The mind is a powerful tool, wherever it is focused, the body follows. A common mistake I have seen made by many trainers is a consideration for only the physical exercise and progress of the horse. Is he using good biomechanics? Are we using proper gymnastic exercises to stretch and strengthen his muscles? Is he developing over his top line? While good physical training of the horse is vital to a successful training program, this is only a part of the equation.
Horses must be educated both mentally and emotionally in addition to the physical training they are put through. When this crucial aspect of their training is overlooked, we start shutting horses down, which at the very least makes for an unhappy horse, and at the worst, a dangerous one. A mentor of mine once remarked; “Imagine what it would be like if you went your whole life without being understood.” For many horses, this is their sad reality. If we don’t take the time to consider the horse’s thoughts and emotions, we can never understand why they react and respond in certain ways. Without this knowledge, we will grow frustrated and may be tempted to use harsher methods to get our point across. Some horses will completely fall by the wayside, with labels like untrainable, aggressive, or dangerous.
The goal of true natural horsemanship is to work with the horse in a way he understands. If we are to achieve this, then the logical assumption we can make is we must first understand the horse. The horse’s physical reaction will always stem from what is going on inside his head. He doesn’t just spook “without a reason” or “attack you out of the blue.” Just because you don’t know what the reason is, doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Every horse I’ve worked with has shown me in their own unique way, that you must have control of their thoughts if you are to accomplish anything worthwhile.
One horse recently I have been helping a client with, has very strongly reiterated this point. His brain is like a ping pong ball and if you don’t have his focus, there’s a good chance of you getting hurt. Trying to keep up with the thoughts of this horse is genuinely exhausting, you can’t let your guard down for a moment. Some people would simply choose to address the symptoms of his behavior when things have gone too far, rearing, jumping around and at times wanting to take off. However, if you wait until this is happening, it’s already too late. His thought will get so strong, his feet simply have to follow it and don’t be stupid enough to get in his way. If you put aggression into this horse, he will give it back to you tenfold.
Since his thought is the root of the problem, this is where we train. The horse’s face can tell you exactly how he is feeling; the eyes and ears in particular. When this horse’s thought leaves his handler, his eyes and ears flicker away, then to be followed by his whole head. If you can catch him just as his eye starts to leave, you can get him back on you fairly easily. Because of his personality, however, you may have to do it 30 times between the pen and the grooming area, which is a good reminder that training starts from the moment you enter the pen, not from when you saddle them up and enter the arena.
Separating out the mental and emotional sides of the horse’s mind can be quite confusing. Some trainers will try to write them off as the same thing, and I once did the same. While the two do obviously go hand in hand, a little mare I had the opportunity to work with, proved to me that there was a real difference. Physically, despite some chubbiness, she was a nice horse. Mentally, she was pretty calm, bombproof on the trail they said. Emotionally, however, she was a train wreck; she had an almost crippling anxiety due to poor training that had been put into her. She was a horse who needed someone to connect with her, reach out and try to understand her, probably for the first time in her life. That’s not to say she had never been loved, but she hadn’t been made to feel like she was safe, that how she felt was a priority to her humans.
I could go on with stories of different horses and their individual needs unique to their personalities. Buddy can be an emotional basket case at times and has challenged me to learn how to support him through that. In fact, that’s the reason I was given him in the first place, but that’s a story for another day. I’ve been told that Apple had a 180-personality flip after she was shown that she could connect with humans who genuinely cared about her. When we open ourselves to understanding, considering, and training the mental and emotional sides of the horse, we give them something, a deeper relationship than what they can receive from the other horses in the herd. In return, they do the same for us, granting us a connection we may not be able to find amongst our own kind
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