How does your horse feel about training?

As an industry we have become so indoctrinated into some really illogical narratives that it can feel impossible to navigate. There is a quick fix for every behavioural problem you can think of, as if each behaviour is stand-alone and not attached to a whole sentient being. Its difficult because we get wrapped up in the pleasant-sounding wording, or the justification of rough handling as if we’re somehow doing the horse a favour and making them “safe” to be around by causing them high-stress in the name of training.

This isn’t a critique of any one particular method, it is all in what exactly you are doing and how your individual horse feels about it in the moment.

Many of the “natural horsemanship” type techniques produce very obedient, seemingly calm horses, but how are you getting there? Is it connection or are you creating an almost hyper-vigilance to the flag/stick/rope/yourself and your horse is just figuring out how to get it to stop?

Are the movements too difficult on his body? Tight turns, backing up and disengaging the quarters are hard on the body, if your horse is compromised he may even find these painful.

There is a difference between gentle, non-escalating pressure and release training and frightening a horse. A horse trying to figure something new out should look calm and quiet, not explosive, stressed and frantically trying to find the right answer.

If your horse is trying to leave during training maybe think about why that is and how you can help make being with you more pleasant, rather than punishing the behaviour by yanking on their face, disengaging their quarters or chasing them with a flag. You want the horse to stay with you because he feels safe doing so, not because something horrible happens if he doesn’t.

Good training looks calm and “boring”, not setting the horse up to fail by putting them in a situation we know may trigger the “problem” behaviour so we can bully it out of them.

With all of the talk around the social license to operate and the welfare of using horses in sport, many people are advocating for moving towards more classical dressage training. But again, is the horse you’re watching relaxed and happy in his work, or is he just not over bent but still finding training quite stressful? I see a lot of in hand lateral work being done with constant swishing tails from the tap tap tap of the whip and a lot of tension in the face and on the mouth. I’m not sure the horses are finding that pleasant. Again if we can learn to read behaviour we can learn to adjust what we’re asking appropriately instead of just focusing on the horse’s legs and body.

And just so nobody accuses me of not being balanced, I am a huge advocate of positive reinforcement training, yet, just like anything else, done badly it can cause stress and frustration. Not creating good foundations, asking questions that are too difficult, not reinforcing enough and being bad with our timing can create a stressed and frustrated horse very quickly. Again, if we can learn to read behaviour and develop our training skills we can avoid all of this and train successfully in a way the horse actually enjoys.

Any trainer who talks about behaviour or movement as purely stand-alone and doesn’t talk about the whole horse probably isn’t going to be making the best choices for your horse. Equipping yourself with the skills to read behaviour, recognise misinformation and recognise basic postural issues means you can take different bits of training that you like to apply to your own horse, and disregard anything that doesn’t feel right for you.

Their bodies are also talked about as if they are separate to the horse’s emotional well being. When talking about rehabbing from injury or improving musculature it is just exercise after exercise with no thought on how the horse is actually feeling about that or how to recognise fatigue.

I see many horses who have gone through a really intense rehab process of raised poles, hill work, lunging, water treadmill, horse walker in the owner’s desperate effort to help their horse. Usually I meet a horse who can’t even stand and walk in a straight line on flat ground in a nice, relaxed flowing way, often showing displacement behaviours just from being asked to stand and hold space for a few seconds. Often the intense rehab has just been inappropriate for the horse because we are completely missing the fact the horse is finding it all too difficult both emotionally and physically so it is not having the desired result.

It is understandable that we all want to find the one fail-safe technique that is the best for us and our horses, but unfortunately it is so much more nuanced than that. The best thing we can do is learn to read and understand horse behaviour ourselves, so we can recognise how our horse is feeling about training despite what we may be being told.

My main focus now in my training interactions with horses is the horse’s emotional state and how I can improve it, it is amazing how much our relationship and training can change when this becomes our focus, and, as if by magic, as their emotional state improves their bodies do too.