Get Your Horse To Trust You In 6 Easy Steps

Does your horse trust you?

Getting your horse to trust you has very little to do with the horse’s behaviour itself - it is about whether or not you are trustworthy to your horse!

So what can we do to help solidify that trust?

1. Consistency

The biggest part, and probably the hardest part of all, is consistency. It doesn’t matter what we are doing, whether it is riding on a trail, mucking out a stall, or rugging up - you need to be consistent in WHAT you are asking and consistent in HOW you ask it.

This might mean spending some time analysing how you interact with your horse at different times. When you lead your horse to the mounting block, do you treat it differently than when you lead them to their feed yard? In that exact example, you will often have horses that will willingly push against you to get to their feed faster, but walk reluctantly to the mounting block. Do you correct both of these behaviours and expect the same movement?

2. Boundaries

To expect our horses to trust us, we must set them up for success. One of the areas that most horse owners tend to muck up is boundaries.

Boundaries mean that we have a clear personal space that we expect our horse to respect, and that space should only be invaded upon invitation.

When we let our horses push into us when they are nervous, but then expect them to not walk over the top of us when we lead them, we have not set up our boundaries correctly.

It might sound counter-intuitive (surely trust means they want to be closer?), but the respect and consistency we build with our boundaries exercise leads to a much higher level of trust.

3. Enocourage a Learningn Brain

How you handle yourself around your horse when times get difficult can influence how the trust develops. For example, how can your horse trust you if you yell at them for doing something that they either are unsure of, testing you with, or unable to do? How can your horse not be expected to get excited if you do?

Breathing and keeping your emotions stable, even when things are going to literal shyte, helps establish respect and trust.

4. Emotional Support

In the same way that we must manage our own emotions, we must help our horses deal with their own. This can be rather difficult in some of the ‘hotter’ breeds but still very important. When we show our horses a way of processing and learning that the scary objects are not as scary as first seen, they breath, look at us and start to understand that we are as trustworthy as we promise to be.

5. Breaking Up The Routine

While consistency is numero uno in all we should do, it shouldn’t mean all work and no play. A chance for adventures, playtime or even a change of scenery not only breaks the monotony of work life, it helps expose the horse to new scenarios to test and explore their trust in you, and work on further extending it.

6. Communication

Finally, communication is very important. How we communicate the commands, how the horse responds to those aids, how we listen when they are processing, how we identify when they are not processing, how they tell us when they move on - all essential for a stronger level of trust.

The Importance of Trust With Your Training

Does your horse trust you?

Trust has in important aspect in your training - it determines whether or not you are going to have a willing horse or a resistant horse.

And a resistant horse isn’t always the horse that is being ‘naughty’. A resistant horse is usually a scared horse, or a shut down horse (read how to identify a shut down horse here).

When we focus on building trust with our horses, it leads to a horse that is willing to work with us, because it trusts that should anything be really scary or dangerous, you will keep it safe.

It is unfortunate that so many trainers expect that EVERY horse will do EVERYTHING they throw that horses way - without spending the time building up a level of trust. That may be fine for some horses but for others it just leads to a meltdown. If that meltdown is shown externally, the horse is deemed crazy or dangerous. If the meltdown is kept internal, the horse is labelled bombproof and sent on it’s way - usually to a home that ends up having to fix all the problems that then follow (or being rehomed again and again until someone either identifies the issues and works to fix them or the horse is sent to the doggers).

Spending time working on trust is one of the most important things you can ever do for the safety and longevity of your horse.

Develop trust and other foundation training skill in our Training Trainability Program

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