Dealing with a Horse that is Very Nervous at Competitions

[Tumbleweed]

I feel your pain. After 1 year of showing, I only have the occasional freak out. But I can get mine back and he will focus on his job- most of the time, and do pretty well. One thing is that i keep going- and he has to focus on what I am telling him to do and complete whatever task is at hand. I am not afraid of him doing anything terrible, he just gets extremely nervous and jigs and might go sideways, but he does do what I ask him and he does not rear or buck undersaddle.
But it is a sideshow sometimes!

You have good advise above and you do just need to get out as much as you can- every weekend at least.

Another thing I have been using for a couple months and found to be super helpful is Purina Outlast. Its a supplement. Check it out. It really helps my guy. I tried ulcergard, nupafeed, about 20 other different magnesium supplements, calming pastes galore , valerian, nothing worked as well as the Outlast. Good Luck!!

[lds14]

@Fairview Horse Center

All day hunter shows. The kind that you can set up chairs, coolers, etc pretty close to the rings and just hang out. The goal would be to tack up and ride 3-4 times throughout the day, in a hack class when you are comfortable, or just in the warmup, but then hang out for hours doing nothing, napping in the sun, etc

We don’t go to many of these unfortunately. I can try to incorporate this into some other type of show, although not quite the same atmosphere.

[supaflyskye]

Your horse sounds quite similar to my own gelding in some ways.

I just wrote out quite a long post talking about my horse, his anxiety, & how we handle it…but I scrapped it w/o posting through…because I realized I was digressing practically into my gelding’s life story more than I was saying anything actually potentially helpful in any way. :lol:

So OP, I will say now, trying to be short, sweet & to the point – w/ my guy, a very large portion of keeping his nerves under control at shows comes down to keeping my own nerves under control at shows. That is much easier said than done, however.
And just getting out & about off property at every possible opportunity really did help my horse (& me to some extent!) be more readily adaptable to new environments. I will also admit that we have ended up showing at the same venues repeatedly in order to make it less stressful for him – like, if there were 2 events/shows going on w/in the month at 2 different venues both of which were a similar distance away, I would deliberately choose to attend the event at the venue where my horse has been many times before & is more comfortable, versus showing at a venue that we’ve only been to once or never been at all. This is perhaps not the most practical thing to do…but it comes fairly naturally to me at least, because the area where I am located does not exactly have a plethora of venue options generally speaking, especially when it comes to eventing. && of course, if at all possible we try to be at the showgrounds the morning of the day before the show, so he has plenty of time to just relax & get accustomed to his surroundings, as well as school & look around at everything.

I must note as well that my guy turned 11 in April of this year (I’ve had him since he was a weanling), & it is almost completely unbelievable how much he has suddenly “mellowed out” over the past year or two!
He is much less of a chronically wound up ball of nerves than he was even just a few years ago. Age really does make a big difference for a lot of horses.

[leheath]

@lds14

…My challenge though is that I’m a very quiet rider and I always like to use the lightest possible aids. And its hard for me to “switch over” at shows where I have to ride extremely aggressively to keep him paying attention to me. It’s still a jarring transition to me. I really have to work on my “adjust-ability”.

leheath - I have a similar situation in where I feel like it’s not 100% consistent what works best in terms of letting him look or not look. I feel fairly confident on him in terms of riding out most antics, but what gets me nervous is having him cause problems with other horses. He once reared straight up in the warm up ring and while he did not touch another horse and I rode it out, it caused a chain reaction of bad behavior for other horses. But honestly, relaxation and confidence are always things I can work on…

I totally get the rider “adjustability” challenges - my horse can be behind the leg and lazy a home, then dashing off with enthusiasm at a show…but not all shows. I’ve really had to work on my ability to ride the horse that shows up that day which may be totally different from the one that showed up yesterday!

I also understand feeling bad about setting off other horses but everyone has been “that horse/rider” at some point. When my young horse went through this phase, I tried to warm up at least away from kids and riders or horses that looked nervous or more likely to be adversely affected by my horse’s behavior and then I just didn’t worry about it. We also went in cold to several dressage tests at schooling shows because she was oddly better in indoor arenas (where most dressage shows are held in my area) than in outdoor rings (where most warm up areas are located).

I am wondering if “riding extremely aggressively” is actually making the issue worse? I ride mares, so they respond a littler differently than geldings, but I am 100% sure if I was aggressive with my horse about her focus, things would deteriorate rapidly. Riding quietly, with light aids, but insistently is more effective, in my experience. If my horse reared, I just waited until she came down the quietly asked again for her to go where we were going originally as if the rear never happened. This avoids the horse thinking “oh my rider is getting tense/aggressive so there must be something bad to be tense about.”

[kcmel]

My 6 YO can still have meltdowns at shows in warm-up, although he has gotten much better. I started taking him places when he was 4, and he has been to many different venues–HTs, CTs, jumper shows, dressage shows, paper chases, clinics, etc., besides just schooling different places.

I haven’t done too much with him off the farm myself. I am fortunate that my event trainer is fearless and has a velcro seat. And my dressage trainer does a great job with him too. For me, I would rather leave it to the pros to make sure he has a positive experience. There has been only one incident where I felt anyone was in danger, before we realized that if you tried to hold him while someone was mounting he would go straight up in the air.

What helped in the beginning was having his stable mate, that I compete, with him. Of course then the problem is “weaning” him away from his friend. Right now he is at the point where if he goes somewhere by himself he is (usually) perfect. When his friend is with him he is usually ok as long as my trailer is parked far away from the ring/course. There is one venue where we are parked right next to the ring, and then my two will call each other the whole time the other one is doing his dressage test (we get a lot of “needs focus” comments). We probably won’t go there anymore, at least for a while:lol:.

[lds14]

@leheath

I am wondering if “riding extremely aggressively” is actually making the issue worse? I ride mares, so they respond a littler differently than geldings, but I am 100% sure if I was aggressive with my horse about her focus, things would deteriorate rapidly. Riding quietly, with light aids, but insistently is more effective, in my experience. If my horse reared, I just waited until she came down the quietly asked again for her to go where we were going originally as if the rear never happened. This avoids the horse thinking “oh my rider is getting tense/aggressive so there must be something bad to be tens”

So, I would say there is always a bit of tension factor when I am sitting on a time bomb. I work on taking big breathes and especially on not tensing my lower arm, which is a overall bad habit of mine. there is always room for improvement here and I have gotten more comfortable sitting on the bomb. But the riding aggressively seems to the only thing that keeps him focused. When I say I aggressive, I probably mean more assertively. At home, he’ll go on the bit and pay attention with a soft half halt and is very light and steady in the hand. At shows, I feel like I’m ripping his face off with the half halts and he’s still blowing through him. I’m not really, it just feels like it to me since it just needs much stronger aids at shows because he is incredibly distracted. I always try to be as light as possible with the aids, but when I ride like I do at home he ends up much more explosive or he just doesn’t listen at all. I’ve tried the less aggressive approach and we just end up broncing around the warm up which is no good for anyone. At shows he requires a strong leg not letting him get behind it and constant communication with the reins and leg yields, circles, etc. I don’t believe that anyone watching would think I was doing anything harsh, it just feels so much more aggressive to me.

[devvie_continued]

The horse I ride is quite different at shows, but has some of the same issues (nappyness, spooking, prop and spin) at home to a lesser degree. I’ve begun doing groundwork exercises with him (NOT NH, sensible groundwork to work on focus and the timing of the aids) and it’s helping. I would recommend giving some thought to this approach. The one I ride was so, uh, excited/distracted at last HT that he basically cleared the corner of the warm up near the start box before I went out (to ride clear around cross), backing up, rearing, and generally losing his shit. I’m hoping for an improvement next time out, so enjoying this thread. With the horse I ride I feel like it will take more than JUST exposure to get him right in the head at shows – he’s 13, he’s been to major show grounds, multi day shows, with a lot more action than the competitions I’ve had him at. With him, I would say it’s really debatable that more exposure is going to fix his mental issues out at shows.

[subk]

I’m working through this right now and making good progress. Yes, go a lot of places, but some of it is basic obedience. “When I put my leg on, you will go forward, when I close my hand you will bring your head down.” (And I’m willing to be demanding about it.) Putting them to WORK is a great defense.

But here’s the biggest thing that has made a difference for us. I teach my green horses to reach forward and down for the bit. I teach this BEFORE I ask them to “go in a dressage frame.” After a few months putting their head down and stretching their neck forward it becomes an actual command–not something I try to entice them to do with wiggling around with the bit. Honestly this concept is the basis for all our early work. This is valuable for a nervous horse–they need to learn that when you close your hand there is always a door available in front of them. I find the ones that are strung tight really build tension if they feel the box closing on all sides. They need to understand the escape hatch is to the front/forward. There is also the added benefit that there is a relation between calmness and physically getting the neck to stretch down.

So once all that is installed at home when I go someplace the plan in to put him to work the moment I get on because there is no quiet walking around. Yes, he is bonkers, but I’m closing my hand and kicking him into it and demanding he go forward. At first it is very ugly. Very ugly. I’m committing the number one sin of pulling a horse’s in, but matching it with leg at least staying forward. We have the tense tiny trot steps, a sky high neck and an inverted frame. But then I start asking him to stretch his neck by softening my hand(s) and giving him someplace to stretch into–showing him the escape hatch is still in front of him. Slowly, slowly his frame becomes less inverted, he’s reaching a little forward and the more he reaches forward the more pleasant life gets. We reach a truce of sorts. As long as that pony doesn’t run up behind him or anything else that he can use as an excuse doesn’t happen we’re at least forward and not inside out. At some point he takes a deep breath and a big sigh and it’s mostly over. If I’m lucky after that big sigh he’ll really start stretching–some days better than others, but the day he finally dropped his head as low as his knees for a few moments was really a break through day.

Lots of going places, even if its just a another barn, getting on, getting some progress, getting off and going home before anything exciting happens. Over and over and hopefully it gets a little better every time. My OTTB is ready to go BN–at home, but we pulled from the RRP because he’s not ready to go places.

[lds14]

Just wanted to provide an update, as I’ve taken a lot of the suggestions and integrated them. We finally had a show where there was zero bad behavior and he was reasonably calm for a still green horse. Here’s the combination of things that worked:

1. We continued off property schooling. Had one really bad one where he completely bronced me off. But improved from there. Possibly knowing the worst of it made me more confident.
2. I ordered and followed the TRT Method. This made a huge difference and gave me some tools to use that bring him back to a more relaxed state when he gets upset. Also definitely helped to have that bonding time. This program is similar to all other groundwork programs, but it resonated with me. I liked the idea of not just de-sensitizing, but teaching him how to handle himself under stressful situation.
3. I started using the SmartCalm paste morning of the show.
4. We’ve worked a lot on keeping him ahead of my leg at all times.

I’m not exactly sure which of these things has really helped the most, but together they seem to be making a difference. I’m definitely hopeful now that he will be able to settle into a show horse in the future.