Discipline-specific, planned in detail against daily aims and milestones. Your involvement in program development and delivery, and full reports provided. We aim to improve every horse in every way--and keep them improving along with you. 
Lucan Lodge takes a professional approach to training your horse, applying proven theory and detailed planning to ensure learning progresses with specific aims in mind.
We can take your horse for full time training, or we can train her a session at a time with our Horse School. We understand that it's not always practical to send your horse away for a long period, but that's no reason to have to miss out on profesisonal training! For teaching new skills like long reining or even improving frame and balance, individual sessions can be a great way to develop your horse's abilities. We explain and demonstrate every technique we use, so that you can continue the training yourself.
It's like a private lesson for your horse!
We provide:
Horse School: private lessons for you and your horse
Mannering and handling: for youngstock, or improving ground work
Starting: mouthing, backing and first steps in training
Riding-in: bringing horses back into work sustainably
Discipline Specific Training: for improving skills or changing fields
Pre-Training: for race, event and endurance horses
Ridden Training: all developmental and educational training
Restarting and Resolutions: for 'problem' or sensitive horses
'Problem' resolution is a key focus of Lucan Lodge. We take a scientific and comprehensive approach to retraining horses with inappropriate or dangerous behaviours. Our style of training involves minimising anxiety and fear, and progressively conditioning the horse to a new, correct set of responses. Our resolution training involves the owner throughout the whole process, and can include the following services:
Root Cause Analysis
Includes detailed problem definition, training history, trauma history, pain assessment, conformation analysis, gait analysis and management analysis. We can draw on the valuable resources of veterinarians, farriers and other complementary therapists where required to fully explore any physical problems and develop ways to resolve them.
Resolution strategy
Including requirements analysis (what you want to achieve) and gap analysis (what needs to improve to get you there!).
Management Planning
Including nutrition and supplement plans, restorative and preventative treatment regimes and stabling/turnout schedules. Here we can arrange detailed dietary analyses for your horse. Improper management is a major contributor to inappropriate behaviour in horses, with many traps and myths (on feeding in particular) to catch the unwary!
Training Plans
For physical conditioning (muscles and bones), behavioural education (responses and attitude) and metabolic adaptation (hormonal processes and recovery). These include full reports of all training sessions we undertake, plus short, medium and long term milestone-based plans, as well as fully documented instructions on all aids and exercises we recommend. We support all our recommendations with articles and notes on the scientific reasons behind our techniques, and encourage you to unserstand WHY as well as HOW.
Pre-Training Programs
We take a scientific approach to conditioning your horse for high-demand performance, including eventing, racing and endurance. We develop a detailed training program for aerobic and anaerobic fitness, conditioning your horse’s cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and metabolic systems, combined with schooling to maximise his balance, efficiency of rhythm, calmness, and controllability. We manage your horse’s condition daily, and provide detailed reports on his heart rate, temperature and recovery times over the training period.
Program Development
12 month development schedules tailored for each horse, including types of exercise and durations by week; milestones to achieve per month; scheduled events to attend; and a detailed management calendar covering all medical and complementary care. For ongoing ease of management we can help coordinate insurance cover, saddle fits, dental files and worming programs as well as show entries, breed registration and transport!
We follow the principles of the German National Equestrian Federation:
The training should be based on a plan
It should be systematic and progressive
The method should be correct
The training should have continuity
It should be varied, comprehensive, all-round training
There should be adequate breaks and relaxation periods
The training should be clear and consistent
The rider should not allow uncontrolled emotions to play any part in training
Progress should be assessed regularly
The individual characteristics of the horse should be taken into account
Training should result in a physically and mentally balanced horse and rider
As part of every training program we involve you, the owner and rider, during development as well as delivery. We like to have you out for a coaching session with your horse once per week, at no extra charge, to make sure you are comfortable with your horse’s progress and also to ensure you learn with him. We also provide full reports for each horse, incorporating the results of all analyses and outcomes of each session.
With this information you can continue his development, armed with the knowledge you need to carry on the good work. We don’t believe in keeping you in the dark—we want you to know as much about our training techniques as your horse will.