We had a youngster who as a foal would occasionally run up to me like I was his playmate - cute at first but not something you want to encourage. I’m not experienced enough to say how to stop it but agree, it’s not a activity you want to encourage.
Lots of things horses do as youngsters that are cute at the time…not so cute when they weigh 1000 lbs or more. It’s the same with all young animals, even people. Cute when they are little and not so much when they are older. I had a friend who let her puppy chew on his leash and anything else he could get when he was a puppy. When I said stop, you are teaching him bad things, she told me it was okay because he was a puppy. Dog is 6 now and won’t stop tearing things up and chewing on stuff. Or the cat that was allowed to nip as a kitten, still does it as an adult. He lives with me and thank goodness he has no teeth (he had to have them pulled because they were rotten when he was dumped on my property) but it’s still a nasty behavior that is too late to eradicate completely.
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Thos is why you do not scratch a foal’s rump. You don’t want a full grown horse approaching you with ther rump.
You do not scratch a calf’s forehead. Tou don’t want a full grown cow/bull approaching you with head down.
…and don’t get me started on the idiot who thought it was cute to have the foal’s front hooves on his shoulders.
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To me, this horse just doesn’t respect you as a herd leader. This horse sees you as lower on the herd list than he is.
He should be listening to YOU every time you are there, not his buddies. I’d enforce that he’s listening to YOU, but be kind about it. He doesn’t get to run with his buddies in the smaller training paddock. You are boss mare. WORK him with standard ground work techniques when he’s focused on the other horses. WORK doesn’t mean making him run into the ground, it means having do stuff like frequent changes of direction, backing up, side-stepping and doing other brain-challenging things.
I suggest that if he’s running at you, he doesn’t respect you. You probably need some professional help. I would always carry a stick with a bag or flag on the end to seriously wave at the horse if he charges. Almost all horses will back off with a flag and if you mean it. YOU be alpha mare. YOU tell him, NO, oh NO, you don’t challenge me. EVER. Of course you hopped on the fence for your safety, that’s smart!!! But this horse is challenging a human and needs to be put in his place. Yes, it was obvious aggression against you, but likely came out of a place of anxiety and fear. It does add up, he’s OK with you when he’s not anxious because he considers you low in the herd rank, but he doesn’t consider you as a “herd leader” when he is anxious.
This is normal horse dynamics and nothing to be ashamed of, but needs to be dealt with. You are ultimately not his friend or equal or underling. You and other humans are the head of the herd and he has to be respectful. If you’ve watches a boss mare, they bite and kick other horses into submission. They don’t back down. Talk “horse” to your horse. Be prepared to whip the crap out of him if he charges into your space. He’ll leave your space pretty quickly, and learn that he can’t run you off like he’d treat a lesser herd-ranked horse. YOU instill fear in HIM at that moment…and then let the moment go, you’re buddies again. None of this will work if you’re hesitant and genuinely afraid of your horse-they’ll know. It that is the case, please seek professional help. Please seek professional help anyway.
I think this horse needs consistent leadership. Providing leadership isn’t abusive at all, it’s “talking horse” to another horse, especially an insecure horse like yours seems to be. Lots of horses are insecure.
Good luck!
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Bolded mine.
Based on those two pieces, it’s pretty apparent to me what is happening. You’ve put him in an area where there is nothing to mentally occupy him (i.e. grazing) and without his herd. You state that sometimes he’ll gallop the fenceline. This is his way of expressing the anxiety he feels at being separated from his friends, food, i.e where he’d LIKE to be and where MENTALLY he still is. And if you’re not doing anything to demand his attention in those moments, to give him structure and guidance as to where he should be focusing, he’ll continue to be worried.
So now he’s feeling anxious and you step in what sounds like his direct line of travel along the fence. Now you’re in his way. This isn’t “aggression” in the sense you’re thinking of - your horse is coping with his anxiety the best way he knows how and now you’ve stepped in and made that hard without giving him any other guidance as to how he could manage it. So in his mind, it’s perfectly reasonable to either A) ignore your presence and try and keep doing what he’s doing, or B) remove you from his path because again, it’s logical to him to try and keep doing what he’s doing because it’s all he knows to do to make himself feel better.
So you need to get FAR more important to this horse when you put him in this “training paddock”. What you’re doing right now is “training” him to ignore you and panic about being somewhere that it isn’t his idea to be. I’d venture this horse is actually not as respectful with a halter on as you think - there are many, many horses out there who will obey in the halter because they feel they have no other choice but when given the freedom to CHOOSE where to focus will leave so fast it’ll make your head spin. Your horse is showing that he has no desire to focus on you, so you need to make yourself much more important to him when he’s loose.
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Hiya, I only turn him loose for perhaps 10 or 20 minutes for a break say or when I grab a drink, the rest of the time I am doing ground work with him where he is well mannered, and responds how he should, yesterdays session included join up and he willingly followed me without a head collar or lead rope, put him back on the rope then when I turned him loose for a break he just grazed and didnt bomb about, so perhaps he is improving with consistency? I definitely agree with your advice though, its so important yo give them structure and guidance and get much more important to them than anything else! Thank you for replying. Amazing how they can be significantly different one day to the next. I doubt the problem is solved yet having said that perhaps I shouldnt turn him loose in there atall yet x
First Practice whipping a carried behind you longe whip to in front of you and swooshing it. Use a post for practice. Then carry it every time, and be prepared to use it. Life is too short to fool around.
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Well, you can still turn him loose, but be prepared to support him getting okay with you walking away for a minute or two from afar, if needed. I find flags excellent for this purpose. Indeed, he needs to have those moments where his herd isn’t there to comfort him and you aren’t right there to give him structure so he can learn he can left alone for a period of time and still be okay.
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At our barn the horses have paddock runouts but can only be in actual big turnout arenas while attended. So I’ve worked out lots of ways to manage horses loose and in hand.
If I’m working a horse that has any pent up energy then encourage them to run and buck at liberty but always moving away from me. For this I carry a longe whip. After they’ve got the zoomies out I typically wait until they have relaxed and are moving about at a quiet walk until I call them over and start working either in hand or at liberty.
In my experience very few horses will have the full out zoomies two days in a row, though some young Arabians and TB might be an exception. On the other hand, quieter horses might surprise you by being more explosive than you expect on any given day. So I completely expect varying degrees of energy and expressiveness day to day. It doesn’t mean he is getting better or worse. It just means he had more energy.
With a 3 year old I would give him a chance to run it off every single day, so you get a chance to learn his patterns. I would always carry a longe whip and stand in the middle of the arena if I am sending him around. I would not let myself get trapped in corner while he is running.
Once he has worked off the zoomies and caught his breath I would start inhand work in the rope halter. If he was being a very good boy, I would consider taking the lead rope off and doing things at liberty. But I would follow this procedure every day.
”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹You have to manage energy level first in a horse, then mood and attitude, and then attention, and only then can you actually engage in teaching him. It’s like the training pyramid of groundwork :). If a horse is all razzed and needs to run, they will not work productively in hand even if they know the work.
I think the first question you have to answer is why he’s galloping around in this area in the first place. You mention him feeling anxious in there. Is it separation anxiety? An anxious horse is a potentially dangerous horse. If he’s galloping due to anxiety, and you happen to show up in the path where he’s running, it isn’t a case of him running “at you” necessarily as much as him running and you being in his path.
That said, I’ve never had one of mine charge me to the point that I felt unsafe (I’ve had other people’s horses do it though), but when mine was full of anxiety recently when we switched his turn-out and removed him from a horse he’d gotten far too attached to, when I’d go out into his pasture while he was fretting, he would run to me. I know him, I’ve raised him from a yearling and he’s 12 now, so I wasn’t bothered by it, and he always slowed or swerved. But it was like he was coming to me seeking relief from his anxiety. When I couldn’t offer it, he’d take off down the fence line again. Thankfully he got over it in a day or two.
Now, I’ve known truly aggressive horses that would charge people with ears pinned and teeth bared, and that’s a different issue, but the solution is the same. In both instances, the horse has to learn that no matter what the reason, when you are in the vicinity, he should steer clear while he’s running. I guarantee you if you were a big ol’ boss mare out there in the enclosure with him, he wouldn’t dare come running right at her because he’d know better. So, you have to impress upon him that you are just as off limits for his shenanigans. If it’s just him being careless and unaware of your importance, it shouldn’t be hard to fix. You’ve been given some good tactics in this thread. Swing a lead rope, carry a whip, whatever it takes to remind him that he should respect your space when he’s being silly. If he’s actually being nasty and aggressive, it’ll take a lot more aggression on your part, and really good timing that might be better coming from a professional that deals with problem horses. It doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re dealing with though, so that’s good.
Funny story, the only horse I’ve ever owned that did anything close to “charging” me was a sort of flunky cutting horse that I got to do dressage and jumping with. He was a gorgeous boy, super smart and fun to ride. He got a bit too tall to be a top cutting horse, but had been started in the discipline, so knew a bit. I was longeing him in the round pen one day and stopped for a minute to talk to someone outside of the pen. I was ignoring him, standing by the rail talking when all of a sudden the person I was talking to’s eyes got big and I heard the hoof beats and felt the ground vibrating and a sudden sort of “whoosh” blasted up behind me just before I turned around. My gelding was standing there, mere inches from me, ears pricked forward, face bright and expectant like he was saying "let’s play!’ The person I was talking to is the one I’d bought him from, and he was laughing by that time. “He’s trying to get you to move,” he told me. Apparently it was something they call “jumping the cow”…the horse wants the cow to move so that he can do his job, and if it doesn’t, the horse kind of rushes at the cow to get it going.
It didn’t bother me because he was a super sweet and respectful horse. He never did it again. I guess he realized there was no point since I just stood there and laughed at him. He was definitely one that would have enjoyed a game of “tag” if I’d been inclined, but I knew that probably wasn’t a smart thing to encourage.
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Thank you, what would you do in supporting him to be ok alone? I feared for his safety that one day when he was racing so much, it’s not a very flat paddock and he looked set to jump out, though hes never jumped before. I made a flag on your advice yesterday and it is definitely a brilliant tool, wont go without now 
Well said, its definitely something I’m working hard on, and will take your advice and it’s a wise idea to have a trainer help us too, iv been in contact with a couple it’s just finding the right one around here, yes I think those excersises you mentioned are so valuable and what really works in calming him down, getting his attention etc I do them alot. I am so annoyed with myself that I’m abit worried about it, not to the point of not handling him but its disappointing that I’m now anxious about it somewhat, particularly as you say, horses know dont they! Hope he doesnt start doing it out of the blue, il make sure to carry the flag and be prepared, Thank you x
I like Tristen Tucker’s method of teaching a horse how to manage itself and have confidence. I would start with his beginning strategies.
If you rhink he is going to jump a fence, do not put him in there again.
Thank you, iver the last few days Iv come to the conclusion it isn’t, as his expression was not aggressive, rather that he was running along before hand and I then got in his way but something to watch out for and carry a flag for sure! X
He settled down the last couple of days when alone however his confidence being alone is something I’m addressing either way!
Oh thank you il look Tristen tucker up now, x
I suggest you need a quality trainer in person, not an internet persona. Sure, you can learn alot from people online, but I suggest you find an kind but quality “real person” who can help you.
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