Horse pulls on the lead rope: how to restore calm leading

When someone tells me their horse pulls on the lead rope, I look at the person first and the horse second. In almost every case the horse is not trying to win; it simply does not know where its place beside us is.

A horse weighs around 500 kilograms. If we start pulling, we lose. So I do the opposite: I keep the rope loose and show direction and tempo with my body. When I stop, the horse should stop. When I speed up, it speeds up too.

The most useful exercise is simple: walk ten steps, stop, breathe out and wait. If the horse walks past you, calmly back it up a step and start again. No shouting, no jerking. Reward it the moment it stops at your shoulder.

After a few days most horses understand that following the human pays off. That is the first step of the K3P method: communication that is clear and calm, not loud.