One question a lot of people ask me is whether Marwari horses are different than other horse breeds and whether training them is too.
The honest answer is no. Marwari horses are horses. They are usually smart and they have a good work ethic, but otherwise they are just like any other horse breed in the world, if you disregard their ears which are in fact unique but shared with two other Indian breeds from the Indian peninsula, the Kathiawari and the Sindhi.
A lot of people will tell you that Marwari horses are high strung and temperamental and often difficult, but personally, I cannot second that.
Yes, there are some individual horses which might be temperamental or difficult, but you cannot generalize this. I have so many homebred Marwari horses who are really cool and easy-going and with whom you can do just everything, including riding them through the thickest of traffic, a busy fair or a crowd of excited children all shouting.
By the end of the day, it boils down to how a horse grew up. If a young horse does not have sufficient exercise, it will become difficult to handle. But this is the same with almost all breeds. Confine a horse in a small space and do not give him anything to do, it will sooner or later get difficult to handle, it will destroy things and it will give his owner or caretaker a hard time. That is why I believe in turnout, the more the better. If you give a young horse a lot of space and the stimulus of a herd, he or she will be content and mentally balanced. Of course, young horses can be naughty and difficult at times, but the more things they have to do, the less naughty they will be.
Horses are born to run. They are animals of the steppe and in the wild, they are on the move almost the whole day, grazing and moving, mostly for 10-15 km but in arid areas often up to 50-60 km when the distances between the grazing areas and the water hole are big.
They are also constant feeders. In the wild horses feed for 20 hours a day the remaining four hours are spent in resting and social activities such as playing or grooming.
So, what does that teach us for our horse keeping?
Horses need plenty of space and constant exercise and horses should have a more or less constant access to food in order to satisfy their physical and psychological needs.
Like most horse breeds, Marwari horses are domesticated horses. They are no longer the same horses that used to roam Asia’s grassy steppes. However, like in all domesticated breeds, their needs have not changed much. They are still essentially the same animal as their ancestor who did roam the steppes.
We humans tend to believe that we can make our animals adopt to our schedules and preferences. It is easier to keep a horse confined in a stable, feeding him concentrate three times a day. You can do that of course, but it will basically mean that your horse will suffer the consequences such as stomach ulcers, illnesses and degradation of their legs and skeleton or respiratory diseases besides suffering from mental stress and the resulting stable vices which are again ill affecting their health and well-being in a vicious circle.
In India there is no tradition of keeping horses roaming free due to lack of pasture and a historical small emphasis on breeding. Traditionally India imported almost all of its horses from Central Asia and the Arabian Peninsula and there was only a small horse breeding tradition in the North Western States. The Centre, South and East are climatically not well suited for horse breeding with only a few exceptions.
So, horse keeping in India was mostly done in stables and confined spaces. Even today, there are few places where horses have access to a big pasture or even run free as they do in many other Asian countries.
As long as they were kept mainly as cavalry horses, this might not even have been very problematic, as they had to daily go on long rides and had a lot of exercise, training and expert care being part of royal and noble household who invested heavily into their mounts.
Today the situation is different. Some horses are still kept as working horses such as the cart horses and do hard labour during the day. However, most horses are either wedding horses or leisure horses who are exercised infrequently. The rest of their time they often spend confined to small spaces or tied up for hours to days.
Even breeders or owner who have enough money to build fancy stables, will not know much about the true needs of their horses to run or socialize. They will rather keep their horses in singles or at best pairs or small groups in small paddocks for limited time and then put them back in stables or tie them up. Theses horses are loved and well cared for. Their owners are proud of them and make sure they get good food and that they are brushed, washed and massaged. But their turnout is often limited to mere hours, often alone and sometimes not at liberty but on the lunge or with an attendant chasing them around so that they will get “exercise”.
The result is a high-strung horse with plenty of extra energy due to a good quality food and little turnout. The stallions are often difficult to manage and have to be restrained with a lot of force, harsh bits, shouting and violence on the part of the handler. When they are set free, they are prone to injury as they will do a lot of running, jumping, stopping and turning, often without a proper warm-up. This is really what has given the Marwari horse the reputation of being a difficult horse.
We keep our horses in spacious paddocks at night and lose on the farm during the day, so they have a lot of turnout and can roam all day together as a herd, all horses together. Extra energy goes into playing and running. At the same time, we handle our horses with love and care. They are extremely positive and relaxed in the presence of people. There are individual differences, but mostly between horses we bought and horses we bred and who grew up on our farm. The latter are generally more relaxed and easy-going as they have experienced this lifestyle from birth and they never had any bad experiences with human beings while the former are sometimes suspicious of people and less sociable with other horses.
So, what I see is that the Marwari horse is an intelligent horse. They learn quickly and they want to please you. They are not difficult to handle, most of them are in fact very pleasant, friendly and forward going horses. Marwari horses are extremely versatile horses, you can ride dressage with them, jump them, use them for trail riding, they excel in endurance and they would do well in Western riding or Working Equitation as well. I even saw some of them trained in Polo, even though the Polo folks in India are not big fans of Marwari horses. They will all tell you: Marwari horses are too high strung and to temperamental to be good polo horses. Yes, I heard that one before!
My youngsters have all learned really fast. None has given me any major problems so far. I start with their training when they are a couple of days old and then slowly progress as they are getting older. I see the training process of a horse as a string of pearls. You have to add each pearl one by one and each is another step on the way to a perfectly training riding horse. From day one I control their learning experience and make sure they only have positive experiences and keep their trust in people.
At the same time, I believe particularly for young horses a constant, daily turnout in the herd is essential. They learn social skills and their bodies develop nicely as they can walk, trot and canter unrestrained over a rocky and uneven pasture. It makes their hooves strong and hard and it gives them the sure-footedness and balance they need to become good trail horses.
With Rajmani it was different as he came to me at the age of three years and I had only a limited idea of what he had experienced before. People at taught him various things in his previous life and he had learned a lot of resistance and negative behaviour. By inconsistent and harsh training, people taught him to be weary and to say no. So till today, he might do something nicely and suddenly changes his mind and refuse to continue. That is a set of behaviour I never had to deal with on such a large scale.
Every young horse will test his limits and check how much he can do with you. That is normal, particularly when they turn into their teenager age. But as I make sure I work with them in a very consistent manner with a lot of positive reinforcement, I encountered very little resistance so far.
One of the biggest problems I had with Rajmani was his constant nipping behavior. He tried to take something in his mouth all the time. The rope, the stick, my t-shirt or my hand. Part of it was certainly normal stallion behaviour but part of it was also extreme anxiety and boredom.
After being on the farm for 11 weeks now, he has calmed down a lot. He still is nippy at times, particularly if I am asking something which requires work from his side. Not so much the riding, he enjoys that, more the groundwork, especially lateral work and work which requires him to bend and move in a proper frame.
I still don’t really lunge him, as this creates even more anxiety in him and he usually just runs in tiny circles, totally headless, cantering on the wrong lead as he bends his head towards the outside or the extreme inside. This was taught to him by his breeder who lunged him on a pole which is a common way in India. The person lunging the horse will wrap the lunging rein around a pole in the middle in order to have more control when the horse pulls. Most horses learn to gallop as fast as possible in a small circle around the pole. Often a second handlers manages the whip and makes sure the horse keeps up the gallop and does not slow down. Only when the horse has galloped for 15-20 minutes, they believe he had enough exercise.
That this is not conductive to have calm horse which can be lunged in a relaxed way in all gaits should be common knowledge, yet somehow it is a practice which is still widely used.
So all in all, the Marwari horse is a hot-blooded horse, comparable to Arabians or Akhal-Tekke horses. That means they have a lot of forward in them. On the other hand that makes them also very intelligent which helps in the training but a smart horse will also expect his owner or trainer to be consistent, careful and gentle in their training methods. Use too much of force and he will quickly turn wild or even against you. If you are too sloppy and not consistent enough, he might take advantage of you. But all in all, Marwari horses are horses with their own special ways perhaps but with the same physical and psychological needs than any other horse breed in the world.
And if you want to see what kind of life our horses have, here you go: