Why Pre-Start Training Matters More Than You Think

I feel very lucky, because in our barn, I get the pre-starts. The young ones. The blank slates. They aren’t ready to ride, but they are ready to learn and explore — some as young as yearlings, others two or three. And I love them. Because this is the moment where everything begins — before tack, before expectation, before anything that could be confused with working or schooling. It’s the time when their personality is at its purest.

Some come in feral, herded onto a box from a field and travelled loose, wide-eyed and unsure. Others have been in “civilised” society a bit already — they’ve had their feet done, been led around, had a headcollar on and off a few times. But that’s not always easier. Sometimes, it’s the slightly handled ones who are the hardest — because they’ve learned to tolerate, not trust. They’ve learned to shut down and go along. They look easy, but they’re not open. And the whole point of the pre-start is to help them stay open.

The pre-start is what we do with a young horse — typically around one to two years old — before we ever think about starting them under saddle. But it’s not age-specific. It’s really for any horse that hasn’t had much done with them. It’s about laying a foundation in the nervous system, in the body, and in the mind, so that when we do eventually put a rider on, the horse already knows what kind of world they live in.

A world where humans make good decisions.

Where boundaries feel safe.

Where curiosity is rewarded.

Where being unsure isn’t punished — it’s supported.

It’s not about drilling the basics. It’s about shaping how the horse sees people and how they process pressure. We’re showing them that life isn’t something to brace against — it’s something to lean into.

As with everything, I start with the body. Somatic work helps us check the nervous system before we load too much onto it. With babies, there usually isn’t much to find — they haven’t lived long enough to build layers of chronic tension. But still, it’s remarkable what even two or three sessions can do. You work through the ribcage, the poll, the pelvis — and next thing you know, they’re on the floor. Sometimes literally. Letting go. Breathing out. Processing.

And from there, I treat them like my little brother or sister. In a lovingly tussled way, I show them how to move their body (often harder for growing legs than you’d think), how to understand boundaries, and I prepare them as quickly as I can to get into the real world and explore with me.

I tow them around with me as I do practical things. Often I take them to clinics and have them as a teaching buddy, so they can learn that sometimes their job is to hang out and wait with me. Sometimes they come with me to watch a vet work, or to walk the property with me while Phil, our groundskeeper, is out cutting trees. I took a young horse with me to fix fencing, to move furniture, and I encourage clients to do the same. It’s great to see people doing their gardening, hanging up their washing, with their little sidekicks. They should see the world the way a younger sibling does — with someone just ahead of them showing the way, challenging them, and helping when they get stuck.

I want them to learn that their job is not just about doing things — it’s about being with people. That sometimes their role is to observe. To wait. To follow. To be curious, but calm. To experience the world from the edges before they’re expected to step into the centre of it.

There’s a tendency with young horses to want to keep them safe — and I get that. You don’t want to “mess them up.” You want to protect their sweetness. But in trying to protect them from ever getting it wrong, we end up keeping them fragile. We teach them that uncertainty is to be avoided, not explored.

I want them to fail.

I want to be clumsy sometimes, and let them feel that.

I want them to get things wrong and then realise — it wasn’t the end of the world.

That’s what builds confidence. Not perfection, but recovery.

For the pushy, dominant ones, I bring them with me to do jobs — they love it. Purpose suits them. For the reactive, watchful types, I like to explore with them. To move together. To run a little. To help them find that freedom in the body is possible when a person is alongside, not just when they’re alone.

You think four weeks is going to be a long time — after all, we’re not even adding tack. But when you consider how quickly babies’ brains get cooked, it starts to make sense. Their sessions are short — usually two or three chunks of 15 to 25 minutes a day — and the list is long. Always, in that final week, I find myself looking at the checklist thinking, Could I squeeze in another week? Did I do enough? But as you go through it, you realise just how much there is for a baby to cope with.

And the more time you spend helping them learn to be independent, to think for themselves at this age, the more they mature into relaxed, curious souls — not ones that fall apart when life starts asking harder questions.

So often, the restarts that come to us at ten or twelve years old have spent their lives either fighting or numbing out. They’ve survived, but they haven’t learned how to engage with the world in a soft, confident way. It can take us fifteen weeks to re-educate what could have been set up in four — and even then, we’re undoing patterns, not just building fresh ones.

I’ve been doing this long enough now to see the pre-start horses come back as grown-ups. Some of them are still working beautifully in their late teens. Many are just hitting their prime — relaxed, sound, able to do almost anything. I remember their owners worrying at the time that they were behind, moving slower than everyone else. But now they’ve got these incredibly well-rounded, healthy, happy horses… and many of the others have fallen behind. Not because of talent, but because they were rushed. Some are physically broken. Others are mentally or emotionally trapped in a lack of preparation.

I’m not saying it’s all down to the pre-start. But I am saying it reflects the mindset of someone who wants to start right — and keep going that way.

The pre-starts last four weeks. The starts are eight. And sometimes people feel a bit hesitant to send their horse for four weeks before the Start, especially if they’re planning to come back the following year. It can feel like a lot of extra money. I completely understand that — it’s a big commitment, and on paper, it can look like an optional add-on.

But in reality, the pre-start makes the Start so much smoother and faster — and because of that, the Start becomes more complete. We don’t have to spend the first few weeks getting the horse used to basic handling, or figuring out how they take food, or sorting out little gaps in pressure, haltering, or feet. All of that is already in place. And often, without the pre-start, we actually end up having to unpick things that were rushed, skipped, or misunderstood — which delays everything even more.

That means we get more time under saddle. We can move towards bridleless sooner. We can hack out further. But maybe more importantly, you get more time riding your horse — learning, exploring, and building the partnership, not just watching us catch them up on what they weren’t ready for yet.

Because underneath that ‘easy’ exterior, there’s a lot going on.

When Clyde gets tense — which, for him, happens quietly — he gets blasty. He holds it in until it leaks out, and when it does, it’s big. Not aggressive. Not dangerous. Just big, powerful, and sudden. And if you weren’t paying attention, you’d mistake it for something else.

He’s a big horse — tall, strong-looking, substantial — and the temptation, especially when he’s older, will be to treat him like a heavy horse. If he’s slow to respond, people will assume he’s lazy or behind the leg. If he gets strong, they’ll think he needs a bigger bit or a sharper aid. But the truth is, he’s not strong at all — not like that. Clyde is one of the most sensitive horses I’ve had in the barn.

That lightness is right there, but it’s fragile. And it would be easy to squash it.

Luckily, his owner is listening. She sees it. She feels it. She wants to understand it. And that means he has space. He has time. And most importantly, he has someone willing to protect that sensitivity — not suppress it.

My job is to help her recognise the small signs — what tension looks like before it becomes movement. To help her understand how Clyde holds pressure, how it leaks, how to catch it upstream. For Clyde, my job is to show him that being big means being aware of his body — not shutting it down. That he has to be responsible for his size. And then, slowly, we begin his exploration of the world beyond home — one step at a time.

Because if we get it right now, that softness won’t disappear as he grows. It’ll deepen. It’ll hold. And it’ll become something you can actually build on.

When we start a horse, riding becomes the goal. Everything else can feel secondary. But in the pre-start, the little things are the work. And it’s those things — the small moments — that teach a horse how to trust, how to think, how to grow.

More than anything though — beyond all the practical reasons I love the pre-starts — it comes down to privilege.

That I get to help these young horses see the world for so many of their firsts — their first exploration of difficult questions, of food, grooming, farriery, loading — as well as just hanging out. Not in the comfort of home, but in a bigger, harder space, where they can feel protected, heard, and encouraged to be independent.

That’s the way horses should feel.