Lazy or struggling?

It it so common to see horses described as lazy, stubborn or low-energy as if its just some sort of personality trait and we have no choice but to ride them with high pressure. While I don’t deny that some horses are naturally quieter in their temperament than others, it is not normal for a horse to find forward movement so difficult.

Often these horses are actually dealing with physical discomfort, have poor posture, poor balance and have become shut down as its the only way they’ve learned to cope with the high pressure they are being trained with. It is also common that these horses are described as bargy and rude on the ground. Horses that find it difficult to go also find it difficult to stop and are usually so defensive and ready to brace against any pressure to protect themselves that it can be misconstrued as “bad manners”. What we really have is a horse that is struggling and trying their best to cope with life.

When we oversimplify training a horse like this by just adding as much pressure as you need to get the horse to move forwards, we are totally overlooking the reasons why the horse won’t, or can’t, move forwards easily. This is the perfect way to create a bracey, shut down horse who hates training with you.

It is so accepted to hurt horses to get them to do what we want that we don’t even recognise it for what it is. Kicking horses hurts them, whipping horses hurts them, spurring horses hurts them. I remember years ago watching a clinic with a list 1 dressage judge and she told the rider to use the leg once, and if the horse didn’t respond quickly enough to take their whole leg off the saddle and give him 3 hard “pony club” kicks. Lovely. Ethics aside, this is counter-productive if we want a relaxed, flowing horse, a horse that is expecting pain will brace to protect themselves. Watching horses tense up and grunt when they feel the leg move is very telling. Maybe people would think differently if we could see bruising easily on horses.

I have a lovely client who reached out to me as she was feeling so uncomfortable with what she was being told to do in her lessons. She has a really safe, quiet cob who she enjoys hacking on but really wanted to try some low level dressage. She was told they had to use increasing pressure as “he was so stubborn” and he was just “taking the mick out of her” to get out of working properly. This resulted in her riding with 2 schooling whips and spurs for months on end, weekly lessons and no improvement in his willingness to go forward. When she questioned this and expressed her discomfort she was told that it was fine and this is just how you have to be with some horses. That is was kinder to ride with 2 whips and spurs as then she didn’t need to use as much pressure to make him move, that less pressure actually being the threat of pain if he didn’t comply.

We started working together on completely changing her lovely cob’s associations with people, training and the arena, using enrichment and the environment to encourage him to choose movement as something positive. With the support of a good physio we also started to gently work on improving his posture and show him that we were no longer going to push him to do things he wasn’t physically capable of doing without discomfort. By the time it was appropriate to ask him to trot under saddle again going forwards was absolutely no issue and she is now preparing for their first intro dressage test, no whips or spurs required and she no longer feels like her horse hates being ridden.

We really need to change how we have been conditioned to think about horses. It is so normalised to kick and pull horses around, I remember being at the riding school and being encouraged to kick, kick, kick while I was chased around on a pony with a lunge whip. We use terms like “encouragement” and “reminder” to justify what we’re doing, but it is what it is.

If your horse really struggles to go forward, it is likely that you have more than just a training issue. Instead of thinking that he won’t respond to your aids, think that maybe he can’t. If we take the pressure off and make sure our horses are comfortable and balanced, both physically and emotionally, on the ground without a rider, we can often start to see the issues run much deeper and unravel them from there. 🐴