This is a subject that appears to be quite in focus at the minute, with many differing opinions as to the best way for humans to interact with horses.  Horses are very large animals and the size of them alone can cause fear in humans which can result in the human feeling the need to be dominant.  As we know, anger quite often covers feelings of fear and as horsemen/women if we don’t understand these emotions then our approach to our horsemanship can very easily have an adverse effect.

As people, none of us are perfect and our primal responses can sometimes take over, no matter how much we understand how feelings work.  When we are involved in any kind of relationship whether it be a friendship, romance, family or work related and something happens that hurts us, our first reaction will more often than not go into defense mode which comes over as anger.  If we feel ignored or disregarded we quite often protect ourselves by shutting off from the people/person who is ignoring or disregarding us.  People are actually quite complex and if we ignore ‘feelings’ then we become blinded, not only to ourselves but to others also.

In my previous employment I took part in training sessions regarding ‘personal safety’, this involved reading situations from early onset, being able to pinpoint initial responses of a possible situation, reading early signs of stress and fear which can result in anger.  It’s at these stages that we look to defuse the situation, if we ignore or are unaware of the initial signs then the situation can easily and quickly manifest itself into a dangerous one where anger has taken over.

This is much the same when we are working with horses.  Firstly, we need to know ourselves and understand how WE ‘react’ to different situations.  Once we understand our own reactions we can then learn how to ‘manage’ situations we find ourselves in a little better.

How does this relate to horsemanship?  Horses have very high senses and that is how they keep themselves safe, they take note of all the small signs that are displayed from the situations surrounding them.  To work in unison with the horse, we need to get onto this level of understanding, if we push too hard and take no notice of the initial signs of stress/fear or are unaware of what the signs are then we can very quickly see the situation getting out of control.  This also relates to awareness of surroundings, what’s going on around you, are you putting yourself and the horse into a situation that could be negative for the both of you?  If the horse doesn’t ‘trust’ our judgement the horse will inevitably trust his own.

How do we get the horse to trust our judgement?

How do we manage that?  

We take the time to learn the initial signs of  fear/stress and act at that point with care and compassion, we defuse the fear/stress.  It’s at this point that the horse will either learn to trust us or learn to ignore us, or worse still, you create a state of ‘learned helplessness’.  Learned helplessness is not trust, it’s a form of bullying and all you have done is cause compliance through enforcement and we as people have more than likely experienced how horrible that feels.  This is when the balance looks like this…..

When any relationship is unbalanced it is ultimately an unhealthy relationship.

We want our relationships to look like this

When the relationship looks like this, we have a healthy relationship.  We have shown the horse that we are there for him, we are someone that he can rely on, we are someone that he can TRUST .

When the horse learns to trust your judgement, he learns to focus on you whenever he feels threatened, by learning the subtle signs of his fears/stresses and dealing with them in a compassionate and understanding way, for him to know that you are there for him and that you acknowledge what he’s feeling and not disregarding them.

If a person is scared of spiders, would you tie them down, not allowing an escape route and then throw spiders over them?  If you did, how will that person view you after this experience?  We quite often do this with horses and then wonder why the horse doesn’t listen to us when fear kicks in.

I know what I would rather have………