Fresh horses?

There are lots of videos being posted at the moment of people being frightened, bucked off and injured by their “fresh” horses.

I find it frustrating that there is still so much focus on how to make your horse jump better or make him perform lateral work while seemingly nobody is being taught to read basic and very obvious stress behaviour.

We praise people for managing to stay on very stressed and explosive horses calling it “good horsemanship”, but wouldn’t good horsemanship be not letting the situation escalate in the first place?

I have just watched a video of a YouTuber tack up their horse that is swinging around on the cross ties, have to be legged up while they’re spinning in a circle, jig-jogged sideways into the arena, kept jogging and occasionally spooking suddenly in the arena, really high head-carriage and tight rein contact the whole time. Laughing away about how “spicy” he is. They decide to put the horse into trot to “get the energy out” and of course the horse explodes and they fall off. They then get back on the horse and do the same thing and fall off again. The horse getting more and more stressed. At no point do they consider they perhaps shouldn’t get back on the horse until he’s calmed down.

If they would’ve stopped at the tacking up and addressed the horse’s emotional state all of that could’ve been avoided. It has been so normalised to see highly-stressed horses that we think its fine and something you just have to ride through.

Riding is dangerous when we make stupid choices.

“Just keep going and hope they calm down” is not helpful for the horse or for the rider, although I appreciate “spicy” behaviour makes great content.

If you’re spending a large portion of time when riding your horse hanging off his mouth to keep him under control, emotional state aside, this is doing nothing good for his physical body or development.

If you consistently train and manage your horse in ways that prioritise his emotional well-being, he will be more able to handle stress and you will have plenty of “tools in your toolkit” so to speak to de-escalate these situations. 🐴