Client story - food aggression

These stories are shared with permission but names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Sandra purchased Bob for her daughter about a year ago, upon getting him home they found him to be pushy on the ground and grumpy at feed times. This escalated to him lunging over the door at people and Sandra sought help from a recommended behavioural trainer. The sessions focused on making Bob move his feet to teach him “respect”, this involved chasing him around the arena and only letting him stop when he chose to follow the trainer, then putting a bucket of feed on the floor and using a flag to chase him away from it if he tried to get to it.

Although Sandra felt uncomfortable they were reassured this was necessary and he just needed to respect them as his leader and all would be well, so she continued following advice and the sessions went on for several months. While they were able to get Bob to back away with a flag when they brought his food in, the rest of his behaviour deteriorated and he became difficult to catch and often pulled away from people and got loose.

One of my clients recommended me to Sandra and I’ll talk about what that assessment looked like and how we improved the situation for both Bob and Sandra.

My first observation of Bob was that he was chronically stressed and hungry. He is a cob who’s weight needs to be managed carefully and he was spending long periods of time with nothing to eat in his stable due to eating his hay rations too quickly. He was also in a very grazed down paddock that, whilst still providing calories, was providing very little fibre. All horses need access to long-stem fibre every day to keep their guts healthy, otherwise they are going to feel hungry regardless of how many calories they’re taking in.

When we have horses displaying food aggression my first priority is making sure that horse has access to appropriate forage at all times and is never left feeling hungry. We improved things for Bob by using trickle feeders and soaking some of his hay ration so he could be given more without gaining weight.

The second important thing to address is a way to feed Bob right now safely while we work on his behaviour around food. I told Sandra to have his feed and hay in his stable ready for him to come into so nobody needed to bother him or get into his space to feed him at this moment in time. Not only is this safer for everyone, it is also going to bring Bob’s anxiety levels around feeding time way down.

Taunting a food aggressive horse by putting feed in front of them then chasing them away if they try to get to it is going to make them feel even more anxious around food and potentially make them more dangerous.

I was also strongly suspicious that Bob had some gut discomfort given his high stress-levels and the amount of time he’d been standing without food so Sandra went to her vet and he was found to have Grade 4 stomach ulcers which were immediately treated.

Bob wasn’t going to be in a trainable state until he was feeling better so I left Sandra to implement these changes for a few weeks. Within a few weeks of having ulcer treatment, having access to forage 24/7 and not having anyone chase him away from his feed Bob was a lot less anxious and we could start to train him.

Given his previous stressful and negative associations with people and the training scenario, we started in protected contact and did simple clicker training and enrichment activities using low value food rewards. We were able to quite quickly work with him on some basic leading and halting using positive reinforcement which meant Sandra now had a pony who they could safely and happily catch, lead in/out and feed without drama.

We are continuing to work with Bob to build up a good foundation with positive reinforcement so they can work towards their goal of hacking safely together. 🐴