Working as a horse behaviorist for Heart of the Redwoods Horse Rescue, I deal with all different types of horses with all different sorts of problems. Many of them have emotional difficulties to varying degrees, but it seems the ones that give people the most trouble are those horses that are overcome with fear. They have never found a safe place to be in the world of humans.What compounds the animal’s misfortune is human misinterpretation of the animal’s behavior. Humans take things personally, as if the horse were misbehaving just to make life difficult.
Comments reflecting this misinterpretation include:
- he knows he’s not supposed to do that
- she’s just being stubborn
- he’s not listening to me today, and
- she does that just to make me mad.
But, the horse is always right!
He only acts in ways appropriate to his sense of self-preservation. He does not know he’s not supposed to do that.
- If the horse is doing it, it’s because he thinks he should!
- Horses can be stubborn – when they are stubbornly defending themselves.
- If the horse is not listening to you, it’s because you are not worthy of being listened to – you’re boring her!
- Finally, horses never do anything just to make someone mad. They don’t harbor such vindictive and uniquely human defects. They are utterly honest and have no ulterior motives.
No matter how much we would like to humanize the horse’s behavior, the horse is just a horse with one primary motivation – finding a safe place to be. His safety is foremost in his mind.
Safety comes before food, before sex, before play, and way before working and partnering with humans. In fact, all those needs must be met before the horse can focus on relating to a human being, and the feeling of safety must remain within the horse while he is doing whatever we may ask of him. Yet, horse people frequently ignore this fundamental fact.
No matter what job we want our horses to do for us our first task is to give them a safe place to be. Our second task is to keep them feeling safe while they do the job we ask of them. Tom Dorrance used to say, “They’ll get to feel like you could ride them up a telephone pole or down a badger hole.” They become that confident under saddle, if you keep them feeling safe.
That sounds easy enough, until you try it. How do you give the horse a safe place to be?
- First, you must appear to your horse as a calm, assertive, and strong leader – in every situation. When the hurricane of terror sweeps him away, you must be the calm in the eye of the storm, totally unflappable, calm, assertive, and strong, even in the worst of storms.
- Second, you must direct the horse’s energy. You do not try to control or contain it. There are thousands of gadgets, tie-downs, severe bits, stud chains and the like, all designed to contain and control the horse. Using these devices is a recipe for disaster – an attempt to employ pain to control fear. Energy bottled up and contained with no easy outlet for release is the definition of a bomb. Horse people ride powder kegs all the time! The more you contain the energy, the higher the pressure builds, until it finally explodes. Do you know what riders say then? - It just came out of nowhere!
It didn’t come out of nowhere. The energy was contained, wrapped up tight like a stick of dynamite -
- until the fuse ran out.
Direct the horse’s energy. Give it an outlet by giving him something productive to focus on. Use the energy – make something useful out of it. Shoot – most of the time we are kicking and poking, jabbing and spurring, trying to get some life in our horses – then when they get full of life we try to shut them down! When the energy is up – use it! Direct it! Be the calm, assertive leader and direct the horse’s energy. As you do, he will automatically become a calm, submissive follower, because you have given him “a safe place to be.”
The horse needs a safe place to be. It’s your job as a herd leader and horse owner to provide that safe place for him. Don’t get things confused. That safe place to be must be a place he sees as a safe place. See it from the horse’s point of view. Take just one example – a nice, cozy, well-bedded stall seems safe to us, but to the horse it’s a trap, a cave where predators hang out!
Look at things from the horse’s point of view.
