You need to teach your horse HOW to learn
Horses aren’t born into this world knowing how to be ridden.
They don’t know appropriate and safe ways to interact with humans.
They don’t know what’s expected of them.
In some cases, such as where they are weaned early, kept separate from other horses or go through poor living conditions such as dogger pens and feed lots, they don’t even know how to socialise with other horses – they only know how to do their best to protect themselves.
Our most common tool for training is negative reinforcement through pressure from halters, bits, spurs, and whips. Horses don’t automatically know what these pressures mean and what the appropriate response to those pressures are. Expecting them to know this is like a person starting a new job with a completely complex computer program, being shown their seat and left to figure it out – they are either going to try and fail, try and succeed, look for help or break down and quit.
Is it any wonder that horses become “naughty” if teaching them to learn isn’t done well?
Horses first need to learn how to process pressure and what it means. They need to know that pressure isn’t pain and isn’t there to hurt them, but is there to help them seek the answer.
Which means we need to know how to use pressure & release correctly to teach this.
The first and most important lesson you need to learn to communicate more effectively with horses:
“You can’t beat understanding into a horse”.
If a horse doesn’t understand what you want using the whip, spurs, halter or bit, using them harder and harder and harder doesn’t make them understand any better.
A lot of times, when a horse isn’t doing what its told, it’s classified as a naughty horse and you are told to be harder and stronger with them. However, in my experience if a horse isn’t doing as its “told”, it’s more commonly because it doesn’t understand, or can’t do what’s being asked. So they “act out” or are “naughty” because they resort to instinctive behaviour or past experiences to respond to the ask – and their instinctive behaviour when confused, intimidated or scared is to fight or run away.
There are definitely times when horses will challenge you and your authority but that’s not with the intent of being naughty – it is with the intent of testing if they can trust you. Are you strong enough and confident enough to lead them and keep them safe? If they decide you aren’t a good leader, they won’t feel safe doing as you ask and will react with the intent to protect themselves.
This is the one situation where being heavy handed can work. However, it’s not the best nor is it the most effective tool, especially if you’re already working with a bold, strong, confident horse. You need to be a really…. really… reaaaaally good rider to convince these horses with a heavy hand because their responses can escalate to big dangerous behaviours and it is hard to not get hurt in these situations until we get submission.
That is why we should teach discipline through consistency and following through with our ask, then rewarding for EFFORT, not necessarily the best most correct behaviour. We first condition how our horses mentally and emotionally process the ask before we get them understanding what the ask is. This may take a little longer in the outset, but sets us and our horses up to learn easily down the track.
When there is a clear pathway of consequence, our horses start looking for the right answer, interacting and engaging with us and enjoying the learning process.
