Ep 74: Developing Patience with Anxious Horses
Anxious horses can be very revealing. These horses often serve as a great representation of how a horse’s behaviors and responses are a reflection of our communication.
If you are in the training business or have numerous personal horses to ride, odds are, you will come across a horse like this at some point in your training career.
When you come across an anxious horse, it is easy to become frustrated both with yourself and with the horse. The fact of the matter is--some horses are just wired this way. It has nothing to do with you or your training program. But, you and your training program can be the thing that makes the difference for this type of horse.
Confidence is one of the hardest things to build and one of the easiest things to destroy.
Even the slightest change in an anxious horse’s surroundings can be enough to break their confidence.
The things that we see as small and irrelevant may seem monumental and scary through the horse’s perspective. We don’t get to see things through their eyes, so we have to be self-aware enough to be understanding of that animal’s perceptions and adjust our training accordingly.
When dealing with horses who are anxious-minded, I tend to focus on one thing: keeping their feet moving. If you have a horse that is fearful of something and shying away from an object, tip that horse’s nose and turn it toward the object. Before long, the horse will begin to focus on their own feet moving more than the object they are scared of. It may take some time, but when that switch flips, you will have helped that animal tap into the thinking side of its brain rather than the reacting side.
There are some horses that we pressure to be ready for certain events by certain ages, and the truth is that some of them simply won’t be ready mentally. They may have all the physical ability in the world, but if they are not in a mental state of confidence, we have to be patient enough to come up with a plan B.
Evaluate where you are with that animal today and make a plan based off of what they are telling you.
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