I had a horse that had a habit of rearing with the barn help when he didn’t want to go where they were taking him. He tried that with me one time and I roared at him like he had just opened the gates of hell. He knew he screwed up and tried backing away from me like his head was on fire and his ass was catching. Never even touched him but I had such an impression on him that it was over and done in less than 3 seconds. Then we went on like nothing had happened but he never once tried that again.
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I’ve got pony who just loves pushing buttons. Peck’s Bad Boy type. When he get too obnoxious, he gets smack on the neck and stands there and looks at you like “What? Who me?”
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Knowing when a sharp correction is warranted comes from good mentorship and a lot of experience.
The most harsh correction I’ve ever given a horse was to a gelding that would bite people, not necessarily when he was being approached, just if you were in the same field or the paddock. He had a normal affect, but when he came close to you, without the usual warning signs, he would become aggressive and bite, because he felt like it.
Having been bitten by him once, I was ready the next time I was in his field and when he went for me and I smacked him on the side of his nose with a leather crop. He was quite surprised, bless his heart, and he never went for a human again.
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I used the John Lyons “make them think they are going to die for three seconds” method when my mare bit me. She was upset because one of the ponies was reacting badly to fly spray, and I was trying to deal with him when she walked up behind me and bit me hard on the shoulder. I had horse teeth-shaped bruises for a long time. I never laid a finger on her, but got big and yelled in her face. She never did it again.
She was very possessive with that pony, and it took a while to make her realize she had no ownership rights to him. We’d adopted them together from a rescue.
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I’m finding there is quite a trend in young novice horse owners that anything other than love and cookies is horrible abuse. The video of the trainer pulling over the horse and repeatedly kicking it in the head while it’s down is one thing, your farrier slapping your stud pony that’s rearing, striking and biting is a whole different thing. Empathy for a scared or in pain horse is great but sometimes they are just spoilt and lacking in boundaries. The scary thing is these girls seem to have no concept of how badly they can get hurt by even a small pony
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I think that the vast majority of people commenting on social media content have zero or very little horse experience. Their reference point is companion animals. I’d rather have a generation focused on empathy towards animals in hopes that it transitions over to their in person interactions.
For the limited few actually interacting with horses hopefully they are wearing helmets and have good adult mentors to help them understand the importance of safety and boundaries before they get hurt.
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Absent a testicular torsion or scrotal hernia, castration is not an emergency surgery, and could have been done after the colt was gentled enough to handle.
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I have friends whose young daughters have trained about a half dozen mustangs so far, and they are not intrinsically “vicious”.
And I’ve dealt with semi-feral equines on and off over my career.
Beating/choking them into submission may “work” in the short term, but it is a pisspoor “training” strategy.
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That said, the interwebs have gone after this man like a pack of screaming hyenas.
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