I feel like “consistent” is a better word than “safe”!
Honesty and obedience are valuable terms/characteristics, too, and say much more than “safe.”
p.s. Sometimes I think “safe” for the ISO means a horse who will not object violently to conflicting aids combined with rider nervousness.
This. No matter what the horse’s reactions are like, it’s up to the handler/rider/trainer to figure out the horse’s limits (thresholds), and how to keep him within them so that he doesn’t become more horse than they can handle/ride.
I’m old and ride a reactive horse, but I’ve had him since he was a foal and have, over the years, figured out just how far I can push him out of his comfort zone before I’m going to be too far out of my comfort zone.
That ability, I think is what many over-horsed riders are lacking. Either that, or they know how to do it but don’t want to, because they want a horse who will allow them to do what they want to do.
What I think people REALLY want is “willing to suffer incorrect/bad (if not flat out piss poor and negligent) handling, riding, etc without reacting.” If you whack your ass on a horses back and jerk it’s mouth over a fence, then an “honest” horse has every right to react. People want NO CONSEQUENCES for their own limitations/errors and MORE PERFORMANCE than they can genuinely produce themselves. And we wonder why the state of horsemanship is tumbling down hill…
I like to make a comparison to fast food vendors. Junk is sold because that is ‘what consumers will buy,’ and consumers buy junk because ‘ that is what vendors are selling.
Safe is definitely a matter of personal opinion. My first two horses were both generally level headed and not phased by much, both on the lazy and slow side. Both would seem safe to any outsider yet neither really knew how to deal with very stressful / scary situations and when faced with one would spin/bolt/buck dramatically and without any warning or regard for their rider.
I think perhaps because they were so generally placid and didn’t spook easily, they never learned to look to their rider for confidence and were not trained to deal with scary situations. Both horses made excellent beginner lesson horses as long as you were in a predictable, controlled environment like their own ring at home. Super ultra safe in those circumstances. But at a show off property or a hack? Not particularly safe.
My current horse, on the other hand, is a lot more reactive and looky. She’s quite aware of her surroundings and will stop or sidestep when something really alarms her. But as soon as I either reassure her or give her a good Pony Club kick, depending on the situation, she just gets over it and carries on with her job. Her “big” spooks consist of a quick scoot straight forward, no spin, no bolt, no silliness. She might not feel safe to an inexperienced rider because she’s quite forward and a fairly big mover, but even as a total Nervous Nellie, I feel very safe on her.
When considering buying her, I asked her owner a number of “What does she do if xyz happens?” type questions, which paints a clearer picture than just asking if a horse is “safe.”
That’s my kind of horse!!
I definitely think it’s a relative term, and I think I’d agree with the people saying that “honest” is probably a better term than “safe.”
I have a three-year-old OTTB who is very honest and will take a joke. We aren’t doing much right now because baby, just light walk-trot work with some poles thrown in every now and then, but we do hack all over the farm (in varying degrees of daylight, with deer everywhere/coming out of the woods left and right when the sun starts going down). He does spook on occasion, but it’s always genuine and the worst of it is usually just a few quick steps sideways. All I have to do is close my leg and sit back and he might go “Mom, are you sure?” but as long as I’m right there with him, he’ll move forward past whatever spooked him in the first place.
Would I put just anyone on him? No. He’s three, his balance is questionable, he’s wiggly as heck, steering is eh because we’re still figuring out the whole inside-leg-to-outside-rein situation, and he’s not the greatest at carrying himself right now so he can use some help with regulating his pace. I wouldn’t put an inexperienced rider on him unless all they were doing was walking around on a lead line with me right there on the ground.
Does he pull dirty tricks? Also no, he’s just a baby and he needs someone with experience on him right now. He’s an angel on the ground with my barn owner’s daughter (who is also only three - we obviously don’t leave her alone with him unsupervised, but she always says hi to him first thing in the morning when she comes up to the barn and he’s always more than happy to get cuddles from her), he’s been great with other kids running around, and while he might greet new things with some skepticism, he always listens to me when I encourage him to keep going.
Is that safe enough for me? Absolutely. He’s honest, he’s got a good brain, he listens to me when he’s not sure (which will be an absolute asset for cross-country, since I want to turn him into an eventer), and that’s what I was looking for (and I bought him sight unseen off the track except for photos/videos and a pretty low-key vet check, so I think you could say that it worked out alright).
Of course, my first lease horse had a rearing problem when I first started riding him (it was a fear thing courtesy of a previous owner, we got through it because I was a naive pre-teen who loved him and wasn’t frightened enough for it to overpower how much I adored him before we could solve the problem), so most horses feel pretty safe compared to that at this point.
I think a horse I’d consider “safe”, when ridden badly or painfully, would give warning shots before doing something unsafe. Maybe it would be better to label them low risk vs. high risk, low reactivity vs. high reactivity. My current horse is unreactive safe 95% of the time, but he bucks, maybe 1-2x a year, and it’s a spook, veer, buck that is not super sittable.
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