One of my main frustrations with the equine industry is our inability to look at the horse holistically. There are numerous trainers out there, both online and in person, that claim to help you fix every problem under the sun if you just follow their method. Separation anxiety, spooking, rider confidence, napping, mounting issues, girthing issues, bridling issues, the list is endless. I sometimes feel like we are treating horses like taking a car to the garage, separate parts working independently of each other just need replacing and all will be well.
Most trainers briefly mention something about “ruling out pain” or “having all the checks” but if you’ve been on my page for more than 5 minutes you’ll understand that these things aren’t possible and certainly not in the simple way people make it out to be. I’m just going to link another post here about that otherwise I’ll never shut up. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=990724239733870&id=100063889095107
Physical issues aside, how many of these behavioural issues are caused by horses living in chronic stress not being able to cope in the environment they’re living in? Maybe their turnout is unsuitable, maybe they’re anxious about their stable neighbour, maybe they don’t feel safe enough to lay down so they’re sleep deprived, maybe the forage and management is inappropriate. I very rarely hear this mentioned. It seems to be irrelevant to the training courses what the other 23 hours of your horse’s day looks like. No guidance on that.
A common complaint I hear from my clients who have taken some of the online courses is that they just don’t see their own horses in the examples, there are step-by-step tutorials, but what happens when your horse reacts weirdly even on step one? What if the exercise isn’t even appropriate for that individual horse?
I’m going to tell you a client story, with permission (names changed for obvious reasons), my client Wendy had a young horse who was backed professionally and hacking out, after a few months the horse became gradually more spooky until Wendy lost all confidence and was afraid to ride her at all. After having her tack checked, teeth checked, a physio and a basic vet check she was told there was no physical issue and it was definitely a behavioural problem.
She tried some lessons with her usual instructor which didn’t improve things, so she tried one of the heavily recommended online methods for spooky horses. She followed the program religiously until her mare was very obedient and seemed calm on the ground, but the riding still just wasn’t happening. She then sought advice from a heavily recommended rider confidence coach who told her she needed to break it down into small steps, but make small goals to kick on to, such as riding to the end of the drive and just focus on that and not to think about anything else. After this also failed Wendy was left feeling really demoralised after being told its because she was “thinking negatively” and she just needed to be more positive!
Now maybe some of this would’ve been appropriate advice for a different horse, maybe, the problem is nobody was actually really looking at the horse in front of them. Or if they were they didn’t have the knowledge to see the issues. I met Wendy 6 months ago, her self esteem was in the gutter and she was feeling like she needed to sell her lovely horse onto someone “better”. During our first session together I noted her horse had a lack of muscle over her back and neck which would make carrying a rider difficult, this would be enough to make a horse sore and cause spooky behaviour. We also noted although her mare was very obedient in the groundwork its like she wasn’t “in the room” with us mentally, she was just going through the motions as she had been conditioned to do so but didn’t actually feel relaxed at all.
We started with some very simple, quiet groundwork and enrichment-type games to help down-regulate her nervous system and build positive associations with people and training again. We were also able to start gently influencing her posture so she could develop the muscling she needed to carry Wendy comfortably again. 6 months down the line they are back riding and going for gentle hacks together with no issues. The spookiness wasn’t the problem, it was a symptom.
The best skillset you can learn is how to read and assess horses for yourself, we must look at horses as individuals and we must look at behavioural issues as symptoms and not do the horse such a disservice by ignoring their communication just because they’ve had “all the checks”. There are a bunch of free resources on my page if you scroll, I will get around to compiling them at some point, you can also join my subscription page for less than £10 where I will be posting as much as I can about reading behaviour for yourself along with appropriate training videos. If we just slow down and learn to look at the whole picture we can advocate for our horses and ourselves better. 🐴
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