Training Youg Horses

On the Education and Training of Young Horses:

As one might expect, the next step in horse ownership is the training of the young horse.

This chapter, however, is somewhat problematic in that it withholds as much information as it offers. It opens almost immediately with the statement that all people know young horses are sent to trainers, rather than be broken in by their masters.

Xenophon gives almost no information on this process, saying only that it is the master's responsibility to outline the skills a young horse must learn, and the period of time in which he must learn them. He also emphasizes here, for the first time, that the horse should learn to trust its handlers and designates this as partly the responsibility of the groom.

He advises that the groom should handle the horse with kindness, stroking it and taking it out into various and strange places so that it learns to enjoy human contact and to be unafraid of unfamiliar areas. If a horse reacts fearfully to anything, its handler is to reassure it rather than punish it.

In this way, Xenophon insists, the horse will learn that there is no need for fear and come to trust its human handler.