Thank you everyone who’s been commenting. It’s comforting to hear similar stories and successes y’all have had with your own horses. It means a lot! Reminds me that I have years with her, if I keep her training up and be patient, she’ll get to a place where she’s confident and not so afraid. If not, hey, she’s a heck of a pretty lawn ornament. 
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Oddly enough though is that because she’s a rescue, she’s literally afraid of everything and seems to have very little grasp on basic training."
Being a rescue… Whatever that means…, or having been in a rescue organization does not automatically equate what you wrote.
What specifically in her past is causing her behavior? Her fear? Her lack of training is likely part of that. You have had her a year, what have you done to improve that?
That’s actually a good thing, because it means that she hasn’t been punished so much that she’s shut down, and the treats can easily be used to teach her manners around treats.
I think what you’re dealing with here are two separate issues, one of which is anxiety and the other is lack of training. Unless of course, we think of habituation as training. But if we separate operant conditioning from habituation, I think what you may have is a horse with little of either, but perhaps more training than exposure?
IOW, I have horses who have enough training that they could probably produce a decent first or second level test, but would be basket cases out on trail because they’re naturally spooky and have had little to no habituation to the things they’d see out on trail. And then I have horses who know very little (aren’t what anyone would describe as well broke) but they’re good trail horses because they’re calm and confident and don’t react violently to much of anything.
So the question now is whether she’ll be able to calm down enough to become the horse you want to ride, and how much exposure it’s going to take for her to learn that she’s safe enough?
I bought her off a woman who pulled her out of a boarding facility she was abandoned at. She was underweight and fearful of all human contact. The woman knew the horse as a filly bc she was bred by a friend of hers, she was a happy go lucky yearling and very sweet to people and curious. Then she was sold, passed around a few times and ended up in a boarding facility, where she had been abandoned for 6 months after her owners moved across country and left her. There facility itself had rumors of abuse, and the horse had new scars she didn’t have originally on her sides and face, so the women bought her away from there and rehabbed her somewhat for a year. Put weight on her, got her to accept some human contact, and even started trail riding her. The horse was improving, but still fearful of people and things. She would flinch when you lifted a hand, but seemed to find trail riding calming. The woman didn’t have a big space however, a half acre backyard and no arena, and with the realization that the horse needed more than what she could offer (coupled with a disability of the woman) she decided to let her go. She is a rescue as far as I’m concerned.
I bought her from the woman, because my last horse had passed away who was an old rescue (guy at my facility abandoned two horses for having medical needs and I took one of them while someone else took the other) and I wanted to rescue another one, though younger so I could have a lifetime with them.
When I brought her to the boarding facility I was at, she was afraid of me and everyone else. Would cower in the back of her stall, flinch if I moved, and not trust me to even stand near her while she ate, was head shy, etc. Fast forward to now, she greets me every morning with a happy whinny and eagerly takes treats from my hands, sasses me when she wants something, comes to me when I call her name, sticks her head in the halter if I hold it open and doesn’t run from me in the turnout. She has also since learned to free lunge, collect while riding, and we’ve worked on groundwork desensitizing like walking on tarps, dragging poles, driving, etc. I also got a trainer who specializes in gaited horses to teach me, since I hadn’t formally ridden a gaited horse before. She did great in the lessons.
Also, about 4 months into my ownership of the horse, she colicked. Not a little one. She required full scale colic surgery because she had 20 stones in her intestines and they had clumped up and completely impacted. We took her to the hospital and got them out, 9k out of my pocket later and she’s back home with us recovering. Her incision got infected, so I spent 1 month sitting directly underneath her belly, hand cleaning her incision 2x a day with soap and water and ointment, while she held perfectly still (a horse who once wouldn’t let me come near her when she scraped her knee). She then had 3 months of hand walking, where I further got to know her, groom her, love on her while she recovered from a very traumatic surgery. That was the turning point where she started to trust me. We put her back to work a few months ago, and have been slowly getting her weight and topline back on. The day I hopped on her with a bareback pad for the first time in 4 months she was calm, happy, and we just did circles in the round pen for 10 minutes. She hadnt been more than handwalked in 4 months and she was that calm. I’ve ridden her 3 times a week since then, building up to longer rides and giving her days off inbetween to rest and this past two month recently we’ve been lunging her and focusing on confirmation building and strengthening. I upped my riding to 4 times a week longer rides in the arena and occasional trail.
She is still a nervous horse. I work alongside a therapeutic riding program that has rehabbed half a dozen horses from serious abuse and trains them to be dead broke and useful for disabled kids to ride. They have all told me she shows signs of serious abuse, and that it would be a long process to undo her fear. I plan on keeping her for life and doing that.
ive done a lot for this horse in a year, yeah.
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This is one of the best analogies I’ve heard I think. She is super responsive, doesn’t really challenge you, and turns on a dime. She’s very seat sensitive and listens eagerly. When friends ride her in an arena, they adore her. So at face value she seemed really trained. But the more I rode her and found things to test her with, like waving flags and cars and bikes and people, I realized how she either hasn’t been exposed to much at all, or has had her confidence destroyed from a bad situation and now has anxiety. She does enjoy trail, wants to lead the pack and doesn’t spook as hard when she does, but if we pass a guy on a dirt bike or a coyote, she’s afraid. Or if a stranger approaches her, she’s afraid.
I found that she needs to be reminded she’s in “work” mode. If I focus her attention on me, she doesn’t spook or trip. So on trail I have to remind her im there, tap the rein “it’s okay girl” her, and keep her moving. She is not a “stop and look at it” horse, she’ll only freak out worse. A lot of her desensitizing training had us redirecting her fear into work, lunging her and asking her to move out when she spooked or got nervous so she didn’t have time to think about it.
That being said, she’s the most nervous on the ground of anything. If we are just hanging out and grazing she will constantly pop her head up worried, eat some more, look up again worried. If I walk away from her, she’ll stop eating and follow me until I hold onto her lead rope again so she can eat “safely”. It took us a full month before she let me come up to her in the stall without her halter on. When she’s not in “work mode” she is more likely to make poor decisions and get scared. It takes a LOT to get her to commit something to memory, daily exposure of blankets on and off for 15 minutes straight before I saddle her up and she still flinches the first time I do it. It’s gonna take a lot of time to undo whatever got her so worried.
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Yes you have.
its not riding training, and explains why you’re not further along, but certainly valuable and vital.
Do just keep on. The past year, because it was pretty consumed with medical stuff is water under the bridge, but really you’re just starting the training work.
It’s been a rough year but now that we are starting to get back to her training I’m hoping we can start to improve her more. At the very least, during her recovery and until now she is so much calmer around me than I think she’s been around anyone in a long time. She asks for affection, joins up effortlessly, and is very willing so I’m proud of her progress that way.
We’ve got a long way to go though.
