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Expanding your Horse’s World
It’s true! A happy horse is a safe horse that will do wonders for your confidence. By understanding your role in earning respect, maintaining focus, and developing your communication skills you can ultimately develop a safe and happy horse. You can also achieve softness in your control of the horse by expanding your horse’s comfort zone. Success hinges not only on your ability to apply pressure correctly, but, equally as important, is your timing in the release of pressure.
Earning respect is first and foremost in developing a sound and safe relationship with your horse. The one thing that we know for sure about horses is that a dominant horse will cause movement to prove he is the strongest, fastest, smartest horse. By driving or herding another horse out of his personal space, a dominant horse earns the respect of each herd member challenging this position.
Like a dominant horse, the more times we move a horse out of our personal space the more respect we will earn. Along with earning respect, we need our horse’s attention focused solely on us so that we can communicate. Horses are into “awareness”. They need to be aware of all things around them, at all times, in order to survive. A respectful horse may be willing to give you his attention for “the moment”. However, our job is to develop a program of keeping his attention focused on us for longer and longer. After all, it is only through communication that the learning process can continue. For example, if my horse is at liberty in a round pen (no halter, no lead line) I will use a verbal command such as a cluck or a kiss to call my horse’s attention back to me. I will reinforce this voice command by slapping my leg or stomping my foot. If the horse continues to ignore me, I will cause movement by driving him forward. I will not allow my horse to stand there and ignore me. He gives me his attention or he goes back to work. I want my horse to understand this lesson very well. I teach it by making the right thing easy (give me your attention) and making the wrong thing difficult (driving him forward). With consistency I will become more important to my horse than “the other things” in his life.
Once we have a respectful horse’s attention focused on us, we can then continue developing our communication skills. Horses communicate through body language. Yes - horses read each and every movement that we make whether we are aware of it or not! Our body language influences the mental and emotional condition of our horse. We either encourage a horse to become calm, relaxed and trusting or we do the very opposite by making the horse feel fearful, resistant and insecure. By learning how to move in a quiet rhythm that is neither quick nor sporadic, our horses will learn to trust our actions. Finally, if we are very consistent with our rhythmic movements, the horse will gain confidence within himself, simply because he has learned to trust our actions. Remember that communication is the seed that allows confidence and trust to grow.
The plain truth is that a happy horse is a horse that is in his comfort zone, and every horse on this planet is a comfort seeker. So, once we have instilled the qualities of respect, focus and communication, our next goal is to desensitize our horse to a wide variety of new and scary things. For the spooky or un-broke horse this process is known as “sacking out” and it simply means introducing frightful objects like saddle blankets, lead ropes, whips or tarps in a way that the horse can handle. The more we desensitize our horse to his fears, the more comfortable his expanding world becomes.
There are only two places that a horse can go when he leaves his comfort zone - the unsure zone or the flight/fight zone. Adding pressures too fast or too soon will “over expose” any horse and send him immediately into the flight/fight zone. This horse will not be thinking, nor will he be in a learning frame of mind. Applying pressure to a horse is all about developing rhythm, feel and balance. The best reward we can offer any horse is a release of pressure. This involves timing! Feeling what is going to happen before it happens is the ultimate in timing and is a goal for which we should all strive.
To expand our horse’s world, we do most of our teaching in the “unsure zone”. We raise the fear level just enough to send the horse into the unsure zone – wait for the slightest try – then release the pressure and allow him to come back to the comfort zone. If we were to allow the horse to come back to the comfort zone before there was any “try” we would only be teaching him to be wrong. The more times we can send the horse into the unsure zone, wait for a positive change, then release the pressure, the more we expand his comfort zone. This horse’s confidence and trust in us will grow as he learns how to deal with his fears in a safe, positive and constructive way.
Horses learn best if they are respectful and focused! We communicate through body language and we earn the trust of our horse by moving in a slow rhythm. The combination of respect, focus and enhanced communication skills has a powerful effect on any horse. These qualities will allow you to gain softness in your control of the horse and together with the release of pressure, you now have the tools to expand your horse’s world, making him a safer and happier horse. To master these principles is to achieve finesse in horsemanship.
Remember – “Success with horses, starts with us”!
Dedicated to “I Dare” a frightened horse.