During my recent trip to Germany, I had the opportunity to work with a horse that was super obedient and super responsive. His name was Adre. He did everything that was asked of him and it required no effort on my part or his owner’s part to have him go along with whatever idea we presented.

Well, almost every idea. The one idea he most struggled with was relaxing and finding comfort in the work.

Every molecule in this horse’s body had been trained to be obedient to whatever he was told to do. But almost no part of him had learned to feel okay about it. He exuded worry to the extreme. He never did anything wrong. Everything was polite and resistance-free. However, he just worried that any mistake might cost him his life.

Let me remind you of my definition of obedience and willingness.

Obedience is a horse doing something because it believes NOT DOING it is a bad idea.

Willingness is a horse doing something because it believes DOING IT is a good idea.

On the surface they may appear similar concepts, but in essence obedience and willingness result in very different emotional states. A willing horse feels emotionally comfortable with an idea we present. An obedient horse carries emotional anxiety about an idea we present.

I should point out that the present owner inherited this problem and did not create it. But now he was her project.

Many people would love a horse that was this responsive and obedient, however, the horse was a bundle of worry. This means there was the risk of an eruption lying just below the surface that required careful handling to avoid bringing it to the surface and a resultant meltdown.

So how do you turn pure obedience into a high level of willingness? How does one correct obedience? This seems a puzzle because we all want our horse to be obedient, so when our horse gives it to us how or why would we correct it? How do we replace the anxiety with emotional comfort when the horse is doing everything we ask?

The obvious answer is to stop rewarding for changes in what a horse is doing and replace them with rewarding for changes in what a horse is feeling.

I believe the problem stemmed from driving the horse to do something, then when it moved as the trainer wanted, the pressure was removed. This was irrespective of whether the horse felt troubled or not. In this way, not only did the horse learn that pressure disappeared when he moved a certain way but also when the horse felt troubled. On a very sensitive horse whose sense of life and death is close to the surface, we teach it that surviving pressure is dependent on both moving as told AND feeling anxious.

In my opinion, the way to approach a horse like this and turn simple obedience into willingness is to go back to square one and start again. However, this time the emphasis should be on rewarding the first inkling of a ‘try’. Reward when the horse has either a question (eg, what are you asking me to do?) or thought to try something that does involve fleeing the pressure/feel.

If the horse moves as a means of escaping the pressure/feel, instead of going with it, we should quietly use our feel to block the escape. Get the horse’s focus back on us, then ask again. Block the idea we don’t want (eg, fleeing the pressure) and wait for the idea we do want (following the feel of the pressure). We must turn the ‘driving’ or ‘fleeing’ into ‘directing’ or ‘going with’. This is the fundamental means of turning obedience into willingness.

As a brief example, say I want my horse to turn right in response to a feel of the right rein and it does so purely from obedience. That means there will be an ill feeling inside my horse despite the high degree of responsiveness and the light response to a feel on the right rein.

To transition the obedience to turn right into a willingness to turn right I must first ensure my horse is focused on me and second thinks to the right when I apply a feel to the right rein. If it is thinking to the left (or anywhere else) I do not release the pressure/feel UNTIL my horse mentally focuses on going to the right. I wait and I wait. It does not matter if the horse is stationary or spinning or backing or leaking to the left or turning to the right. I wait. If the horse’s anxiety gets stronger I probably need to lighten the pressure. But I still wait. He is trying something. So I wait.

Then if the horse is still searching for an answer (“try”) at some point the horse will think to the right. It may be a glance or a look or shift in its weight or a change in posture. Something will tell me it changed its thought to think to the right. That’s when I release the pressure/feel. That’s when the horse is ready to be directed to the right rather than flee to the right. That’s when the idea to turn right becomes the horse’s idea and not something it does out of pure obedience and worry.

I know this is an oversimplified example and I know I have not given you enough information to make this work for you. But it is so important that you first understand how obedience and willingness work and why horses, like the one I worked with in Germany, are made to be emotionally crippled by prioritising what we can train them to do before we train them how to feel about what we train them to do.

This principle underpins almost everything I teach at my clinics. It’s hard work to train yourself I know some people don’t see the point. However, I find that people who have little interest in these ideas are people who have yet to meet a horse like the one in Germany. But one day ….