hour. It was a bit scary taking the huge horse trailer into the downtown area. But we used a visualization technique and everything went perfectly. I even rode right next to a opening to the subway system and when I look at it on the video…it’s kind of scary!

Without lightness, everything the horse does is unnatural. We feel that lightness is a necessary requirement for reaching that state of grace, which is indispensable in art. Training a horse is not only gaining the animal’s submission, but also making sure that the horse takes pleasure in doing everything that is asked of the equine. In life, when two living beings are giving their best in order to fulfill their dreams, something marvelous happens. So it is an art, in all forms. The artist must be able to give the very best of himself that he possibly can.

When the lesson is over, we feel that the horse must have retained confidence and should return to the stable feeling that he has been exercised with intelligence and affection.

Nothing artificial is used during the training and exhibiting of our horses. We make sure that each horse is well suited for the discipline of horsemanship that we choose to pursue. In our case our passion is classical dressage, so we want a horse that along with a great personality has the following qualities: a short back, a good angle at the shoulder, good extensions and a lot of power from the back.

We need to be aware of the qualities that our sport of choice requires and find a horse that is well suited for it because of their natural balance, appropriate conformation and agility. If these qualities are genetically in your horse and the horse is physically and mentally well suited for our purposes, we are making our life and most importantly the life of our horse so much more pleasant and we are certainly setting ourselves on the way to success. Our horse’s training follows a pattern similar to that of an Olympic gymnast, we give them exercises to develop sets of muscles before moving onto the next exercise.

The stallions of Andalusians de la Parra are worked every day except Sunday and Monday. That is because we, many times have clients from all over the world, mostly on weekends and to give the horses some time to be outside and be free. It’s good for their mind and a well deserved break. On the farm, the mares are only worked once a week. We don’t do much work with the foals except visit them in the fields and hug and brush while having with them very meaningful conversations. We keep our young stock washed and brushed from ear to hoof. No other work is done with the foals until they are three years old.

In our experience, a baby that stays with his mother at least 3 months (ours stay 5 to 6 months) grows up to be a more calm, relaxed, self assured individual. If the mother gave us such a great gift (the baby) and the foal is going to give us a lifelong of pleasure, loyalty, willingness, cooperation and satisfaction, don’t they both deserve a happy period of “motherhood” as well as a nurturing childhood? We want our beloved horses to be trusting and accustomed to people and with a good head on their shoulders.