By which I mean the horse has not been taught over the past year that longeing is where he gets to bolt and buck. I see so many people inadvertently teaching this.
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I’m not saying not to lunge to help get rid of excess energy. I AM saying, it still needs to be somewhat under control. No horse, especially at a show where a yeeeeehaww! horse is likely to get loose, should be allowed, let alone encouraged, to race around like a fast-cornering motorcycle. By the time a horse is going to a horse show, he should have a pretty solid education on lunging etiquette.
A lot of people seem to forget that a mentally stimulated horse is much less likely to be inappropriately physically energized. Solid groundwork skills, in-hand where you have a lot more control, can go a long way towards mentally centering a horse to the point where HE is able to take more control of his energy so that you, the rider, can put it to good use.
So many people get complacent at home because routines are the same, horses go along, they aren’t really challenged in their behaviors, and the owners don’t do anything to challenge things. The assume that good behavior is all rooted in the training so far, when in reality, a lot of times it’s only good, because the horse didn’t have any reason to do anything to the contrary, therefore there’s been on training on how to behave in the face of new stimulus.
That doesn’t mean he’ll be the same ho-hum horse at a show that he is at home, that’s not the point. You can’t teach horses how to react to every single situation. You CAN teach him appropriate behavior while in your control. Expect to lose some level of training in horses newer to showing (and in some cases, all shows LOL). You’d never train your Hunter over only 2’6" fences, and ask him to show a whole weekend at 3’ for the first time. No, you train for 3’ at home, and show at 2’6" or maybe 2’9" for the first time. So don’t train for 2’6" behavior at home and expect 3’ behavior at a show - it has to be the other way around.
And yes, sometimes no matter what, you have a horse you didn’t expect. You still don’t let him rip-roar around on the lunge, unless you don’t care if you go home early with an injured horse.
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I will respond when I get back from the barn because I want to give this the response it deserves. I think the main thing is that it’s made me wonder what abuse is and how we define it.
ETA:
Here are a few quick thoughts:
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Most recently, her long yearling was tied to her trailer and panicked because I came out of the barn. Instead of letting him work out his spook, she untied him and let him graze. In the process of untying him, he bolted and ran her over.
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I mentioned not feeding her horses if they don’t consent.
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Her older horse clearly has a medical problem; she is perpetually in heat. She’ll back up to anything and wink at it. FFL thinks the mare is a “slut.”
I think these few incidences make me wonder how we constitute abuse: is it just hitting or neglect? Is it also treating a horse like a child? Is it not treating a horse with a black/white approach? That’s what I mean.
Long trot that excess energy out. I will not, under any circumstances, allow wild bucking fits when they’re attached to me.
See all the “black and white” comments. Think your horse is smart enough to know the difference between a 6’ lead line and a 25’ lunge line? I don’t trust mine to know the difference, and I think it’s unfair to expect them to. Line on = no bucking/rearing/crowding/shenanigans.
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I am at a big self board barn with several onsite or visiting lower level trainers but mostly DIY in a variety of modes and disciplines, and no actual training program. We also have Pony Club.
Every mode has strong points and gaps. Pony Club is great at many things but doesn’t have much groundwork in its repertoire for instance.
True abuse is easy enough to spot but the grey lines between excellent horsemanship, mediocre horsemanship, a confused horse and handler, and actual neglect or abuse can be very hard to define.
I constantly see things that I disagree with in terms of management (mostly obesity), hoof care, ground skills, and riding (including rolkurish stuff) but MYOB. The only time I’ve intervened was when a half leaser was not doing their scheduled visit and horse was going without food or water for 36 hours.
Otherwise I just try not to watch and I don’t engage. I have a few friends I can discuss things indepth with but otherwise not my circus, not my monkeys. You can only work on your own horses and horsemanship.
It can be useful to glance at other people for a model of what to avoid, but you cannot change or fix them, and you should not start feeling you need to.save them from themselves.
BTW my mare seemed to be in heat all the time for several summers when she was younger. If estrus comes around every 3 weeks and full heat lasts a week, it really can.seem like constant.
Anyhow your FF lady is craycray and doing lots wrong, and it sounds like you are engaged with her to a certain extent. For your own sanity, back off and get her out of your head. You can’t change her. Despite the fact she’s picked up a few interesting buzzwords, she’s not applying any of this correctly and you have nothing to learn from her.
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Hitting is active abuse. Neglect to the point of health issues is passive abuse. There’s mental abuse in humans when it comes to words.
To me, abuse is pretty clear - it’s something done on purpose that is detrimental to their physical or mental well-being. Stalling the horse because you don’t feel like cleaning mud off him, is abuse. Letting him get thin because you don’t want to pay for the “good” hay, is abuse. Letting him live in chronic pain that results in major weight loss, is abuse. Hitting because he didn’t do what you wanted, is abuse.
Dictionary definitions of abuse include:
use (something) to bad effect or for a bad purpose; misuse.
treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.
cruel and violent treatment of a person or animal.
Keeping a horse stalled when turnout is a detriment to his health, that’s not abuse.
And to your last question, IMHO yes, it is a form of mental abuse if he’s constantly living in a state of gray, because he doesn’t know WHAT to do. He doesn’t know if being lazy today is ok but tomorrow it results in “correction”.
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eggggzactly. Truthfully, if your horse can’t let you get on at a show without bucking right off the bat, and without being lunged like a lunatic, he doesn’t belong at the show yet OR, he belongs there but without any intention of riding, let alone showing.
It’s harder to head into a hissy fit while being asked to long-trot, than if walking or cantering, and trotting (and walking) requires muscle-based breathing which is also more tiring than the pressure-induced diaphramatic breathing of the canter or gallop.
Horses CAN learn to associate X behavior with Y equipment - people involved with breeding stallions do this a lot, using This halter for turnout/work/etc, and Y halter for breeding activities. So a horse COULD learn the difference between a lead rope and a lunge line, but for everyone’s safety, IMHO, it should be much more about “are we physically connected”, and if so, there are behavior rules, period.
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Just tell her you don’t consent to her working with your horse.
Or that your horse conveyed that he actually didn’t consent but felt peer pressured into it.
Either way.
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I do think “feel” is real - it’s the skill of being able to communicate well with horses - and I do think it’s hard to acquire and can seem frustrating or impossible to some folks. And for a lot of people who have it, it becomes instinct and you really can’t explain it to others. And I think some people aren’t naturally sensitive or observant enough to ever be really great at it.
My barn has a really big range of abilities, from very experienced horsepeople to true adult novices, so I see this play out every day. I help people with their horses and I try to explain as much as I can about what I’m doing, but there’s certain aspects of it I can’t always communicate. Do I know why the horses are better for me than their nervous owners? Yes. Am I particularly good at explaining it to them? Not at all. Often it’s not that I’m even visibly DOING anything different from the owner, but the horse is reacting to my energy and confidence and body language, and I am reacting to THEIR energy and very subtle body language, and I learned all of this over 25 years.
It’s easy to give concrete instruction like “always halt them before the gate so they learn not to rush!” and really hard to say, “I felt her tense, which was really that I saw out of the corner of my eye that her poll went up half an inch and her nostril tightened, so I closed my hand a little bit on the lead rope to reassure her that I was there.” Are you aware you’re doing that in the moment? Do you have to think about it? Or is just something instinctive that happens in a split second?
The other day one of our boarders who started in horses as an adult was talking to a younger teen, and the boarder said something like, “You have to realize [the more experienced boarders] can’t remember NOT knowing how to do these things, which is why they aren’t always great at telling you why or how they do it.” I don’t know what the topic was - learning to feel diagonals, maybe - but I think it applies to a lot of horsemanship and horse handling.
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Yesss. I agree with and experience so much of this.
It’s also hard sometimes to recommend certain exercises or training solutions, because while I did x for y horse, z horse would’ve possibly killed me if I would’ve done it that way. How did I know that? I just felt it, you have to feel it out. I have a hard time teaching or explaining that.
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I had a bad actor similar to this once. It wasn’t just on the lunge. He’d figure out when/how to spirit himself away from you on the lead, too, which was really a pain in the butt. The trainer would use a chain, but if he’d got loose with a chain, you know he can break his whole head by stepping on that line and tightening the chain, so I didn’t use it. I used a “be nice” halter instead.
But that’s neither here nor there (about the leading).
What I did with the lunge line was get a proper lunging cavesson, with the attachment loop at the front of the nose. SO MUCH BETTER for a misbehaving horse than either the line to bit rings or any halter loop.
If the horse misbehaves on the lunge, and you tug, it swings his whole body around because he’s literally being led by the nose. Reduces his available leverage that he’s using against you.
Now, it must be property fitted, and snug, so you don’t wind up interfering with his eye. But there’s a reason this piece of apparatus was invented. Plus you can put it over or under a bridle, and still use sidereins in your training work if you want. That way, the effect of the sidereins is independent from the person in the middle of the circle, as it should be.
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Exacerbated by instruction barns where young people learn to ride on school horses. How much has each of us learned by working with our horses at liberty? A LOT. How often do non-owners get to work with horses at liberty? Hardly ever at all.
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Well I made it about half way through that video. To me she was upset because the horse wouldn’t back. To me the horse did not understand the cue for going back. She is being rewarded for going forward and then suddenly not being rewarded for going forward and just leaves so she doesn’t get the idea of what the lunge whip used in front means. When loose the lunge whip in front means change direction.
To have no control over the horse whatsoever and do things like walk underneath, stick arm in mouth, hold ears until the horse is upset, just shows how much of a problem horse that horse is not. To have no control and be kissing on rump, ribs, shoulder, wherever I have NEVER seen anyone do.
To not feed a horse, OMG, the mind boggles. To do this enough for the horse to lose weight. I am sorry this is beyond the realm of normalcy and is not a person who should own animals or have children in her care. The unawareness is so extreme.
For a horse you cannot hold was Sim when next door moved their foals to a new paddock. How dare they! His babies had been taken. HORROR. This behaviour would go on for 3 days. I could not hold him. He would canter for 3 days and not graze. If hubby could hold him to tack him. I could lunge and ride by keeping my attention on me. He was a bit better once let go but still 3 days and each year he was getting worse and worse. It was not just the foals being moved but also if their horses changed paddocks.
I saw John Chatterton and he said hold loose when he goes to go pull and release.
This is done with a normal halter with circles not squares. The lead rope goes through the circle, behind the jaw and clicks to the circle on the other side.
To start with it didn’t seem to do anything but at least he wasn’t getting away from me. Slowly he got a bit better and I was able to lead him. When I let him go he grazed for a bit. This seemed to help not just physically but also mentally.
He got better and better and nowadays we hardly notice if they move a horse next door and we no longer have to use the pull and release. He just has a bit more energy when being ridden.
As to your question about praise and punishment. Praise is Good boy or Girl, on the lunge I use words like Yes, Beautiful, Lovely, That is what I want. I stroke only, I don’t pat. Strokes can be long and hard or soft and short. I also turn the dressage whip upside down and use that when in a free walk. While riding the reward is to prove the inside rein. To walk for a rest and if they did something super hop off and finish. I do not use food rewards, but I can use a carrot for reward if needed.
Punishment is to say uhuh. Sometimes a no. Or a really? A slap usually on the neck or shoulder if they move and put back and praise I use as training, never anger.
To the person who said that their horses are standing on their feet. A mare never steps on her foal. They know. Unless you put your foot under their hoof as it is coming down. That gives you something to think about. Change your handling. Having a horse stand on your foot is not normal. Stand further away.
To me all horses want to please you. They want to do good. If they understand what you want it makes them happy to do it and they will work their heart out for you. It is only a horse who doesn’t understand that doesn’t do what you want.
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My instructor said this is the main difference between people who grew up riding horses and those who start later in life. He has seen me do it and he knows he does it himself. The horse is doing such and such you just wait, horse finishes doing such and such and then you go on with whatever and not a problem.
His partner and my partner taught by us respectively. Do not do this, do whatever when horse is not ready. It does not seem like something that can be taught.
Sure they do. It’s almost always an accident. Legs get broken. Ribs get broken. Sometimes they do try to kill their own foals (and sometimes succeed).
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I would probably be that mare!
A good read for this thread
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This was my boy, Flight. Who was trained with Love. I certainly wasn’t as skilled a trainer as i am now…but i loved him with all my heart. Hard not to/he was so beautiful…
Bekah Tate - Horsemanship .
“I regularly get messaged
“how do I Get my horse to _____________”
The answer is, you MAKE them
((easy now! Put the lunge whip down
|16x16]
You Make them fall in love with you.
and to do that?
you must first fall in love with them
If we are a pleasant presence for our horses internally and externally, we will have both the connection and the voluntary participation needed to help them enthusiastically learn.
However if we are trying to extract something from them, they will run away
(both literally and metaphorically!)
If we begin to focus on what we can offer to them from a place of love, they will be there (again both literally and metaphorically )
It’s easy to focus on the behaviors we don’t want (hard to catch, distracted, difficult to trailer, etc).
However, that focus on the aversive makes it hard to operate from a place of empathy and compassion.
Any of those behaviors become easy when our horses deeply want to be active participants in a loving relationship.
This relationship paves the way for a rewarding behavioral development process.
We often focus so much on what we want From the horse.
We can forget to see what it is that we can provide to the horse instead. ((Heightened sense of safety, food reward, social interaction))
However when we make the shift in focus, we are in turn Given what we were looking to ‘get’ in the first place.
If we appeal to what they want and need to be well and at peace, they will always be there as voluntary participants in the relationship.”
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I was going to mention Schiller. I think the force free lady is missing some very key points (no kidding). Schiller believes in fostering a relationship and listening to your horse. On his FB page, he is great at answering questions or concerns and apparently even better for those who have a subscription.
I do use some of strategies and I appreciate the low key mindful approach, and so does my horse.
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One of my friends at the barn and myself talk a lot about Schiller.
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