My arena is right alongside the road as well as my pasture. Although I live in the country and the traffic isn’t high, we get 4 wheelers, dirt bikes, giant farm equipment, etc. Can you turn him out in the arena?
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I have a similar situation with my riding area. What I did was, I turned my horse out in it. He lived in it 24/7 and got to deal with all the boogers running up and down the road. And once I started riding him in it if I hear something coming, I turn and face it and let him look.
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Agreed that having my filly now live outdoors next to the road has made her completely immune to road traffic spooks… thank goodness because those bikers love to come roaring by lol
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I guess I could but I just built this arena last year and it was pushing 100k. ;-( So I don’t really wanna turn anything out there!
His paddock is fairly close behind the arena so he can still see/hear road noise, but even though I imported him over a year ago he still is pretty traumatized by it all going by. He doesn’t mind EV traffic lol, or even reasonable noise but the yahoos who run open headers and the tandem dump trucks who like to think they are F1 drivers are terrifying for him.
What type of groundwork? Lunging or long lining? I am actually a little more confident in the tack then on the ground with this guy.
OMG 
I would join that secret club in a heartbeat re the GP horses spooking at the pretty flowers. BTDT. It’s tough for sure. Most horses definitely would have somewhat acclimatized by now but as mentioned in another reply - he’s been in this country almost a year now and I have not really seen a whole ton of improvement. But to be fair some of these drivers are total jerks. I used to hack on the road all the time back in the day but now it feels almost suicidal to do that anymore.
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Well, would you rather turn him out in the arena and have him muss up the sand, or would you rather not be able to use your nice arena?
If the arena is dry he’s not going to destroy the base it even if he runs a bit.
If I see something super loud coming I turn my spookier horse to face it, but they handled a giant piece of farm equipment spreading lime tonight and didn’t even look.
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The monkey bar Harley drivers seem to be the worst… To be honest, I have been hard pressed not to hold up and wave my little pinky finger - acknowledging the driver’s obvious overly compensating public admission… but I still wanna live…
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I agree. flooding with worrisome things is not the way to go with this guy…
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I think that is your problem to begin with. If he’s not relaxed on the ground… he’s not going to be under saddle. You will always be fighting this hole in his training if you don’t fix it.
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This is something for you to think about. The horse is not the only one with the spooks.
A horse is unlikely to be calmer than the person working with him. You and he have a reflective anxiety beaming back & forth at each other.
It’s not easy, but if you can fake a totally blase’ ‘everything is fine’ demeanor, it may help.
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I completely agree with your sentiment. That said I’m not nervous or worried at all about working on the ground and did not mean to convey that. It is simply that my preference is in the saddle as I am much more effective in calming and redirecting his nervous energy on top, as for this horse particularly he derives far more comfort from me riding him than beside him. Of course not every horse is like this. I do work on the ground if they are particularly difficult / dangerous / blowing through aids / not concerned about their personal welfare etc. but that is definitely not him. The worst he will do is bolt sideways and he is fairly easy to bring back.
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Yeah I would really think about this as well. I have always found ground work translates to a better relationship in the saddle. I do lots of poles in hand and lunging. Long lining for those that are comfortable (i have one that just can’t so we do more in hand work). I have a few basic obstacles I use too to get them thinking. But honestly with poles and blocks I can create a lot of simple questions that get their minds working. I spent a lot of time last year really getting into dressage at the same time I was learning positive reinforcement. My mare I had at the time made huge progress as we spent more time working on the ground. I did way more ground work than riding and my dressage instructor was so impressed at how quickly she became soft and balanced in the saddle.
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Turning out near the problem works well for most horses. Of course I had one that didnt acclimate that way. When in turnout, he would practice his spook-bolt run and get himself excited on and on. He reacted less to minor things, but a big clanky truck, etc would trigger that reaction, which I was concerned was becoming a habit. Scary thing? Run, buck, stop, snort, then get over it. Not what I wanted under saddle!
For him, working in the field or ring mostly on the “safer” side mostly in hand helped. Sometimes there was a quiet horse and rider who would work in the ring and that was ideal.
He was always reactive. It was part of what made him an athletic, sensitie ride. But he did get used to stuff that happened repeatedly. And he learned to tamp down his startle reaction to surprises.
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Is he turned out alone? Give him a super calm friend who never reacts to the road. If one friend doesn’t settle them enough, he might need a few friends who are nonreactive. Then I’d move the calm friend and young horse to the arena and if you don’t want to turn out in there, hang out, do ground work alternating between them, etc. When the young horse is good with a buddy, move the buddy where he can still be seen but maybe not in the arena.
I bought a 2-year old right before 4th of July and put him on 24/7 turnout and my boarding farm does their own fireworks on the top of a hill. I was so nervous but I had a friend that had lived on the property in a rental and she said none of the horses cared about the fireworks and my new horse would take his cue from them.
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Another member of the ring next to the busy road club. I thank Google maps on the daily for this development: I swear it has been since everyone started using google, waze, etc, that the traffic picked up as the GPS was showing people they could save 2 minutes by going this way instead 
Anyway: can you time your rides around the traffic? It is generally lighter mid-day for me. I almost never ride 3-6pm as that is the traffic peak. I ride some pretty spooky horses and they really did get used to most traffic, but I definitely dread the random truck with something flapping (also, thanks pick-up trucks with flags 
). There is not much that can be done about those cars or motorcycles that go by that sound like they are back-firing. I literally count my lucky stars when I’ve just come in from the ring and something like that drives by.
At least the neighbors’ kids are no longer riding their stupid little shoe car up and down the driveway for hours on end. The inconsistent rumble on the driveway maybe 30 feet away was a real killer.
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I boarded once ages ago at a place where they had a couple of kids that had these little go kart things with like 6 foot tall flags like bicycle flags on them and the kids would zip around on them. Of course, my three year-old that I just bought off the track was not amused. So once I felt a little more comfortable with the whole situation and had exposed her to that a little more on the ground, I asked them if they would come in and slowly let me work with the horse with the go kart. We started with it standing still, and we would approach and then after we got good with that, then it would slowly move And so forth, and we went all the way up to them riding it around normally however they wanted, and it didn’t bother the horse . Of course that may not work with every horse. Some horses are just booger than others but sometimes if you just take the time you can get them past it.
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Right??? Was so rural here 30 years ago… This used to be a dead end road. NOW there huge city street sweepers (they are the most terrifying for all the horses here) noisy recycling and garbage pickup trucks, giant grass mowers cutting down all the boulevards that I would much prefer to pick for my horses for treats, neighbours cutting and felling massive trees, neighbours attempting to load skidders and other heavy machinery on to narrow ramps on flat decks…(often times badly) and of course lots of trucks with stupid flags too. It’s a big ask for these horses to tolerate. Of course there are some upsides for sure but at the end of the day there are those uber sensitive horses who will never be fully comfortable with it all. You can only do so much with that kind of temperament. They will never be ammy horses and that’s ok.
I definitely do pick my times to ride and like you… am very thankful to the road gawds when something terrible thunders by and I have just finished my school. And although I can pretty much always ride whatever he puts out there, I feel like for him this is very likely always going to be a difficult thing for him to get past - at least reliably. But he’s very talented and worth all my patient efforts to help him cope.
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If a horse lacks confidence, following a scary object is better to get them over than expecting them to walk up to it or stand there as it passes by.
When starting colts, at a certain point we drag scary things away from them and they get very brave quickly.
From that they learn to be confident they can handle most scary things that show up.
Once Colt is confident, other things that we can’t help with, like noisy traffic, is easier for them to respond to, having learned calming skills with the smaller scary things.
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Look up some of the free TRT videos. The Arabian I’m part leasing has responded very well.
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