There is a running theme in my writing of trying to help people see that a lot of training completely disregards the horse’s feelings and is just looking for compliance without question. This would be fine if that’s what it said on the tin so people knew what they were being sold. Instead it is still dressed up as kindness, feel, trust, connection and all that jazz.
I read a great post this morning by Ross Jacobs where he suggested watching training videos with the sound off first and really looking at the horse and what is going on without being influenced by the commentary. We as humans love stories and patterns; if it feels good and it fits of course we want to believe the fairytale narrative. “Unruly, fearful horse learns to trust again.” When in actual fact you just watched some guy yank a terrified horse around on a halter for an hour until the horse finally gave in and realised the only way to get it to stop is to comply. There’s something that makes me feel a bit sick seeing this stuff revered as amazing, kind horsemanship.
Most of the time when we’re seeing loud, dramatic behaviour we have already made a mistake and pushed that horse too far over threshold. I’m going to use loading as an example simply because it is something everyone is familiar with, we have all seen horses that won’t load, and we have all seen people trying to get them to load. The generally used technique to load a difficult horse is to apply pressure of varying degrees and not let up that pressure until the horse takes a step forward. Valid and logical if you want to just make the horse go onto the box. But if you want the horse to feel safe and to start building positive associations with the box, absolutely not the way to go.
Horses who won’t load are fearful in one way or another, whether that be the experience of travelling itself, or they often have physical issues in their body that makes travelling unpleasant, which is why you get those horses who will load to go out but won’t load to come home again. No horse is refusing to load because they’re “stubborn”. People mistake a horse completely shutting down with stress and planting with “going to sleep”, and use this as proof the horse isn’t scared and is just trying to get one over on them.
I used to load horses with a lot of pressure (and still would in an emergency). I would not let up until they took a step forward and they would inevitably get louder and louder in their protests until they were rearing and exploding back off the ramp. I used to bleat the “if they’re exploding its because they’re about to give up and go on” line, which was true, but also awful now I understand what I was doing to them. The last ditch desperate effort from them before they realise there is no escape and they have to go onto the box as the alternative is worse. Doesn’t feel very warm and confidence-building does it?
So what is the answer? Its complex and inconvenient. I believe all horses should have loading training so they can be moved safely in an emergency, but if your horse has pathology which makes travelling uncomfortable or they are so deeply traumatised from past experiences that they’re never going to feel good about it, we’ve got to ask ourselves if its worth the cost to them for our own pleasure to go on outings?
Loading training for me now looks like using positive reinforcement and staying well under threshold. For some horses they are so traumatised by past loading experiences this can look like training vaguely near the box until they’re okay with that before we even attempt to approach the ramp. If they feel the need to rear, pull back or try to spin away I’ve already pushed too far. I’m now the weirdo that just chills on the ramp doing “nothing” while people roll their eyes and mutter how they could get the horse on. The thing is, I too could also get the horse on quicker, but I’m not just looking for compliance anymore.
Interestingly my older horse Lenny was a notoriously bad loader and I always had to use a pressure halter. I could get him on in about 20 minutes after some rearing and scrabbling as long as it was a big, rear-loading lorry. I didn’t travel him for 7 years, during that time I started dabbling in some positive reinforcement training with him, he loaded perfectly onto a 3.5 ton side-loader twice recently when I needed to move him, just like that. Our relationship has changed so much. He is full of orthopaedic pathology and I’m sure travelling isn’t fun for him and yet he did it because I asked him to, not because I made him.
If you’re here on this page you’re probably interested in training more ethically, to do this we really need to start questioning the norms within the industry. We expect horses to do so much without really taking into account how difficult and stressful these things may be for them. Next time you’re training something really have a think about whether you’re just hassling the horse into compliance or if you’re actually building positive associations and helping them feel better. 🐴
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