Training is the bridge between a well-kept horse and a competitive one. The system is deliberately simple to state: exercises build strength and confidence, and hitting thresholds unlocks tournament eligibility. That is the entire gate — you do not enter tournaments because a quest told you to, you enter because the horse has trained up to the required numbers.
Two axes of progress, and they are not the same thing. Strength is the physical capacity for the discipline. Confidence is the horse's willingness to perform, and it is closer to the character trait system than to the physical one. A horse can be strong and unconfident — typically because of how it was handled, its inherited temperament, or how it was desensitized — and that combination will lose you a competition that raw strength should have won.
Desensitization training was one of the notable systems added in the October 2026 demo, and it is the mechanical counterpart to the confidence axis. Desensitization is the practice of gradually exposing a horse to the things that spook it — crowds, noise, unfamiliar handling — so that it stops reacting to them. In-game it is a direct lever on confidence, and it is a good example of the game's approach: the mechanics are the real practice, not a reskin of it.
Caprilli tests also arrived in the October demo. Caprilli is the classical sequence of movements — collected trot, passage, piaffe, lateral work and so on — used to assess a horse's training progress and balance. Its inclusion signals that the game is reaching past casual horse-care and into actual equestrian sport, which is where the library system starts to matter.
Once a horse clears the thresholds, you enter tournaments in the nearby town and compete for prize money. That prize money is then reinvested into expanding the farm. The loop is deliberate and legible: care the horse, train the horse, compete the horse, spend the winnings on more capacity, then repeat with a better operation than the one you started with.
Eligible is not the same as competitive. A horse needs enough strength for the discipline, enough confidence to hold up under the pressure of an event, enough condition that it is not carrying an untreated scratch or abscess into the ring, and a temperament that does not fall apart in front of a crowd. Those four pull against each other — heavy training builds strength but costs condition, and confidence work takes time that condition also needs — which is what makes the training phase a genuine decision rather than a grind.