“It’s a matter of timing… to approach a horse with a so-called philosophy where you wait til the horse does something wrong and then you beat on him or punish him afterwards – it’s not even logical. Yet the horse isn’t so different from us – in order to learn, you have to make mistakes. Then you re-calibrate, make a decision, try something different and try again. And the idea with a horse is when you see things going in the wrong direction, then you redirect his mind. You don’t wait for him to get into trouble, you try to keep him out of trouble. Parenting is very similar – you know a long time before something’s going to go wrong, so if you redirect them and you’re going to be the parent and help to guide them, there’s no reason you should have to beat on a kid to get him to respond to you.”
– Buck Brannaman
Once again, this relates to all animals and humans – not just horses!