There is so much more to training than just training

Over the last few years I have become more and more convinced that focusing on the horse’s emotional state is the most powerful element in improving not only behavioural issues but also when attempting physical rehabilitation. So many horses are chronically stressed and have negative associations with work and training for various reasons. When we are trying to fix an issue, often the issue we think we have is just the tip of the iceberg in a horse that is struggling emotionally and if we don’t address this we are going to continue to struggle.

The majority of my clients now are people who have had some performance or behavioural issues, diligently gone to the vet and treated what was found, followed the rehab plan to the letter, yet still feel things aren’t going well. I sometimes feel a strong sense of imposter syndrome when I’m going out to see new clients who have had a team of highly regarded professionals helping them already, yet upon seeing the horse I find they struggle with simple things like standing quietly or walking straight lines in hand with a nice relaxed neck. Sometimes in our efforts to help I think we can’t see the wood for the trees.

There can be such a focus on what we need to do to strengthen this body part or that body part, we are so desperate to fix things for the horse that we focus on what we think we should be doing regardless of how they feel about it. There can be a strong pressure of “if I don’t do these exercises exactly to the letter he is going to deteriorate or its not going to work”.

We can be doing all the raised poles, long reining, lunging, hillwork, water treadmill, massage pads, theraplate etc but if our horse doesn’t feel good about any of them what are we really achieving? A horse that feels stressed, anxious or just fed up about spending time around us is not going to thrive physically either.

Rehabbing an injury or working out to gain strength can be difficult and miserable even for us when we can understand what we’re doing, a horse has no concept of rehab, he just knows how he feels. If a horse has been working with discomfort, perhaps been asked to do things he finds too difficult or has been trained in a high-pressure way, his association with training is going to be negative. We cannot fix that by continuing to work with him in the same way.

So many horses are chronically stressed and showing stereotypical behaviours yet it is seen as irrelevant to their physical issues. This really isn’t the case. Most horses I meet show displacement behaviour when being asked to do even the simplest tasks like standing still on a headcollar. When we are used to being surrounded by chronically stressed horses of course their behaviour is going to become normalised to us, we aren’t taught to see it for what it is.

Time and time again I see huge improvements in horses, both emotionally and physically, when we back off with the “work”, reduce the stress levels in their environment and start creating more positive associations with us and training through enrichment-type activities. Then we are in a much better place to start building things up again.

We are surrounded on social media with stories of horses being “fixed” and “saved” with some method or another, but all I see is different ways of making horses comply so they do the stuff we want them to do without protest. Are those horses actually feeling better? Are their bodies feeling better? Do they feel safe with us? Or are they just tolerating?

When you’ve been indoctrinated into the current system, and you have outside pressures from others, I realise it sounds extremely radical to perhaps stop riding your horse for a period of time, to spend time playing “games” with him, to spend time doing “nothing” together, especially when you desperately want to fix his body. But if we really want to help them we have to take a look at the uncomfortable stuff.

If we can just look at things differently, we can genuinely transform our relationship with our horses and their associations with training, then we can really help them, and help ourselves too. 🐴