Every time we do something with a horse and there is resistance or avoidance or it causes their thought to go somewhere else, it is an indication of the ill feelings they carry. Any time we don’t fix it, we leave those ill feelings inside our horse. It doesn’t matter if it is something as small as they look away when being haltered or something has humongous as bolting when the neighbour starts their chainsaw. They are all signs of trouble inside a horse and leaving them there is a problem.
I live by a rule when it comes to things like this. Any time I come across a no-go response in my horse I am going to fix it. By that, I mean any time a horse tells me it doesn’t like something I am going to try to change those feelings. It might be something as important a not standing to be mounted or something most people would not bother with such as swimming the English Channel back-stroke. They are all important because each “no-go” response sets the boundaries of my relationship with a horse. When there are a lot of no-go areas for a horse, the comfort boundary of our relationship may be only as big as a cat box. But, like the expansion of the universe, as the no-go areas dissipate from the good work we do the comfort limits of our relationship can expand beyond our reach.
I recall when my horse, China was a baby. I was brushing his tail and I noticed he would clamp it down whenever my hand came near. It bothered him. I knew he was drawing a line that told me this was the limit of how far he trusted me and felt okay about me brushing him. I worked at helping him become less defensive until I could move his tail in any direction and China didn’t tighten up. I didn’t know it at the time, but years later when I taught him to carry a pack-saddle and introduced a crupper, it was an uneventful experience and the crupper did not bother him one iota.
This brings me to the point of this essay.
There is a growing view in the horse industry that it is kinder to not challenge horses with tasks they don’t automatically choose to do. I have even come across people who believe that riding is cruel because they feel a horse would not choose to be ridden. I recently came across a first time saddling session that entailed not directing a horse to stand quietly for saddling, but to wait and wait until the horse stood quietly and relaxed of its own accord. The belief was that the horse had absolute freedom to do anything it liked and it chose to allow the saddle to be fitted because it wanted.
There is so much about this thinking that is delusional that it would take a chapter in a book to cover it. Just thinking that a horse has complete freedom of choice is crazy when it is in a fenced enclosure without the freedom to leave and head for the state border with a cute filly that his parents don’t approve of and ruin his promising future in family horse-hair reins making business.
But the bubble I want to burst is the belief that an approach to working horses that insists on zero emotional challenge leads to the best kind of relationship with horses. My experience confirms to me that this is not true and even irrational.
As I said, any interaction with a horse that creates worry or resistance is a message that your horse is saying you have reached the limits of your relationship. The good feelings between horse and human stops here. That’s where the horse says, “I don’t trust you”, or “I don’t understand”, or “I’m worried about what might happen if I change my thought”, etc. The things that trouble a horse tell you the limitations of your relationship. Without those challenges, you’ll never know the boundaries of your relationship.
But even more important is the fact that when you address a trouble spot in a horse and come out the other side with the horse having more clarity and feeling softer, you have changed the boundary of your relationship. Every time you help a horse through a challenge your relationship is better. I don’t mean you just get through it in a sense that your horse survived. I mean your horse feels better and less troubled when it gets through it than before. When it feels better at the end of the challenge than it did at the beginning you have made a positive impact on your relationship.
Life is full of events that challenge a horse’s sense of safety and comfort and they increase exponentially when we begin training. Don’t avoid them by not facing them. View them as opportunities to improve your horse’s trust and confidence in you and his willingness to try and think through the problem. The biggest favour we can do for our horses is to prepare them for the challenges they will face and help them trust that following our idea always results in a better outcome. Use the no-go responses as a chance to get along better with your horse. Don’t enable their concerns, solve them.
Of course, there are conditions that determine if this works or not. We should never overwhelm a horse with a situation that it feels is beyond its ability to cope or survive. We should only pose questions or address problems where we are capable of ensuring the horse comes out the other side feeling better, softer, and thinking clearer about the solution. Never pose a problem to a horse that you are not confident you can help them through. Don’t go looking for trouble, but don’t run away from it or sidestep it either. Use it to your advantage.
If we truly want to develop the best relationship possible with a horse it does not come from protecting them from trouble. It doesn’t come from allowing the no-go areas of our relationship to linger. It comes from facing the things that create anxiety and stress in a horse and ensuring the horse comes out the other side with a good experience and feeling better. Then we look like the good guy and the best friend he could ever have. The best relationships are born from human and horse solving problems together.
Anna Bonnage and Belle working on having a better relationship.