Horse training
practices to teach horses certain behaviors
Horse training is the variety of practices that teach horses to perform certain behaviors when commanded to do so by humans. Horses are trained to be manageable by humans for everyday care as well as for equestrian activities, ranging anywhere from equine sports such as horse racing, dressage, or jumping, to therapeutic horseback riding for people with disabilities.
Historically, horses were trained for warfare, farm work, sport and transport purposes. Today, most horse training is geared toward making horses useful for a variety of recreational and sporting equestrian pursuits. Horses are also trained for specialized jobs from movie stunt work to police and crowd control activities, circus entertainment, and equine-assisted psychotherapy.
There is controversy over various methods of horse training and even some of the words used to describe these methods. Some techniques are considered cruel and others are considered humane.
Goals
The range of training techniques and training goals is large, but basic animal training concepts apply to all forms of horse training. The initial goal of most types of training is to create a horse that is safe for humans to handle (under most circumstances) and able to perform a useful task for the benefit of humans.
A few specific considerations and some basic knowledge of horse behavior help a horse trainer be effective no matter what school or discipline is chosen:
Safety is paramount: Horses are much larger and stronger than humans, so they must be taught behavior that will not injure people.
The public source identifies “Horse training” as practices to teach horses certain behaviors. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Horse, training and practices.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q848937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Horse training” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.