1 year and 8 months - training rides

Well you've made it this far - congratulations. And you know what - you should give yourselves a pat on the back!

You are now the proud owner of a lovely young horse, who at the age of 1 year and 8 months is ready to start training to be a champion.

Now, if your horse has woken up with low energy and health after their final day of games, you need to ensure they return to 100% health before commencing training. Put them in the field for a couple of hours, groom them feed them or put them in the box for a bit in order to get their health back up.

HANDY HINT
If you train a horse with health less than 100% (at any time in their life) they will gain less skills than they would otherwise have done. So it's always best to wait until they have recovered.

Once you're ready, it's time to start taking your horse out on rides.

From now on there is no set method to follow as it all depends on the breed of horse you have. They are all good at different things and so need to be trained accordingly.

Before the age of 2 the only training you can do is by taking your horse out on rides. Look for the buttons on the far right-hand side of the page, about half way down.

There are 3 types of ride:

-Trotting ride
-Galloping ride
-Steep slope ride

And each of these rides has 2 further options - short or long.

Look for your breed in the following table and see which rides you should start with: (for this method we are going to train your horse in their top 3 skills - a good habit to get in to. Later on when you are training more advanced horses, this all changes - look out for further posts on 'Advanced Training' in the future. But for now lets keep it simple).

-Short trotting rides: Standardbred, Fjord
-Long trotting rides: Friesian, Hackney, Peruvian Paso, Lusitano, Nokota
-Short galloping rides: Quarter Horse, Paint Horse, Purebred Spanish Horse, Thoroughbred, Appaloosa, Chincoteague, Mustang, Welsh, Brumby
-Long galloping rides: Irish Hunter, Marwari, Quarter Pony, Trakehner
-Short steep slope rides: Hanoverian, Australian, Newfoundland
-Long steep slope rides: Arabian, Connemara, Canadian, Donkey, Barb, Russian Don Horse, Morgan, Shetland, Gypsy Vanner, Shagya Arabian, Holsteiner

Train your horse for as long as you can in their chosen ride - try to use up nearly all their energy (you can take it down as far as 1-2%). Then stroke, give a carrot, drink, groom and feed. You now have to give your horse grain as well as forage - just follow what it tells you when you click the 'feed' button.

You should do rides until your horse is 2 years old. Then check out our Training methods post to find out what to do next.

Please note, this is a very simplistic overview of training. There are lots of methods out there and everyone has their own opinions about the 'best method'. Take your time to play around with your horses' training and find out what works best for you and your horse.

Lucy