"He's fine once I'm on"

Often when I’m taking history from a new client they will list behavioural issues like not catching, turning away when they bring their tack in, pulling faces when tacking up, refusing to stand still at the mounting block, throwing their head up and bracing as you put weight in the stirrup. This is very often followed by “but he’s fine once I’m on”.

If our horse is communicating all of this discomfort in the lead up to us getting on, I guarantee what we’re experiencing once we get on board isn’t a horse who is “fine”, it is a horse who is compliant and knows that once you’re in the saddle there are no other options on the table and he has to just get on with it.

Horses are very compliant animals, its actually really easy to make them do stuff they don’t want to do and there are countless tutorial videos to show you how to make them, they’re just dressed up as “building connection/being a good leader/teaching respect/building confidence”.

Your horse isn’t moving away from his tack because you’re not a “good leader”, he’s moving away from his tack because he finds what comes next uncomfortable/scary/painful.

Usually we have already made it quite difficult for the horse not to comply by applying pressure until they do the thing we want them to do, so for them to still be trying to communicate their discomfort to us is very telling.

This is one of the main reasons I believe giving horses real choice is so important in training. Tapping a horse with a stick/putting pressure on the reins/flapping a flag and only stopping when the horse does the “right” thing is not giving the horse a choice. It is telling them there is only one choice if they want the uncomfortable thing to stop. If we’re persistent enough, and it doesn’t have to be high pressure just persistent, most horses will eventually give in and comply, despite often being in pain or frightened.

If instead, we prioritise listening to the horse communicate with us and set up training scenarios where they can give us those clear answers, we may really not like those answers, but this is how we train ethically and also how we can start to actually problem-solve.

The inconvenient truth is most behavioural issues are rooted in chronic stress and/or pain. A lack of explosive behaviour is not a green light to continue, “gently” ignoring their communication is still ignoring their communication, I have a post I really want to write on this but I can’t quite get the words out today so I wrote this one instead.

I do not ride horses unless they’re fine before I get on. If we want to train ethically we need to get really good at reading our horse’s communication and then using that information to make appropriate choices, not trying to figure out how to make them comply despite it. 🐴