Allow your horse to look

There is a tendency within the horse industry to see any behaviour that isn’t just immediately complying with what we want as a sign of disrespect or disobedience.

To give a scenario I watched recently, someone is having a lesson in a new arena and their horse balks at a banner on one side and won’t go near it. The rider starts kicking and growling at the horse, the horse becomes more stressed and sort of wriggles past sideways a good 15ft away from the banner. The instructor tells them to get the horse into trot and “don’t let him look at it”. The horse comes back round being booted repeatedly with the inside leg, desperately trying to wrench his head to the outside to look at the banner. He spends the whole session full of tension bracing against the rider. This is doing nothing good for his body or his mind. He’s having a horrible time.

When met with these scenarios, if we can stop worrying about the inconvenience and think logically for a second, we can have a much better outcome. While it may initially take longer, if you consistently train in a way that your horse finds positive and doesn’t push them into high-stress, they will be much more likely to feel safer with you in the future. In this particular scenario I would’ve just let the horse look on a loose rein, allowed them to pass the banner as close as they were comfortable with and not pressed it further. If I wanted them to go closer I would reward them for the tiniest try.

Because I do so much training and enrichment that builds curiosity in my horses at home, my horses tend to approach and investigate novel objects so it is easy for me to reward that behaviour. Many horses have had their curiosity punished out of them and we need to help them find it again.

I have seen trainers with a horse standing quietly on a halter while they chat to the owner and if the horse so much as dares turn their head to look at something they are yanked sharply back into obedience. The owner being told it is a sign the horse isn’t respecting them as a leader. Meanwhile the horse is learning this person is pretty horrible and scary to be around and curiosity will be punished. Its a great way to start creating a shut down horse. Do what I say, watch me like a hawk and have no thoughts of your own, or else…

Allowing horses to look, having patience, encouraging their curiosity and building positive experiences does not create spooky horses. Chronically stressful living situations and high-stress training does.

There are so many ways we can train to build our horse’s confidence in the environment that don’t involve hassling and punishing them for the perfectly normal behaviour of wanting to look at and assess things. We also don’t need to be dragging them over tarpaulins and under flags while they try to rear and pull away from us. Using small, incremental steps to introduce new things and using positive reinforcement and enrichment activities creates brave, curious horses who can enjoy being out in the world.

A good place to start is to just pause and look with your horse when he notices something, add no pressure and just give him time to assess. You will find the more you do this, the less reactive he will be as he will start to realise you aren’t going to hassle him. 🐴