Nasty horse....comes at you with jaws open

[grayarabs]

I hope the owners continue with positive reinforcement/clicker training. I am a CT’er. I can see where CT/+R would be the only way to help these horse/s. The basics of CT/+R of course - with protected contact. (a barrier between) Ignore the bad / reward the good. Click and treat what you like.

[grayarabs]

To add: (can’t edit above). If owners are trying CT - I hope they are using an experienced / professional one. Curious: What breed and age is the horse?

[mvp]

@Seagram

Thanks MVP and Equkelly for the thoughtful insights, and everyone else. “Battle conditions in his mind” is exactly what it sounds like. This is not the kind of horse you can or should fight. It only makes it worse, you guys are absolutely right. I’ve watched the owner and the barn manager, and they definitely deal with him differently, so he has an expectation of how he will be treated. I am hopeful that they are successful and I am glad to have the opportunity to watch them work with him. I will be the first to admit that I still have a lot to learn when it comes to horses, that it is a never ending process. And I am thankful, also, that they are aware of the problem and not willing to put me in danger. This truly is not a normal situation with just a ‘bad’ horse. I know there is more to his backstory.

Here’s a funny thing though. Now that I am not handling him at all, when I say hello to him as I pass his stall, he whickers at me. I say hello to all the horses in the barn, in passing, and he is the only one that answers. As if he enjoyed his game with me and now he misses it? Bugger

So interesting!

This horse reminds me of an apparently extroverted, happy (but not) comedian who has to “take up all the social oxygen” with big behavior. I don’t mean to diss the man, but Robin Williams’ style in things like interviews always made me uncomfortable. He just had to be in control of the conversation and expressly keep the interviewer off balance by going into riffs that took their own path through topics. If Robin Williams riffing in his rapid fire way that offered the interviewer almost no opportunity to steer were a horse, would you swing a leg over that? I wouldn’t. But as was revealed later, Williams was not the ebulliently happy dude whose appearance to be very “with” people actually felt that way to him.

In terms of a horse like this, who is way-over-the-top controlling when you handle him, but who “courts you” with those Barry White whickers when you are at a safe distance, that’s interesting!

That kind of reminds me of my mare (who reminds me of me when I was 13): The motivation behind the “snarl first/over the top, ask questions later” behavior is a combination of being very alpha and also sensitive. So her view of life is “I might be unsure, but everyone else is an idiot, so I’m going to have to treat this as a ‘battle conditions’ scenario.” What this horse needs, then, is direction from someone Who Has Credibility.

At first, that looks like being very exacting with her. So with a horse like yours, that is one that would get handled with precision, firmness and either a rope halter or a chain, every.single.time. He’d be a little bit like a dangerous prisoner coming out of his cell where there was a ritual like his putting his hands through the slot to be handcuffed before the door even opened. Yours (and mine) are horses who I would teach to face me in the stall with an open, attentive expression before I stepped in. And they’d be taught through repetition that this “What can I do for you today?” expression of a great store clerk is the one he needs to offer people. His handlers need to put him into the spot where he offers this (because this really relates to the “I’m in an attentive, equal relationship with you”) state of mind that’s safe and useful for both of you. You are teaching this horse how to open his mind when he sees a person rather than to leap to whatever conclusion he likes and start dragging you along with that view of the world.

Later on, that direction-with-credibility- looks like teaching her to be very exacting with her feet on the ground. So this horses was “on the job” and given a thinking job to do every time she was with a person. Also, when she was loose and on her own, I didn’t try to influence her. I wanted her to experience being very attentive to her handler whenever she was with a person. Also, asking her to do some ground work gave you the opportunity to give her the opportunity to earn some praise. So her handler was both exacting and rewarding. What she’s really repeating is the process of giving her attention exclusively to me and then noticing that that feels pleasurable-- safe, peaceful and self-esteem-y.

Last, with all that experience baked in, I’d become the handler who also helped her feel OK under pressure. Now, the logic was that when we were, in fact, in Battle Conditions where she, say, had to approach a cow or something scary, she got peace when she followed my direction and put her feet where I told her too. I became valuable to her and listening to me became worthwhile because I kept her safe, which is what she wanted in the first place.

Lots of people and lots of horsemanship that we see looks like the first and second parts-- it’s the first part of reform where the person seems to be kicking some ass of the “disrespectful” horse (note that “disrespect” is a crude term that disregards the horse’s legit concern about self-preservation). Really, they are just staging an “intervention” where they are making themselves relevant to a horse who has thus-far not paid particularly careful attention to people.

But what people don’t talk enough about or demonstrate so well is the credibility-building part that must be done for these “big” horses. Until you answer a horse’s need for security, he’s going to answer that question for himself, his way with whatever dysfunctional strategy he discovered. And this is a “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs” thing: No horse will do anything else for you so long as he has questions about his own safety and whether your contribute to that or distract him from the number-one-job of keeping himself safe. If you don’t teach a horse that you can offer him a better version of the security (and maybe self-esteem and maybe the entertainment of seeing the world and learning stuff under saddle), you haven’t given him anything he values.

My horse has another feature that might be relevant to consider for your horse. She is half-Arabian and brings that smartness and intense, aiming-to-please of that breed to the table. She’s always mellow and deeply relaxed after a ride, but before hand she is tense and anxious. Even though she’s in fifth grade and gets praised for being a good student, she knows that there is something really hard out there called “the bar exam” and every day is the day she has to take it.

So I can try to tell her today is not bar exam today and that I would never expect that of a mere fifth grader, but this is her paranoid fantasy and she’s sticking to it. So I have to answer her (emotions-based) question about how to survive today’s bar exam. You know how you take the bar exam? You get down to the intellectual business of taking the bar exam and sublimate your feelings about taking the bar exam. That “sublimate your emotions” is what these big-behaving horses need to learn to do. It’s what we get and train and expect from all the horses we ride. While they are doing a job for us and being very compliant, they are not having strong opinions about their safety or anything else.

Learning to put aside your emotions and focus on a job is a skill to be learned and it’s an “internal job”; the horse has to be put into situations that let him practice doing that. What the Robin Williams horse or the OP’s open-jawed horse is doing is using big behavior to shape the world to help him feel safe with big (or, at least, important-to-him) emotions. So this horse who whickers for your interaction but then goes over-the-top to control your interaction with him is being dragged along by his emotional need for a very particular kind of interaction with people. He has no idea how to cut it out and just be attentive because no one has taught him how to put his emotional needs on hold while he does that. But if he’s as smart and interested in people as those whickers suggest, he can be taught with some skill and time.

[endlessclimb]

@mvp

So interesting!

This horse reminds me of an apparently extroverted, happy (but not) comedian who has to “take up all the social oxygen” with big behavior. I don’t mean to diss the man, but Robin Williams’ style in things like interviews always made me uncomfortable. He just had to be in control of the conversation and expressly keep the interviewer off balance by going into riffs that took their own path through topics. I imagined being in a conversation with someone like that where I was just taken for a ride wherever they were going and “was there” as their interlocutor, but never with any opportunity for input or to steer the conversation. When I imagined myself in the interviewer’s shoes, I felt destabilized and exhausted, and that I was not actually with the person across from me, but held in some proximity that he wanted. And, as we learned later, the man was not, in fact, the ebulliently happy dude.

If Robin Williams riffing in his rapid fire way that offered the interviewer almost no opportunity to steer were a horse, would you swing a leg over that? I wouldn’t.

In terms of a horse like this, who is way-over-the-top controlling when you handle him, but who “courts you” with those Barry White whickers when you are at a safe distance, that’s interesting.

That kind of reminds me of my mare (who reminds me of me when I was 13): The motivation behind the “snarl first/over the top, ask questions later” behavior is a combination of being very alpha and also sensitive. So her view of life is “I might be unsure, but everyone else is an idiot, so I’m going to have to treat this as a ‘battle conditions’ scenario.” What this horse needs, then, is direction from someone Who Has Credibility.

At first, that looks like being very exacting with her. So with a horse like yours, that is one that would get handled with precision, firmness and either a rope halter or a chain, every.single.time. He’d be a little bit like a dangerous prisoner coming out of his cell where there was a ritual like his putting his hands through the slot to be handcuffed before the door even opened. Yours (and mind) are horses who I would teach to face me in the stall with an open, attentive expression before I stepped in. And they’d be taught through repetition that this “What can I do for you today?” expression of a great store clerk is the one he needs to offer people. His handlers need to put him into the spot where he offers this (because this really relates to the “I’m in an attentive, equal relationship with you”) state of mind that’s safe and useful for both of you. You are teaching this horse how to open his mind when he sees a person rather than to leap to whatever conclusion he likes and start dragging you along with that view of the world.

Later on, that direction-with-credibility- looks like teaching her to be very exacting with her feet on the ground. So this horses was “on the job” and given a thinking job to do every time she was with a person. Also, when she was loose and on her own, I didn’t try to influence her. I wanted her to experience being very attentive to her handler whenever she was with a person. Also, asking her to do some ground work gave you the opportunity to give her the opportunity to earn some praise. So her handler was both exacting and rewarding.

Last, with all that experience baked in, I’d become the handler who also helped her feel OK under pressure. Now, the logic was that when we were, in fact, in Battle Conditions where she, say, had to approach a cow or something scary, she got peace when she followed my direction and put her feet where I told her too. I became valuable to her and listening to me became worthwhile because I kept her safe, which is what she wanted in the first place.

Lots of people and lots of horsemanship that we see looks like the first and second parts-- it’s the first part of reform where the person seems to be kicking some ass of the “disrespectful” horse (note that “disrespect” is a crude term that disregards the horse’s legit concern about self-preservation). But what people don’t talk enough about or demonstrate so well is the credibility-building part that must be done for these horses. Until you answer a horse’s need for security, he’s going to answer that question for himself, his way with whatever dysfunctional strategy he discovered. And this is a “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs” thing: No horse will do anything else for you so long as he has questions about his own safety and whether your contribute to that or distract him from the number-one-job of keeping himself safe. If you don’t teach a horse that you can offer him a better version of the security (and maybe self-esteem and maybe the entertainment of seeing the world and learning stuff under saddle), you haven’t given him anything he values.

These are all really interesting thoughts, and a really interesting thread. Just wanted to say I enjoyed reading and contemplating the approach. Thanks, all!

[mvp]

Oooh, one more insight from my mare for you, OP:

Perhaps the reason this horse’s behavior escalated with you while you were politely handling him, but not training him is because you put him into the worst possible “gray zone”. That is to say, he was not safe-- where he’s loose or where he’s trying to flirt with you and have you come over to him. But when you are handling him, without giving him the kind of detailed direction that gives him a job to do that requires all his brain cells be employed to do the job such that he doesn’t have time to take his own emotional temperature, you are just an added distraction in his world. You don’t provide him the experience of peace or “time off” from his emotions, but you do put the pressure on him of asking him to do stuff… while he still has enough brain cells left over to have an opinion about that. See his problem?

My mare had this kind of problem when I gave her the rather bland, uninvolved “sit chilly”/tactful hunter ride. To me, I was trying to give her the experience of my demands being soft and calm, no matter what. To her, that was a form of polite abandonment because I wasn’t answering her needs for the kind of ride that directed her and made sure she kept her balance (which is a horse’s big question about safety while under saddle). See what I mean? I meant well and wanted to give her peace, but I wasn’t actually getting in her head enough to ask her what she needed in order to feel peace.

It was a surprise to me to learn that my strategy of “when in doubt, get more bland” thing was actually unhelpful to a horse who had real concerns. I was like the teacher of the struggling dyslexic kid in my classroom of 30 students. School is a bad experience for him-- he alternately feels anxiety and shame because this is so hard for him and nothing seems to help him “get it” so that he can feel better when he’s in school, doing the only job he’s ever had and which he is not allowed to quit. I think I’m helping him by inflating his grades a bit to keep him passing and his fragile self-esteem intact. I mean well when I stop by his desk to reassure him that his B- is a respectable grade and that I can see that he’s trying and I like him for that. But he knows a B- that he worked hard for is bad when his friends flake off and do much better. No one has given him the key to actually doing better (with hard work or not), so his basic worry about how he’ll survive the next test wasn’t addressed by me at all. It doesn’t matter that this one kid or horse isn’t like the other 29. For him, he’s got to be “met where he is” and helped with whatever block is the barrier for success.

For personable, talented horses (who have the luck to have been well-bred and expensive), these horses can get trained under saddle and managed (their emotions managed well enough) by good-riding pros. But these are the buggers who are nightmares on the ground because most horses don’t need quite so much training and help about managing their emotions in the low-pressure situation of being led around. Meh, they just need some remedial help. And I think it can help them (as well as the horsemanship of their handlers) to address the horse’s ability to manage his emotions while he’s on the ground where the skilled person can set up experiences for him, but where they don’t have to risk their body or ride well as in the under-saddle training situation. On the ground is a very safe, low mileage place to start to teach a horse the skill of managing his emotions.

[kashmere]

Glad you no longer have to handle this guy, OP. Smart move and very happy your boss takes your safety seriously. Hope the horse owner has success helping this guy along! Horses generally don’t want to be grouchy and defensive, he’ll be a happier guy if she manages to break through. Fingers crossed all 'round.

[Equkelly]

@Seagram

Here’s a funny thing though. Now that I am not handling him at all, when I say hello to him as I pass his stall, he whickers at me. I say hello to all the horses in the barn, in passing, and he is the only one that answers. As if he enjoyed his game with me and now he misses it? Bugger

This doesn’t surprise me at all. Before when you were handling him he wasn’t sure about you so you were a threat. Now, you’re not handling him and he knows you’re just walking by doing your thing so you’re not a threat.

[Seagram]

@grayarabs

To add: (can’t edit above). If owners are trying CT - I hope they are using an experienced / professional one. Curious: What breed and age is the horse?

He is a five year old warmblood, gelded at 4.

[SuzieQNutter]

@mvp

I think the people who think that, with those open-jawed horse they can get to the place where they can put him in his place “with a look” (like someone’s gelding does). are going to a gun fight with a pocket knife of knowledge. Or more accurately, they are not appreciating or acknowledging that the open-jawed horse has already passed several crucial levels of escalation. If his feet are moving toward you, and the jaws are open (he’s not just snaking his neck, but standing still) that’s yet another level; I’m not sure which version of “coming at you” the OP meant. In any case negotiating power who has already pulled out all the stops to show you his power is going to take a lot… I mean, really “a lot” a lot to make into an OK one.

I do think the other horse who postured like a bad-ass that was mentioned in this thread-- the neglected bad-actor who was doing that for attention-- is usually distinguishable in their behavior. I can tell you the differences between “Hmm… maybe this horse will listen if I talk to him about which of us can go more alpha mare…” and “Holy, shit, life is too short to be on the same side of a fence with him; I’m out,” but I won’t bore you with my laundry list of signs of each kind of horse unless y’all want to know. I do agree, however, that there are some horses who have learned the rather backward art of getting attention (even bad attention) by looking ferocious. And then there are some (like my mare) who are quite alpha, sensitive and “don’t have a filter” with unknown people. These beasties goes up the DefCon scale fast enough that people think they could be dangerous to them. But horses like this who have handlers who see them escalate well before any actually threatening behavior happens, can be engage with and taught how to not do that and, ultimately, not feel that they need to jack up the DefCon. My mare is extremely broke-- in part, because of her nature-- and you’d have to try a bit to get her to think she could dominate you because she has not been handled in a way where 1. That was allowed; and 2. Where she was “just told who was boss” without being offered some comfort and security from her handler.

Back to the OP’s horse: What would worry me about a horse who as in a normal, working barn situation for some time and who still has such a “beyond normal limits” kind of behavior is predictability. I think a horse coming toward people with his jaws open is living in “battle conditions” in his mind. No one makes good, rational or predictable decisions when they are under that kind of stress. So even if I got one like this to be obedient and trusting… appearing to trust me, most of the time, could I see and prevent something that sent him spinning up into that level of defensiveness in all times and all places? I don’t know. That’s why such an extreme, stress-expressing behavior would concern me.

Interesting case! It really make you think.

Controlling with a look does not happen overnight. We have had him 10 years.

Yes I can control from a distance with a look and/or my voice now. He is impeccably trained for me on the ground as I never ever give him a mm. NEVER. He is not a pet.

I have had to teach him every. single. thing. How to walk, how to lead, how to trot. Not just to do them but how to do them. He is the hardest horse I have ever retrained.

I went away for work and without me here doing that it was the start of the 3rd week that I got the phone call that he had charged 6 ft hubby from 6 feet back with mouth open and knocked him down and given him a black eye. That is because hubby does.not. follow. the rules and received the consequences.

Seeing him being ridden you would not ever think of the journey we went through to get him to go like that. Given to us as he ended up here from very experienced and professional horsemen who gave up on him.

With him it was from lack of confidence which you would not think from the bully to the other horses in the paddock.

But no we do not let other people handle him. He has to be sedated to get his teeth done as I can put the rasp in his mouth but the dentist can’t. He has gotten better with the vet, because I put his muzzle in a bowl of pellets, but don’t need to do that any more.

[candyappy]

@Equkelly

@mvp
Most horses that bite are biting because they’re trying to tell you “something hurts” or “I don’t like that”. This horse is probably biting because he feels like you are a predator that he needs to defend himself against to stay alive. If you go in with a whip, thinking “this will show him who’s boss” you’re just going to make him more defensive because you made yourself more of a threat.

While I agree that biting can be a sign of pain or fear in some horses, the majority of horses that nip/ bite are just plain spoiled and have no respect for human handlers in general. They see them as an equal not as the herd boss ( as we should be).

My youngster (I got in Feb) came with limited handling and is a bit “mouthy” and we are working on it with success. While he pesters one mare constantly , he shows obvious respect for my mare who is unquestionably the boss. It is quite dramatic how he responds when she just moves the correct way. He would never pester her. Ever.

OP’s horse coming at her with open mouth aggression is really disturbing and I wonder if there is some neurological issue going on somewhere.

[Equkelly]

@candyappy

While I agree that biting can be a sign of pain or fear in some horses, the majority of horses that nip/ bite are just plain spoiled and have no respect for human handlers in general. They see them as an equal not as the herd boss ( as we should be).

My youngster (I got in Feb) came with limited handling and is a bit “mouthy” and we are working on it with success. While he pesters one mare constantly , he shows obvious respect for my mare who is unquestionably the boss. It is quite dramatic how he responds when she just moves the correct way. He would never pester her. Ever.

OP’s horse coming at her with open mouth aggression is really disturbing and I wonder if there is some neurological issue going on somewhere.

Yes that is the point I’ve tried to make here. Most biting (like 99%) can be solved with a firm and confident handler. Rarely, you get that one horse that is going after people and biting due to much more serious and complex issues. People just get into trouble when they assume all behavior always has the same training solution when in reality horses can exhibit a similar behavior but for very different reasons. You don’t solve mouthy horse the same way you’d solve a horse biting because it feels like it needs to defend itself.

There’s lots of comments about how people have solved their horses mouthy and nippy behavior. That’s great but the horse OP mentioned sounds like a really rare type of horse with atypical behavior so the comments about how “well i once fixed a horse that used to bite!” Are probably not relevant.

[SuzieQNutter]

Young horses also bite to play, which has nothing to do with pain, which is why hitting them back afterwards doesn’t work.

Every horse is different. You have to find what works for each horse. Trainers have not just learnt from instructors. They learn from every single horse they have worked with and have many tools in their belt for different types of horses.

That is because horses do not speak English. It is the trainer who has to work things out to teach an animal who in this case does not want to be there but has no choice.

[J-Lu]

It sounds like you have to be boss mare to this horse. Boss mares strike and then instantly let go of emotion. I would not rely on the owners to train this horse from your description. If you have to work with the horse, be a boss mare and nothing more. I’d alert the owners to the horse’s behavior and how unacceptable it is.

[alibi_18]

@J-Lu

It sounds like you have to be boss mare to this horse. Boss mares strike and then instantly let go of emotion. I would not rely on the owners to train this horse from your description. If you have to work with the horse, be a boss mare and nothing more. I’d alert the owners to the horse’s behavior and how unacceptable it is.

Have you read the thread?

[Equkelly]

@J-Lu

It sounds like you have to be boss mare to this horse. Boss mares strike and then instantly let go of emotion. I would not rely on the owners to train this horse from your description. If you have to work with the horse, be a boss mare and nothing more. I’d alert the owners to the horse’s behavior and how unacceptable it is.

This attitude is how people get hurt.

[endlessclimb]

@alibi_18

Have you read the thread?

Clearly the answer is no. And I wouldn’t take training advice from J-Lu. Look at her post history if in doubt.

[Rackonteur]

Originally posted by @mvp

So I can try to tell her today is not bar exam today and that I would never expect that of a mere fifth grader, but this is her paranoid fantasy and she’s sticking to it. So I have to answer her (emotions-based) question about how to survive today’s bar exam. You know how you take the bar exam? You get down to the intellectual business of taking the bar exam and sublimate your feelings about taking the bar exam. That “sublimate your emotions” is what these big-behaving horses need to learn to do. It’s what we get and train and expect from all the horses we ride. While they are doing a job for us and being very compliant, they are not having strong opinions about their safety or anything else.

What is not “bar exam day” to you might be “bar exam day” to her. Even if she were a human, your idea of a minor review might be her idea of a bar exam that will determine the rest of her life. As it is, she is not a human, she is a different species, who looks at the world (literally) in a different way than a human does. As you cannot get inside her equine head – and her individual, unique head that is equine – you may not always be able to convince her that what is child’s play to you will be filly’s play for her.

I’ve seen this happen between human beings too. We are each unique.

As to Robin Williams, that was very interesting to me, what you said about his style in interviews. I never saw him in an interview. I never liked him in any of his movies. The first time I ever saw him act was in “Popeye” and things just went downhill from there, to me. He always weirded me out, and I was very shocked as well as saddened when he died. He never seemed a happy person IMO, or as if he fitted in anywhere.

[Seagram]

Thank you everyone, who took the time to read and reply! Some excellent insights, and very interesting ideas. I am glad to watch the owner/trainer and the barn manager in how they handle him, and will update at some point. He is a very interesting case, that is for sure!

[mvp]

@Rackonteur

What is not “bar exam day” to you might be “bar exam day” to her. Even if she were a human, your idea of a minor review might be her idea of a bar exam that will determine the rest of her life. As it is, she is not a human, she is a different species, who looks at the world (literally) in a different way than a human does. As you cannot get inside her equine head – and her individual, unique head that is equine – you may not always be able to convince her that what is child’s play to you will be filly’s play for her.

I’ve seen this happen between human beings too. We are each unique.

As to Robin Williams, that was very interesting to me, what you said about his style in interviews. I never saw him in an interview. I never liked him in any of his movies. The first time I ever saw him act was in “Popeye” and things just went downhill from there, to me. He always weirded me out, and I was very shocked as well as saddened when he died. He never seemed a happy person IMO, or as if he fitted in anywhere.

Well… “we are each unique” and “you can’t get inside a horse’s head” means that no one has any hope of communicating in some way that’s at least good enough, and it means we really shouldn’t be swinging a leg over the body connected to a tiny, unreachable brain!

But I don’t think that’s the case. I also don’t think anyone riding horses thinks they are inscrutable or unreachable. And of course I’m aware that my idea of a day in fifth grade is akin to this mare’s bar exam. See the part about “that’s her paranoid fantasy and she’s sticking to it”?

But what are you gonna do, never try to improve a horse or make him safe because we might be changing is mind or not reading him perfectly? I don’t think that’s ends up being a good plan for an animal or a kid who needs to learn to get along in this world, even if the intention to acknowledge his point of view comes from a good place.

It’s always really interesting to me to see who saw what in Williams’ performances and style. I think that the folks who took his manic, can’t-catch-your-breath entertaining style at face value grew up in pretty functional families where “what you see is what you get” and there’s no any darkness or danger to try and suss out underneath happy or normal-looking behavior. My parents weren’t Ward and June Cleaver, so I got some additional tools about making inferences from behavior.

[Railbird]

In case you do have to handle this horse at some point later on, or if anyone else runs into this- I had a horse who was nasty, but not consistently- he would be pleasant when you got him out of the stall and just periodically try to run you over and trample you when he decided he was done… We bought a hickory twitch from Quillin and put a snap on the end with the rope to attach to the halter to walk him. It prevented the whipping around of the neck that preceded the charge and could usually keep things from escalating early.