Competition puts a lot of stress on our horses that we don’t really think about.

Horses are designed to not show they are stressed. In the wild, being an animal of prey, showing signs of stress, injury or illness makes them easy pickings for predators. So quite often it’s not until our horse is really struggling that we tend to see the more obvious signs. 

Competition is stressful to the horse because we are taking them to new environments. Depending on how far you go the float travel takes a lot out of them. We normally enter them in multiple classes so they end up working anywhere from a couple hours to all day. It is a very stimulating environment with all the other horses and chaos that we expect them to be focused and well behaved in. Not to mention the athletic performance we expect on the day and the extra stress we put on our horses because of our own stress about doing well.  

A lot of my riding career I spent competing. We used to compete most weekend and work our way around the show circuit each year. Competing at shows had the extra chaos of all the people, side show alleys, rides, fireworks at night, all sorts of scary experiences. My horse King was always a bit of a sensitive soul. We had gotten a certain level of rapport that he trusted me and worked well for me even if he was nervous. Mostly we would be able to work around the scary things until he stopped looking at them. 

At this stage of my riding career I didn’t do much groundwork or horsemanship. We just worked together because of how much time we spent together and all the things we had worked through. It was my thought at this time that if you had to lunge your horse to ride you didn’t know how to ride. I had gotten pretty good at holding onto a buck.  

One of the classes we were in at the Townsville show, King was working really sweetly and we were working through our paces around the ring, waiting for the judge to pick their horses for line up - when the bubble machine in side show alley started up. Holy was King unimpressed!!! The bubbles started floating across the field. Coming across in front of him. He was only just keeping his cool. I could feel his body all tight and coiled up doing his best to stay focused and keep working. And then one bubble popped on his nose!!! 

And that was it. King was done, no longer could he control himself and he let out an almighty dummy spit broncing around the arena.

I was able to pull him up eventually. He was a mess. But once he settled we carried on with our day and had a successful show. He was pretty stoked to get on the float and go home at the end though!

King not only taught me to ride well, but understanding his nature was the beginning to understanding how our training impacts our horses, and how we can do so much better for them by using the correct tools. That is why I have created training trainability - an online course you can access to strengthen your bond, encourage curiosity, and help your horse reduce the mental stress load, plus so much more.

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