Don't be greedy in training

Training should not feel like a battle. We cause so many of the behavioural issues we see by inadvertently setting the horse up to fail. Often through not recognising when the horse is struggling emotionally or physically, and very often through expecting and asking too much of the horse. We’re then told we need to work through it and win the battle otherwise we’re going to ruin him, we can’t let him get his way or he’ll learn he can walk all over you and be dangerous.

What if I told you that you don’t have to work through it? Not in the sense that most people mean anyway. Instead of deciding what you want the horse to do and making it happen even if the horse starts to get really upset. How about we meet the horse where they’re at and break it down into really small steps from there.

An example I think illustrates the difference for me is training a horse to stand still. In the past I would ask the horse to stand then every time they moved I would either back them up or disengage their quarters, I wouldn’t quit until they were standing quietly for a significant period of time and had given up trying to leave. Sometimes this would escalate into quite explosive behaviour as the horse became more stressed until they eventually complied. I don’t think those horses enjoyed working with me very much.

Now when I’m training with a horse who struggles with standing still, I quietly ask them to stand, and as soon as I get stillness for a couple of seconds I allow the horse to walk again. Then we simply repeat, horses who struggle to stand still are anxious and being able to choose to move makes them feel better. By making the ask really easy to achieve, the horse’s anxiety lessens and fairly quickly you are able to ask them to stand still for longer. No battling through required.

It rings alarm bells when I see trainers advertising their services with photos and videos of horses being pushed into stress behaviours like rearing, bucking and pulling away as a sign of their competence. Before and after, look how great I am at fixing these dangerous horses! The truth is, if a horse is displaying those behaviours, we caused them by setting the horse up to fail. It can make you feel like you have this difficult, dangerous horse who you need a professional to “sort out”, but if we train more empathetically we can avoid pushing our horses into these behaviours altogether. Training should look quiet and “boring”.

We can get so stuck in the mindset of “he has to do it”. Ask yourself why? What will happen if your horse doesn’t go perfectly into that spooky corner today? What will happen if you decide not to ride that day because your horse is telling you he isn’t comfortable being mounted? What will happen if you horse stops repeatedly at a jump and you just call it a day and get off him? I’ll tell you what will happen, it will start to improve your relationship because you listened to him when he was communicating he was struggling instead of stressing him further.

Just this morning my horse Dan was having a hard time holding up one of his hooves to be trimmed, it is something that he struggles with only with that particular leg due to some issues he is dealing with in his hind end. Some days he’s fine, other days he’s really not feeling it. In the past I’d have hung onto his leg and scolded him until he was still. Today I just let go, waited a moment for him to reposition himself and asked again. When he did offer the hoof up I spent 5 seconds rasping, then gave it back to him and rewarded him with food to say thank you for co-operating with me when he was clearly struggling. We continued in this way, and at one point he took his leg back and walked away completely and I let him.

This is not a training issue, he knows how to have his legs handled, he is fine with all 3 of his other legs, this is a communication that he is finding it hard today. Me accepting his no is not going to teach him to be bad about having his legs handled. It is a huge no from Dan for him to walk away from me while I have food. Yes he needs to have his hooves trimmed regularly and yes in an emergency I could keep hold of his leg, but they don’t have to be done perfectly today at the cost of our relationship. We’ll do a little more tomorrow.

There is all of this complicated talk about how to build a bond and relationship with your horse by making him move his feet and yield to pressure in all sorts of ways without question, when the simple solution to building a good relationship is to be a pleasant person to be around. Behaviours are not random or stand-alone, if your horse is saying no he has good reason to, and it is up to us to figure that out instead of trying to harass them into compliance.