Prerequisites for training

I often use the phrase “not in a trainable state” and I want to explain what I mean by that. If you’re having issues with your horse it seems logical to think the answer is to get straight into training but often these horses are too anxious and stressed to learn.

When horses are stressed gentle asks won’t work so this is often used to justify the use of high-pressure. If I ask quietly the horse is ignoring me so I have no choice but to use more pressure right? I used to spend a lot of time disengaging horses quarters, moving their feet and backing them up out of my space until they “relaxed”. I would often cause explosive behaviour as I added more pressure on top of an already stressed horse. I wasn’t achieving relaxation, I was achieving compliance and probably pushing horses into shut down.

If we cannot train gently then the horse isn’t in a trainable state.

I used to struggle with this years ago when I first started to move over into more ethical horsemanship. I still felt pressure to achieve “results” with clients and I remember going to a pony who was extremely stressed. He was box walking frantically and was lead around in a chain. I spent 45 minutes walking this pony around an arena trying to gently ask him to halt for a second and walk with me, it didn’t work he continued to scream the whole time and I was conflicted because I knew how to get a “result” using my old methods, but I wasn’t comfortable doing so any more. I tried to explain to the client that he wasn’t in a trainable state and offered some advice on how to improve his general stress-levels, but I’m sure that client was left disappointed and rightly so. Not because I should’ve produced a “result”, but because I was still trying to people-please instead of advocating for the horse and offering other solutions right off the bat. If I met that pony now we’d be going to an area he felt comfortable and eating some low-value food out of buckets and playing treat scatters until he was able to down-regulate.

So if we have a horse that is not in a trainable state, how do we get them into a trainable state?

🐴 We need to address their chronic stress levels, this means looking at their management and adjusting it accordingly so their needs are met and they feel safe.

🐴 We need to address pain and discomfort.

🐴 We need to improve the horse’s associations with people and the training environment by using positive reinforcement to help down-regulate their nervous system.

🐴 We need to stop handling, riding and training them in ways that scare them or cause high-stress.

Loud and difficult behaviour is not a justification for being hard on horses and using high-pressure or punishment. It makes great click-bait but it is not ethical no matter how you try to dress it up. If we’re seeing rearing, bucking, bolting, kicking, biting, pulling back etc we’ve already pushed too far. We need to learn about behaviour and nervous system states so we can see what the horse is actually experiencing when we see this sort of training and not be taken in by the pretty narratives we’re sold.

Horses are not testing you, they are not being stubborn, they are not "too clever for their own good" and it is completely illogical to think pushing an already anxious and often frightened horse into even more stress to get compliance is helping them feel better. If we do this we are just getting compliance but creating horrible associations with people. If we cannot train gently then we need to go back a step and work on the horse’s emotional state first. 🐴