H.E.R.D Human Equine Relationship Development

H.E.R.
D
Human Equine Relationship Development
Written by Tamara Svencer
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H.E.R.D Human Equine Relationship Development Copyright 2010 Tamara Svencer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the author.
This book is dedicated to my children, Elliott, Laurel, Jacob, & Richie who have taught me how to believe in my own dreams and remind me daily that dreams really do come true.
Thank you too Miss Bella, may you be forever free.
PREFACE
Why would I ever want a horse to be like me? I would rather aspire to be more like the horse honest, strong, faithful, intelligent beyond reason, and dependable beyond belief. Tamara Svencer
INTRODUCTION
Dealing with horses makes you a better

person. I thank God for my horses as they have developed my character in so many ways. They have taught me patience. They have taught me the ability to just be still and know. They have given to me the strength inside and out to deal with a lot of my own personal issues. They have undoubtedly taught me all forms of the word balance and for that I am eternally grateful. Being with horses is not all about getting on their backs and riding, it is so much more than that. Some of the best times I have had with horses has been from the ground just bonding. There is a natural attraction to the horses freedom, it's beauty, its undeniable grace that draws us towards it. It is hard to put into words exactly what the attraction to this animal is. It
has a certain quality that lets us embrace all that we wish we were. My goal is to educate others through my own experiences. In the horse world experience is something to be coveted. The more experience you get the better of a horse-person you will be. The thing that you should keep in mind is that all experience is important, not just time spent in the saddle. Sometimes the time we spend grooming or just sitting watching our horses accomplishes more than an hour long ride. The true key to success here is bonding with our animal. A natural bond will form that will strengthen every aspect of our relationships with our horses. This book is for all horse people. I wish that all newcomers could get a copy of this book before getting into the task of horse ownership and training. I think even advanced horsemen/horsewomen will benefit from understanding that the relationship one has with their horse must be built, like anything else, upon a good foundation. A solid foundation will effect how we act and react to all of the ups and downs that come along the way.
To me training is not an activity solely participated in by the horse. Training is a two way street, you must both be learning about each other for this relationship to progress. The reward of communicating with a horse in a natural way they understand will result in a horse that will surpass your expectations, as well as move you along in your own abilities. You are holding a conversation with the horse not lecturing him. Horses are not only excellent students, they are superior teachers. My horse has taught me about patience, discipline, strength, and endurance. She has taught me to never give up and to push through the pain, heat, snow and rain not only physically but also emotionally. She has taught me what "heart" means and for this I will be ever grateful. I ask only that you approach these pages with an open mind. My approach is one that takes control of the horse from the inside out. If you can get her to give you her trust and her heart there will be nothing she will not do for you. Many people approach horses with a preconceived notion of what will happen. Some
have spent time riding horses from riding stables, or watched a lot of western movies. Horses from riding schools are often so "desensitized" to dealing with different people and situations that they are docile and stable mounts. This is great opportunity for those that like to ride a weekend or two out of a month. It will help build up a shaky riders confidence. But please remember most horses are not like horses from riding stables. This is a really important thing to consider when purchasing your own horse. Most horses come with a few "quirks". Some are spooky, some are fearful, some bite, some kick, some run off, some rare up, some don't move at all, some even like to go in reverse. If you have a mental picture of buying a horse, jumping on its back and riding off into the sunset at full gallop your first time out, understand that this is probably more fantasy than fact. Before you go any farther, just drop all of your preconceived notions of what a horse can and cannot do. Forget everything you have been told and approach this animal with a totally fresh
mindset. Open your mind to a whole new world of possibilities that you can achieve with a loving, well balanced relationship with what I believe to be the most wonderful of all of God's creatures. I am not writing this book to be a how to training manual. There have been so many of those written. You can learn the technique of training a horse to lead, tie, and accept a rider from one of those, as there are many great books available on that subject matter. This book is more of a foundation builder for your entire equine relationship. It will teach you the why factors that motivate and control a horse from birth. Horse sense and human sense are completely different. I want to bridge the gap and give you a better way to communicate with your horse to build a stronger more humane relationship. Horses do not speak the English language. Think about that for a moment. Your horse does not sit around thinking in words like you do. They don't have a spoken language. Therefore their thoughts are not in words. That is a really hard concept to take a hold of mentally for a human
because that is the way we have always done things. We think, and we think in words. We convey what we are thinking about by producing a sound that other humans can understand to mean a certain object or concept. Imagine that you didn't have a word for the object we call tree or the feeling we call love. How would you describe them with out words? Through actions, and that is how the horse speaks. He does not speak in English, Spanish or Dutch but he speaks in action and energy. You have to start thinking and acting more like the horse for him/her to start to understand you. They understand action and energy. They don't understand a word that you are saying. They only understand the tone in which it is spoken and the energy with which it is delivered. A sharp quit it conveys disapproval. A gentle good girl conveys acceptance. They only understand the energy and actions associated with our words. You will learn you can speak to a horse without every actually speaking a spoken word. For this reason it is silly to have lengthy, in
depth conversations with your horse as if they are participating in a conversation with you. It may make you feel better but the horse only hears something like blah, blah blah blah, blah, blah blah blah. Learning to focus on the energy and emotions we are displaying will allow you to remove the words from the equation. You can have silent, very productive conversations with your horse that he will understand completely. If you sat for 12 hours a day observing your horses you would find that the horses are silent for about 11 hours and 45 minutes of that time. You may occasionally hear one horse call out to another in moments where they are on the move and have lost visual sight of each other but other than that, its pretty quiet. They are in fact though constantly speaking to each other through body language. This is the sole way a horse will communicate most of his needs and desires. He talks with his body and the energy he is displaying to other horses around him. Any relationship that we enter into must possess strong communication skills to be
successful. You see that marriages often fail after this breaks down because communication is so valuable in conveying our wants, needs and desires. It can not be one sided, that is just unreasonable and unbalanced. A horse is a very honest and reasonable animal. His communication is open and straightforward. He isn't sneaky and his feelings are not hidden. If you take a little bit of time and energy to understand how he speaks you will bypass all of the headaches of trying to teach him how to think and speak like a human. Trust me this is the much easier and more rewarding way of doing things. It is also the most natural and easily accepted method by the horse. It builds a working relationship that is filled with success and satisfaction.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Working with any animal can be a

dangerous activity, always make sure you practice safe horse handling. Wear the appropriate protective gear as well as always let someone else know where you will be at and what you will be doing. Due to the size and strength of a horse, injuries can be sustained easily. Always use your best judgment in working with horses, and if you feel uncomfortable with an activity or a behavior issue consult a professional horse trainer to aid you.
Chapter 1 : Quiet Confidence
There is one tool that any person needs to

have in order to successfully work with horses. It is a tool that is of more importance than any other tool that you may possess. You cannot buy this tool at a feed store or order it online. It is a tool that will make all other tools of the trade more useful. And without it all other tools useless. That tool is confidence. A sort of fearlessness in the face of an animal that could very easily hurt you at best, and kill you at worst.
A horse by nature does not really communicate its wishes through verbal commands. They do on occasion let you know what they are about to do by whinnying or neighing, but for the most part they speak to each other through body language. I want to address the fact that when you step into their world your body language will do the speaking for you. You need to learn what they are saying and be able to anticipate what they are about to do. The more fluent you become in speaking their language the easier and safer your horse experiences will become. A horse is a prey animal. It survives through picking up on the slightest signals around it. It is also a great reader of things unseen. They have a sixth sense of sorts, filtering in information from between the lines, as well as directly. When you venture into their space they are picking up on so much more than what you are doing. They can sense what you are feeling. They have a sponge like ability to absorb what you are feeling especially anxiety. It is very important to remember that when you are feeling nervous or
anxious so is your horse. This signals to your horse that they need to be ready to flee because danger is around. Unfortunately they do not understand that to a person who lacks confidence they are often the danger that is around. So whenever you are going to interact with your horse or any horses for that matter, you need to really be aware of the feelings you are projecting onto them. You need a quiet confidence, a sense of relaxed energy, that will allow them to remain calm in your presence. And over time you will develop this quiet confidence more and more. What do I mean by quiet confidence? Well quiet confidence comes from a sense that you truly know that everything around you is alright and that you are in control of the situation. It speaks of a true leadership state of mind. That is what a horse is looking for, a true leader. If you want to have a natural leadership role with your horse, this is the key, quiet confidence. When you see people yelling and screaming at their horses teetering on the edge of abusing them into doing what they want, they are reacting out of fear or
anger. Fear and anger do not make for good leadership qualities. Horses understand that when you are out of control you can not control them. Before you can have control of your horse, you must be able to control yourself. The horse knows this and you should learn it before going any further. Focus on understanding that with a horse fear is a sign of weakness or danger. Weak people do not lead horses, weak people get pushed around by horses. When a horse senses fear it also can become nervous and ready to flee for safety. When a horse does not respond to something you want it to do and it makes you angry you need to take a mental timeout. Horses do not lead through anger. Horses lead in one way and one way only - quiet confidence. Confidence is not something you can just get either. It is learned, built upon, and grows. It takes time to get the confidence you need to be a true leader in all situations. The whole idea of natural horsemanship has taken off to a great extent in recent years. It has helped put some of the archaic and outdated
training techniques to rest and for this I am thankful. Just like any new idea that comes along, it has been over marketed and milked for every single penny it can produce. People have slapped the natural horsemanship label on everything from books to gear in order to sell it more quickly. I am not a natural horsewoman. I am just a woman who seeks to have a very balanced and productive relationship with my horse. In fact if I wanted to be a natural horsewoman I don't think I would ever place my rump in a saddle. My horses would be left running free on open ranges and I would never subject them to the training, fences, trailers, and shows I so often do. Everything humans do for the most part with and too their horses is unnatural. Calling it natural doesn't make it that way. Whatever I can do to learn more, I will. And whenever I can help teach someone else something that will aid them in developing a deeper relationship with their horse, I will. I hope by the end of this book you will have learned something and moved forward in the understanding that a horse is not just a beast.
They are very intelligent, very perceptive, very able creatures that I feel every human can call their partner. The relationship you have with your horse is much like the relationship you share with people in your lives. To have a successful relationship of any kind it must be a working relationship. It must continually be growing and as it grows it will strengthen itself naturally. It must also be a balanced relationship. The start to having a balanced relationship with your horse is to understand that a horse is a horse and not a human being. That is the beginning to having a fulfilling experience that makes both parties happy. Human beings have this inner need to humanize animals and other "things" that inhabit our lives. We assume that animals think and react like people through spoken words. I have heard many people referring to their horses as if the horse was just another human. I want you to understand that a horse speaks a different language, feels different emotions, and is very non human.
I think the world may be a better place if people were a little more like horses and a little less like people. And that is the key here, be more like a horse instead of forcing the horse to be more like a human. The biggest mistake most people make with their horses is to "love" them too much. It isn't hard to love a horse. It is really easy in fact to develop a very deep emotional attachment to it. I want you to love your horse. I want you to love your horse so much that you make unselfish decisions when it comes to their development. Spoiling a horse in the name of love only benefits the owners own need to feel loved by the horse. But horses do not "love" people in the sense than humans love one another. Yes they can become very attached to their human companions. They become bonded in a way that resembles human love. But it is not the same. When you truly love your horse you will understand that you must make every effort possible to bring forth a well mannered and obedient animal. Chances are that you will not own your
horse for the entirety of its life. Things change so rapidly in our lifetimes. People lose jobs, they need to relocate, get new jobs, have children, become physically unable to care for their horses. Many things can happen that will result in you needing to find a new home for your horse. A horse that is well mannered, submissive, and obedient will go on to have a long and well-lived life. It is horses that have been spoiled in the name of love that develop the multitude of undesirable behaviors that will dwindle their chances at finding a good home. And even worse your beloved friend could end up at a stock sale being shipped to Canada or Mexico to have their lives ended in a cruel and unimaginable way. It is a sad but truthful reality that as the economy has dwindled in recent years we find far too many horses left in a state of homelessness. Many people who loved their horses have had to make the ultimate decision on the welfare of their animals and surrender them to others so that they can be cared for adequately. There are so many horses and not enough quality places for them to
live right now. Many horses have ended up in the hands of horse traders, or less than perfect living arrangements. Only the good horse who is useful to man will find a place in this world to live a nice quality life. Horses that have issues are often the first to be sent off to the sale. So if you truly love your horse, you will be a strong leader. Leading your horse in a way that will produce a balanced animal will insure him a place in the human world for many years to come. I ask you to put aside your own needs and consider your horses long term needs. Spoiling your horse will not gain you anything other than a lot of problems or worse injuries. I want you to understand what I mean by spoiling. Anything you do with your horse needs to have a few simple boundaries. You need to maintain a space around you. You can envision a bubble of sorts - it expands out about 1 or 2 feet around you - this space is yours and the horse is not to enter it. (When we look at the lead mare behavior in the next chapter you will learn more about why this is so important) You can pet your horse, in fact I feel
touching your horse all over his body is an excellent way of gentling him/her. You can offer your horse treats on occasion as long as it is done in moderation and at the correct time. People tend to think that because a horse comes rushing over to the fence to see them, somehow they have created a special connection with their horse. The horse will always come running to the fence if it is given treats for showing up. They come running to see the treat not you. I want to show you that the horse can come running from a true bond to you, not because he is bribed into behavior. You need to remember that everything you do should be done in moderation which will end in balance. Balance is not something only needed in the saddle. Balance must exist in every aspect of horsemanship. Imagine a scale if you will on the left hand side you see the opposite of spoiling, you see neglect and abuse. It is easier to picture this end of the spectrum in your mind. On the left we have the abusive owner who try's to beat submission into his animal and neglects to even care for its basic needs of food, shelter and water.
Now look to the right hand side of the spectrum and you will see the polar opposite of the bad side. You see the owner who allows the horse to dominate and dictate to him/her what is going to happen. On this side the owner pops in every once in awhile with sugary treats and over indulges the animal. Soon the horse is nipping at his owners' pockets and dragging him around by the lead rope or worse kicking them out of disrespect or being uncontrollable in some other way. You need to be somewhere directly in the middle of this scale. You need to maintain balanced and fair treatment of your horse through quiet confidence. A horse is a simple animal. You can show your horse "love" by giving him/her proper nutrition and as much clean drinking water as they can drink. You can show love by feeding him grain twice a day, giving him a good supply of hay, and a nice pasture to graze upon. You can show them love by keeping their stall clean, and keeping their bodies clean through proper grooming. You can show them love by providing proper veterinarian care and keeping them pest
free. You can show them love by scratching under their chin or in any other place they can't normally reach. This is a horses happy place, being cared for and being provided for. This type of love will benefit your horse for many years to come and will produce a pleasant animal to work and play with. The key is to find balance, where both parties are happy and content with the partnership. If the horse isn't happy you are too far to the left. If you are not happy you have drifted too far to the right. If you stay in the middle everyone will be content. It is human, not horse beliefs, that dictate that we must buy affection. I told you earlier to think more like the horse. They don't care if you are spending lots of money on new halters and bridles. They don't care that you took a loan out to have a better horse trailer than your neighbor. The true connection that will bond you tightly to your horse doesn't cost anything but time. Humans somehow try to make up for not enough time spent by placing a monetary bandaid on the shortcoming. You cannot buy your way
to control. You must put in the effort and the time needed to make the connection and the connection can only be made through confident leadership. In the horse world there are two types of social roles, a leader and a follower. If you take a look out in your own field you will see that there is only one true main leader and the rest filter in behind them. Number 2 horse will follow number 1 but she will also lead number 3. Number 3 follows number 1 & 2 but leads number 4. There are no two number 2 ranking horses, it is a single file line that leads all the way down to the lowest member of the society. They all bow down to number 1 and number 1 submits to no one. Your job is to study number 1 and learn about how she leads with quiet confidence. Confidence is something that comes from the inside and extends out into our physical being. It is a feeling of collected self awareness. You feel powerful therefore you are. Maybe you are fortunate and are a naturally confident person, then your task is going to be easier. Be sure that your confidence is not actually arrogance.
Arrogance is actually the lack of true confidence. It comes from feeling inadequate and trying to over compensate by puffing oneself up. Horses can call this bluff easily. Arrogance and horses will add up to injury or worse death. The horse will look for a confident leader. You need to stand with confidence, move with confidence, breath with confidence. You need to personify confidence. I want you to stand up tall and move like a mountain around horses. In your mind you ball up all of that strong energy and you move right through them instead of wavering around them. If they are in your way, you make them move out of your way. Time will prove to you as you apply this simple state of mind that the horse will respond naturally to you and move as you will them too. You must be very clear and focused in your thinking as to exactly what you want them to do and then apply just enough energy to make it come true. There will be times when you may face a horse that has more confidence than you. In these instances you will need to make sound judgments
on how you proceed. Training an animal with more confidence than you can be dangerous. Ask yourself if this horse is really more confident, or is he more afraid? Are his actions based on dominance or fear? You need to study this horse and see if you can learn something from it. Remember horses are our teachers and they have mimicked their way to where they are. Study his/her confidence and then do just that, mimic their behavior, but always be safe. I want you to really develop this confidence around horses. Become consciously aware of what you are projecting at the horse. Be aware of what you are feeling before you go through the gate. Be diligent in your pursuit of this quiet confidence. You can spend thousands of dollars attending a seminar or clinic on horse training to learn how to train horses. You can go out and spend hundreds of dollars on new training aids or even thousands on a new round pen to do your training in. All of it will be money wasted if you don't have the confidence to lead the horse. You cannot fake it. You cannot buy it. You must develop it. It is free except for the time you spend
building it. It is invaluable. There are many horse owners who have a fearful relationship with their own horses. Being fearful is the main mistake people make with ther horses. Being even the slightest bit nervous around a horse will put you in the subordinate seat. You will not get results in your training. You will have a very flat and unsatisfying relationship if you base it on fear. I want to suggest to those that are afraid, even in the slightest, of their own horse that they go out and buy a whip. You may never even need to use it. It is more a tool to help you feel safe and more confident. Get out your lunge whip if you want. Carry it in your hand when dealing with your horse. I am not asking you to use it, I am asking you to carry it. Sometimes the security of knowing you have it will give your confidence the boost it needs to start conversing successfully with your horse. If a horse respects a lifeless stick that only weighs ounces because it can produce a slight sting on his rear, imagine how much more respect you alone could have with the horse. Carry your whip in hand until you feel safe in leaving it
behind. It is merely an aid to help you start to understand that horses are not as big and bad as some people believe them to be. Before long you will understand just how powerful you can be and just how submissive a horse can be. You will also find that this new confidence will filter out into the rest of your life. You will walk a little straighter and be bolder in what you do. You learn to be more aware of the feelings you are projecting. Confidence will attract the horses attention just like it does a humans. Remember confidence is not bullying. Think back to when you were in school and there were bullies. Usually a bully was just puffing himself up and acting aggressively towards others because he was afraid. A horse can tell when he is being bullied and it will not have the lasting effect that confidence will. You can bully a horse sometimes but bullying will only get you so far. I have seen lots of horse bullies and none of them were horses. They have all been humans trying to put on a show of strength. And that is all it is, a show. The horse knows the difference
between bullying and confidence. Bullying comes from inner fear, confidence comes from inner strength. A horse will follow strength, he will flee from fear. And keep in mind that if he can't flee from the fear, he can as a last resort, act out in protective aggression. Bullying a horse is a good way to get hurt or killed. I don't want you to fear your horse. Sometimes it is easy to fear an animal that has so much power and so much strength. His size alone can easily make him dangerous but for the most part a horse is a docile and timid creature. He is also submissive and willing to be a part of man's world. If he weren't he would simply jump over the fence we have built to contain him or bust through the barn door and set himself free. He doesn't use his strength in the same manner a human being would. He will if faced with a life threatening situation, but for the most part he is docile and timid. Thats not to say it is a guarantee that your horse will never assert itself over you physically. He can and chances are he will, but it will be in more subtle ways than stomping you to death.
Horses often test you to see if you are paying attention. Subtle invasions of your role as leader can add up to a mutiny, so be aware of what the horse is saying to you at all times. Try to replace fear with respect. Respect the fact that he is large and you should proceed with educated caution when handling him. Do not irritate a horse or tease it. Do not provoke him to prove a point to other humans. In fact leave all your desires to impress people with your horse skills at home. Concentrate on you and him and the relationship you truly want to share. Use common sense. Do not stand behind a horse and taunt it to kick you to prove it won't. You may get unlucky one day and try this with the wrong horse. Show respect, not fear. After you start to have a safe track record your confidence will naturally grow and replace the fears you once had.
Five Steps To Confidence

Practice these 5 key ingredients to build your inner confidence. Before long they will become like second nature.
1. Positive thinking Positive thinking is the key to confidence. Thinking positively about yourself will help you project confidence. Think about all of the accomplishments you have made. Pat yourself on the back for having the courage to want to better your relationship. Reflect positive thoughts, and zap negative ones as soon as they enter your mind. Lose the phrase I Can't and replace it with I Can. 2. Setting Goals Baby step your way along the path. Understand every step you make towards your goals is a step in the right direction. Set goals that are attainable. For instance set a daily goal. Today I want to work with my horse for 1 hour on leading correctly. Have a goal and reach it, if in a month you do this a few times, you will have spent several hours working with your horse. Instead of telling yourself this month I want to work 15 hours on leading and being overwhelmed. You take you biggest goal and break it down into daily baby steps. 3. Breathing techniques Breathing is am essential part of relaxing and having confidence. Take a nice deep breath and exhale. Repeat this process about 5 times and you will immediately start to feel more relaxed. Confident people are relaxed people. Breathe in those deep breaths and exhale slowly anytime you may start to feel nervous. 4. Body language Walk straight and tall. Don't slouch your shoulders. When you sit, sit straight. Start making it a point to have correct posture. You will instantly feel more alive and energized. You will look and feel more confident.
5. Mind management
Guard your mind and only allow positive thoughts to enter it. Don't listen to other peoples negativity either. You can do anything you set your mind to. Don't always assume something is going to go bad, think like everything is going to go right and often it will!
Chapter 2 : Looking For A Leader
Horses are an instinct driven being. There

are certain drives built into them naturally that dictate their responses to certain situations. They are a herd animal which means they have a strong desire to be part of a group. The group
provides him with safety and safety is what a horse desires most. A horse understands the herd and it functions within its hierarchy to fulfill its role within the herd. The herd is the "society" of the horse. The horse understands the dynamics of this through natural instincts and learned behavior. To understand the horse you must understand the herd. The herd to a horse provides safety and survival. The more eyes, ears and noses filtering in information the more chances there are to detect danger. A herd of horses works as a collective being, each member serving a particular role to benefit the group as an entirety. The herd is a a very complex society. To really understand how to work with nature instead of against it, you must understand what is going on in this social grouping. The horse although a large animal is a very timid animal by nature. The main instinct that a horse has is it's flight drive. When faced with danger or perceived danger the horse will instinctively flee. They will flee with enough force to escape that particular threat and the it will
calm down and go right back to grazing. They live in the moment. After a scary experience they are not like humans, they don't recollect and talk about it forever. Their thought process is something like this fear=flight=safety=relaxation. Very simple. The fears that horses have seem rather silly to us as human beings. It is silly that a 1400 pound animal is afraid of a grocery sack that has gotten caught on the barbed wire fence of our neighbor. To us its just a bag, to the horse it is something that could eat him alive. Most of the fears horses have are of the unknown. The fears are mostly unwarranted but as their human leader it becomes our job to lead them through these imagined life or death situations with a tender but fearless lead. Their battles are in their heads. Once something moves from the scary list to the safe list in their heads it stays there unless in the future it actually proves to provide harm to the horse. 99% of the battles we will face in training our horse to be a well adjusted animal will be in their heads. You must control the mind to a
certain extent and where the mind goes the body will follow. There are two schools of thought when it comes to training a horse. The more traditional school believes that you control the body through dominance and then the horse will give you its mind. The newer school believes you harness the mind naturally and then the body will follow suit. Both will work. For many years man has been taking a horse and beating it into submission, it does work, but not because it is the right way to do things. It works because a horse is such a naturally submissive animal. It is taking advantage of this submission that leads to the worst kind of abuse. You are breaking it physically in this manner of training, giving it the choice to survive by obeying. All of this whipping, tying, and deprivation will produce a horse that can be handled by humans. And for some humans this is all they need. I feel the new school of thinking and training is superior to old school methods because you work with nature instead of against it. You get
better more dependable results from the horse because you are teaching him to trust you as his leader, not to submit to you because you are a tyrant. It is less work and stress for both the horse and human to harness the mind first through communicating in a way he/she will understand and then baby stepping our way through the basics. Eventually you will move all the way up through advanced skills in a way that is not only more humane but proves to build a better foundation for a well balanced and truly trustworthy animal. You will see the word dominance a lot in articles about horse training. I try to shy away from using this word because the word dominance creates visions of taking power forcefully instead of being given power willingly. You need confidence which will place you naturally not forcefully in a state of dominance over the horse. This sort of dominance is not out of balance or abusive. It is only a word to express your status as leader. Dominance in animals is rarely abused by the dominant animal. Humans are the only
animal that abuses the power of dominance. People in positions of power can become intoxicated by the rush of being in control and sometimes they take their power to extremes that exploit those beneath them. Animals do not do that. They take dominance as a leadership role solely and that gives them more responsibilities to maintain the well being of those beneath them. A dominant animal is there because it is in the best interest of it's species to have the stronger genes pasted on to future generations . They are there because it is in the best interest of the herd for survival to be lead by a confident and strong animal who is willing to serve them in finding a good food & water supply. It is all about survival of the fittest and smartest. In mother nature stupid and weak animals do not live for very long. The lead mare is dominant, intelligent, and able to fulfill the role. She will have earned her spot by showing natural leadership qualities and taking her spot at the top. So you won't see me use the word dominance a lot. You will find I use the word confidence because dominance to an animal is something totally different than what it
is to a human. When you think about this for awhile you will start to understand that training has nothing to do with jumping in a round pen and chasing a horse until it is so exhausted it wants to drop dead. It has nothing to do with whipping it severely until it says uncle. Training is simply a long series of exposing a horse to something new and scary and then moving that scary object or situation to the safe list in the horses' head by confidently leading them through it. After it has been moved to a status of safe then the horse has the ability to totally ignore that which they once thought would kill them with ease. They are masters of just simply moving on, they don't dwell on things. So enters people into the horses life. I have often wondered what exactly does the horse think we are. A human being until proven otherwise is a threat to the horse just like the bag on the barbed wire fence. A horse that has not been handled by a human sees us as something that has come to eat it alive. He will run wildly around us trying everything to escape this strange beast that walks
on two legs. To a horse we smell funny and look angry with our ears always pinned back. We make the strangest noises and do the weirdest things. It amazes me that the horse ever eventually submits to man, but he will, given that the man proves to be a non-threatening being after all. Every horse starts somewhere. There is a moment in all captive horses that changes the direction of their lives forever. It is the moment man enters into his world. For some they are born into it and the touch comes shortly after birth. For some they are pulled off of ranges and the touch comes far later in life. But for any horse that man wishes to use there will be a moment when man enters into it's life. That moment will change the life of that horse forever. Fortunate horses will be handled correctly from the start and unfortunate horses won't. So you may ask what is the easiest way to get inside of a horses head and handle him/her correctly? Well the answer to that question can only be answered by the horse. A horse is a really honest animal. You need to learn the basics of
their language and when you learn this language, you will understand how to communicate your leadership to them. Horses do not speak in words, they speak in actions. I guess the closest scenario in humans would be the sign language that a deaf person uses to communicate. The horse gives a sign and that signals a response from other horses. You can give the same signs and get the same results. I don't understand why they do it, but a horse will accept a human sign the same way they accept a horse sign. Earlier we talked about the lead mare and the fact that she rules the roost. I spoke to you about the bubble around you and that your space is not to be invaded. The lead mare has this space and this space is what sets her apart from all the other horses in a herd. You will notice that the lead mare may enter any of the lower horses spaces but they never just stroll into hers. If they make that mistake she swiftly corrects it. If you spend a day just sitting in the pasture watching your horses, they will tell you exactly what you need to do to be a true leader.
Paying close attention to what the lead mare does will show you exactly what you need to do to be leader of the whole herd. Getting the submissive lower horses to follow your direction and give you their respect by doing so becomes easy when you watch what she does. Horses show respect by following. Sitting in the pasture all day may be boring to some as it isn't much like the movies we see on TV. The horses don't usually run around in slow motion, showing affection to each other, with the wind whipping wildly through their hair. No it is more about the business of eating and resting. The lead mare controls the food for the most part and it is her job to move the herd to the best spots for grazing. She determines when it is time to move to the water and she will also be the first one to drink. But all along the way, when she moves, the others follow and mimic what she does. She moves them, they do not move her. When the lead mare comes out of the barn the other horses move out of her way. When she comes into the round bale to get some hay the other horses move out of her way. This is not done
out of fear it is simply learned behavior that gives the horse its structured and safe life. It is efficient and effective. This is where we have to drop our human way of thinking. This lead mare is not a bully, although she can deliver punishment for insubordination, she is a fair leader. She will not normally go running around bullying her herd. She leads them through survival, she is not on a power trip. Every day, day in and day out, she leads them to food, water and shelter and keeps them from danger. If the lead mare starts running, everyone starts running. She leads and they follow. When you are working with your horse, you should lead, and they will follow. They understand this relationship best. When we start letting them invade our space, they become confused instantly, and this mixed signal tells them that they are now the leader. It is that simple. They are not into complex emotional relationships like people. They can't understand that when we come in and kiss all over their faces and feed them a bag of carrots that it is just done out of affection. Their ability to get close to us says only one thing, we have
allowed them to invade our space, therefore they are now the boss. The lead mare does not blur this line. She has her space and everyone else is to stay out of it. All of the other "followers" will float in and out of each others spaces. Horses higher up on the totem pole will often move lower horses out of their spaces. It all boils down to that space. If you make a horse move out of your space, you are now the leader. If he makes you move out of his space, he is now the leader. That one thing may be the most important piece of information you can receive. You must maintain your space, then the horse becomes the follower. Exercises like "join up" are just this one crucial bit of information in action. Through join up you are telling the horse...MOVE OUT OF MY SPACE...therefore you are now the leader. That is why after a successful join up a horse will follow you around like a puppy dog, zigging here, and zagging there. I like the join up exercise but I feel that through proper body language and action you can get the same results just through everyday interactions with your horse.
So lets go back to the pasture and lets look at our horses. In the morning while it is cool they are very busy grazing away, heads down nibbling at the grass. They are relaxed. You see some tails swishing at the occasional fly. Nothing too spectacular is going on, everyone is just eating breakfast until they hear you coming with the feed. All of a sudden there are the low grumbles of neighs as they all run to their spot to be fed. Here you will see the pecking order best defined and here it is easiest to see who is truly boss. She will eat first and can run any of the other horses out of their grain. Horse second in charge can run all of the other horses out except for the lead mare. Horse third in command can run all other horses out except for number 2 and number 1 and so forth all the way down the line until you get to the last horse in the order and she is usually just lucky to eat a little bit before being run out. So how do they move each other around? Well it is a matter of confidence. First the horse either has it or it doesn't. It is true horse power. They don't pretend to be something they are not.
The lead horse is always the one with the most confidence. It is not the biggest horse, it is not the youngest horse, it is the most confident. The leader of our herd is a 26 year old sway backed quarter horse mare named Becky. She is maybe 14.2 hands high. She is much smaller than the second in command an 8 year old 16.5 hand quarter horse named Maggie who probably has a good 300 pounds on Becky. The leader before Becky was an Arabian named Bella who ruled the herd even though she had a genetic disorder called cerebrum abiotrophy. To the human way of thinking her handicap would have dwindled her chances to lead. It was her confidence and sheer moxy that put her in as head honcho until she suffered a fall and she had to be put down. Becky who was number 2 rose to the occasion and she has been in the lead ever since. Size has nothing to do with it either. There are herds that are being lead by ponies and even miniature horses. The leader of the herd is there out of pure confidence. She believes she is boss so she is. And this is the example by which we as
humans must enter the horses' world. We must believe it with all that we are, that we are at the top of the order. No one will invade our space. The horse will understand and respect this and will be a lot more pleasant to work with. Because a horse cannot follow a subordinate being, period. It cannot and will not just because this goes against all that the horse knows. If you are less confident than I am, you must follow me. And vice versa if you have more confidence than I do, I must follow you. That is horse law, we cannot rewrite it or change it, this is what they believe and this is what has kept their society in order and successful for many moons. I didn't make this law, it is mother natures law. I think this is the hardest concept for a human being to accept and live out. Horses in real life are not like horses in movies. In fact I think that movies have done a lot of damage to what the true horses' character is truly like. Many people get into horses wanting a cinematic experience and this does little more than set the person and the horse up for a huge disappointment. That is not to say you should not have a
loving relationship with your horse. I would be a hypocrite if I sat here and told you to not love your horse. Loving your horse becomes a natural thing, but you need to love them enough to understand who they are. I want you to surpass the bond of superficial human affection and go deeper. Bond with your horse as another horse would bond, not a human being would. It is only through this natural bond can you find the true heart of the horse. This bond will unlock the true potential of your relationship. So unthink affection for a moment. To us as humans contact and affection go hand in hand. When we love something we want to touch it constantly. We use all areas of our bodies to show affection, we hold hands, rub backs, hug, and kiss. These affectionate acts provide both the giver and the receiver comfort. That is human affection and it is only natural for us to assume that it is the only type of affection. Let us look back into our pasture and watch our horses. The only type of contact between horses that could be considered affectionate would be the mutual grooming that
on occasion happens. You may witness one horse gently nibbling on another horses neckline and the favor being returned. Sometimes they stand resting with there heads neck to neck. I call this affection loosely because it resembles human affection only, that does not mean it is affection. It could be more utilitarian in nature. I can't remove the ticks and such from my hairline myself, so my neighbor does it for me and I return the favor. We do not witness much touching and rubbing on a daily basis between horses. Mostly it is everyone has a nice space to eat in, in the afternoon we rest under the apple tree, and in the evening we go graze some more. This to a horse is the perfect life. They do not need the constant affection that a human needs. Now I can hear some of you right now, well just because they don't need it, doesn't mean they don't enjoy it. I think that it confuses them a lot. It mixes up the situation and sends them signals that tells them you are being submissive if done in the wrong way. I want to say first that I think it is important to touch a horse. I am a big supporter of grooming because grooming mimics a horses
closest resemblance of affection. I think the horse enjoys being in the relaxed energy of the human more than the actual affection the person is trying to give the horse. Standing quietly in a relaxed way near your horse provides him with more comfort than kissing all over his face. Just being near, being quiet, and being confident relaxes them. They can feel you are relaxed and for a moment they can also relax. Remember they spend much of their time in a state of nervousness concerned they are about to be attacked. The only time they truly relax is when their leader relaxes because they trust their leaders judgment that much. The relaxation of the leader has a ripple effect throughout the herd. When you remove a horse from its herd it will become naturally anxious because it has left the safety of its herd mates. When you remove a horse from the herd you should take over the role of leader in a two party herd. If the horse determines you to be it's new leader you will see a relaxed animal who follows you willingly. If it rejects you as leader, you will see an animal who
is hard to control and is acting out its anxieties from being separated from the safety net of it's herd. This little simple exercise can help you to see if you are thought of as leader. Simply go in the pasture and remove your horse. As soon as he/she is out of sight of the herd you will see one of two things happen. If you are leader the horse will follow you without incident. If you are not trusted as the leader the horse will become harder to control. It may spin around paying little attention to your commands and crowd you. Extreme cases may rare up. People use the term herd bound to describe a horse that reacts in a negative way to being removed from his herd mates. A herd bound horse may pull and jerk you around. He may run off with the his rider back to his buddies. The truth about this horse is they just do not feel that you are a confident enough leader to keep them safe. They are safer in the herd. They will try to escape you and return to where they are safe. People confuse this behavior with a horse that is spoiled. They say the horse does not want
to work. He is avoiding work and wants to get back to grazing. This is not usually the case. A horse that is herd bound needs to be taught that he is safe away from the pasture and his friends. He needs to know that you will be a good leader in place of his lead mare. After a few successful adventures under your command he will no longer react to being removed. If for some reason his fears are justified, like you take him out and whip him to make him stop - punishing him too severely or at the wrong time - the behavior will get worse. You have to be steady and consistent. Apply enough force to move the horse along and then take the time and effort to teach him that the outside world isn't so bad after all and you are a good leader who keeps him safe. Here is a little story to illustrate this point. My niece Ashley bought an older mare to start out on learning to ride. Although this mare was older she was a very confident and strong willed mare. She had also been neglected when she arrived at our farm. She was starved and underweight. Her first priority was to eat and she seized every
opportunity to do so. This was in the best interest of her survival, she needed to gain weight. A skinny weak horse will not survive as long as one at a healthy weight. A horse knows that in order to get the best food they need good pasture and a herd to keep them safe. That is pretty simple. My niece like most kids wanted to ride her new horse and as soon as the mare got a little weight on her and had her hooves trimmed we saddled her up. This horse was very herd bound. No matter what you did, the day ended with her running off back to her pasture and friends. The experience for my niece was frightening. Having a horse out of control while you are on its back is a little nerve shattering for a novice rider. But my niece stuck with it, she didn't give in. It took some time and a lot of patience but eventually this horse stopped its shenanigans. It stopped them as she started to understand that my niece who was only 12 at the time could lead her with confidence. You need to approach every situation with unshakeable confidence. Training isn't isolated to the round pen. Training happens in every aspect
of horse handling. It is interwoven into the fabric of horse ownership. The lead mare never gives up her position, not for a minute, she maintains control at all times and so must you. There is no in between position in the horse world, you either are the leader or the follower. You must prove your leadership ability. If you submit for just a minute, you will have to reestablish your role as leader. This is all they understand. I think it is really unfair to the horse when we try to superimpose our beliefs and behaviors onto them. This is just totally confusing and unfortunate for the horse. A horse is so simple it is hard for the human being to understand them. They are simple and honest. Imagine if someone put you on a plane and dropped you off in China. You don't speak a word of Chinese and you have no idea what is socially and culturally acceptable. It would take time and effort to adapt. You wouldn't just expect everyone to convert over to English and go by your social standards. You must think the same way about the horse. You have to learn what they find acceptable and adjust yourself in order to
communicate easier. Now there are "old school" horsemen who believe this is all nonsense, a horse can learn to adjust to our way of thinking. And it is a sad truth that yes they can. It is a tribute to the horses great intelligent and submissive nature that they will eventually learn the ways of man to some degree. They will learn them as much as they need to survive. As the higher thinking being it is easier for us and more effective to learn their language and behaviors. It cuts down the stress placed on the animal and has far superior results in the end. It creates an animal who understands from the get go what is expected rather than stumbling through trial and error until they feel their behavior is accepted. It is a different kind of work and it is far more compassionate than beating an animal into submission or tiring it out so severely it finally submits to our will. So lets go back to the lead mare again what is she saying and how is she saying it. A horse has two business ends. The head and the rear end. They use their head in a multitude of ways
to speak to the other horses. A head that is raised and ears that are erect says I am alert for some reason. You will notice that all of the other horses will raise their heads and follow in suit concentrating on what she is looking at. A head that is lowered and ears that are relaxed says I am relaxed. The bottom lip often hangs a little lower and she may have her weight shifted off of one of her back legs, this is saying I am relaxed. Her eyes may also look soft almost like they could close at any second. The lower the head the more relaxed she is. You will notice when the lead mare is relaxed the rest of the herd is as well. Some may graze while others rest right along with her. This is a nice quiet time in the herd. Ears are a major part of communication in the horse. Ears that are pinned flat back says I am angry and you need to move. This is often displayed before a bite is issued. Horses normally give a warning then deliver with an action. This is the case most often but sometimes the final punishment is just dealt out in acts that the leader feels deserve no warning. Ears pinned back says I am really unhappy about you being in my space,
move now or your gonna get it. Ears pinned back and mouth open says I am going to bite you now. Sometimes you will witness the snaking of the head along the ground as a warning that a horse is angry and about to try and dominate another. Ears tell you what the horse is paying attention to as well. A horse can position one ear on you, listening to what is going on as you tighten the girth for example, and use the other ear to be listening to what is going on in front of it. An ear that is cocked to you means they are paying attention to you and that is good. If you start just observing your horse, sitting quietly off to the side and just watching, you will start to notice that their language is almost undetectable but still very effective. The way they speak to each other sets an example for the human who wishes to interact with them. A horse will say what it needs to say, deliver correction if need be, and then goes on with its life. It is quick and over within a few seconds. The horse who is being spoken too has just seconds to listen and react. Failure to do so ends with correction of either a bite, a bump, or a kick. Once
the correction has been servedthier lives resume. This is the way they understand dealing with issues. A horse that does something wrong to a human may receive a multitude of punishments. Humans will turn them in circles, lunge them, lock them away in the barn or yell and scream at them. All of which the horse doesn't truly understand. They understand the energy coming off of the human probably better than the punishment. Usually when a human is angry, their facial expression is more tense. Their movements a little more exaggerated. Their voice becomes louder and more angry. This body language is all that is telling them they did something wrong. Correction of a horse should mirror that dished out by the lead mare. Swift, immediate, and in appropriate amount to the offense. Once the correction is served life goes back to normal. That is all that is needed. This is just too simple for humans to comprehend at times. I think humans feel like a horse is so big that they have to beat it to have an effect on it. Remember a horses
skin is so sensitive, it can feel the tiniest fly on its withers. Just because they are a large animal doesn't mean it takes massive amounts of correction to fix an issue.
I think that the traditional ways of making a horse run in circles or jerking around on the horse just release the frustration the human is feeling toward the horses offense. The horse only learns you are angry, at best you prove some sort of haphazard dominance over them, at worst you hurt the horse and produce fear. A correction to the nose when a horse is about to bite when done quickly and assertively corrects the problem and then you just resume what you are doing. The horse understands this. He tried to assert himself over you and you in return told him that was not happening. You have about 3 seconds to do so. I think even quicker is better. It needs to be instantaneous. There is no time to run to the barn for a crop or a lunge line. If it takes longer than 3 seconds he will have no idea as to why he is being corrected.
So lets talk about correction and what that means. A lead mare will first warn the other horses, or direct them, as too what she wants done. She strolls up and they need to move aside, lets take feed time for example. Her food is poured in her bowl and another horse dives in and gets a mouthful of grain. She comes charging with confidence, ears pinned back. All of her body language is saying move. Usually the horse quickly retreats happy to have just stolen a bite of free food. But if he sticks around a second too long he is going to either get bit or kicked and she will have no sympathy in how she does it. She warned him, he didn't leave, so he will be physically corrected. If he is so stubborn to stand there and ignore her, she will dull out whatever it takes to make him move by amplifying the strength of force until he finally retreats. Usually a horse that is settled into the herd only needs the look of her coming and ears pinned back to know he needs to beat feet and make a retreat. So enters the human into the equation. We are so much smaller and inferior physically to the horse. They could squash us like a bug if the
wanted too but they don't realize that. To them we are just as powerful as they are unless proven otherwise. Which means we need to take careful precaution to never reveal this little secret. A horse kick can exert up too 400 pounds of force and an average human can kick is about 88 pounds of force. If you get into a kicking match with a horse, you will lose. When the lead mare kicks at her followers she isn't holding anything back. She goes at them often with both guns blazing. Let's talk about the other business end of the horse, the mouth. If you have ever had the misfortune of being bit by a horse you know it can be brutal. They have to have their teeth come together to reopen their mouth and it is very painful to be bit by one. Usually you have a huge circle bruise and maybe even broken skin. This is where I find correction to be a major issue. It is socially unacceptable to slap or hit living creatures in human society. Remember all the talk about balance before, here balance becomes imperative. I will slap a horse in the nose for trying to bite, trust me, usually my fingers hurt worse than his nose. I will also slap a horse on the
neck when it refuses to follow. My little slap doesn't hurt the horse it is more of a stimulus to snap them out of the mental rut they are in. I will threaten, more often than not, just like the lead mare does. Force exerted to the rear of a horse drives it forward. I am not talking about actually whipping. All you need is to have a crop in hand and go towards the rump as if you will use it. The horse will usually heed the warning and begin to listen and obey. You rarely actually have to make physical contact if you are an established leader. Just like the lead mare need only twitch her tail a certain way to make the horse behind her flee before she actually has to kick it. But if the threat is left unheeded then yes you must quickly follow through with the correction. If you do this faithfully your horse will heed the warning sign and be obedient rather than accept the correction.
Therulestocorrectionareasfollows: 1. Give the warning if possible. (if a horse is trying to bite you or kick at you no warning is given, correction is quickly and fairly dispersed and then you just go on about your business like nothing happened) 2. In the case of a disobedient situation (ex. won't load in trailer when normally has no fear, won't move out of your way at the gate) where you have given the warning and the horse ignores you follow up with a correction of your choice. 3. Immediately go back to normal the second the horse starts to even make the slightest movement towards obedience. If it doesn't repeat the above steps increasing the intensity of correction until he/she moves. Never correct your horse when you angry.
This is where correction can easily slip into abuse. Walk away and cool off! Correction to a horse is natural. The correction it receives from a human pales in comparison to what it will receive from it's horsemates. I have heard a lot of people talking about how you should never have to discipline a horse with force. Horses are like children if brought up correctly over time you will no longer need to correct them. They are learning every step of the way, just as you are. If a horse is not corrected swiftly it will repeat its behavior again and again and this can turn into a very serious problem if left unchecked. Think of the long term implications for the horse and remember horses with behavior issues have a less likely chance of having a satisfying life. I am a stern advocate of animal welfare. I believe that we are stewards for are four legged friends. Beating a horse, tying it up for hours on end, or applying any of the other archaic torture training techniques used in the olden days of horsemanship to me is inexcusable. I am a firm believer in balance in
correction. Correcting out of a desire to better the animal, not my image. Many of the old timers act as if they have something to prove to others about how they can handle any horse. The truth of the matter is that most horses will submit to a beating but that doesn't make it right. Most problems can be resolved with consistant, humane correction, faster and easier. The sad truth is that most of the old time correction methods may have temporarily solved one issue but in it's place left several new problems. A firm approach is needed when dealing with an animal of this size and strength but crossing over into abusive beatings with boards and sticks just crosses the line from correction to abuse. It is really important to note that before any of this you must take each behavior and examine it. Most of the time reluctance to do something is fear based. When disobedience comes from fear you must lead your horse through the situation without increasing the anxiety by your behavior Lets take for instance a situation in which
you are riding along on a trail ride. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and your horse is just walking along. All the world seems beautiful. Then all of a sudden up goes the head and the ears as you approach a pile of logs left alongside the road. Your horse is on high alert, she starts stepping to the side rather than moving forward. She trys with all her might to turn you around from the woodpile. You try comforting her by talking to her. You reach down and pet her neck but she stops dead in her tracks and just stares. Her whole body is tense. You keep talking trying to soothe her but it has no effect. She is positive this is a bad situation and that the wood is going to jump up and eat her alive. This problem could be the wood, it could be a smell being given off by the wood or it could be a snake she hears deep down inside the pile. Who knows exactly what it is about it but she is afraid. You try to move her forward giving her a little sqeeze to the sides but she doesn't budge. You give a sharper more direct kick and she budges only a few steps. She moves her head up
and down. Her eyes are wide and she is trying to smell as she sucks in the air, she is checking it out easing into it. You continue to talk to her and she reluctantly moves forward bit by bit. Just as you think you are going to get her through it, she whirls around and trots away as you are pulling back saying whoa. You get her straightened out again and try to get her to make the pass one more time, still to know avail. Now you could kick the crap out of her sides, and whip her rear in an effort to prove you are the boss, or you can do what I would do. Get off and walk her through it. That is right get off. Now here I can hear the chatter, never get off the horse, ride them through it at all cost. I get off and start to pet her neck and she will instantly relax. You can almost hear a sigh of relief as she exhales. I take the reigns in my hand and I walk before her. Talking to her all the while and consoling her with a voice that lets her know I am not afraid. I walk slowly and confidently never even really paying any attention to the pile. I look straight ahead and keep her moving. She trusts me as her leader so
she falls in right behind me. I can hear her behind me trying to smell the pile. I can feel her turn her head to look at it as we pass, but I don't. I look straight ahead and keep on going. When we get past the pile we walk for a little more distance and we turn around. I repeat the process staring straight ahead, talking to her, but not even looking at her. I just keep moving forward. This time there is less smelling and her head stays straight. We pass the pile in the opposite direction and we stop right in front of it. And there we stand. I am looking straight ahead still. If she trys to look behind her, I will repeat the pass again. If she doesn't look back we will walk a couple of steps up and I will remount her and this time ride her past, once again paying no attention to the pile. And there in a few minutes of my time I have lead her through a fear. I could have forced her to pass the pile but I didn't need to force her. I took the time to lovingly teach her that there was nothing to be afraid of after all. By doing it this way she learned her lesson and I have reinforced my status as a competent leader. Everyone has won. Some people do not
understand my way of doing things and I do not understand theirs. Quite honestly I doubt I ever will. I am confident in what I am doing and it works. I have been at a few horse shows and witnessed people flipping out on their horses because the horse does something like refuses to go around a barrel. I have sat and watched as the human would kick with spurs, whip and try to force the horse to move on around it. It always seemed to me though this was more of an effort on proving something to the crowd about their horse skills than teaching the horse anything. If you ever find yourself in this mindset of putting other peoples opinions of you above the welfare of your horse, it is time to take a breather and think about what will be in the best interest of the relationship.
Good Leadership Qualities

Confident A good leader is confident in his ability to get a job done. He has an inner awareness of the personal strength he possesses and is able to put trust in his own ability. In other words, he knows he can do anything he puts his mind too. Trustworthy A leader is able to lead others because they feel safe in following his directions . His strong decision making skills have proved wise in the past. The horse is watching you and evaluating your abilities to make smart decisions on his behalf. He wants to know his trust is in good hands that will keep him safe. Have A Vision and Stay Focused A good leader has a vision in his head that he can focus on and direct a clear path towards his ultimate goals. He is focused and direct in his actions. It is easy to follow and trust someone who has clarity of mind and action. Communicate Clearly A good leader speaks clearly in a way that communicates his directives so that others understand them. In the case of communicating with horses, a good leader makes the extra effort to make sure his student hears and digests what he is saying through his body language.
Chapter 3: Touch Me, Teach Me Trust
Sometimes in the mornings, before the

kids get out of bed, I will sit on the back porch and drink my coffee. Our pasture and barn are just about 100 feet away and I sit quietly watching our
horses as they enjoy the morning. It is in this quiet still time that I think a lot about them. I watch them observing their quiet natures and I think of all the places and people who have entered and left their lives. Each new person and each new situation have left their hand print on my horses. I think of all the good and all of the bad they must have experienced. When you get a new horse you sometimes get lucky and know a little about their pasts but normally you don't know very much at all. It takes a good bit of time to get to know them as an individual. So as they quietly forage for breakfast I wonder about the people who have crossed their paths. Some I know have had rather rough times in their lives. The scar on Maggie's front pastern is from an injury she received from a hog who nearly ripped her hoof off and then wasn't cared for by a vet and it left a misshapen growth on her leg. I think about what a disappointment these people were for her. A couple of our horses had been starved to the point of bones when they arrived. I see how fat and round their bellies and backs have
grown and I wonder if they remember the long cold nights of winter without food. I look at Becky at her ripe old age of 26 and I wonder if there is a young lady out there who misses her. Maybe she loved that horse with all her heart in her youth and had to reluctantly let her go to go onto school or marriage or somewhere else life may have led her. Every horse has a history, some parts good and some parts bad. Sometimes you can see the scars on the outside and sometimes the scars are all on the inside. A horses memory is excellent. They remember people, places, smells, and everything in between. Their ability to remember so much is one of the reasons they are so useful to man because it makes them highly trainable. This is also the downside to a horse. Behavior that is learned can be good and it can be bad. And unfortunately when a horse has been treated abusively or neglected by people they will base their future experiences with people on those human failures at leadership. It is a long road for a foal. They come into
the world all wobbly and fresh, a clean slate if you will. Their mother is there to teach and direct them to grow and survive. The herd is like their school. Everyone teaches them to understand the language. They grow to understand their place in it's confines. It is a slow process but a natural one. Left in the wild this horse would grow, reproduce, and die. But more often than not he will be introduced to man, his partner if he is too survive. And he will be watching man just as he watches his mother and how she reacts to man. Every horse living in captivity will have that moment, the "man moment" as I like to call it. He experiences a human for the first time. I wonder what they think of this strange creature that rears at all times, and walks on its hind legs. He sees how his mother submits, coming in close to receive her grain. He watches as the horses run away from the gate as the new being waves his hand. He is instinctively weary of this creature. He will hurt him until proven otherwise. That is one of the characteristics of a horse given to him at birth. Everything new has the potential to hurt even kill him till proven safe.
Horses are usually curious animals but they are also extremely cautious. The flight instinct that he has pumping in his veins is there for a good purpose. A horse is a prey animal and that means that they live in a constant state of worrying about being eaten. The wilder the horse is (less domesticated) the stronger that inner urge is to run away from anything they fear. Domesticated horses that have lived in captivity for several generations have lost some of this drive. But deep within them there is a reaction of flight when confronted with a situation they believe will result in harm or death. A horses timidity is a force to be reckoned with. I find the best way to deal with it is with slow constant pressure and reassurance. I am a mother and I liken it to a childs timidity. When a child is afraid of something imagined, like a monster in the closet, you deal with it with patience, understanding and firmness. You are reassuring him by taking the time to turn on the light and open up the closet door, showing him that there really isn't anything inside other than clothes and toys. When you sit on the
bed and explain to him that monsters don't exist you are showing him understanding and this instantly will give him some comfort. Being firm comes in when you leave him and turn out the light without giving in to his wishes of sleeping in your bed. Then he is left to face his fear and get over it. Eventually a few nights of no monster coming after him and he falls asleep without any problems. If you give into his fears and let him climb in bed with you, you will create a new problem. The child will not want to sleep by himself . The monster will still be in his closet when he returns to his own room and you will still have to help him face that original fear. A horse is the same way, showing understanding towards a problem he is having instead of just forcing him through it will allow him to get over it without any traumatic after effects. And once something has been shown nonthreatening to your horses life he will just ignore it from that point on. Also you have not created a new problem by not dealing with the first problem.
This is the whole training process when dealing with a horse. It starts with the very first touch from a human being. This can be a very scary experience to a horse. He will run wildly away from you unsure of what to do. The older he is when this happens the more wildly he will react. You look scary, you smell scary, you sound scary, and you act scary. The first touch from any human will be one that the horse remembers forever. You have to prove yourself to be a nonthreatening being. Move gently but confidently and again be persistent. The ideal situation is to let him become so comfortable with your presence that he will first come to you. This can take a few minutes, this can take a few days, this could take a few weeks, but the wait is worth the result. The biggest drawback to natural training methods is the time it takes to do them correctly but they are worth every single second of that extra time and effort. We live in a now society. We want everything now. We drive up to a window and want our food now. We can't wait for food to cook
on a stove anymore we need it cooked in the microwave right now. We can't wait to talk to people when we are home, we need cell phones so we can talk to them now. In fact life is so fast paced we do everything in fast forward. Horse training is a time consuming process and to get quality results you need time. You need the cell phone turned off. In fact you need to turn time and the rest of the world off. When you are in the training mode it is just you and the horse and time should not be a distraction. Your goal should be one thing and one thing only, teaching the horse whatever you have set about to teach it. You must have that kind of focus in your head and then you just do it and give that particular horse all the time he or she needs to fully understand it. You will see ads for horses in the paper all the time about how the horse has received 30 days of professional training. This seems to be the industry standard for getting a horse green broke, halter broke, etc. This is the time frame many trainers put on getting certain results. This is just too constraining to my way of doing things. What if it doesn't take a full 30 days because the horse is
exceptionally trusting from the get go? What if it takes 60 days because the horse is exceptionally timid? What if it takes 6 months? What if it takes 1 year? Why force this time limit on any horse? Why not train them and get them to where they need to be no matter what the amount of time it takes? Horses can't be mass produced into cookie cutter molds, each one has its own personality and its own complications, just train the horse for quality results and don't put a time limit on how long it takes. If you can get to the horse and use your body language to convey that you are a non-life threatening being he will give you the honor of being the first person to ever touch him. You need to savor that sweet moment, it is the beginning on the very long road to bringing forth a safe and dependable horse. And that moment where trust has been given by the horse, the foundation you will need to teach him everything from halter breaking to accepting a rider has been laid. It is the truth that if you can touch a horse, you can ride it. But it also true that in how you touch him,
will dictate how you must ride him. Your hands are you first extension of that quiet confidence. Your hands are to be sure and steady, comforting but stern. When you raise them high they are threatening but when kept at your sides they are comfortable. They provide the horse sensations she has never experienced. She can feel just a fingertip gently tapping against her skin. She will find comfort in the security your hands can provide as they lead her fearlessly through danger. Your hands are your next most important tool after confidence. They are what you will use to communicate to your horse the most. The is the sole reason that you must make a conscious effort to never let your hands act hastily in a situation. They can be a tool of correction but must not become an object the horse fears. Your hands must be kept under steady control because they are an instrument of control. Imagine if your steering wheel of your car was loose and wobbly, you would be a little afraid of driving a car that had a shaky steering wheel. A horse feels the same, a shaky unsure hand tells
the horse you are not in control. Work on your hands. Practice your touches. Start by trying to have the lightest touch you can to get results from your horse. Try a feather light stroke from your finger tips down her face, notice how this pacifies her. Watch as that gentle touch turns her eyes soft and brings her head into a relaxed state. Imagine all of the relaxed confident feelings inside of your body are flowing out through your fingertips and into her skin down into her muscles. Close your eyes and just spend some time touching your horse with relaxed energy and you will see how you can communicate without words. Focus on that feeling of being relaxed and she will instantly start to be relaxed. Your hands will be teaching her many things. They will be something she is paying particular attention too. I think it is amazing how much we are unaware of that horses are aware of. They see how you hold your hands when you are relaxed, and they see how you hold your hands when you are tense. Every little detail matters, even though at times the horse seems to be paying
attention to nothing at all, she still is picking up on everything happening around her. Make the effort to assure her that your hands are something she can put her full trust in and never use them to abuse her. Once the line has been crossed and a horse has been abused by human hands it takes a lot of effort to show them that those hands can be trusted again.
Chapter 4: Lead Me Through MY Fears
Understanding the timid nature of the

horse is hard for us because to humans size equates strength. A horse is a large, massive
animal therefore in the human mind we tend to see them as something they are not naturally brave. It is much like the analogy of the elephant running away from a tiny little mouse, a horse will flee from anything it finds frightening. If I could break down training I would say training a horse is just simply desensitizing him to a multitude of objects, situations and experiences. Let me explain what I mean by desensitizing, some may already know what this is, others may not. Desensitizing a horse is exposing him to a new object in a controlled way that allows him to naturally overcome his fear of it through repetition. Horses learn through repetition. Repeating something over and over makes it a learned behavior that the horse just accepts as truth. The first thing to realize about desensitization is that it is based on a few factors. The first determining factor is the mind set of the horse, his/hers particular personality. If a horse is a spooky horse you will be doing a lot of desensitizing in their training. They have a high
flight drive. On the other hand you may have a horse who is natural curious and confident and sails through new situations with ease. The first step is determining your horses particular level of flight drive. The next factor to consider is how to calm that particular horses nerves down. This is different for every horse. You may have a flighty horse who needs to be dealt with in a very strong manner to feel comfortable. He must be dominated through the situation to get results. But then again you may have a flighty horse who needs to be soothed through his fear. Soothing through a fear is not bribing through a fear and I will explain more about that a little later. You have to know the horse you are working with to get results that are reached quickly. This will result in less stress placed on the horse and yourself. This would be a good time to talk about the importance of knowing the horse you are working with. It would be unfair to say all horses are the same, they are not. What works for this one, will only terrify that one. So it is important that you
take your time to get to know the horse from the inside out. Is he the low man on the totem pole? Is this one dominant or submissive by nature? Does he respond to any sort of pressure? Does he respect your space instinctively? Here is a little scenario about the importance of taking the time to know your horse. I have heard people describe certain horses as just plain crazy. These horses could have a few different things happening in their head that we misinterpret as being crazy, which is rarely the case. The first conclusion people make is that the horse is somehow super confident. Men will often try to beat this horses' will out of it. The first conclusion is more than likely the wrong one. It is more often the case that the horse is super afraid where gentling would be the more appropriate plan of action. What if you take a horse that is extremely afraid of everything and you try to use excessive force to bring it into submission? You will just make the situation a lot worse. Now you have an extremely scared horse who once only believed that people were threatening and now
he is at a point of knowing people are horrible scary creatures who will hurt him. They may lead through a fearful situation out of fear of the human controlling them, but at the moment something happens they fear more than the human, the horse will flee. He will not have the trust and safety of a true leader to keep him following through the fear. I have heard stories of horses that were just so mean and cantankerous that no man could ever break them. They were cunning and overpowered every attempt of man taming the primitive wild beast within. They are what legends and movies are based on. Usually these horses, the ones that are right at the edge of craziness, will make the best horses. It takes an effort to reach them correctly and lots of time. We had a horse named Bella. Bella was an Arabian. She was brought to our farm after the purchase of a stallion fell through, on trade out for the value of the stallion. She was dropped off in a stall while no one was around. She was infested with lice and had green discharge in her nostrils.
Her feet were severely overgrown and the vet said she had shipping fever. He didn't think she would survive the week, but she did. Bella was a survivor. And by everyone's description she was also crazy. She would rear up in her stall if a human entered. She would kick and buck if you tried to halter her. She would always give you the butt at the fence as if to say...nanny nanny boo boo I am better than you. She had to be tranquilized to have her feet trimmed. She ran off two trainers who said that she was just beyond help. She was terrified of bicycles, lawn mowers, tractors, dogs, four wheelers, weed eaters and everything else that made any noise. But boy could she could run, she looked like a strong wind picked her up and just blew her past you. I loved to watch her run. Still to this day it remains one of the most beautiful sights my eyes have ever had the privilege of seeing. She was just extreme at all she did. Bella lived most of her life in solitary confinement. She had a couple of horses across the road that were pastured to keep her company.
She spent most of her days along her fence trying so hard to connect with those three horses. Gentling Bella started when she was 6 years old and it was a slow process. It started with simple touches while sitting close to her as she ate her grain. Gobs and gobs of grass fed to her by myself and the kids always stealing a touch here and there until she accepted the touches without the grass. Haltering her at first was a chore until finally through patience it became easy. It took nearly 9 months to get to the point where you could stand next to her, brush her completely out, touch under her tail and put a halter and lead rope on her without any fusses. She was slowly introduced to pasture mates, one by one, who at first she reacted very violently to. Chasing them like a stallion would, kicking and squealing. Overtime more were added and she slowly calmed down her response to a new friend. She learned so much over that year, but it was at a slow, steady and compassionate pace that she responded well too. The horse that once ran whenever you entered her pasture now walked right up to you
and rubbed her head against your chest and belly. She went from fearing me to totally accepting me. She trusted me so much I could do most anything with her. She was still flighty and when removed from her familiar settings would at times react fearfully. Raring up was her favorite fear tactic but she always came down away from me. And once she was settled down she was fine. One day she took a fall and we had the vet out and he said she suffered from a genetic disease that Arabians carry called Cerebrum Abiotrophy. It is a degeneration of brain cells in the cerebrum which gives a horse its balance and control over movements. Many things started to make sense; the head bobbing, the trouble walking on a lead sometimes, all of her balance issues. She wasn't crazy at all. She was aware she had a physical problem that made her very vulnerable in surviving. All of those fears she had were all very justifiable. The world through her eyes was off kilter and she reacted to that. It took nearly a full year for her to be totally gentled. After learning of her disorder
plans of breaking her went on hold. She would never be a dependable ride, she could stumble too easily with her balance issues. A decision was made that Bella would live out her years as a pasture ornament and friend. One of my favorite times in my life was playing with her at sunset. I would take off running though the pasture and she would run by me as if I was standing still. She loved to have her butt scratched too, she was almost like a huge dog as she would squat down her rear end really low on which ever side you were scratching. Bella went from being a fear filled basket case that no human could touch, to being a gentle loving animal that provided me with the experience of seeing into the heart and soul of a horse. Bella suffered a fall over a hill and impaled her rear end on a log and was euthanized due to the injuries being too severe. The saddest part of this story is that I had to lead her to her final resting spot. She followed along faithfully by my side even though she had to be in excruciating pain. One of the last things she did in her life was
rub her face against the belly of the beast she had feared for most of her life, as if to say, I understand. I carry a lock of her mane, the mane I had watched so many times blowing in the wind, as a reminder of her spirit. She taught me about what it takes to communicate with a horse. As the leader of the herd you must show confidence and intelligence in your ability to get your follower through a situation that it finds fearful competently. That is your job and you must succeed, for if you fail, you will not be accepted as leader. A horse knows enough to understand that a leader who leads him into danger and allows harm to befall him doesn't possess the skills to have the job as leader. So along the journey of training you will have many obstacles to overcome and you have to lead your horse through them safely. We have already discussed having the confidence to make the animal move, and the steady hands you will need to lead, but you will need to establish a successful record of getting the job done correctly. So day in and day out as you face new situations,
experiences, and objects thought to be frightening by the horse, you must get him/her through them with no true harm befalling your horse physically. He will faithfully do his part by following you but he expects to come through the situation unharmed. If he does he will trust you even more as a leader. If he doesn't he will look at you as unreliable and his trust will have been shaken in your abilities. This is just basic survival skills inbred into him dictating his need for a strong and intelligent leader who makes good decisions about his welfare. Horses as a species wouldn't be as successful as they are without this awareness of good leadership. If a horses sense of following anything more confident than it lead it over a cliff, or into a bears den, the species wouldn't have survived very long at all. They are looking for you to have some intelligence in matters of physical safety. A good example of this is when you are out trail riding and you come to a gravel road. If your horse has been shod and has on his shoes you can
safely proceed. If he is going barefoot that day and you make him go along despite his tiptoeing around the gravel and his feet become bruised you have failed him. The horse knows this is going to hurt his feet, and so should you. If you force him to proceed and you see him hobbling around for a week with stone bruises you should feel bad. You lead him were he got hurt and as the leader you should have known more than him. You let harm come his way through your decision and he will remember that. It will effect his confidence in your abilities. He will not be as trusting as he was before he was harmed. You will yet again have to prove your ability to lead him safely without any harm befalling him physically. This is basic horse sense. If I know more about staying safe, I can't let myself be harmed by following you. When trail riding you will often see a horse without shoes clinging to the grassy, softer sides of the road. He isn't stupid. The second he sees and feels the gravel he knows he needs to get out of it or he will suffer injury to his feet. I have witnessed people forcing their horse to ride it out and stay in the gravel to prove they are the
ultimate in control. This selfish way of thinking does not equal a partnership, it equals a tyranny and it will result in injury to your horse. Sometimes if you just watch him, take the time to truly observe every little detail, you will see his amazing intelligence. Let's go back to the beginning, way back to the very first experience you have with your horse. From the instant you walk into that animals life and assert yourself as leader, the responsibility to keep him safe starts then and there. In human society more is expected from the leader and horse society isn't much different. We expect leadership, and that is an action, not just a title. It will be your responsibility to keep this animal well fed and cared for. You must provide good clean water and the other necessities to keep his mind and body satisfied and healthy. The survival instinct dictates that a leader will lead him to all of these things and you must keep him safe from harm. That is what a horse in it's natural setting is looking for and if you can do that you will be a respected, easily followed leader.
Once you start building the trust in your abilities to keep this animal safe, the repetition of that safety through fearful situations, will allow you a different kind of control over him/her. It will be a deep control. One that will allow you to more quickly and easily control the flight instinct and more dependably move him through his fears. There is a fear factor to all new objects and situations for a horse. We talked about that earlier. It is a form of socialization in a way, taking an animal into a very unnatural environment and getting him to let go of everything that nature provided for him for survival and relax. Everything inside a horse says run the second you feel afraid. If he can't escape his last shot of survival may be to strike out in fear, through a kick, rearing or a charge. To him every situation seems to be a life or death matter when his flight instinct has been engaged by fear. He is operating in a totally different mode at that time. At the moment this is engaged, it doesn't matter how many carrots you brought him yesterday, it only matters how confident he is in
you as a leader. He must trust you will control the situation for him and he will come through it unharmed. A horse that trusts you will stay still in a situation that would normally make him flee. If you are calm, confident, and trustworthy he will follow your lead instead of the instinct of flight. How much trust he has in you is based on his experiences with you, this is the true work in working with horses. You must be aware that all of your actions have consequences, either good or bad. Your judgments must be made clearly and concisely in the best interest of the horse. Safety is the number one thing on a horses mind. When a horse feels safe, he is relaxed, and when he is relaxed he is safer to handle and more apt to be dependable. This flight instinct that gets engaged by a new experience is very powerful. When you have a 1400 pound animal ready to flee at full force your physical might is not going to stop it. You have to be careful in engaging this mechanism. Be constantly aware of it being there, understand that it gets put into motion in an instant.
In a controlled environment like a round pen used for training you can be in control of engaging it, and disabling it through desensitization. That will be your only job in training, introducing something new to the horse and working him through his fear of it. The first object is you yourself. The next object is your hands. Then there is a long list of ropes, halters, blankets, saddles, and all the other tools of the trade we need to ride the horse. But it is a great idea to take the objects from outside the round pen and try to introduce them to him while in a controlled environment. You will encounter many things along the road of horseback riding. There will be dogs, chickens, plastic bags, tarps, culverts, big rocks, old broken down trucks, 4 wheelers, kids with balloons and fire trucks. There will be wild animals, like deer and turkeys, that just seem to pop out from nowhere at the worst possible moments. Some of these things can be brought into the round pen, others can not. As many as you can bring in, please do. Here is a list of things everyone should bring in:
1. Plastic grocery bags. Try the bag alone at first, then place it on the end of a stick. There is something really scary about plastic bags and horses. I am not sure if it is the sound, or the way that it smells, or the way that it moves. If you ever plan on doing parades with your horse desensitize him/her to the bags. Where we live at the streets are lined with little kids holding these bags to collect candy thrown out by the people in the parade. This is a nightmare to a horse who has not been desensitized to plastic bags. 2. Dogs. A dog is a predator animal. A bad dog on a ride that comes bearing teeth to a horse unfamiliar with dogs can be disastrous. My youngest son was almost thrown last summer over a dog while riding a new pony we had just purchased. It will take a special dog to do this desensitization, one that is calm and passive to the horse. The easy way to do it is just put the dog in the round pen with
you at first and work the horse as if the dog isn't even there. Start taking the dog with you on rides too. My dog tags along a lot on rides. 3. Bicycles. I am not sure what is about a bicycle that is so threatening to a horse but it is a fear that many horses have. Start out by just laying the bike down on the ground in the middle of the pen. When things are left just lying down they are less threatening to the horse. She will either ignore it or her curiosity will compel her to smell it and sometimes taste it. After she is comfortable with its presence, do the same thing again, but this time place it on its kickstand erect. After she works through that issue, try riding it around, then lay it down. Work the horse with it in the pen a few times and then have someone ride along with you as you ride in the pen. 4. Things that go vroom. I live in the country and whenever I go riding I encounter at least one person on a 4 wheeler, dirt bike, or some other
recreational vehicle. They are louder and more aggressive to a horse than a car. And unfortunately not all people are considerate when encountering someone on horseback. Walk them through it like the bicycle. First park it in the center of the pen and just walk away. You can even try sitting on it and showing her it doesn't harm you. Once she is comfortable with its presence try starting it up but be cautious here. The noise may drive her berserk at first. Be ready to turn it off if she looks like she will harm herself in fear or like she will attack the 4 wheeler as last resort. Do this over and over until you see her calm down. It is also best if you place the 4 wheeler in the pen before putting the horse in there with it. 5. Lawnmowers & weed-eaters. I am placing these two together but they will need to be worked out separately. They are loud and throw clippings around. They can be very frightening to a horse. They also release a funny smell through their
gasoline that the horse finds offensive. Same thing as the others, take baby steps in introducing them. First they are just there, let them soak up the smells and get comfortable with the sight. Then start them up and see what happens. After you get them comfortable in the pen, start riding them in the yard while the grass is being mowed. 6. Cars & Trucks. This one can't really be done in the round pen because of the issue of the size of a car. This is something you need a partner to help with. Walk your horse around parked cars. Let them see there is no danger. Start a car up and let it idol and walk your horse around it. When this step is comfortable to the horse get in the saddle and ride around the car while it idols. Next have a buddy move the car a little while you sit on the horse. Feel her body for any flinching. Talk to her in a soothing voice. Follow behind the car down the driveway a few times before taking it to the street level. There is a
special note here on making a horse traffic safe. Even a horse that has been ridden successfully in and around traffic can be spooked by automobiles that are larger than normal, emit a different type of smell, or make a different kind of noise than what they have been exposed too. I had a horse who was around traffic for most of its riding life but the neighbors truck bed made a squeaky sound when he went down a bumpy road that terrified that horse. Just ALWAYS be alert in traffic because this is a very dangerous situation for you, the horse, and the automobile. 7. Cows, goats and chickens can all strike fear into a horses heart, so if at all possible take the time to expose your horse to as many animals as you can. Sometimes you can borrow them from friends just to use for a few hours in training. If a cow isn't around take your horse to where there are cows. I know it sounds silly, but a lot of horses find cows to be something fearful, in the movies they go hand in hand, but
pleasure horses not used in ranch work may have little understanding of what a cow is. 8. Flags and things that fly. Things that flap in the wind can cause a horse to bolt. Run through everything that you can find that flaps or flies. Flags, bedsheets on the line, kites, and helium filled balloons. Tarps are also a huge concern to horses and should be worked with from the ground up. A horse will need to be able to walk across a tarp on the ground, move past one covering something like a car or a woodpile and stand still while one is flapped around it. Tarps are everywhere and they are a scary object to a lot of horses. 9. Balls. Things that roll or bounce or that can fly through the air like balls or regular balloons. I found this out the hard way in the last parade I rode in. My horse is still working on her training, but I consider her pretty steadfast in most situations. It was a 4th of July parade and someone had
handed out red, white and blue balloons to the children in the crowd. Not the helium filled type, just blown up balloons. One of the kids must have lost their balloon as it was rolling and floating across the ground out into the street we were riding on. My horse didn't blow up but she was fixated on the balloon to the point of sidestepping into another horse and rider, if she wasn't so steadfast it could have ended in her bolting through a group of children to flee the scary red balloon and that could have been deadly. 10. Mailboxes and signs. Mailboxes that are decorative or different from the standard mailbox can throw a horse into a state of nervousness, sometimes it can help to expose your horse to mailboxes and signs while on a walk. Signs seem to be more of a problem than mailboxes. Horses seem more afraid of things that are up higher and are of weird shapes and colors. Stop signs and yield signs have been known to spook horses.
11. Garbage cans. This one should been done using a dirty garbage can. Our garbage stinks, it smells of decay and a horse has learned to stay away from anything that smells of decay. I think this comes from the fact that as a prey animal, the smell of decay signals of death. Where there is a dead animal, there is usually a predator. It is back to that primitive instinct driven beast that will avoid death and injury at all cost. Take your old garbage can, if it has bags of garbage in it even better and put it in the pen. DO NOT LEAVE IT UNATTENDED THOUGH. Some horses may try to eat the plastic bag or get into stuff in the garbage that could harm them after they feel comfortable. After smelling something, tasting is next on the list to understanding it completely.
That should get you started on desensitization of the basic problems a rider will encounter while riding. There are also pot holes, mud puddles, and drain grates. Look down, look
up, and look around always. There are so many things to be aware of. You need to truly think like the horse be looking everywhere anticipating ANYTHING that may set off the flight instinct. Be aware and see any problems BEFORE your horse does. You can start talking her through it and calming her down before she goes into alert mode. This is not to say you enter the saddle a nervous wreck worried about every leaf dropping from the tree. No, you need to be confident for your horse. You need to be confident that even if something does happen, you can make it through it just fine. If you don't have that confidence, and trust me if you figure that out when your horse is blowing up and rearing all over the place, you shouldn't go out riding alone. Riding a horse can be dangerous IT IS NOT LIKE IN THE MOVIES. Horses are flighty, easily excitable animals at times. Even gentle well mannered horses can be set off in an instant. NEVER put your wants above your safety, this is disaster waiting to happen. If you feel even the slightest apprehension about doing something alone on a
horse, one word, DON'T. I do not want you to fear your horse, this will only end in a disaster. I want you to have a healthy respect for his size and power. A horse for the most part is a docile, passive animal. When you take the time to learn what he is saying through body language you can co-exist with him quiet enjoyably. There is the ever present danger of being harmed by a horse if you act in haste or overestimate your own abilities. Horsemanship is all about being honest. You need to be really honest about your own abilities. You need to honestly evaluate your own skills and know your strengths and weaknesses. Understand that your horse knows them very well. Your horse can feel your heart beating in your chest through your legs when you are mounted on his back, that is how sensitive his senses are. He can feel it speed up when you are anxious about a situation. He can hear how you are breathing. He can feel the tension in your muscles when you are afraid. All of these details he is processing for survival. Lets say you have a fear of riding down a certain steep hill. The second you start to tense up
and feel afraid, so will your horse. He is saying inside something is the matter with this hill. My rider is afraid of this hill and you will notice his reluctance to go down it without your full confidence. Where a more confident rider can ride up to the hill on the same horse and go right over the edge without any resistance from the animal. The more relaxed and confident rider is telling the horse there is nothing to be afraid of lets go and the horse will follow suit easily. That is why when people send a horse off to a trainer to be worked with it rarely ends in a result that is pleasing to the owner completely. A trainer has had years of experience to build up a certain confidence with horses in general. His knowledge far surpasses that of the average horse owner. He works with horses every day and has had the bumps, bruises and broken bones to prove it. He also has learned to speak the language hopefully a little more fluently than the average Joe who has a few horses he wants to ride for pleasure. So when Joe sends his horse off to the trainer, the trainer gets the horse and might not
even get the experience of seeing the horse act out the owners problem just because the trainer has more confidence in dealing with the animal. The horse may feel safe when being lead by the trainer and never feel the need to act out of fear. Lets say your horse gives you a fit when loading into the trailer. This is a scary experience for the novice horseman/horsewoman. Why? Because someone who doesn't understand horses and already has a preconceived notion that trailer loading is a difficult situation will approach this with that mindset and bring an anxious energy into the environment. Some people are also afraid of being in such tight quarters with an animal as large as a horse. They have a fear of being crushed along the inside of the trailer or kicked or something else. So they bring a lot of nervous energy to the whole situation from the get go. They don't feel comfortable so the horse doesn't feel comfortable. So they manage to get a friend who will help them get this beast up in the trailer and after much commotion they get him in and lock the trailer door and off to the trainer he is sent.
The trainer unloads the horse and puts him in a stall and listens to the owner as she describes what a harrowing experience it was to get this beast onto the trailer and he assures her he will do everything possible to retrain this horse into loading without any problems in the future. They shake hands and part ways. The next day the trainer goes out, pulls out the horse, walks him up to his horse trailer, swings open the door and walks the horse right up in the trailer. The horse goes in just fine, not one ounce of resistance at all. He does this same activity for days to come and finds no problem with the horse loading at all. He calls up the owner explains that the horse is loading just fine and he wants her to come out and see for herself. She is elated to here this and comes out the very next day. The trainer goes out to the barn walks the horse up to the trailer and in it goes without flinching. She is so excited. The trainer explains that the horse is such a good loader that even she can do it now. He backs the horse out and hands her the lead and she takes the horse right up in
the trailer. She is amazed at this trainers ability to cure this problem so quickly and she thanks him again and again as she writes the check for his services. She gets the horse home, unloads it without problem, and puts it back in the barn. A week goes by and she needs to take the horse down to the vet for his vaccinations. She goes out to the barn and gets her horse and as she walks up to the trailer. She starts to feel nervous without the professional trainer there to help her. She opens up the door and looks inside. She starts to feel anxious about being alone with this animal up in that tight space. She sucks it up a bit and musters all she has and pulls on the lead rope and the horse won't budge. He say huh uh lady, I feel that nervousness, I am not moving. So what happened? Nothing happened. The horse didn't learn anything new from the trainer and the lady probably paid several hundred dollars to get back the same exact horse she sent there. It isn't the horse that needs to be trained, it's you. Without the strong confident presence of the trainer there, she didn't feel
relaxed and confident in leading her own horse into that space. Without that feeling in the atmosphere , not only from the owner being more relaxed but also the trainer directing the horse through his confident body language, the horse says no I do not feel comfortable with this at all. A horse learns through repetition and so do human beings. As your horse is learning to trust you through coming through fearful situations successfully, you are learning to trust him/her too. It can take a very long time to build up that confidence to be able to do anything you want to with a horse. A professional trainer has had several thousands of experiences to get it. You as an average horse owner are lucky to get a few hours a week. That is why time is so valuable when spent getting to know the ins and the outs of your animal. All of the training exercises that you do are not only for the horse, you are in training too. Everything you do with your horse helps develop the horse and yourself. It is a very satisfying feeling to work and learn alongside this great animal. It is a series of desensitization
against all things fearful, for the horse and for you. Let me walk you through the basics of what desensitization means and what to expect in the way of results. You will introduce something new to your horse and for explanation purposes lets use a plastic grocery bag as the object. Whenever you use these steps in the future just replace the plastic grocery bag with whatever object you are trying to desensitize your horse with. You enter into the horses space carrying the object out in front. Be honest with your animal, don't hide it behind your back and then pop it out in their face at last moment. At first just carry it like you would anything, don't make a big deal out of it, just carry it. Don't move slow and in a stalking manner, again this just raises the horses suspicions that you are doing a sneak attack. Just act normal, feel confident and don't make a big deal out of it. If the horse takes off and tries to run away let him, but DO NOT chase him. When a horse is running in fear his flight instinct has kicked in.
Your job is to get him to be unafraid and that will stop the running away. Attack the fear, not the flight. If you take off chasing him down he will only have his beliefs confirmed that the bag is out to get him. In fact walking in the opposite direction will let him know it is not chasing him. Walk and stay calm. Some horses are like cats though, they are curious as all get out. They will muster up enough courage to come and check it out, the curiosity to understand this new thing will drive them past their fears, curiosity is a sign of intelligence. You need to just stay relaxed, be aware of your body, don't tense up in anticipation of the horse fleeing you. Treat the new object just like you would anything else that the horse is already comfortable with. If the horse is comfortable with the halter, imagine you are carrying a halter in your hand. Stay relaxed in every situation. Stay quietly confident in every situation. I know it is a lot to be aware of but over time it becomes like second nature. You will assume a certain attitude and stance when dealing with your horses.
Do NOT push it on the horse unless you feel this horse can handle you advancing him at a faster pace. Certain horses you can take hold of by the halter and work them through something a little faster, some horses you can't. Some horses will submit to working at a faster pace with just a little resistance and some will blow up and be uncontrollable. Work with your particular horse, not against it. This is where judgment and understanding comes in. You will need to make educated judgments based on your understanding of this particular animal. I like to move onto touching the animal on the body and neck BEFORE I stick the object anywhere near their head. By soothingly stroking and petting the horse with an object he will start to relax. Some horses who are curious will want to smell the object first, that is OK too. If they make the first move go ahead and let them. It is a good sign that this desensitization of this particular object is going to go smoothly and quickly. If they don't offer to smell it, try the rubbing of the body first. Wait till you see a physical sign of relaxation,
a heavy sigh, the head dropping, the eyes relaxing to proceed further. Look at your horses body, see what it is saying. If it is saying, OK this isn't that bad, then move to the horses face. Offer to let him smell it then gently touch his face all around. If its something that makes noise like the crinkling sound of the plastic bag, crinkle it in your hands. Do this whole process till the horse is as comfortable with this new object as he is with old objects he has already been desensitized too. You do this over and over with everything you can think of that the horse will encounter in his new unnatural world that man has made. The basic thing to learn here is that desensitizing a horse to various situations and objects will produce an unnatural confidence in a normally fearful animal. The best thing about a horse is that once something is repeated a few times without any ill effects to him physically, he just moves on, totally ignoring it as a fearful stimulus any longer. He doesn't today accept the plastic bag, and tomorrow see it and throw you off UNLESS he has a bad experience later on that proves to be
harmful to him by the object. So to the best of your ability be a strong and successful leader by keeping your horse safe. Double check everything that could harm him and show him that you can competently lead him through his life without allowing injury to inflict him because of your poor judgments. Think about it for a second, no one really wants to harm their horses intentionally. It is the little mistakes we make in our care of them that can cost them severely. Imagine if you failed to replace the boards in your trailer after noting that they had a few soft rot spots and your horses leg went through it while loading, or worse while driving down the highway. What if you put off fixing that broken fence post and your horse impaled himself on it while you were sleeping? What if you put off removing that sharp old rusted machinery from the barn and your horse cut its leg so badly he had to be euthanized? Just like when you have a baby crawling around your house, everything low must be locked or put up. They depend on you to provide them
with a safe environment that they can live in without hurting themselves. The baby who gets under the sink and gets into a toxic cleaning product is far more tragic than the horse that gets into the unlocked grain room and gorges itself into a severe state of colic, but none the less it is still tragic. The worst part of tragedy when it happens is that it usually always avoidable with a little common sense and a little work.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Both Sides Are Equally Important When doing ANY work with a horse be it gentling, desensitizing, or training repeat it on both the left and right sides of the horse. A horse sees differently and processes information differently than humans. You must always repeat the behavior on both sides for them to fully understand what you are trying to teach.. Try leading, mounting, and dismounting from the right side just as often as from the left.
Chapter 5 : Up, Down, Back, Forward, Side to

Side
I want you to open your mind for a minute

and understand something about horses. Horses already know how to move before we come into
their lives. A horse can move forward at a walk, trot & lope all by itself. It can go backwards, it can go up, and it can go down all by itself. We are not teaching them how to move when we are training, we are teaching them cues that signal we want them to move in a certain way. When we approach this task we need to learn how to communicate clearly with our horse. I liken it to a human being taking directions from another human being. It is much easier to accept direction from a human who speaks in a clear concise voice. If the person giving you directions is mumbling his words and we can't really hear him, we will become confused. Horses are unique in the fact that they learn many more details about a command than just the command. They pay close attention to every detail and they learn to anticipate what is going to happen by little things that happen BEFORE an actual event. Every morning around 9:00 A.M I go out to grain my horses. They greet me the second I walk out my back door with the low, guttural
neighs that say hey good morning it's breakfast time. No matter where they were at in the pasture, they know to be somewhere near their feeding spots at 9:00 in the morning. How do they know it is time to be fed? They hear the sound of the kids getting ready for school. They hear the sound of the kitchen door as it creaks open, and they hear the slamming of the screen door as I come out to get my boots. So long before I get there they know I am coming. Training is the same way. We know the industry standards of a kick or a squeeze to make them move, pull back and say whoa for a stop, pull right to go right, pull left to go left. Move your hips back in the seat and pull to go back. But your horse is so much more capable than this. Traditional riding methods do work and some say if it ain't broke don't fix it. I say if you can improve on it, then do. So you have a horse who has been broke and he goes faithfully in whatever direction you want with ease only giving you a stubborn bone every once in awhile. Why not try to spice it up a
bit. Teach an old horse new tricks so to speak. Horses just like humans can get bored easily. We need mental stimulation to stay happy and so does a horse. A horse likes to learn. In fact he is designed to learn quickly, he needs to associate stimulation with responses to survive. He is a very natural learner. We need to make sure his mind is getting lots of exercise just like we make sure his body is. I wanted to include some bonding exercises you can try to develop your communication skills and teach you just how subtle you can be and still get results. We use three main cues for conveying our commands to a horse; verbal, physical, and focal cues. Lets talk about how each one of these methods can be fined tuned to get better results with less energy. How we can speak clearly in all three methods so the horse gets it the first time around.
Verbal Communication
When you speak to your horse it is more important the tone that you speak in than the words coming out of your mouth. Horses do not speak English. English is a human language. It is the sound rather than the actual word that matters most. Horses hear high pitched sounds better than low pitched sounds. In fact if you speak too softly your voice may be drowned out by all the background noise around you. A high pitched whistle is more effective than a low pitched whoa. Simple sounds work best. One syllable words are better than longer more complex words. And remember if you teach your horse something out of the ordinary, other than the go whoa commands, you will need to teach it to the new owner if you should ever have to sell your horse so try to make it sensible. You wouldn't teach your horse to go forward on a whoa command or to stand perfectly still and stop on a go command. They need to feel natural and be something you can remember. Your verbal commands will also need to convey the amount of energy you
wish it completed with. That is where tone comes in but try to always keep the tone the same when using the command. Whoa and Slow sound a lot alike so try giving each word a different tone. Next time you are riding try doing a whistle for the trot. Don't do anything but whistle, then squeeze to make her go faster. Soon you will find the squeeze is not necessary, as soon as she hears the whistle (keep it as uniform as possible) she will move into a trot. Once you try this concept you can be as creative as you like.
Physical Communication
We have talked a lot about how your body language speaks louder to a horse above all else. This is true even when in the saddle. My horse will pick up pace the second she feels me shift my weight forward a little bit into a trot. She knows just by this little adjustment exactly what I want her to do. If you have ever ridden a well trained horse you won't have to squeeze it to make it go, if you just slightly move your legs out as if to start to squeeze he will start moving. This is all like the
lead mare who keeps everyone away with the anticipation of a kick if she slightly has her rear leg cocked off the ground. Horses are paying attention to every little detail. They notice what happens directly before something else happens. We can see this clearly in the bad habits they pick up along the road of life. Take for instance the horse that paws at the ground before feeding time. They will paw and paw and paw, increasing intensity as the food gets closer and closer, until they get what they want - the food. Now it is an annoying habit but it is extremely hard to break this one because the horse has a strong connection in its head between the pawing and the food. It thinks it is being fed because it paws the ground. It would entail many many empty buckets of food to instill that the response of food is not because of the action of pawing. Horses are also trained through the absence of physical communication in the release of pressure. You cannot pull a horse to make it move, in fact the harder you pull, the more force against your pulling will be applied by the horse.
If you want him to move you need to signal to him you want him to move and when he even starts to lean into moving you release all pressure against him. The release of pressure says to the horse he is responding correctly. The same time rule for correction applies here too. You need to be immediate in the release of pressure, just as you need to be immediate in the correction of bad behavior. You have less than a couple of seconds to give them the reward of pressure release. To put physical communication into play try raising your right arm before you turn the horse right with the reigns, much like a bicyclist would when making a turn. Raise your arm first then turn the horse with the reigns. Before long you will see that if you raise your right arm, the horse will turn right without the reign. This is just another creative example to teach you how to develop communication outside the box.
Focal Communication
If you study your horses you will find that they can follow the attention path of their leader quite well. It is important to know when a leader
is alerted and be aware of what they have been alerted too. A horse will do the same for his human partner. What you are focusing on will be of interest to him too. When you are in the saddle all you must do is direct your belly button in the direction you want him to go. This is such a simple rule of thumb, but it is so effective. Point your belly button straight forward and you will go straight. And you will notice that before you turn your horse through the use of reigns your body naturally twists to point your belly button in the direction you want to go. It is simple yet effective. Focal communication needs focus. You need to be a good strong focused leader. Imagine your eyes are like your belly button, wherever they point that is the direction you are heading. In your mind you need to have a plan and turn it into action. Your head can't be swimming with all kinds of thoughts when you interact with your horse. Like I said earlier, every single time you are in their presence you are training a horse in some way, shape or form. So if you are out there thinking about what
you want to make for dinner, and did you wash your sons practice pants for football, and do you need to get an oil change in your car, while you are trying to get your horse to stop bucking on the canter command, you will be less that productive. This can be so hard to do because we live such busy lives, but after you learn to shut everything else off, you will look forward to your time spent with your horse even more. It will give you an escape from all of the other things that often wear us down. It is rather relaxing in fact, if you enjoy working with horses, to concentrate solely on them for an hour or so. And then you find that even the work part of horses becomes enjoyable. I have a saying that I go over in my own head to remind me of how I need to focus on the tasks at hand for that day with that horse mentally I just say leave it at the gate. That means that once I enter into the world of my horses everything else gets left back at the gate. Trust me its all there when you return. Focus is one of the best skills you will develop and as you develop it along with your
horse you will be amazed at just how in tune to you your horse will become. Sometimes you will think he is reading your mind. Next time you are leading your horse just focus on where you want her to go while standing at her shoulder. Focus on something off to your left like a fence post, or a tree, focus with all of your attention. Look at that object and focus, concentrate, watch how the horse will instinctively turn to the left when you finally move. An interesting note about focal communication is that it can also be used in reverse. A horse that is in the follower position will ignore things that it's leader also ignores. So if something scary is on the horizon and you make an effort to not focus any attention on it, the horse will also pay no attention to it. Of the three types of communication I feel physical and focal communication are used the most. Verbal communication does not really exist in the horse world. They do call out to each other especially if they feel they have some how been left out of a herd activity. And yes they whinny
and neigh when they see you coming with food, or see an old or new friend. But they don't really communicate all day long chatting up a storm in the pasture. For the most part they are pretty quiet and they rely on the non-verbal communication methods to do their talking. Therefore it makes sense that when in Rome, do as the Roman's do and you will find them reacting to you much more efficiently. Remember they already know how to do exactly everything you could ask them to do. It is learning how to communicate what you want them to do and then leading them confidently through it. If you lead and speak in a way they understand, they will listen and obey.
Chapter 6: Ground Control
I personally enjoy the time spent on the

ground as much as I do in the saddle. I feel a closeness sometimes from the ground I do not feel in the saddle. If something happened to me tomorrow that I could never ride again, I would still own horses just because I enjoy being in their
presence so greatly because of ground work. In the horse world riding gets all the glory and ground control gets the backseat. It is of the two, the more important in turning out a well mannered and balanced horse. It is what makes getting in the saddle even possible and it connects you and your horse in a completely different way. Call me crazy but I love spending time on the ground working with my horses. When you are working a horse on the ground you don't share his attention with anything else. When you are in the saddle he is busy taking in information from around him as you move through new environments. His attention is split. Working on the ground demands he pay full attention to you. There are many exercises one can use on the ground to establish leadership and supply the horse with some needed exercise. The one that most people think of when talking about ground work is lunging. Now lunging is much more fun for the trainer than the horse. It has its place but it cannot be the only source of ground work you do.
Recent research says that a horse is not naturally built to run in such a tight circle with his weight leaned in at an angle on the feet as lunging forces him to do. These studies have found that it may do more harm than good. What lunging does accomplish is your ability to send down the line the fact that you want the horse to move forward while paying attention to you. In a way lunging lets you control the flight instinct for the first time. The horse could really easily just take off running in a straight line and rip all of the lunge rope right out of your hands if he didn't submit his head to you and obey your command for him to move around you. Lunging also teaches you how to control the pressure you are sending him. You learn how to increase pressure with just a stare at his shoulder. You learn that staying slightly to the rear of the shoulder will drive him/her forward. You learn that a relaxed lunge whip decreases the force and slows the horse and a raised whip increases the horses speed and forces it to move faster. You learn all kinds of focal power as does
the horse. When a horse has been worked on the lunge making contact with the whip is rarely necessary. He anticipates what will happen by just raising or lowering it. But isn't it funny that you have 1400 pounds of pure power tied to the end of a rope and you can make it move faster or slower with only your eyes. I want you to understand just how perceptive a horse can be. If you can move all of this weight into a circle using this line, what else can you do? Well use your imagination and come up with new ways to move your horse, it really isn't that hard. My favorite is the snaking method of snaking the rope and making him move backwards. This feels fun for me. I also like to imagine myself as a brick wall coming at the horse. I imagine that I am as heavy and strong as a brick wall and when I come at him from the shoulder he must turn out of my way. I of course repeat it from both sides. You start to understand using your mind to move mountains. This will ultimately filter out into your outside life. Working with horses gives you a
clearer more focused outlook. You start to feel more powerful and more self aware. You may talk a little less and listen a little more. Your senses become more fine tuned. You are more confident. It is a life changing feeling and it is easy to see why the horse makes such a great therapeutic animal, used in work with handicapped children to abused women. The horse has an ability to effect you, train you if you will, to be a more powerful person inwardly and outwardly. Ground control is one of the best ways to develop your equine relationship. Remember it is a two way street, the horse is learning, but so are you. Through repetition of your interactions you will both be learning what to expect from each other. Ground exercises are also the best way to learn about space. We talked about the 2 foot bubble earlier and how important it is to enforce and reinforce that space. People have a really good perception of personal space. Take for instance your home. You know where your property line is and you will protect it from being invaded by your neighbor. We even build
expensive fences to protect and define our properties boundaries. We often feel uncomfortable when we go into someone elses' space. You wouldn't go over into your neighbors yard without permission and you wouldn't want them in your yard without your permission. When we go out to eat we sit at a table with our families. It would be socially unacceptable for a complete stranger to come over pull up a chair and start eating our food. We have whole legal agencies dedicated to protecting our space. In human society if someone invades our space without permission it is a punishable crime. Law enforcement officers must attain a search warrant to come into our space. We have legal rights to protect our space. In the city building you can find book upon book of huge maps, drawing up what space belongs to who. We are very conscious of space and when we invite someone into our space it is a sign of friendship. We invite people into our homes. We invite them to sit at our tables. In fact sharing space with someone is a sign of affection and
friendship to a human being. Unfortunately we try to repeat this affection with our animals and expect them to show us the same sort of respect other humans show us for sharing space. It doesn't work that way with animals. It is the same problem you see with canines that are allowed to sleep in our beds. This causes them to be confused as to where the boundaries are in the relationship. For animals sharing of space means you are more submissive than they are and they react in a way that is totally natural to them, they take over. A dog that is allowed to sleep in the master's bed will decide he is now the boss. The same as a horse that is allowed to crowd in on you decides you need to follow him, not the other way around. When we get to work on the ground, maintaining that personal space is rule number one. Imagine a circle about two feet in diameter floating on the ground around you. Do not let your horse come into this space. It is a pet peeve of mine when a horse crowds me. Some people love it because they are
thinking the horse is showing the human affectionate act of wanting to be close to them. I know it is far from affection. I hate walking a horse that is constantly crowding me. I use my elbow as a guide. If I stick my elbow out to the side and it runs into the horse, it is too close. I then bump him with the elbow till he backs off. I have had my toes smashed too many times by a crowding horse. I would rather he get bumped, than my toes get smashed. You will often notice that a horse that is crowding you will follow up the crowding with dragging you along. Well why not? He feels like he is now the leader, you need to follow him. If you heed anything I say, this one bit of information will make everything you do on the ground easier and safer. Keep your space sacred. If you respect your space, so will the horse. Through ground control you will be able to do something that is often overlooked. You will be working on the gentling aspect of horse training. Too often when a horse becomes tame enough to be haltered, the gentling stops and the training begins. Gentling a horse means that a
horse becomes comfortable with having every part of its body touched and doesn't offer an adverse reaction to the touch. A gentled horse can be touched under the tail head. A gentled horse can have your finger stuck down in it's ear, up its nostril, and in its mouth. It will tolerate just about anything you will do to it. Gentling a horse sometimes stops when the horse can be successfully haltered because training it's useable skills starts. There are many horses who are broke to ride that have not fully been gentled. Because of this you have lots of problems down the road when handling the horse. Gentling a horse to the human touch can help not only you but also your farrier, vet, and anyone else who makes a living out of caring for horses and their health. Gentling a horse can be a slow process or it can be a speedy one depending on the personality of the horse. But no matter how long it takes, you must do it. Once you have reached a level that allows you to touch even the horses most sensitive parts (under the tail head, the nose, ears, teats, mouth) you will find the horse becomes a much calmer animal during
human interaction. I am including this in the ground work section because it goes hand in hand with what we are establishing on the ground through the use of halters, cavessons, and ropes trust & control. You start gentling a horse by touching him in a way that is firm yet comfortable. Just like a human, horses don't like to be man handled. Firm, steady hands are more comforting to a horse than soft, anxious hands. Use your hands to explore the horse looking always for signs of agitation. Start at the shoulder area going with the hair, stroke your horses torso and neck, in a soothing voice tell her good girl as she stands relaxed. Watch her ears and her tail for any agitation brought on by a certain area being touched. Pinning of the ears or a twitching of the tail is her warning that she doesn't like being touched there and is the alert that she could kick or bite so be aware. If you see this agitation brewing tell her in a firm tone knock it off or quit it or correct her with a tap to tell her your displeased but continue to touch the area and tell
her good girl if she accepts it. Use caution and judgment Correct any negative behavior associated with touching any area but do not give up just because she is agitated. Go right back to petting her there. A gentle but firm, persistant approach is necessary. I had a 12 year old Leopard Appaloosa who was totally broke but had never been gentled. He could not stand being touched and grooming him was a nightmare. You had to tie him as he would try and bite you and even with his head tied he would try to cow kick you. I would walk up to him while he was eating and he always pinned his ears flat. I often pet my horses while they are eating, just as if to say hi. Its just a little pat on the head or neck. Well he would have none of that and I noticed his right side was worse off then his left. I would yell at him when I saw the ears back and continue to pet him with firm hands. He got over some of his issues but continued to be a fierce biter, more so towards other people than me . My daughter became rather attached to
him and tried to befriend him. On one instance he came after her while she was playing near the fence and tried to bite her in the face. I sold him shortly afterward because no horse is worth my daughters safety. Everything else was fine with the horse. He was great looking, in good health, and a nice ride. But he was never gentled to a point of safe handling. He serves as an example of why we must take care to turn out a well mannered and balanced animal, because some bad habits, can be very dangerous. Maybe he could have been retrained but I just didn't feel the risk was worth it. My children will always come first. Gentling is also important because it is a way in which we can see that something may be wrong physically with a horse. If they all of a sudden show agitation to being handled in a certain area, that they never reacted to before, chances are something is painful in that spot. If all of a sudden a touch to a horses flank area or belly results in a cow kick then your horse may be getting ready to colic. If you run your hands down her legs and all of a sudden your
mare jerks her leg away, maybe she has some pain in that leg. Being able to touch her body will help you understand when something physical is askew or starting to go wrong. Start out with gentling your horse completely and do little refresher lessons here and there. The more you touch her body, the more relaxed she will become with it. Ground control exercises start out with the act of haltering a horse. Haltering a horse allows us to have control of it's head. The horse understands the halter so well that even a horse who would normally put up a fuss without the halter on will immediately act submissive the moment it goes on. Once you have the head, the horses body will follow. Haltering a horse should be easy and smooth. If your horse runs away from you when he sees you coming with halter and lead rope, don't be discouraged. This bad behavior is fairly common but it does need to be dealt with. You need to deal with it by being persistent. Chances are that somewhere in this horses past he learned he could stay with his herd
if he just wore down the person who was coming for him with the halter. In this case he learned that he was rewarded with the release of the humans pressure. The human gave up, pressure is released, he can go back to grazing. The human beings presence should not result in pressure so much so the horse wants to flee, if the horse has been successfully desensitized to humans. The horse should not see being haltered as a frightful experience. The horse that flees at being caught is afraid of either the human or the halter. To determine which, simply walk into the pasture without the halter. Does the horse still flee? If so he needs further gentling and desensitization work done towards humans. If he stands fine and doesn't flee it is the halter. And somewhere down the road the halter has either not been worked with enough, lead him into a bad experience that he doesn't want to repeat, or has caused him physical pain itself by improper use. Sometimes it is not the wearing of the halter that has produced the fear, but the way the animal is handled while having it put on. Maybe this horse needs more gentling to the ears or the
face. Like I said before, gentling a horse will allow you to reap untold advantages in the future. Maybe in the past someone was really rough while putting it on and it caused the horse pain. Maybe they practiced the unsafe habit of leaving the halter on and it rubbed the horse till there was a sore. Or maybe the horse was beaten with a halter out of frustration from someone who just couldn't stand the horses fussing about over it. Who knows, but it could be any of these reasons. It is rarely the reason most people think of first, the horse is lazy and doesn't want to work. A horse will work until it drops over dead. Sure they prefer their idle time of grazing but they don't flee from work if work is presented correctly from the start. In a way you must even desensitize a horse to work. If a horse is handled regularly from the start and is asked to complete tasks, work becomes just another part of life. If a horse is left for years to become set in its ways, then work may pose a problem. But it is a problem easily fixed by introducing work as a way of life. You must desensitize them to working with humans on a regular basis. Training in a way
is just the series of desensitizing a horse to work. I have also seen a horse that is hard to catch be the lowest member of the herd. In a herd the low man always flees the more confident members. Their first response is to move out of the way, even if it is a human rather than a horse, coming towards them. Be diligent, be determined, and don't give up on the hard to catch horse. But don't chase it around either. Chasing a horse is never a good idea with the exception of working them in the round pen and then it isn't really chasing. One way to outsmart him is to interact with the other members of the herd first. If you walk out into the field with the halter in plain sight, (never try to hide it behind your back) and start paying attention to the other animals in a pleasurable way, he will want to come to you. He may be hesitant but he is watching the other horses and seeing how they react. He may not come the very first time, you may have to repeat it a few times. He will start to relax around you because the other herd members do. This is his natural instincts kicking in.
Always reach out and pet first. Make contact with him first by touch not treat. Keep your hand steady and confident. When he is standing there relaxed slip a lead rope across his neck and hold him with just that. Pet him and relax him and then try haltering him. When the halter is on and he is relaxed then give him his share. And go on about your business like nothing was ever wrong. Do this a couple of times and then try it again without the help of the herd. Be confident, walk right up to him. Never sneak around. Try to look at him without making to much eye contact. A shy horse sees this as too much pressure, it will make him move. If he starts to move, just release pressure by standing still and looking at the ground or turning away. If you approach from the rear you will also have more of a chance of making him flee. Try to direct your approach from the front slightly off to the side. Put the lead rope over his neck, give him a little rub down and halter him. After a few sessions of nothing bad happening to him, he will start to accept this
activity as routine. You can reward this good behavior with a treat but only after he successfully complies. Don't hold out a carrot and grab him when he comes for it. This is bribery, and bribery only gets you so far. You want to be able to complete any task without the use of treats. You won't always have them on hand. The treat comes afterward and try to make this a surprise treat. Sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't. Now lets talk about halters because they are not all the same. I prefer a rope halter with knots for pressure. This halter will give you better control and it can be used for correction the horse understands promptly. A quick jerk down provides pressure to the sensitive area of the horses nose/face and he understands it as a correction. Flat nylon halters do nothing. Rope halters are inexpensive and are invaluable. If you have a horse that likes to back up and throw its head when you want it tied, this halter will solve that. Every time the horse throws itself backwards the knots provide a little pain and pressure. The horse learns quickly that it is hurting only itself by doing this behavior.
Get a rope halter and just try it, once you do you will never own a nylon halter for training. With your halter on, you will snap on a lead rope and set off on the many tasks of working a horse from the ground. I want you to learn that from the ground you are teaching the horse to yield to pressure. Pressure comes in two forms, from physical applied pressure, and the anticipation of physical applied pressure. A horse will move out of my way if I walk directly towards his shoulder with confidence even if I never make contact with him if he has successfully been trained. That is because he anticipates the pressure and he is moving away from it, releasing himself from it. I want to teach you more about the attitude and the mindset you need to have while performing these fundamental tasks. It is so simple it is too simple for a human to accept. Working a horse on the ground is teaching him to communicate with you. You are holding a conversation through moving your bodies. The animal who is moving his feet the most is the
more submissive of the two. The leader is applying the pressure, the submissive is moving away from the pressure, and the leader is releasing the pressure. That is the easiest way to assess who is control in your equine relationship. If you are constantly moving out of the way of your horse, he is in control. If when you enter the pasture with a feed bucket you have to run away to dump it before being trampled, well your horse has successfully just controlled you. If when you have him on the lead he is jerking you across the road to get at some grass, he has moved you in the way he wanted you too. He is leading, you are following. This is why lunging works to establish control. You stay stationary in the center and apply pressure to move the horse. His feet are constantly moving, where as you are barely moving around in the same spot. People don't seem to get the fact that a horse who gets away with even the slightest infraction will believe he is now in control. Every little detail of his training must be taken seriously.
Even if it is something so tiny as him eating grass while you are trying to lead him. Correct even the smallest bypass of the leader/follower role. Ground control is just that, control displayed from the ground. It will help you in riding your horse but let's face facts, most people spend more hours out of the saddle than it it with their horses. Having an animal that respects your space and follows your lead will enable you to handle him with ease in every day situations. Feeding, grooming, leading, trailering, having him stand for the vet or farrier, cleaning out his stalls, working in his area, all become safer and easier activities.
Chapter 7: Ride With Me, Not Against Me
No book about horses would be complete

without the inclusion of riding. In all honesty that is what makes the horse most useful to humans. And that is probably the sole reason the horse still remains a source of pleasure, rather than a source of food for humans. There are many different ways in which humans do use horses besides riding. There are
still horses used for pulling things like carts and wagons but for the most part you won't see too many horses pulling plows anymore. Nowadays they have been replaced by other motorized farm equipment. For the modern horse, riding is where humans find them the most useful. People use horses for trail and pleasure riding and push their abilities all the way up the ladder through competitive sports such as racing or jumping. All of these sports find a human placed on the horses back. Imagine how unnatural this is for this animal. It is like a lion jumping on the back of a water buffalo and saying giddy up. Humans are a predatory animal, and a horse is a prey animal. Everything in them says this is not right. That is why breaking a horse to ride can be an explosive rejection of the idea by the horse. It takes a certain kind of person to break a horse. I can not say I even like the term breaking because it sounds so negative. When we break something we have destroyed it. Something that is broken has usually lost its use. But in the case of a horse it is the way it gains its
use. It takes a very special person to do this correctly , unfortunately that isn't always the case. If you ever have the opportunity to watch a horse being broken it would be a highly educational experience. If you want to really get to know a horse and what it goes through in a lifetime make the effort to watch it being broken. The experience of being broken is a snapshot of the way a horse is viewed and treated by a human being. In most places a horse is more like an object, than a living, breathing, intelligent being. They are thought of as a possession and its value is directly attached to the monetary dollar amount the animal is worth. High dollar horses are treated as more important objects to people. But the animals monetary value has nothing to do with the horses actual value. A horse that cost $100.00 thinks and feels the same as a horse that has a value of $10,000.00. To me both horses, no matter what their price tags should be treated the same, with respect to keeping them in a fair humane environment that they can live healthy well adjusted lives.
That is the human way of thinking, the more value an object has the better it is cared for. I want you to treat your horse regardless of what you paid for it, like it is worth a million dollars. It is funny that you can take a really high dollar horse and treat it poorly and it will soon look and perform no better than your average horse. But if you take an average horse and treat him as if you have the most expensive horse in the world, he will start to act the part. After the horse has the initial edge taken off of having a human being sitting atop its back it will go through a series of training steps to produce a dependable animal that the average person can ride with pleasure. The term green broke is a trainers way of saying this horse has had a human on its back and it is on its way to being a riding horse but isn't truly finished. Green broke horses are not for beginners. A green broke horse is just starting out. He still needs to learn a lot and he needs to learn it correctly from an experienced rider or trainer. Some people think that the best way to get
a horse to ride is to get one from a baby, raise it, break it, and ride it. This is more of a fantasy than something truly attainable. Beginners need a horse that they can learn from, an older more seasoned horse will teach the new rider the skills they need to further their riding ability. The most important thing the more seasoned horse will provide the rider with is confidence. Because a horse that has been there and done that is far less likely to do something that will scare the new rider. So lets talk about riding. Riding on a horse can be a wonderful, relaxing experience. It is a time of leading your horse into new areas of your relationship. It is the perfect time to strengthen that natural bond we have been trying to build. Working a horse on the ground will allow you to start the foundation but riding that horse will help you finish the foundation. You can not spend too much time in the saddle. Let me say that again, you can not spend too much time in the saddle. Every single chance you get to ride, you should take it. Ride your horse as often as you possibly
can. Ride your friends horses. Ride your neighbors horses. Ride every horse you possibly can and start to feel the differences and similarities in all of them. The more you ride, the better you will become. You can read a book about painting, but reading the book doesn't make you an artist. The same with horse back riding, it takes getting in the saddle to develop your skills. There are thousands of books out there about riding. There are books to help you find your independent seat, how to develop your balance, how to sit correctly, how to deliver direction from the saddle, how to compete, in shows, there are books and dvd's, and everything in between. I am a firm believer in reading as much as you can about every aspect of the horse. I think you should always feed your mind information because you should work smarter not harder. But I think the very best thing you can do to build your own abilities is to get a very comfortable horse and just try it out. What I mean by a comfortable horse is find a horse that is on your level. I will talk more in depth about this in
the next chapter, but you need to find a horse you feel really comfortable with. Put that horse in an area you feel safe in, like a round pen or a riding arena and then I just want you to play with that horse in every way possible. This is how my own children have learned to ride. I got them a good horse, who was going to be a safe starter horse and then I just let them have free reign with the horse. We went over the basics of course. They were taught how to saddle a horse, how to control a horse with reigns, how to make the horse move forwards, backwards, left and right. I instructed them on how to sit straight in the saddle, and where to place their hands on the reigns and how to pull them correctly to have the most effect. They were also educated on safe horse handling. And then I just let them go. I let them learn everything they need to be great riders by feeling it out for themselves. I sat watching everything they were doing, I did add my two cents worth when I felt they could use it, but I didn't sit and criticize or dominate their learning experience. I have seen riding instructors rip to shreds the enthusiasm of their students.
Enthusiasm to learn something new is to be admired. It takes a lot of courage to get up on such a large animal. Anytime someone is brave enough to do it, I think they have what it takes to follow it through. I want them to learn at their own pace and find their own success, while still retaining that initial amazement of the animal. My daughter still loves to ride even though she has spent hours and hours learning about it. I know other children that have to be made to ride because they have been so criticized in their techniques it has turned into work. It should never feel like work. It should be something you look forward too each and every time. Get in that saddle and keep only a few things in mind, make sure you are sitting up straight, keep your feet in the proper position, and then just relax and go at your own pace. Walking around slowly and learning how it feels will adjust your balance. You have to have balance to stay on, if you don't you may fall off, and if you fall off learn from the experience and don't repeat it. After awhile just walking around will feel comfortable, you will want to start to trot, not
because you are forced too but just because you are progressing naturally. And all the while you are learning, and feeling, and growing. You start to recognize the way the horses body moves along with yours, you find that when you are in tune with its rhythm your ride feels smoother more comfortable. You start to find that groove more naturally, more instinctively. Soon you start to move faster, more naturally you can glide through the gallop. You don't have all of those things in your head you might have when in a traditional riding school. No one is looming over your shoulder telling you to do this or that. If you are riding incorrectly you will figure it out, it will be bumpy and you will fall. I think people have over examined riding and made it a technical and confusing activity. I don't think it is so complicated. It is and should remain as natural and free flowing as possible. It really isn't that hard. Everyone has their opinions and techniques and I think it has been picked apart until it has killed the intuition out of it. It is wonderful to explore new techniques, and try other peoples suggestions. But I stand
behind the belief that great riders are not that way because of other peoples input. I believe they develop a really natural and free flowing seat because of the time they have in the saddle and nothing else. It is like dancing, a great dancer has a graceful attachment to the music. The dancers body flows with the beat. This is something that flows from the inside out. They connect with the music and let it flow through them and their body moves intuitively almost instinctively in tune to the sounds. Riding a horse should be the same. It has too stay natural and graceful. You need to let the horses rhythm move through you, not be absorbed into you. It needs to come into you and move through you in a smooth and instinctive way. You need to move together, as one unit, one being. No one can tell you how to do this. It is something you need to learn on your own, in your own way by riding as much as you possibly can. Now for the person who is reading this and saying to themselves, well that is all good for the beginner rider but I have been riding 15 years I want to learn something new. Well I want you to
examine your own riding skills. Have you forgotten that feeling of sitting on a horse for the first time? Do you remember that awe you had for the animal in the beginning? Has it turned more into work or sport than pleasure? Is it more about ribbons and trophies and one upping your rival riders? Have you forgotten that enthusiasm you held for riding? Are you so in tune to your horse that you feel like their is no saddle between you, do you feel like you are one with the horse? Do you know what your horse is going to do before he does it? There are few things to remember when one wants to be a good rider. I use an acronym to help myself remember them. It is as follows, and you can use it too. If you learn the following list of what is needed to be a great rider you can do anything you want on the back of a horse.
R.I.D.E.R
R = Relax No matter what is going on when you go to mount your horse you need to let it all go. Getting on the horses back is just like being on the ground. The horse will be picking up signals from you and your body. If you are afraid the horse will become afraid. Even worse he could sense your fear and take it as weakness and not listen to you. You need to be relaxed mentally and physically. A body that is afraid is tense. A body that is tense will not be free flowing, it will be bumpy and the ride will be rough. Loosen up all the way from the inside out. Take a deep breath and just relax. I = Imagine Imagine the rider you want to be and visualize yourself riding just like that. Visualization through your imagination will help you to achieve whatever goal you are trying to attain. Imagine yourself running through a field
unafraid. Imagine yourself in the winners circle. Imagine yourself taking Grand Champion this show season. Imagine yourself running a 16 second barrel pattern. Imagine and focus on that mental picture. Imagine it, and you can do it. Focus on seeing yourself doing that what you want to do most. D = Determination Be determined in all that you do with your horse. Determination is just mental focus applied physically. Don't let anything stop you from reaching your personal best. Be determined to be physically fit. Be determined to put in the work to reach your goals. Let nothing sway you from them. If you have a bad day, wipe it off, and start fresh tomorrow. Never let it get you down. Just keep moving forward. You will be a stronger, better rider because of any bad experiences. Learn from them and keep pushing forward with pit bull tenacity. E = Education Never think you know it all. No one knows it all. Read, watch, study & try everything you can to be a better rider. Learn new things and styles,
try them to see if they work for you. If you normally ride Western, try riding English. Borrow an Australian saddle and see how you like it. Go to horse shows, watch what others are doing. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Sign up for a clinic, or a class for the weekend. Ride as many horses as you can. RIDE, RIDE, RIDE. Learn about the horses body, its health. Learn about equine nutrition, learn as much as you can and experience as much as you can. NEVER think you know it all. Listen when other people offer advice and learn from more experienced people you admire. It is nice to work smarter, not harder. It saves a lot of personal energy for yourself, and your horse. There is no need to let pride force you to reinvent the wheel so to speak in your journey to be a good horseman. Your attitude will determine your altitude. Open your mind and your ears, listen respectively to anyone who will help you along the way. R = Responsibility Take the responsibility of horse ownership seriously. Understand you are responsible for the horses physical and mental needs. You are
responsible for feeding, watering, and providing exercise for your horse. You are responsible for stimulating his mind and keeping him mentally fit. You are responsible for your horses actions, so the better behaved he is the better off you are. Take that responsibility and stretch it out into the world. You are responsible for being a spokes model to the rest of the horse community. Be responsible and set an example for others to be proud to follow. And know you are responsible for what you teach your horse to do. You are leaving a hand-print on his life, he will act as you have trained him too for years and years to come. Be responsible and do not create problems for other people to deal with.
Bareback Is Best
If you really want to be a great rider consider losing the saddle and getting back to basics. The best way to connect with your horse and learn about how a horses body moves is to ride bareback. Simple exercises while performed out of the saddle and on the bare back of a horse take on a whole new meaning. You must learn true balance to stay on the horse without the aid and security of the saddle seat, horn, and stirrups. Spend as much time as you can riding bareback. Try to push yourself to perform all gaits without the saddle. Feel how the horses body moves with you. Bareback riding is a great way to adjust your looseness. Riding rigid and stiff while bareback won't work. You have to be loose and relaxed. Being bareback fine tunes your balance and also gives you a fresh perspective on the rhythm that a horses body naturally produces when moving. It gives you the opportunity to get into that rhythm. I suggest ride as much as you can without the saddle to increase your riding ability.
Chapter 8: Buying The Right Horse
Nothing you do will be more important

than purchasing the right horse if you are truly interested in developing your horsemanship skills. It is the single most important decision you will be making and probably one of the most expensive. So take some educated considerations before you start out on this fundamental task. And it will be a task. You need to look at a
lot of horses before settling on one so get ready for some serious leg work, lots of driving, and unfortunately lots of disappointment. But before you grab the paper and start making the phone calls lets talk about what you need versus what you want. We can start out by finding a breed that suits us best, and then refine our wishes amongst the breed. Lets look at what a breed means. The horse was a basic animal of survival. He needed to survive, and thus he was equipped with a body and markings that allowed him to survive more easily. His coat blended into his environment, his nostrils were shaped to allow him to breath most efficiently in his environment, and so forth. He was built solely for survival. Then man entered his world and we started fooling with the genetics a bit. We started refining the breeding to produce animals for aesthetic and pleasure purposes. We started breeding for mass and muscle like in the drafts we now see. We bred for entertainment purposes and that is how we have brought forth all the variations in the species of the equine.
We now have spotted ones, red ones, black ones, tall ones, little ones, shaggy ones, sleek ones and aside from the physical appearance of the animal, we have also bred them for temperament and use. And our breeding programs have been so successful you can pick out an entire breed that best suits your needs. That is not to say every Arabian is a certain way, or every Quarter Horse is a certain way, but they do have a certain quality that makes them more apt to act, look, and behave a certain way. We did that. We have engineered each breed to meet a certain use. Now within that breed each horse may have a different personality and temperament based on its own individuality and experiences. Do a lot of research and find a couple breeds that interest you most and would fit your level of experience and own needs. Lets say you have aspirations of becoming a barrel racer, you would look more to the Quarter Horse than to the Clydesdale. You are going to need a horse with a certain physical size, shape, and ability to perform the task at hand.
If you are looking for a riding horse for pleasure riding alone, then maybe a Tennessee Walking Horse would make a good partner. Learn the breeds and find the breed that best suits your needs. It is funny how people will research the purchase of a dog longer than they do the purchase of a horse sometimes. Research those breeds, buy and read books, see what horses tend to be popular in the areas you are interested in most. After you pick a breed stick to it. I am such a sucker when it comes to animals. I may have my mind set on one thing until I look into the big brown eyes of the exact opposite thing. Or worse I feel an animal is being neglected or abused and that I need to somehow rescue it. For me reason used to fly straight out the window. But unfortunately I have learned the hard way and it has often ended up costing me lots of money. With horses mistakes always cost you lots of money. So shop with your head first and then use your heart. Make rational not emotional decisions
even though this may be hard, in the end you will be happy you did. After you look at the breeds and make up your mind, buy the paper or go online. Start making some prospect picks based on the price. If you only have 1000.00 to spend, rule out the 5000.00 horses. If maybe you are fortunate and find some 500.00 prospects well then maybe you will get lucky and come out with a little spending cash for hay. You at this point really need to have an honest evaluation of your own skills. Be honest because if you are not honest with yourself here, you are going to really regret it later. Pride may keep you from admitting that you are not the greatest rider in the world as of yet. It may be tempting to outclass your abilities and this will only end in a disaster or even worse a pasture ornament you have no fun at all with but still have to feed. Be completely honest about what level of rider you are. Beginner, intermediate, or advanced. In the age of the Internet there are sites that show ads for horses in your area that you can
filter out by distance, price, etc. You can even see full color photos of the animals so you can get a rough idea of what you are interested in. Many of these sites also have a sliding scale to depict the horses temperament. The more gentle the horse the better for the beginner, only an advanced rider should even ponder owning a horse that scores poorly in temperament. This can be a deadly mistake for a novice. This would be a good time to talk about age in horses because lots of great horses are overlooked because of their ages. The recent research that has helped us all be more aware of the nutritional needs of horses has helped them to live longer, healthier lives. Just like people horses are living longer due to better nutrition and health care. It is not uncommon to see a horse that is in their late twenties even thirties still competing and doing well despite their age. But the greatest benefit these older horses have for the beginner is that most of the things that would spook a young horse have been totally desensitized out of the older horse. She has usually been around the block a time or two and
will be a quiet calm horse for someone who needs that to build up their riding confidence. Thats not to say that you have to buy an older horse. There are exceptional 8 year olds and even younger, but it is usually much safer for the beginner to stick with horses that are up in their teens and twenties even. There are exceptions to this rule as well. Sometimes a horse won't be broken until they are 12 or even later. I find this absolutely absurd to wait that long, but it still happens, and this is the same situation as buying a green broke 3 year old. This horse would be best left to an advanced rider. Look through the ads, read them and start picking out some horses that sound compatible with your needs, are in line with your price range, and are suitable for your experience level. And please if this is for a beginner don't pass up a horse just because it says he/she is 18. As long as they are sound it really doesn't matter the age. Then start making some phone calls. Do this in a relaxed manner the same way you would call about something else for sale in the paper. Even though you may be rather excited about it,
stay calm and don't sound so eager. There are many reputable people selling horses. Sometimes it is individuals that need to find a new home for a horse they no longer can afford or are looking to replace the horse they have with a more advanced horse. But unfortunately horse trading still is very active and you never know who is on the other end of the line. Here are some good questions to ask on the phone before driving out to a farm to look at the horse. 1. How old is the horse? We just talked about this, and you need to make a wise decision on the ability of the horse versus the ability of your rider.
2. Who currently is riding the horse and how often do they ride? This is important because if a horse has been sitting in a pasture for a year or too and no one is handling it, there will be a lot of refresher training going on.
3. Has the horse ever received professional training? This will let you know what the people actually know about the history of a horse. History is important, and if a certain trainer has worked with the horse ask who it was and give that person a call. If they remember working with the horse they can provide some really valuable insight on the animals behavior
4. Is the horse current on its vaccinations? If it doesn't have its tetanus and rabies shots at least, it is going to cost you money off the bat with the vet. These little added expenses can soon add up. Keep track of anything you will have to spend when you get the horse home and tack that onto the asking price.
5. Does it do well with the farrier and are its feet currently trimmed?
If a horse is a nightmare for a farrier it can be hard to find one that will deal with it on a regular basis. And again if the shoes are not current, there will be additional money to consider when the horse comes home. If a person cares for their horses feet on a regular schedule it also lessens the risk that the hooves develop issues from not being trimmed (broken edges, cracks, etc all come from unshod feet)
6. Has the horse ever had an injury to its legs or any other part of its body that the owner knows of? Old injuries can lead to a lifetime of treatment and they can also throw off the horses confirmation so severely they lead to future problems.
7. Has the horse ever offered to bite or kick at a human? This is a really important question and you can only hope to get an honest answer. A horse that bites or kicks should never be
considered for a beginner or a child. Biting and kicking are all signs that the horse feels superior to humans. Now it could be the current owner is just really submissive to this particular horse, but still, biting and kicking are something I would pass on. There are so many wonderful horses that need homes, try to pick one with the least problems to start off with.
8. Where in the pecking order does the horse exist? If a horse is a very dominant horse you could have problems controlling it. If it is really low on the totem pole you may have to deal with self confidence and fear issues. Both can be as dangerous as the other. For instance a horse that is the lowest member of a herd is often hard to catch because she is so used to running away from more dominant animals, she will instinctively flee instead of deal with a possible conflict. It is annoying to have a horse running away from you all the time.
9. Does the horse have any vices like cribbing? Cribbing and other vices can not only cost you a lot of money in the long run due to damaged property they can be detrimental to the physical well being of the horse.
10. What do they currently feed the horse? This is a HUGE question and listen closely to the answer. Proper nutrition is the basis of good health. A horse that is not fed correctly can have issues with it's eyes, kidneys, stomachs, and hooves. Just like a human, health is determined by getting the proper nutrition to feed our bodies. Horses that have been underfed or are sustained on a low grade food can have a multitude of ill effects that will in the long run cost you a lot of money to correct. The horse should be getting grain twice a day and as much hay as it can eat, or the equivalent of nice pasture that it can graze
as much as it wishes. If you get a skinny horse trust me it takes a lot of time to put the weight back on. Skinny horses often have really dry, brittle hooves with cracks, that can take a while to correct. The eyes may have suffered from malnutrition too. I do not tolerate anyone's excuse for having a skinny horse. There is only one explanation in most cases and that is it is underfed. If you can't feed your horse you shouldn't own one.
11. How many hands is the horse? This is just to allow you to understand if this particular horse is the right size in proportion to the rider. You don't want a horse that is too big or too small. You want it to be just right.
12.Has the horse been shown or competed in events that you are interested in? If you have any desire to compete with the horse you want one that has already been
exposed to the show/rodeo atmosphere. There are lots of things going on there that a horse who hasn't experienced it could consider frightening. If you are an experienced showman then you could consider show training a prospect. If not than try to find a horse with experience already.
13. Has the horse had regular vet care? This is also important. Without health a horse just like a human has nothing. Having seen a vet on a regular basis will help to catch any health issue the horse may have, like heart murmurs or kidney stones. You will also want to have the animal checked by your vet, so make sure they feel comfortable with that idea before purchase. If the object to that, then that is a good sign something is wrong that they are not telling you about.
14. Does the horse trailer load easily? Trailering injuries are quite common in
horses that find this task difficult. But one of the reasons you need to ask this is because you will need to move the animal from their farm to yours in the chance that you buy it. If it is a bear to load, maybe arrangements can be made to have them move it to your farm where you can start working with it loading. Trailer loading a horse can be difficult for some people, it is great when a horse has no issues with it all.
15. What is the horses temperament like? Hopefully you get an honest answer. People have gone through great lengths in the past to push off a high spirited horse as a gentle horse. They will even go so far as starving a horse down so that it is too weak to act up, which is one of the reasons to stay clear of underweight animals. (once the weight gets back on you may have a firecracker instead of a dud) Sometimes they have even drugged the animal with
tranquilizers in order to quickly unload it on unsuspecting buyers. A little trick here is that in the case of a male you can tell because his penis will hang loose and low and will not retract back into his sheath if he has been drugged.
16. How long have they owned the horse and what do they know about its past? A horse that has belonged to the same person for a long period of time should come with some history. This horse will have not only a behavioral history the owner can tell you about, but a medical and training history as well. If they haven't had the horse for long, try to probe them for past owner information, and anything else they can tell you about where the horse has come from. A good owner will know these things. A horse trader will have no clue about where the animal has been.
17. Why are they getting rid of the horse? This is an important question. If they have just told you they recently got the horse then why would they be unloading it so soon? I understand things happen in life. Perhaps the man has lost his job and can no longer afford it. Maybe they are needing to move and won't have the land they need to keep horses. Medical issues can also dictate the sale of horses. Maybe an injury to the back or something else like a terminal illness makes the sale necessary. Maybe a beginner has decided to move up to an intermediate horse but can only afford to keep one horse so the beginner horse must be sold to make room for the new intermediate one. But if they tell you something like it just isn't working out, then a red flag pops up. Don't get stuck with another persons problem. This horse could have behavioral issues or even worse health issues. It is not unheard of for a horse that is near death to be sold
dirt cheap and pushed off the farm in order to not have to deal with it's impending burial. In the horse buying business it is truly buyer beware.
Feel free to make up as many questions as you would like and ask away. Hopefully you will be dealing with good honest people, sometimes you won't. You will have to trust your own judgments in cases where you feel people are being less than honest. One of the questions you didn't see me ask was what does the horse look like. Some people ask this first. The appearance of the animal is less important than the temperament of the animal and the soundness of its body. That goes back to the human way of thinking about things. If you get lucky and you get a horse that is perfect looking and is on your skill level and has no health concerns then you will indeed be just that lucky. This is not the norm. I would rather deal with a less than perfect looking horse who has a great attitude and temperament than one that looks great but is dangerously dominant.
The only time you should consider buying a horse based on looks would be for show competitions such as halter classes. But even then a good looking horse has to behave itself in the arena or it will find itself and its handler disqualified quickly. After you have a list of horses you feel meet your criteria, then it is time to start visiting them. This can be an exciting time, when you love horses it is always fun to go and be around new ones. But please do not let your emotions get the best of you. Keep in mind that a sensible decision will pay off in the long run. Buying a horse that is well suited to you and your needs will enable horse ownership to be a joy. Trust me you will know if you make a mistake shortly after you get the animal home. Then you will be the one in search of a new home for the horse because of trying to get what you want instead of what you need. When meeting new horses you will be meeting new people. Keep your eyes and your ears open. Any discrepancies in stories should signal that you can't trust everything they are telling you.
And going with the old saying believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see can prove priceless when horse shopping. Make them ride the horse for you. If they are afraid to do so, make sure you bring someone along who is advanced in riding that will ride the horse. With someone else in the saddle you will be able to observe the horse from the ground. This will let you see if he is lame or has any other physical issues. If you are in search of a riding horse then make sure you see it ridden. After someone else rides it, then you need to ride it yourself. Do not buy a riding horse you personally have not ridden. If you are afraid to ride the horse in it's current environment where it feels comfortable, you will not grow any braver when you get home. In fact the horses behavior will probably head south for about two weeks until it settles in to its new home. The other big mistake people make is buying a horse because they feel sorry for it after seeing where it lives. Horses sometimes do end up in deplorable situations and this is a sad fact. If
you venture out to a farm and feel that the horse is being neglected you sometimes feel like you need to save it. Do not buy a horse solely because you feel bad for it. If by chance that particular horse is one you would buy regardless of it's current situation then buying it may be an option. But do not buy it on the grounds that you need to rescue it if it falls short of your expectations. What you can do is turn the owners into the authorities if you feel the animals life is being threatened due to neglect. That is the only way you can help that horse. I hope I have been able to help you in providing you with a starting ground on buying a horse. There are so many dishonest people selling horses. It is like buying a car. If you don't know anything about the mechanics of a car you need to take along a buddy who does. Some people are more motivated by money than ethics. You need to educate yourself as much as possible and never be afraid to ask more experienced friends to ride along. I recently purchased a horse from a friend who was thankfully honest enough to show me
she had a slight inward curve to her hoof heels in the front. He didn't know how to correct it and didn't even know if it could be corrected. I called a very reputable farrier to come and take a look at the hooves before I bought the horse. I had to pay for his services of course. The $40.00 I spent on his consultation was worth the piece of mind it gave me when I wrote a larger more substantial check for the animal later. The same goes for the vet, if you want to have the animal checked out by the vet, pay the farm call and examination fee before buying the animal. It is worth the piece of mind that it gives and it can also protect you from making a very costly mistake. Horses have ailments you can't see so easily like a limp, sometimes it is inside, like a heart murmur. Always get a bill of sale. It doesn't matter if it is a friend or a stranger. Get a bill of sale. You will need this when registering the ownership with some breed registries. It doesn't have to be elaborate. Put that paperwork with all your other important papers.
The Kid Safe Horse Sellers will often advertise a horse as being kid safe. This term is widely overused. I wanted to include some information about this, because as a mother, I know the concern people have for the temperament of the horse their child is riding. It is important to keep in mind that the word child can be a relative term. There are children who have no riding experience and then there are children who can out ride even seasoned adults. So when someone tells you that their child rides the horse without problems, you need to ask the skill level of the child. Also keep in mind that no horse is child safe. A horse can act out, or become uncontrollable in an instant. I have been told that the most dangerous horse is the gentle one, because you become so relaxed around it you often forget that it can be very dangerous. Trust the phrase child safe loosely. You need to be the judge of the horses character yourself. It is best to use the rule that your child needs to be horse safe before ever trusting him/her to control a horse by themselves. If they are truly horse safe they will be able to handle most any situation that could occur, on an old gentle horse, or even on a younger more spirited horse. Teach your children proper safety skills when dealing with any horse and they will be better prepared for all horses. Not just ones people label as child safe.
Chapter 9: The Promise
When you get a new horse you need to

take a moment to think about the promise you are about to make to this animal. The horse doesn't understand the concept of what a promise stands for, but you do, and I hope you can say the following to yourself and mean every word of it. I promise to take care of you as best I can for as long as I can. I promise to never abuse you and I promise to show you I can be trusted. I will protect you and provide for you. I will never ask
you to do something that I know will hurt you. I promise to lead you with confidence through all of your fears. And I promise to always let you be a horse. We have already covered many of these promises previously in this book, but what about that last promise. The promise to let the horse be a horse. That is probably the most important promise you can make and keep because it allows you to have a true and deep connection with your animal if you succeed. I have seen a lot of horses in my life. I have seen the difference between one that has had proper human training and handling and one that hasn't. I have seen the effects of being abused and neglected. I can't honestly say I think humans have done right by the horse. I think we found an animal that was very useful for work and we exploited it severely for our own needs, with little thought given to the horses real needs. Something horrible happens along the way for some horses. Something that steals away the essence of the animal. I don't like looking at animals that have lost the drive that once made
them so special. Some people don't care to see a horse standing at a fence, head held low as if in a state of depression, all its will beaten out of it. I don't like that at all. I prefer a horse that is gentle and well mannered but hasn't lost the sparkle in his eye. He still has the spirit in him. He is still alive and curious. He is strong yet yielding to his human companion. He still has that little special ingredient that makes him a horse. No other animal has helped the human civilize the world as much as the horse. The horse has broken it's back in service to man since man was able to harness its power. He has pulled and pushed our communities across this country from shore to shore. He has carried countless men into battle, often losing his own life in return for his faithfulness. He has worked day in and day out in the heat of the summer sun plowing our fields to ensure a crop for his master. He is faithful, dependable and submissive to a fault. He is unselfish by nature, willing to work till the death. He is intelligent and wise remembering every lesson of his life. He has done
so very much for man, I think what he asks in return is fairly reasonable. He only asks for a couple cans of grain a day, some nice green pasture to nibble on, and a trough full of clean drinking water. He asks for a place to get out of the rain and the snow, and maybe a pat on the head or a carrot every once in awhile. For all the enjoyment my horses provide me I don't think that it is a whole lot to ask for. It is time that we stop looking at the horse as just a beast of burden. When man looks at a horse he is often more concerned about what the animal can do for him. This is not a good foundation for a relationship. It can't be all one sided. I strongly urge you to look at your horse with a fresh set of eyes, see him for what he is, and ask what can you do for each other. We have talked a lot about leading, and what it takes to be a strong leader. There is a fine line between managing and leading your horse. A leader is often called on to make quick and wise decisions, where a manager rarely has to make decisions on his own. Start making good decisions on the welfare of your horse and stop managing a
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herd. Start leading it, instead of just maintaining it. The horses can tell the difference. If you are merely managing them your relationship will be less than what it can be if you put in the effort to lead them too. In this human ruled world the horse will still have his basic needs for survival of food, water, and shelter from the elements to deal with daily. But now because of humans he has a new basic need for survival, he must learn to coexist with man. That is why I place such importance on being a strong leader. If you do not provide him with the skills he needs, and teach him how to live peacefully with people, his chances for survival in his new world are cut down drasticly. He is doomed just as sure as if someone stopped feeding him or stopped providing him with water. Because of the captivity we have placed them in they have a whole new set of needs. I think it is funny when someone complains about a horse always blowing up on them if it isn't properly lunged before a show. That is because you have an animal who has a need that isn't
being fulfilled usually. That animal was born to cover several miles a day to keep his body and mind sound and fit. When you lock him in a ten foot by ten foot box and only take him out once a week or worse a month to expend that energy, he is going to blow up on you. He needs his freedom, it isn't a want, it's a need! When we take it away and then fail to provide him an outlet for mental and physical exercise he does go a little batty on us. He is only doing what is completely natural, expending all that excess energy. Start thinking about why problem behavior exists. Stop always blaming the horse because rarely is it the horses fault. More often than not it is the human in care of him, or a human from his past, that has failed him. He doesn't blow up because he wants too, he blows up because he needs too. When we take an animal and remove it from it's natural environment and place it in an artificial environment we often overlook just how much that effects him on a whole. Not only can we not provide a habitat that is equal, our man-made habitats often are far inferior to the one God
intended. Look at the horses hooves as an example. In the wild a horses hoof grows strong. It grows strong because he gets good nourishment from the wild grasses and other forages he can easily obtain all by himself. As he travels across his territory the hoof is naturally trimmed away. You do not see nearly as many hoof problems in wild horses as you do in domesticated ones. We started the practice of horse shoeing to make up for the horses natural way of keeping his hooves and it is far inferior. Hoof problems have been plaguing horse owners since we started domesticating them, just because we can't truly provide them with a satisfactory substitute for the natural way things are supposed to be done. Colic is a huge area of concern for any horse owner because it can happen to anyone at any time. The slightest human error can send a horse into this painful, sometimes fatal condition. This all stems from the way we feed our domesticated horses, our man-made substitutes for their natural forages are far inferior for the health of the horse. There are several other
ailments besides colic that a horse can succumb too brought on by our unnatural feeding habits, including laminitis, founder & obesity. The fences we use to contain them have injured, maimed, scarred, and killed their fair share of the animals they were supposed to protect. A fence is another unnatural man-made introduction to the horse that has caused him much grief throughout the ions of domestication the horse has endured. Think about the stalls and barns we place them in. This is probably one of the most unnatural requirements placed on the horse. A horse by nature is claustrophobic. Placing him into a small dark stall for hours a day goes totally against his natural grain. Asking him to stand idle for days upon days is just too much for some horses who were born to roam freely. You see a multitude of bad behaviors arise from being kept solely inside the confines of those tight walls. Cribbing, is just one example, there are many more. There is a lot more going on inside the horse, that you can't see. Horses can turn into
powder kegs of energy that once ignited by being let loose can explode at any given minute. They are just responding to a natural need they have for survival. They are meant to be on the move, it is what they do, it is who they are. If they can't move and spend up that energy, well it has to come out whenever they get the opportunity. All of these unnatural things come from humans thinking they can control mother nature. Humans need to control everything, it is our nature. We build elaborate fake wildernesses so we can go to places like zoos and enjoy mother nature on our terms, in comfort. Humans often make the mistake of superimposing their own desires and beliefs onto their animal friends. To a human a nice house to relax in is better than being homeless. To a horse being free and homeless feels better than being confined to even the most spectacular of air conditioned barns. No matter what the barn cost the owner and how luxurious its amenities, a horse would prefer to be free, finding shade and shelter beneath a tree. A horse is just a horse. And all he knows is
how to be is a horse. I think it is incredible that they have actually survived in captivity as well as they have for as long as they have. They are a highly adaptable animal when you truly think of how much they have changed to survive in our world. We have asked them to give up all of their natural instincts and natural desires so that they can live with us on our terms. We take the horse out of the horse and try to replace it with human feelings, desires, and wants. Think for a moment just how unfair that is. How utterly ridiculous it is to ask something so great of an animal and then have the audacity to turn around and grow angry at him for just being himself. Think about the whys of your horses behavior before you jump to the conclusion that he is just being bad to cause you grief. He really isn't. He is just responding to some sort of deficiency in his life. All horse problems result from a deficiency in their needs. All horse problems then arise from man failing to meet his needs in some way, shape or form. Really think about that. Digest the huge responsibility it is to be a horse owner.
A horse with behavior issues is lacking one of the following needs being met. Leadership, physical exercise, mental exercise, or nutrition. These are his basic needs. If they are not met you will have problems. If you fail to lead, he will not obey your commands and will walk all over you. This is not from his selfish desires, no this is from his natural instinct to be a leader or a follower. If you do not provide him with a substitute for his natural need to move miles and miles a day his pent up energy will be released in some other less desirable form, blowing up and being uncontrollable. If you fail to stimulate his mind he will do it himself by starting annoying habits like pacing, pawing or cribbing. He is just trying to entertain his mind. If you fail to feed him and he starts to eat your barn apart, don't blame him, blame yourself. If you provide him with everything he needs, truly needs, you will have little or no issues with your horse. Like I said earlier, his needs are not unreasonable, they are natural. He is only being a horse because that is what he is. He is not a human and he will never be happy being treated
like one. He needs that one simple freedom above all else, the freedom to be a horse. He will succumb to coexisting with humans. He will submit to all of our training rituals and learn them shockingly fast, if you take the time and the energy to lead him in a natural horse minded way. He doesn't want to be a human. He just wants to be a horse. He can't change that, and why would you ever ask him too. Think simple, think natural, think horse.
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Chapter 10: Aggression
I thought I would address aggressive

behavior in horses later because I wanted to deal more with normal behavior first. Once we understand what normal is, we can start to understand what abnormal is. Normal horses are by nature timid, fearful prey animals, who when given the choice between fight or flight, more often will chose flight. Horses do possess some aggression naturally, such as a
mare protecting her foal, or a lead mare defending her role to a newly introduced horse. For the most part it is defensive aggression. Aggressive behavior and dominant behavior can be easily confused. Aggression is when a horse is going after someone or something with extreme physical force. Aggressive behavior can be displayed by chasing, stomping, biting, kicking, bucking or raring up. There is a normal level of aggression that keeps balance within a herd and maintains the hierarchy and then there is an abnormal level. This chapter is about abnormal levels of aggressive behavior. Normal levels of aggression will not pose a problem for the human. Normal levels can be corrected by reasonable means. Abnormal levels will require more work and expertise and can be very dangerous. It is easy to know when the limits have been exceeded because a horse is trying to inflict serious harm to humans on a regular basis. Even a normally timid horse under extreme stress may resort to fight. That is important to understand. If a horse feels that it is either die or fight back, it will sometimes chose to
stand its' ground and fight. Not always, but often enough that you should be aware that it can happen. Usually it will be an isolated incident, instead of the habitual aggression we will be discussing. Extremely aggressive horses are not normally born that way. They can be, but it is rare. Normally horses are born with the normal attributes of a horse. Timidity & flight. Aggression is something that is learned behavior for most horses. Horse to horse aggression is learned within the herd. Horse to human aggression is learned from interactions with humans. Horses possess a minimal amount of aggression to survive and use it mostly as a defense mechanism. They are a prey animal remember, you see more aggressive behavior coming from predators. This is not the aggression I am talking about. The exception would be stallions. If you ever have the opportunity to watch foals interact with each you will understand better what I am talking about. They will romp and play, sometimes they will show dominance over each other. But you won't see one attacking
the other with the ferociousness that I am talking about when I say aggressive behavior The exception to that rule would be a normally timid horse that is in severe pain for some reason. Pain can cause a horse to act out in aggression because he is extremely afraid of the pain that he is in. But even then, a horse can tolerate a high threshold of pain before reverting to aggression. When dealing with an aggressive horse rule out the possibility that his bad behavior is not being brought on by pain. Colic, toothache, back pain, leg pain etc. For the most part aggression is learned because an animal has been pushed to the breaking point at some point in their lives. They had to make the decision between fight or flight, and they chose fight and it worked to relieve the pressure that they were under at the time. It is the same rule used in training, pressure release is a reward. By fighting the pressure was relieved and thus they learned some really bad behavior. This happens because of human error. Realize how easily it is for a horse to learn
something new, be it good or bad. They make behavior connections rather quickly. So understand that if you are teaching a horse anything and they react aggressively towards you and you do nothing or give in to them, they will soon repeat it because it worked. Most aggression in horses thus is a result of fear. The initial fear triggered the response of flight, when that was not available, fight was left. Once this worked for the horse to relieve the fear, he learns a new behavior pattern. Instead of fear=flight=release of stress produced by fear now he has this pattern fear=fight=release of stress produced by fear. Pressure and stress can be one in the same. Here is an example. A mare is being worked for the first time in a few years. Her owner walks out to catch her and put her halter on. She had some training in the past but not a lot , for explanation purposes lets say she is a 5 year old mare who has lived most of her life out to pasture. Her owner decides to start working with her a bit more and she goes out to halter her. She backs the horse into a corner of the fence and manages to
put a rope on her, as she nervously fiddles with the halter the horse displays signs of discomfort & fear, the slight pinning of the ears, but the owner pays no attention to her warning. The mare increases the intensity of her initial warning, the pinned ears, and nips the owner in the side. The owner who lacks confidence and skill, flees from the horse in pain. Giving up her plans of haltering this horse on this day. Well that worked out for the mare and she thinks hmmmmmmm interesting. Soon the mare is pinning her ears and biting everyone for any thing she feels threatens her. Haltering, grooming, leading. Now the owner has a big problem. A horse that she fears because it is a biter . The owner who is now fearful will unlikely nip this bad behavior in the bud. Horses can learn to paw at people with their front legs, they can chase people, bite people, and of course kick people once they learn that they can successfully scare away the stress brought on by people by using fight instead of flight. This is a secret most horses will never learn
because aggression goes against their inborn instincts. But some will learn it, and when they do, watch out because it can become a habitual problem that can be very dangerous if not dealt with correctly. Undoing learned behavior is very hard. Once you know something, you can't just forget it. The horse can't either, it becomes a new skill. Over time it can become worse because a horse learns through repetition, so the longer the problem has been allowed to persist, the longer and harder it will be to cure. You can avoid teaching aggression to horses by always giving them the option of flight to some degree. Pushing a horse into a corner and saying do or die is a good way to ensure that you will trigger a fight response if overdone. We see this clearly in the case of breaking a horse to a ride. Most horses will be pushed past the limits in this scenario. A horse is usually in a round pen where he can't flee the stress and fear of the man on his back. The horse then resorts to aggression in bucking and throwing himself around, trying to fight the man off of his back.
The man persists until the fight has been lost by the horse. The horse may try the bucking around a few more times in the future, but as long as he repeatedly loses that fight, he will give up and accept it as a lost cause. BUT if he somehow does succeed in releasing the stress by displacing the rider, and the rider does not get back on, well he will fight it out every single time thinking he can repeat his former success. That is why some jobs, should be left to some people. Breaking a horse is one of those jobs. The rider must never give in to the horses fight or breaking will be unsuccessful. Learning when to call it quits is as important as knowing when not to stop. Sometimes calling it quits is the correct course of action but it has to be done correctly to work. Do not wait until the fight instinct has been triggered to make that call. Make sure you have enough horse awareness to make the call before the fight trigger is pulled. Lets face facts, in a fight with a horse, the human is going to lose. The horse doesn't know that but he can learn it really quickly if you allow
him too. Your job is too never reveal that secret to your horse. If you are up against a horse that is about to boil over as I like to say, turn down the heat before he does. You will not be able to control him once he does, and everything that he learns will be bad. Before he reaches his breaking point, and time will teach you to see it coming, let off of the gas and revert to something he can and will willingly do. Slow it all down, take a breather, but never leave unless your life is in true danger. You stick it out, because if he thinks his behavior has caused you to leave, he will repeat it again. Revert back to a simple command that puts you back in control, like backing up, standing still, or turning in circles. Try to stay clear of moving him forward. Forward motion triggers flight. Give him time to cool off with you. Then try it again but don't push too hard. If you are having that much of an issue with a horse then you may need to take another look at what you are asking him to do. Perhaps instead of taking baby steps you have asked him to make a leap that he doesn't quite understand.
You may also need to do some gentling or other fundamental work with them before proceeding on to what you are trying to teach. This will apply to every horse other than a stallion. A stallion has an entirely different makeup than mares and geldings. He has other instincts and hormones driving him around. Stallions are best left to people who have expertise in working with them. Unlike normal horses stallions can be aggressive by nature, therefore they are to be handled entirely different than the normal timid mare or gelding. There are also extremely dominant individuals within the horse herd. You may encounter a handful of these in your life. Some are horses that have been kept wild for too long and they have reverted back to a more raw state of mind. They can be down right mean and nasty and they don't make any difference between being aggressive with a man, or with another horse. This type of aggression is not what I have been talking about. It is more of a wild streak. It is extreme dominance that has been left unchallenged for far too long. This aggression
does not come from a bad experience with humans, it comes from the lack of experience with humans. It is fear based to some extent, the fear of the unknown. This type of horse will be harder to train because he is so set in his or her ways. Coupled with a dominant personality a horse like this should be left to the professionals to start laying a safe foundation. A horse of this sorts can easily kill a human who lacks the experience to understand and deal with its dominant personality. This is one reason early socialization of a horse is so important, it makes everything so much easier. Once a horse is displaying regular aggressive behavior it will take time and effort to correct it. As a responsible horseman you must correct it before someone becomes seriously injured. Keep in mind that all horses may show aggression at certain points of their handling. Pinning of ears when you are cinching a saddle is a common example but we are talking about animals who have developed a habit of being
aggressive. They have consistently shown aggressive behavior over and over. Biting is a really nasty behavior that can become very hard to cure if it is left unchecked for a long period of time. The best way to correct it is by instantly causing the horse discomfort the moment he even thinks about biting. A horse will normally pin its ears before a bite is delivered. Move the horse out of your space the instant he even thinks about biting. Carry a whip if you must, and the second you notice he is even thinking about it, drive him out of your space. That is not to say you need to hit him with the whip, often it will not be necessary, make a big fuss and drive him off with the threat of the whip. If he starts to understand that the thought gets him in trouble, well he will quit thinking about biting, if he stops thinking about it, he will stop doing it. If he just comes at you open mouthed and ready to take a chunk out of your arm, then quickly and sharply reprimand him instantly. Carry a crop if you must and whack him right on the end of the nose, if you don't have a crop use
your hand. Then drive him away. Driving a horse out of your space instantly puts you in control. Be careful though, he may try to deliver a parting kick in your direction. The whack to the nose will sting, the bite to the arm will be much more brutal. If you do not feel comfortable in correcting this dangerous vice yourself consult a trainer who can. A lot of the problems people face with aggression can be avoided by making sure that your horses understand and respect your personal space by asserting your confidence over them constantly from day one. If a horse is only allowed to enter your space with a submissive attitude you won't have issues with aggression. Drive them away anytime they do something you feel is a show of dominance over you. Dominance is just the first step to aggression if left unchecked. This is where making sure you have developed good communication skills with your horse is of utmost importance. Good communication can literally save your life when dealing with horses. Remember communication is not only speaking, it is also listening. You must be
so in tune and aware that even when the horse whispers to you, you can hear the slightest indication that aggression is about to be displayed. There are three options for the horse owner who is dealing with extreme aggression. 1. Deal with it yourself. This will take a strong and confident approach to be successful. If you even have the slightest apprehension about dealing with it yourself, don't. 2. Hire someone else to deal with it. Please do your homework though, there are lots of horse trainers but only a few will provide quality results. Some horse trainers could actually make a fearful aggression issue worse if they are too aggressive in treating it. 3. Sell it and cut your losses. I know that sounds so cold but a 1400 pound animal that is threatening bodily harm is not worth keeping if you are not willing to take option 1 or 2. You are left only with the option of cutting your losses and replacing
the ill behaved horse with one that has better behavior. Selling it may be hard, but keeping it will be harder. Be honest about it's faults to potential buyers as this is the responsible and honest thing to do.
That is all you can do. I have sold a horse because of aggression issues because I have children. At our farm I like to maintain a level of natural existence with the horses. I like for my children to be able to enter the pasture with the herd and have no fear of them being harmed by a horse. With an aggressive horse in my herd I can't do that. As I am teaching my horses to be confident in my leadership, I am also teaching my children to be confident and feel safe with the horses. I can hear the boos and hisses now, I gave up on a horse. I did, but because I have a bigger responsibility to my children. As a parent I can not keep an animal that I feel would harm my children or even kill them given the chance. I don't apologize for that. I tried to teach the horse to stop biting. His
aggression seemed to center around his food, which made the whole situation worse. Behavior that is bad when connected with food is extremely hard to cure because the animal believes that the food is a reward for the bad behavior. In this horses case, he thought he was bullying me to the point of surrendering his food. I was told to take his food completely away from him but I won't do that. That goes against what I personally believe about being a leader. I think starving a horse into submission is wrong regardless if it would provide results to some degree. When you were about to feed he would pin his ears and come at you with his mouth open. I started to take the lunge whip and chase him away and make him stand out away from the dish until I allowed him to come in to eat. I started counting to five, then after a few days to ten, then fifteen seconds. He would calm down a little but I got the feeling he was just playing a game with me. I could tell he was smart enough to pretend to submit to get his food. Because every day we went through the same ordeal. He was a tester. He constantly was testing
his status in the herd. He was always sneaking up trying to push the boundaries and he never really settled into any given spot. Normal horses do from time to time try to move up the social ladder, often this is when a new individual is added to the herd. But in a well balanced herd the members seem to filter into spot and stay there until someone leaves or someone enters. There are little attempts here and there at seeing what they can get away with, like a mouthful of grain out of a superiors' food pan. But this particular horse tried it every day at every feeding time with even the lead mare. He tried to annoy his way to the top. He would stand there after he gobbled down his grain and move in closer and closer, inch by inch, trying to get in the lead mares grain. She would have nothing of it, he would push her to squealing and kicking every day. And the next day he would just move in again, inch by inch, until she was forced to run him off. He was very persistent. I tried join up and again I felt his efforts were less than authentic. I swear he knew how to pretend to give me what I wanted so I would leave
him alone to pester his way up the ladder. He would submit in join up, follow me like a puppy dog, and low and behold the very next day I was met with pinned ears at feeding time or worse sometimes an open mouth. Some days were better than others and I had to assert myself constantly with him to keep any ground I gained. And he literally had no respect for the children. They were all smaller, weaker, less important beings to him. It took everything in me to control him. I knew the children had little chance of having a good relationship with him. They could no longer enjoy spending time in the field with the other horses. And after 6 months of gaining little more than an ounce of respect. The respect wasn't even for me it was for my whip. I said enough is enough and it is time for you to go on to someone who has a lot of time and no children. I learned many very valuable lessons through him. Buying the wrong horse can be an expensive mistake. In my mind he remains the prime example of why horses should not be left in a pasture for 12 years and then all of a sudden
broken and sold. That is the wrong way to do things. I have vowed to never let any of the horses I am fortunate enough to know suffer from this lack of caring consideration. He was spoiled to the point of being rotten by his previous owners for several years. He spent most of his time alone, being top dog. He didn't have a herd to learn from and the humans in his life showed him no dominance or confidence. They did however over indulge him with treats and reward him daily for his bad attitude. They didn't handle him at all. They did everything in the book wrong. The following is a list of human activities that will develop aggression in horse. This is what NOT to do if you want to have a great, safe horse.
1. Abusing the animal physically. Pushing any horse past the limit of sanity can cause them to snap. If a horse feels it must fight with humans for survival it will.
Once the horse views humans as a threat it will become natural for them to defend themselves against humans. Humans should never be a threat to a horse. Fear of humans can be very hard to correct. It takes starting almost at ground zero and rebuilding trust all over again. It is a shame when a horse is abused physically because it just damages so much in the effort to produce a well mannered animal.
2. Give them free reign. If you just get a horse and throw it in a pen and call it done you are asking for aggression to naturally occur. A domesticated horse needs to be handled to reinforce the humans role in its life. A horse learns to revert backwards when left alone for long periods of time. Even a well trained horse when turned out to pasture for a few years may need some refresher work when the time comes that the owner wants to ride again. Be aware that horses should be touched and handled ideally every day, the more you do that, the
more gentle and well mannered the horse will become. He will understand the role of humans in his life. Confident leaders.
3. Reward a horse at the wrong time. This is where knowing how to reward a horse correctly comes into importance. Rewarding a horse with treats whenever he has shown even the slightest aggression will encourage him to do it again and he will eventually amplify his behavior in belief he is doing something correctly. You must learn to speak their language fluently to avoid unknowingly rewarding them at the wrong time. It can also tell them they can bully you out of food. The lead mare does take away the food of subordinate horses. If you give a horse a treat after he has pushed into your space, he will think he has bullied you out of your food. If it worked once for him, he will do it over and over until you successfully check him a few times and prove to him he can't take your food. You can actually be encouraging his
bad behavior if you are not rewarding him correctly.
4. Neglect to correct him. If you won't correct him for bad behavior he will only repeat it until someone does. There will not be a magical moment one day where the horse says wow, I really love this person I don't want to hurt them because horses don't think like we do. He understands only the simple way of doing things, lead or follow. If you are leading you call the shots and get what you want. If you are following you are told what to do and if you don't do it you are corrected. By never correcting a horse he feels what he is doing must be right or he is actually the real boss. If he believes either you are in trouble.
Aggressive behavior is a good example of the old saying an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Once it starts, it is a lot of work to get rid of it. Most behavior can be fixed with the right attitude and lots of confidence. But there
will be exceptions to this as well. Whenever you deal with horses you will be called on to think with your head and not with your heart from time to time. Dealing with aggressive animals will be one of these occasions. No one likes the thought of throwing in the towel and saying I can't fix this. But it is a personal decision you sometimes must make. Part of being a good horseman is knowing when to fold and walk away from the table. There are a few that are just too far gone and it is sad. There may be someone out there who can help the animal more than you can, so passing it on, could actually be of benefit to the animals own development. Sometimes keeping it and working through its issues can help you learn valuable skills. Pushing you past your comfort zone is a way of building confidence in yourself, but proceed with caution. A horse can be dangerous, it's size alone makes it this way. If it has a nasty attitude it can be deadly. Make no mistake about that fact, a horse can kill you.
Learn the different types of aggression and react accordingly to each... Defensive Aggression A horse is born with the ability to display this sort of aggression. It is not really aggression it is more of a form of defense. A horse that feels it must fight, will. Like the mare naturally protecting her colt. A horse that is fearful will display this as a last resort to protect himself. It is a protective sort of aggression. They feel flight is not an option and revert to fight. Fearful Aggression This is similar to protective aggression but it usually displayed while the horse is moving away from a situation. A horse that kicks as it is fleeing. Dominant Aggression This is the worst type of aggression to deal with. The horse is asserting itself over you with severe physical force. When you don't correct this the instant it occurs, it will become worse. Biting, Kicking, Raring, Bucking, Charging & Pawing are all dominant aggressive behavior when the force is coming towards the intended victim.
Chapter 11: Spoiled Rotten
Most people have experienced a child

throwing a temper tantrum at one time or another. Often we see these little tyrannical episodes when the child is out shopping with their parents. The child wants something that the parent refuses to supply and the child reacts with an emotional explosion. Children are not born with patience and understanding, those are
learned virtues. When a child erupts into a fit over not getting his way, we as the bystander, often think to ourselves well if that was my child I would fix that problem A.S.A.P. We are often mind boggled by the fact that the childs parents do little to regain their control and are mortified when we see them give in to what the child wants just to pacify him. I feel the same way when I see a horse throwing a temper tantrum. A horse can become spoiled rotten by it's owners very easily. The saddest part of the situation is the owner does it in the name of love with good intentions at heart. By spoiling your horse you are only setting him up for bad behavior development. I talked earlier in the book about how humans try to make a horse think and feel like a human. We assume that they abide by the same rules of affection. We think we must be loving on them constantly and feeding them treats to prove to them how much we care. I have even heard people making up excuses for their horses bad behavior like a mother would for her child, Oh he is having a
bad day, he isn't normally like this. Horses don't have bad days. That is one of the great things about horses, how dependable they are regardless of outside influences. A horse may move a little slower in the heat, but if you make him go faster he will. I horse will just as easily trod through the snow in minus zero conditions, than run through a meadow in spring. They are very steadfast and dependable by nature. When you see an outburst from a horse, it isn't because he is having a bad day, it's because he has become spoiled in some way, shape or form. There is one exception to this rule, a horse that is suffering some sort of pain. I have made the mistake of saddling my horse and forgetting to make sure her mane wasn't under the pad. She became very agitated during the ride. Twitching her tail, not paying attention, acting as if she was irritated and cranky. I stopped and checked everything out but found no reason for her discomfort. I kept feeling her twitch her muscles in her withers as if she was getting rid of flies, so I thought maybe a horsefly was biting at her. When
I looked down I saw her mane was pulled tightly back under the saddle pad and with every step it yanked at it more. She was reacting to pain. As soon as I fixed the problem, she went right back to her normal dependable self. If a horse who normally is well behaved starts to take a fit, check for physical discomfort first. Maybe the cinch is pinching him, there is a burr in the saddle pad, or a horsefly is biting him. If a horse has a habit of throwing fits then there is a chance he has been spoiled and needs to be corrected and placed back into a state of submissive follower. A horse that is in a submissive state of mind will not throw a fit. He can't, it is impossible. Only a horse who feels he is in control and boss will throw a fit or try to dominate a human being with bad behavior. A spoiled horse is a pushy horse. He will try to push his owner around, just like the bossy child. He trys to make his owner do what he wants by throwing little fits. Spoiling a horse is the leading cause of behavior issues. Signs a horse is spoiled...
Pushy Attitude In a pushy horses mind it is fine to crowd its owner, pull him around, drag him even if he wants too. He can be in the owners space, even knock him down if he doesn't move out of the way. It is OK to bite his owner when the owner doesn't follow his lead or takes to long in complying with his wishes. He expects a treat regardless of what he does, he wants one just for showing up. If you don't give it to him, he will stick his nose in your pocket and take it. In his mind he is the boss.
Aggressive Attitude The pushy horse will mature into the aggressive horse, it is only a matter of time. Soon he is biting, charging, and kicking anyone who stands in the way of what he wants. If he doesn't want to be handled he throws a fit, he is completely out of control. Usually there is a submissive person running around telling him to be a good boy and mommy will get him some apples. Human beings just can't understand that a horse does not reap one good reward from over
indulgence. It is all bad. It is the worst thing you can do to a horse. You must try to find balance. Sometimes we do it ourselves, sometimes it was done before the horse becomes ours. It doesn't matter who did it, it has to end right now. If you have been spoiling your horse, just stop it and learn a new way to reward him that will result in positive effects you will both enjoy.
Rule # 1 : Never let the horse come into your space unless he does so with a submissive attitude.
Rule #2 : Never accept any attempt to dominate you in any way. Even the slightest infraction of this rule needs to be corrected immediately.
Rule # 3: Never use food as his sole reward for good behavior Mix it up with body pats, and ada boys.
Rule #4: Never give the reward before he deserves it. That constitutes bribery. Bribery doesn't work for you, it works for the horse. A horse learns quickly that by not doing what you want him too he gets a treat. Think about that for a minute. If the horse doesn't want to follow you on the lead rope and you give him a reward hoping he will move, he takes it as he refuses to do it and gets a reward. He will not get the reward and then say wow she is so nice I should do what she wants.
Rule#5: Be aware of how you physically interact with him. Body language is the only language a horse speaks. Be confident and show control in your physical demeanor. If you are shaky, nervous, or show submission he will hear what you are saying loud and clear. He will instantly seize the opportunity to be leader of the two man herd. He won't feel bad about it in the slightest either. He is just doing what horses do.
I spend a lot of time with my horses every

day. I am around them for the better part of any given day. I do so because I want to maintain my status as leader and I love them. I am constantly practicing these five rules and they have paid off for me personally and the are paying off for my horses too. Human affection is natural for us as humans. Love for a human is shown through affectionate acts. We express our love between humans by giving gifts to one another. So it is only natural we want to do the same with the animals that we love. But truly it isn't received the same way humans would accept our affection. It only confuses them and makes them feel as if they are in control. They don't understand we do it because we love them, they take our love and understand it as submission and it can destroy your relationship with your horse, and the horses ability to be well mannered and obedient.
The Importance Of Body Language

Imagine that you were to spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 5 years living in a herd. Imagine that you could not speak but had to totally rely on your body to convey what you wanted. You had to learn what others wanted from you in order to avoid being kicked or bitten. Imagine that for a minute. Think about how you would adapt and be able to interpret the slightest movement of the horses around you. This is exactly how your horse has been trained first, by horses in the herd. I can see when a person is fearful or even nervous when handling their horse. Fear is written literally all over their face. It is in the way they stand nervously out and to the side. It is in the way they hold their arms in a defensive manner. If I can see it, trust me the horses can see it too. They have spent their entire life learning the skill of conversing in body language. When a horse is nervous in the presence of another horse it signals submission. A submissive horse or person cannot lead. You MUST lead or you will have to follow. If you follow you will be pushed around, bitten, kicked, and treated far less respectful than if you were the leader.
Chapter 12: What Every Horse Should Know
Now that you understand what the horse

needs & how to communicate clearly with him you can move on to teaching him in a way he understands. Be aware that the more you practice conversing with your horse the better you will become. Now we can cover what your horse should know in order to be a well trained, well mannered companion. Theses skills will enable him/her to have a satisfying life living amongst humans. Every person who handles horses is in a
sense a trainer and every time you are interacting with them it should be viewed as a training session. They are always learning from us. That is why you must understand the importance of being aware that all of our actions will create reactions in the horse. Even when you buy a horse and just turn it out to pasture, you are in essence training him by your lack of action. Be conscious of what you are doing so you are not responsible for teaching bad behavior unwittingly. I am including some of the basics that every horse should learn in order to be a pleasure to work with and handle. No one likes dealing with an ill behaved horse, it is frustrating, time consuming, and can be dangerous. Sometimes we get horses who have strayed away from the basics, but trust me, they can be put back on track easily. These horses have been taught through human error most times, so again be aware of what you are doing at all times. Don't make mistakes that someone else will have to fix down the road. Treat every step as important as the last and the next. Each skill is a building block for the horses foundation. Don't skip over one and move on to
the next. Make sure you have taught them everything equally well, that way there are no holes in their training. If you are working with a previously trained horse, evaluate him. Learn his strengths and find his weaknesses. Then make an effort to strengthen any weak areas so his training can be well balanced and complete.
The Basics
Catch Easily : Every horse should be able to be caught without chasing him or her for hours around a field. This is a very annoying and inconvenient habit that can cause the horse owner much grief. The horse that insists on running away from a human needs to be taught two things. Humans are not to be feared nor are the activities humans ask them to do. (work, leave the herd or field, or go in the trailer, etc.) Horses that are hard to catch may be reacting to past experiences but luckily you can
replace those bad experiences with repetitious good ones and eliminate the problem all together. Start out by just going in and out of the pasture. Start teaching the horse that every time a human comes in it doesn't mean work. Walk around, scoop poop, check your fencing, sit quietly under a tree, pet the other horses but pay little attention to the hard to catch horse. It is helpful to include carrying your halter and lead rope with you at this time. Let them know that every time you come you are not expecting work. It is sad that most of the time when we go to visit them it is because we are asking them to do some work. People don't spend enough quiet time with their horses. Usually it is a grab and go situation that does end with the horse doing some work. So try and break that habit by just hanging out with your horses without having an agenda for work. After a few visits to the pasture, ignoring the horse, you will see it start to calm down. She won't be paying as much attention to the fact that you are there. She won't be as nervous or fearful of your presence. Baby step your way to getting
closer and closer. I have developed this inner meter, I can just feel when nervous tension is starting to build in the horse. Let your intuition guide you and don't push her too hard. If she starts to flee from you simply turn around and stand still, act like you are fiddling with something on the ground. Crouch down even, with your back turned to her. Whenever you crouch and reduce your bodies stature the horse will feel less nervous. Wait and repeat this and she will start to understand you are not going to chase her, you have not asked her to work, and you are dealing with her differently than humans have in the past. She is learning a new way of doing things. The fact that she isn't taking off from you and running far away to the outskirts to stare at you will be proof she is learning. Keep baby stepping her up, moving closer and closer until she allows you to touch her. Once physical contact is made on her terms (this is not her dominating you either) you need to just spend time petting her for a few moments then walk away again. After a few sessions of understanding you
are not there to harm her she will no longer flee from you. I know this sounds like a lot to go through to teach a horse to not flee on the sight of a halter and lead rope clad human but it is less time consuming than all the hours you will spend chasing her around in a lifetime. She is afraid, she is not being dominating. A dominant confident horse will not react by fleeing, a horse that is running away is afraid. She is afraid of the human, she is afraid of the halter, she is afraid of the work, or she could be afraid that you are going to expose her to some other thing she fears such as remove her from the herd and load her in a trailer. This behavior is all fear based. Fear based behavior needs a consistent, steady, amount of pressure to be dealt with, always moving forward in baby steps. As long as you are persistent in your efforts this can be dealt with. Once you are able to easily catch her, start putting on the halter and then taking it off. For the first few times just put it on and then take it off don't make her leave the pasture. The next step
is to put it on her and lead her out of the pasture, take her for a walk and let her nibble on some grass for a few minutes, then put her back in. Always do this with confidence, be a good leader. Switch it up and pull her out of the pasture to eat her grain away from the herd and then put her back in. You will see that very soon she has learned that leaving isn't that bad, sometimes there are rewards for being haltered. Don't always let it be a food centered reward. Take her out and give her a good long grooming session. Let it always end on a positive note by giving her a good pat on the head and setting her free. Start introducing work now and again, so she doesn't always expect to be put to work. Make it fun, keep it interesting. And in no time you will have not one problem in catching her.
Halter: Haltering a horse should not be a hassle. It should be easy and smooth to slip a halter on a horses head. Some horses fear the halter because the instant it goes on they lose control. It is still amazing to me, that a horse once haltered turns
submissive most of the time. Move forward with confidence, be firm yet compassionate enough to not hurt his ears. Practice taking it on and off, but never leave it on. Horses can catch their back feet in it when scratching or can snag it on protruding objects easily. If this happens the horse will become fearful of the halter in the future due to the fact it has caused him discomfort. In the winter months when there is ice, a halter can be a death trap to a horse that falls and snaps it's neck because a halter gets snagged on something. Make it a habit to remove it when you are finished with your horse.
Lead Freely: If a horse is leading correctly, you shouldn't even feel it on the end of the line. There should be no pressure at all on the horse or your hand, the two of you should be moving in unison. If a horse halts and refuses to move, try moving them side to side and unlocking the front legs a bit, then try to move forward again. If this does not work turn your horse into circles until he is again moving freely with you. Practice leading
your horse by taking him for walks just like you would a dog. Try walking, even trotting alongside your horse, be confident and stand close. Don't extend your arm out and be afraid. The safest place to be when leading a horse is close. If you are confident and strong, he will by nature follow your lead. Be focused on where you want to go and then look straight ahead and go. Your focus will also direct him. It should feel like you are walking with a shadow. The horse should float alongside without any resistance. If the horse is jerking it's head down to graze then correct him and continue on. Do not let a horse jerk you around. A good rope halter works best for teaching a horse to lead correctly. A few jerks downward on the lead will reprimand him and let him know he is not to be grazing, or pulling you around, he is to be following you.
Move Backwards: A horse should willingly move backwards with the same ease it moves forward. Moving in reverse is unnatural for a horse. He has to trust the individual who is directing him to do so. So every
time you move your horse in reverse and he stays safe, you are building trust. Also backing a horse up switches his find into focusing on that activity, and as such it is a good tension breaker to break off stress or the flight drive. Remember too, you are not pushing the horse backwards, in fact the pressure you must apply should be minimal.
Stand Quietly While Tied: Standing quietly while tied is a fundamental exercise for the horse. It is necessary for all sorts of everyday tasks that the horse will endure from bathing, grooming, clipping. The horse will need to stand quietly tied in a variety of situations, so we need to teach them safely to do so. This is a simple exercise from human perspective but for the horse it can be extremely frightening because it is a prey animal and you are taking away it's ability to flee from danger. Investing in a good knotted rope halter will make teaching a horse to tie much easier because a horse can easily break the flat nylon halters. Nylon halters offer little if no pressure on the horse to teach with you the fact that pulling
backwards is unacceptable when asked to be tied quietly. Find a good strong place to tie the horse. Do not tie to anything your horse could rip out of the ground or break if it decides to fly backwards or becomes spooked. Don't tie to gates or any other object that could move or rattle, this can frighten the horse and create a bad situation. Start out by wrapping the rope behind the object and giving your horse enough slack to be comfortable, but not enough they could be entangled in or enough that they can put there head to the ground to graze. Just ask your horse to stand near the post and place your rope behind it and stand close, pat your horse on the neck and tell it to stand. Keep the end of your rope in your hand and walk a distance away. If the horse tries to move tug on the halter and tell them to stand. Hold the rope in one hand keeping it taught and move the horse forward a step to teach it moving forward releases the pressure. Release pressure when the horse obeys. This is his reward. Next wrap it around the post an extra time,
so that if the horse does back up or throws itself into reverse it will tighten the rope and increase the pressure itself, but the rope can still be released if need be. If he backs up or tries to pull again step in and tell him to halt and move him forward thus releasing the pressure. The next step is to tie the rope in a manner it can be quickly released if the situation turns ugly or the horse is in danger of harming itself. The horse may try to move backwards throwing its head up and pulling, it will figure it out, they aren't as stupid as some people think. There is the rare occasion that the situation becomes dangerous for the horse, release if need be. For the better part of the time though, the horse is going to move forward to release the pressure. Next you will need to tie and back away a few feet. The horse may become uneasy and try again to back up, but most of the time he has learned enough to know it is best to just stand still. You have made it easier to do what is right, and harder to do what is wrong. Horses normally chose the easiest path of least resistance.
Start increasing the time you leave the horse tied. At first maybe less than a minute, then move to five, ten even fifteen minutes. For the first few sessions you need to make sure that nothing under your control is going to alarm him while tied. Examples would be not to have the lawn being mowed, or anything loud going on. Try to keep the environment safe for the horse so he is not startled. Bad experiences during training can turn into phobias for the horse. If something startles him and he tries to flee but instead harms his neck in any way, tying could become a real problem in the future. So try to the best of your ability to start off on a good foot in a quiet, safe, environment. It is in my opinion that it is in the best interest of the horse to never be left alone while tied. That is just common sense. If you tie them and something does happen that should spook them they could become injured, and without a human to release them, they could suffer greatly. Some horses who are not tied regularly will forget about tying. Horses that also learn they can free themselves by breaking the halter somewhere
down the line, can start a nasty habit of trying to free themselves that way in the future. Keep this skill fresh in their minds by repeating it as often as possible.
Stand Calmly While Being Saddled This is just good etiquette for the horse to understand. No one wants to saddle a fidgety horse. Make sure all of your rigging is up on the side that will be tossed over the horse. Let the cinch and breast collars fall after the saddle is in place gently. A horse does not appreciate having its side pelted by loose stirrups and rigging. This little common courtesy on your part, will help to insure the experience is not frightening. Practice saddling and unsaddling your horse while he is tied. If he starts to move around on you correct him with a tug on the halter and tell him whoa. Teach him to stand still first and saddling him shouldn't be that big of an issue as long as you are courteous with the rigging. Practice makes perfect.
Lowering the Head For Bridling Stand facing the same direction as the horse close to its head. At this point you will work on having the horse drop its head. Have the horse haltered with lead rope. Hold the lead rope in one hand and place the hand closest to the horse on the top of its head between its ears. Gently push down on the top of its head with two fingers. Be gentle but firm, the second the horse moves away moving his head downward, release pressure. Tapping in a rhythm sometimes works as well. The point is to have him drop his head low so bridling is easy. Practice having him lower his head first before even introducing the bridle. Once you have consistent results with him lowering his head. Introduce the bridle. With confidence hold the bridle and slip it up over the lowered head. Take your fingers and gently squeeze his mouth to have him open it to slip in the bit. Do not clang the bit against his teeth. He will open if you squeeze correctly. Some people like to slip their fingers in the space between teeth to persuade the horse to open up. Try whatever you wish. But make sure he keeps his head down
and you move swiftly and gently causing him no discomfort. Slip the reigns and the top of the bridle up over his ears being careful not to cause him any more discomfort than needed. Do this every time. Make sure the horse is lowering it's head and you are being careful not to clang his teeth or hurt his ears and bridling your horse will become easy.
Keeping Head Up When Bridled It is best if you teach your horse not to graze with a bit in his mouth. It is best for everyone if you just never allow it to happen. I park my horse with the reigns wrapped securely around the horn, so she can't reach down and nibble on the grass. A horse that is allowed to graze with the bit in is prone to stopping whenever she feels like it along the trail. She will also try to meander off into any patch of grass that looks delicious. So just don't let the habit start. Correct it by keeping her head up whenever the bit is in. This habit can be dangerous also because a horse who pulls downward with force to get at
grass, can rip the reigns from your hands, thus leaving you out of control. Just don't start it and the horse will not miss it.
Mount & Dismount From Both Sides: It is important to be able to get on or off the horse from both sides for safety issues as well as having a well balanced animal. A horse that accepts only the traditional left side is not as well balanced, as the one that accepts both. Just retrain yourself to believe every horse should be this way, comfortable with both sides, and forget the old way of doing it only on the left. You simply need to get the horse desensitized to being mounted from the right. Start by mimicking how a horse is first broken. Pat the right neck and put your body across the saddle, and pat him on the left side of the shoulder/neck area. When he becomes relaxed about this new way of seeing and feeling you, advance to putting weight in the right stirrup and just let him feel that for awhile, until again he finds it comfortable. Speak to him in a soothing firm voice, assuring him everything is alright.
Then work your way to throwing a leg over from the right side. Sit in the saddle for a moment and then dismount from the right side. Repeat this a few times, and start mixing it up. Chances are he will learn it quickly and without much fuss, but if he does fuss, stick with it.
Stop Instantly on Command: It may seem that this is a given but whoa is probably the most important command for a horse to learn. Teaching a horse to stop can save your life in a situation where everything in a horses body is telling it to go. Like when the flight drive has been triggered. Turning a horse in circles by bringing his nose to your knee can disengage this drive but whoa is the preferred method of stopping a horse. Practice whoa often, just to brush him up on it. If you have a horse with a hard mouth, who has been desensitized to the bit, and has problems with stopping you definitely need to address it as soon as possible. Being on a run-a-way horse is not much fun and it can be downright dangerous.
Turn Left & Right: Turning a horse seems simple, pull left he goes left. Pull right he goes right. This is the basics. But take a moment to consider the importance of the way you treat your horses mouth. Bare in mind that this is an instrument of communication. It is the interpreter for your hands. Your hands can send down the reigns what you want the horse to do without destroying the feelings of the horses mouth. I liken it to getting in someones ear and screaming as loud as you can HELLO when greeting them. It would have been sufficient to walk up and just say hi in a soft voice. They would understand you even better without destroying the person's eardrum in the process. Use the least amount of pressure necessary to turn the horses head in the direction you want him to go, try feather light reigns first and add pressure as needed, verses jerking as hard as you can. The lighter the touch, the more fine tuned your horse becomes to your intentions. I see people making the mistake of jerking on a horses reigns when it refuses to move. That is like jerking on your cars steering wheel without
hitting the gas pedal. The reigns don't make the horse move, it's rear end does. In a horse the engine is in the rear and the steering is up front. Jerking around on the reigns will just break down communication and hurt the horses mouth. You want the horses mouth to stay a fine tuned instrument able to receive the slightest indication from your hands.
Take Leg Cues Your reigns are your steering wheel and your legs are your gas pedals. A squeeze should tell your horse to pick up pace. A horse should be paying attention to your legs. You will develop a feel for the horse as he does you. When you apply more pressure it means move faster. Between the reigns and your legs, you and the horse should be holding a conversation about where you want to go and how fast you want to get there. You are speaking and he is listening. If you were holding a conversation with someone and they were not paying attention you would be offended. The same attitude should be applied to having a conversation with your horse. Command his full
attention and do not settle for less. When you are in the saddle maintain control and accept nothing less than what you want. Don't let the horse top you from the bottom. That cannot become a habit you teach otherwise you will have a lazy, meandering horse, who will do what he wants, when he wants. Correct insubordination and don't just be a passenger. Take an active role and be as much a part of the ride as the horse is.
Yield To Leg Pressure Standing next to the horse pull his head around towards you slightly as you take your fist and place slight pressure where your foot would normally fall if you were seated on his back. The horse should move his hind end away from the pressure swinging it around away from you. The second he moves release pressure and say, good boy. Repeat on the other side. Practice this as often as you can and then try it while in the saddle. You can teach a horse all sorts of nifty tricks once they get yielding to leg pressure down, like side passes and twirls. Have fun with it and see what you and the horse can do together.
Cross Water: This doesn't seem like a big deal until you have to do it and the horse refuses with fierce tenacity. There are many speculations as to why horses fear crossing water, be it a mud puddle or a raging river, some horses will refuse to go the course. I have heard it said that horses are prey animals and fear there is a predator lurking below the surface. I have heard it said that to a horse, they feel if the step into the water they will sink because they have no idea of the depth, so stepping into a 2 inch muddle puddle could be stepping into a 12 foot deep pool for all they know. I think it is boils down to a horses life depends on its legs and feet. A horse has to be conscious of where it is stepping with every step it takes in it's life. One wrong move could doom the horse to death. A misstep could result in sudden death like a fall from a cliff, or it could result in an injury that makes it more vulnerable to attack. If a horse injures a leg or a hoof in the wild, its chances for survival are slim to none. If it can't keep up with the herd, it will not be able to move to find food, and it loses its safety. A horse with
say a broken leg, left behind by the herd, is a sitting duck for a mountain lion. Remember that a domesticated horse is still fueled by many natural survival instincts. Just because he spends most of his life in captivity does not mean he forgets his vulnerabilities. He is built with a set of rules he must not break and his internal drives dictate what is safe and what can be deadly. Asking him to step his foot into a situation he is not 100% sure of where it will fall is too much of a risk for him to take. You must desensitize him to the experience by allowing him to understand that water will not harm him. Start with puddles on a trail. When going along look straight ahead and move him forward like you are going across normal trail ground. Imagine the puddle isn't even there. Sometimes you get lucky and your confidence and focus will be all you need. The horse may react like nothing is happening, he may take a jump across it, or he may hurry through it. But as long as he moves forward through it reward him and keep on moving. Act like nothing has happened.
For the other horse who balks at the situation and absolutely refuses or tries to pass alongside it you will need to do some work. A great thing to do is make a conscious effort on the day you want to work with him on this skill to bring along a buddy who has a horse that easily passes through water. When you know the puddle is coming ask your buddy to move out in front and cross through first, again making no big deal about it. Keep calm and collected as if the water isn't even there. If the horse follows behind the other horse that is great. If he tries to go around the puddle refuse to let him pass around. Back him up and again try to move forward. Seeing the other horse on the other side may motivate him. If not back up a farther distance and stand facing the other horse. Sometimes the stress of being separated farther behind the lead horse will increase his motivation to pass through the puddle. If this still doesn't work, have the horse on the other side of the puddle start to leave him behind, now he has the pressure of the distance and the pressure of see the other horse leaving
him, this usually is enough to make any horse move through the puddle. But again do NOT let him go around it. Take your time and be determined, any step towards going through it should be rewarded. Make him stand facing it as much as possible, and keep the energy moving through it as much as possible. It may take an hour even to get him through, but thats OK, don't give up. Take whatever time it takes to prove to him he can do this and he will be OK. If you don't have a buddy to help you out try the above exercises of walking up and trying it, without being able to go around it. Keep the horse straight looking at the puddle and keep rewarding every step towards the ultimate goal of going through it. Make it easier to go through the puddle and harder to keep resisting it. Channel the horse through it with your energy and your focus. Let him know he IS going through it. Once he does, even if he runs through it, reward him and move on down the trail. Leave it on a good note, he survived and life goes on. The next time around he may resist
but not as much, keep him moving forward always and NEVER give in to letting him go around. Eventually the fuss will grow less and less until he just plods through it like it isn't even there. On to running water, like in a river. The same principles apply but more forceful focus may be needed. The running water may have sounds of roaring he does not understand. I would say to baby step him through lesser intimidating circumstances and work your way up just like in any of the training, take baby steps. But make sure that in each step, no harm befalls your horse. That is the key, he must remain safe.
Load Easily Into a Trailer A horse by nature is claustrophobic. He doesn't like the idea of moving into a tight space because he is too large to move around in the way he normally would if free. People have their speculations on why horses are afraid of things like stalls, and trailers and I have my own. Some people say it is a natural instinct stemming from caves, that horses learned predators lived in caves. They avoid any dark tight space in which
something could be hiding. I think it is because it is in the best interest to the horses survival for it to be able to move freely in any direction at a moments notice. In a trailer he is doomed if attacked, the same with a stall. There is no escape hatch. You disarm his main defense, flight. So a horse who has issues with trailering, be it their first time or their 40th time, just needs to be certain he will be safe. He needs the leader to be strong and confident in making this decision for him. If you make a big huge deal out of trailering, so will he. Trailering should be like everything else, never decide to wait till the last minute to handle a horse who has trailering issues because then you are rushed. When people get rushed they often get frustrated and angry. Frustration and anger produce rash decisions on the welfare of the horse. You have to make the whole situation feel safe & comfortable. Remember back to the water problem, a horse is aware of it's feet and what they touch. Stepping up into a trailer is a new
sensation. The trailer floor is noisy and gives under their feet. The whole trailer moves against his weight, and this will make him feel very uneasy and vulnerable. The sides are close and confining, there is no where to go if something proves threatening. trailering is like exposing a horse to many different stimuli all at once. What you need to do is baby step him through all of them. Starting on the ground teach your horse that you as the leader can safely get him across many different types of things on the ground. Walking across tarps, sheets of plywood, water, storm grates. Teach him you are also aware of the vulnerability of his feet and legs and that you can make wise decisions that keep him safe. Horses see differently than we do too. They have separate vision for each side, that crosses briefly in the front. A horse is used to being in a wide open space with the sky above him. Asking him to go into a steel box that has a ceiling is a really weird request to him, and because of his different way of seeing things, it is probably extremely confusing and frightening.
But we know he has a submissive side and can do this, because horses ride in trailers everyday. Your number one priority is to make it as safe and comfortable as possible and insure he is never injured during the process. Yes you can correct him if he gets out of control, but never beat him. If a horse receives a beating each time before he loads, what do you think he will think whenever he starts to approach the trailer. He will assume he is in for another beating and will naturally become nervous and excited. Trailering is most easily accepted at a young age, if it is introduced then, the issues can be resolved easily especially with the use of the foals mother. If you wait till later in life, well the task is a little more difficult. You will never coax a horse into the trailer either. If you think you can walk him up to the trailer in the morning and say come on boy, lets get inside, and wait for him to go all by himself , well you will still be there in the evening waiting for a miracle. He needs you to lead him confidently onto the trailer and show him it is OK.
You will need to be firm and focused and take control of the situation. You can have a helper standing off to the rear using an aid such as a whip to motivate him. That doesn't mean the person ever has to use the whip, the horse just needs to anticipate he will use it. Use a driving energy from behind, and a steady forward energy to move the horse up and into the trailer. Reward him every step of the way, even a slight movement towards the trailer should be rewarded. Once he is in, reward him greatly, make a big deal out of his accomplishment. Make the scary experience extremely pleasurable for him. Make it something he will want to do in the future. Giving a nice scoop of grain, some fresh hay, or a cut up apple will reframe this in his head as a pleasurable experience. Pat him, tell him good boy. Soon your horse will look forward to going in the trailer. Make sure his ride inside is comfortable as well, always keep in mind the safety of the animal you are hauling. Make up practice loading sessions until your horse just follows you like a shadow, easily and smoothly right up into the trailer. It may take
a few times, but his resistance will lighten, and before long it will be an easy activity for him to perform.
In Closing I have heard it said that it isn't if you will

get hurt, it is a question of when you will get hurt when dealing with horses. Injuries are a fact of life when handling horses. There may be a few scrapes and scratches, some bumps and bruises, maybe even a broken bone or two along the way. But to the horseman/horsewoman they are all well worth it. All of the bad experiences are actually good in a way. Each one teaches us a valuable lesson. Being determined to succeed is a trait that is a leadership skill. Every setback forces us to stretch our personal strengths, thus building more endurance and more confidence in our skills. The truth is that you can buy every horse
book and DVD set known to man-kind. You can set through every clinic provided by your favorite horse person celebrity. You can subscribe to every horse magazine but without application of the techniques described you will learn nothing. And without confidence the techniques will fail. The truth is you must have the confidence to interact with horses without fear. The only thing holding you back is fear. I challenge you to be fearless in the face of the horse. Respect yes. Fear no. There are so many horse owners out there who are literally afraid of their horses. This is robbing them of having a productive relationship with the animal. Sure a horse is pretty to look at. It gives a sense of pride to own an equine, but without having an understanding with them, where we can fearlessly converse, it all falls flat. For me the horse has become more than just an animal, it has become a passion. I can't even imagine my life without them. They provide me with such a wonderful feeling inside. Just being near them is therapeutic in a sense. They have personally taught me so much about myself. They have helped me to understand
my own personal power. I can't even imagine the person I would be without all the lessons they have so generously provided. They ask for so very little in return for that partnership, I feel it is something I can gladly provide them. They exist in such a simple, pure state of being. They don't worry about tomorrow and they can put the past behind them without holding any resentments. Their ability to naturally govern their herd in a way that is just and unselfish is an example for humans to take note of. Everything they do is simple, concise and balanced. They have awoken something inside of me that I wasn't even aware lay sleeping. I am truly indebted to them and I want to educate others so that they can have this deep bond with their animals. Not that superficial human bond, but the deep inspiring, almost spiritual bond of being part of the herd. They have so much to teach us, instead of always worrying about what we teach them, we need to open our minds to learning from them. I am proud to say I am herd bound.
The Author: Tamara Svencer

If you have enjoyed this book I will suggest that you take the time to read my other book ,Free Your Mind And Your Horse Will Follow. You can buy the book or contact me for consultation via my website http://www.herdbound.net

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H.E.R.D Human Equine Relationship Development Copyright 2010 Tamara Svencer

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Thank you too Miss Bella, may you be forever free.

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Dealing with horses makes you a better

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Working with any animal can be a

Chapter 1 : Quiet Confidence

There is one tool that any person needs to

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

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Human Equine Relationship Development

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Five Steps To Confidence

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Chapter 2 : Looking For A Leader

Horses are an instinct driven being. There

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Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

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Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

Human Equine Relationship Development

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Human Equine Relationship Development

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Good Leadership Qualities

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Chapter 3: Touch Me, Teach Me Trust

Sometimes in the mornings, before the

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Human Equine Relationship Development

Chapter 4: Lead Me Through MY Fears