When training issues aren't just training issues

I would be as bold to say that training issues aren’t just training issues 99% of the time.

It is common when I meet new clients that they have had various professionals out, perhaps the vet, a bodyworker, saddle fitter, usually a trainer or two. They often feel like they’ve tried everything simply because we are made to feel like that’s all there is available. We choose a yard to go to and the horse just has to live there and cope with the rules, we choose a bodyworker and trust that if they say our horses are fine then they are and we choose a trainer who says they’re kind, ethical and a behavioural expert so we trust that they are.

What I often come to find is a horse who’s living situation is causing them to be chronically stressed, a horse with a compromised body very much not helped by living in chronic stress and a horse who has been taken into a training space and had pressure applied in various ways trying to make them comply. We could obviously go into so much more depth here but hopefully you get the idea of what I’m saying. None of this is helping the horse and until we address that chronic stress and help their body there are going to be behavioural or training “issues”.

This is really hard to recognise as so many horses are living in chronic high-stress, they must be fine if they all live like this, right? Many horses shut down to cope so that’s why we see that the training “works” you’ve just got to keep applying enough pressure until the horse gives in. We’re told that the horse is now happy and relaxed in their work, but actually they’ve just learned that its easier to comply than be hassled and that they have no choice regardless of how they feel about it.

There are two parts I focus on that make the biggest difference to horse’s behaviour and wellbeing quickly, neither of them are training:

🐴 Getting their management the absolute best we can to ensure their needs are met, this is way more complex than just turned out or stabled. We need to ensure they have appropriate company, appropriate forage (long stem fibre every single day, yes even if they’re fat), comfortable places to lie down, freedom to move and feeling safe in their living environment.

🐴 Stop doing the things that are causing them high-stress. When having behavioural issues we’re often putting the horse into high-stress situations again and again in a bid to try and solve the issue, when actually all we’re doing is compounding those negative associations. We need to stop trying to modify the behaviour and start to help the horse feel safe again. This usually looks like doing enrichment activities until the horse is feeling better and is happy to engage with us. Then we can start training again in a more positive way.

Of course there are lots of other considerations here, but those are the two biggest parts to having a horse feel better significantly.

When we’re having training issues we need to think, are we looking at the whole horse and their life or are we just taking the horse into a training space and trying to modify behaviour with no thought for anything else?

We want quick fixes, we want to ride the horse now. Unfortunately when we bought a horse we bought a sentient being with their own physical body, thoughts and emotions, yet we have been conditioned to think we are entitled to use them however we want. There is constant justification and pressure from the people around us that the horse is “fine” and we just need to crack on. But if we truly put our horse’s needs first we aren’t always going to be able to do what we want with them and we need to trust our gut and seek out people who can actually help us and our horses.

We can’t just want to feel good about it and speak in platitudes, we have to actually show up for our horses and do what needs to be done for their welfare and quality of life, and sometimes that is hard and sometimes that is uncomfortable. Our horses cannot advocate for themselves, we’re all they’ve got.🐴