Q. What do you do when a horse is going along the trail and shies or spooks at something?

A. It depends on why is the horse worried about the object.

There are two likely reasons for a horse’s alert response to something. First, the object is legitimately scary to the horse. Second, the horse feels anxious about the ride and/or rider, and acting warily at an object is a displacement response stemming from their underlying anxiety, not specifically the object itself.

GENUINELY SCARY OBJECT
If something genuinely scares a horse it is important to recognise the fear and address it with respect. DO NOT treat the problem as a horse being disobedient or disrespectful and try to force a horse to “get over” its fear. Acknowledge the level of fear the horse is experiencing and act in a way to dissipate it.

When I’m asked how to do that I think of how I’ve seen horses cope with a scary object when they are by themselves. They start by investigating the object from a safe distance before getting close or going past.

For example, a horse might be alerted by a fallen branch or a bridge, or a kangaroo carcass. The first thing a horse does is stop at a distance far enough away that it feels it has flight options. It stares and carries an alert posture. It then might take a step with its neck stretched out, nose close to the ground, sniff for evil spirits to jump out from the object, and be ready to fly backward or to the side. If nothing triggers a flight response, the horse will step closer and again investigate. It might step around the object to one side, then backward, then take a step or two closer. This will continue until the horse puts its nose on the object and satisfies itself all is okay.

When riding a horse that is scared of an object, I approach the training in the same way a horse would investigate the object by itself. I let it stop at the edge of the safe distance. I let it sniff the ground. I let it step backward. I let it step to the side. I wait. 

But there are two things I do differently to how a horse would behave towards frightening an object.

The first is that I keep the horse directed at the object. Even if steps backward or to the side, I use my reins to keep the horse pointed at the puddle or carcass or stump.

The second thing is that I wait until the horse shifts its focus to something other than the scary object before asking it to walk forward. When the horse’s attention moves away from the object to something else (like another horse or the grass or a car) I know the scary object has lost some of its fear factor. The fear of the object is slightly diminished. That’s the time to ask the horse to move forward until it gets close enough that its fear has risen again and caused a halt. Then I start all over again. I continue to dance through the process of building confidence in this way. Slowly the object loses its potency to scare the horse and we continue the ride.

NON-SCARY OBJECT
It happens often that a horse will behave as if it is scared of something, but the object is not the actual problem.

Perhaps the most common cause of this happening relates to the Cup of Worry principle. The Cup of Worry is a principle that describes each horse's ability to hold in a certain amount of worry before it is triggered to explode with an extreme behaviour. Each small amount of worry is deposited inside a horse's emotional store (the cup). If we don’t remove the worry, it accumulates and builds until the cup is almost full. At this point, it only takes a very minor amount of worry to be deposited into the cup for the cup to overflow and the horse to display seriously bad behaviour.

It’s like when you have a bad day at work and have a headache and a problem on your mind that you don’t know how to solve and then you snap at somebody who asks if you know what tomorrow’s weather will be. Being asked about the weather is not the problem, it just triggered your cup of worry to overflow.

The solution to your horse acting like it is scared of something is to empty the cup of worry every time a little bit of worry goes into the cup. Address each moment of anxiety, resistance, loss of focus and lack of clarity.

I can say without hesitation that almost every time I see a horse spooking at objects it is not genuinely afraid of, there is a focus problem with the horse. Most times, there is a lack of conversation between the horse and the rider and the rider sits in the saddle leaving the horse to mentally disconnect. This is a recipe for teaching a horse to be spooky. For instance, many people have the experience of their horse always spooking at the scary corner of the arena. No matter how many times their horse is worked in the same arena, there is always a section of the arena where their horse becomes spooky or at least hyper-vigilant. This is very often an example of a horse exhibiting a response to a its cup of worry being filled and not so much a genuine fear of that part of the arena.

When you notice your horse’s focus drifting away, the first thing to do is to ask it a question that requires it to be attentive to you and does not cause any worry. It could be to ask your horse to slow down, turn, perform transitions, etc. The question you ask has to be something that requires your horse to pay attention and not something it can do in its sleep, like an established pattern. The very important second step is to ensure that at the end of your question, your horse’s level of worry is significantly diminished. The cup of worry is not nearly as full at the end as it was at the beginning.

Finally, how can you tell if your horse spooks because of genuine fear of a specific object or if it is a generalised alarm because their cup of worry is close to overflowing?

The answer is not so simple. But I will say that if the trouble is from genuine fear, very often the level of worry quickly goes from zero to 100 very quickly. A horse’s shy is often a surprise and accelerates very quickly. Alternatively, when the shying comes from the underlying worry that they are carrying all the time, there will be signs of tension and anxiety along the way that will be obvious to the vigilant rider. If you want to know how full is your horse’s cup of worry, ask it a question and notice how much pressure you need to apply and how much resistance is in your horse’s response.

Everybody has to work through episodes of spookiness. I have never met a combination that did not experience it. It’s important to recognise that shying and spookiness is a symptom of something else. My biggest piece of advice is to address the cause and do not punish a horse for the symptom.