10

Horse Problems and People Problems

I OFTEN MEET HORSES in my clinics that are socially bankrupt. They are inept at being around other horses. This problem sometimes goes back to their separation from their mothers; humans may not have offered them a replacement that they needed to become secure within themselves.

Quite often, however, the environment is responsible, an owner who has a small piece of property or buys a house in a subdivision, then decides to get a horse or two. An environment like this is completely artificial compared to where God put horses in the first place. Even if the horse in such a situation gets to be around one parent or brother or sister, he doesn’t get to be around other horses in a herd environment.

Going to a clinic is the first time such sheltered animals are around other horses. They’re not at all equipped to fit into the equine society. They’ll either be scared to death and want to huddle in a corner or be aggressively warlike in their actions.

It’s all because the owner hasn’t allowed his horse to be in a natural environment when he’s not riding or working with him. The owner thinks he’s doing his horse a favor by putting him in a box stall lined with varnished oak, with polished brass door handles and pretty pictures on the stable wall. He thinks he’s really pampering his horse, when to the horse it’s no different than living in solitary confinement. In fact, prisoners are given more room and more exercise than these horses.

Owners who put their socially bankrupt horses into a clinic’s herd environment often feel resentment because their horses don’t fit in. This resentment is motivated by the horse’s discomfort, which creates in the owners a fear of getting bucked off or of the horse running or jumping out from under them. They’re afraid of getting kicked or of the horse kicking somebody else.

Such horses are lost, but they don’t have to be. Support from the rider, the kind of support that works with a horse’s mind and causes accurate movements that are stimulating to him, will make all the other social issues irrelevant. When you ask for these movements, when your idea becomes the horse’s idea, your mind and your horse’s mind can become one. You then build on the horse’s pride in such a way that he feels more secure within himself. The end result is a horse that will fit better in a social environment with other horses.

Someone who has a horse with social problems can’t just go out and buy a herd of horses, then throw him into it and think that everything is going to be fixed. The horse missed out on his formative years, and trying to re-create them won’t work.

A child psychologist could easily draw a parallel between such a horse and a kid who wasn’t raised right by his parents, one who missed out on formative experiences that should have occurred early on. A kid who’s thrust into an antisocial environment and who starts hanging around a bunch of gangster punks—the type of people who are drawn together because they’re social deviants—won’t develop socially acceptable behavior.

A horse with the same kind of social problem isn’t any different. As a rider, you must slowly and methodically show your horse what is appropriate. You also have to discourage what’s inappropriate, not by making the inappropriate impossible, but by making it difficult so that the horse himself chooses appropriate behavior. You can’t choose it for him; you can only make it difficult for him to make the wrong choices. If, however, you make it impossible for him to make the wrong choices, you’re making war.

Socially bankrupt horses are a lot like kids who come home from school with report cards that say, “Doesn’t play well with others.” There are many reasons for this sort of behavior.

A horse can be frightened of other horses. He’s been sheltered and thinks the whole world is out to get him. Because he’s afraid, another horse doesn’t have to be overtly aggressive toward him. A quick move by another horse or even a rider passing by can be enough to send the frightened horse into a fearful response. That can be unsafe for anybody sitting on him: he may jump out from underneath the rider or run away. Then, too, the rider may be just as scared. His response may be just as fearful as that of the horse: the rider might jerk on the reins or clamp down with his legs. That will terrify the horse even more, which just perpetuates the problem.

Using a flag usually teaches an insecure horse to be confident. A flag is a stainless-steel antenna with a strip of colored plastic tied to the end of it. At first it can be pretty scary, but if you get the horse used to it while you’re on foot, you can gradually get him to the point that you can ride while you carry it.

Buck uses the “flag” to get this horse used to outside sensations. The flag acts as an extension of his arm, and keeps him safe if the horse decides to kick or strike.

Carry the flag up, like a tennis racquet, because if you carry it down like a crop, the flag might disappear into your horse’s blind spot under his chin. Then he’ll become startled when you raise your hand and the flag reappears.

You wave the flag to encourage other animals to move away from you. Your horse will perceive that when you’re riding him and using that flag, he (actually you) is causing other horses that he thought were superior to move away. That will build his confidence fast. He may have spent his whole life yielding to other horses, but when he realizes that he can cause them to yield to him, you will see quite a change in how your horse feels about himself.

Kicking or biting are other inappropriate behaviors. They don’t always happen because a horse is aggressive; many times a horse kicks or bites because he’s frightened. Sometimes he just feels as if he’s been backed into a corner and has nowhere to go.

Imagine a situation where you’re buried up to your waist in sand and people are walking all around you. How insecure would you feel if you couldn’t move your feet and people were stepping on your fingers and pushing, running into, and kicking you? If you can’t move your feet to keep from getting hurt, how violent would you become from the waist up? By the same token, a horse whose feet aren’t freed up when he doesn’t feel comfortable moving them is likely to show a similar violent attitude toward other horses. Another horse or rider crowding his space makes him feel he needs to bite or kick. Such a horse is scared and bound up within himself because he can’t or won’t move his feet to get away from trouble.

Regarding a horse that is inclined to kick, after he’s already lashed out at someone, he should not be punished. It’s already too late. Nothing good will come of it, and besides, you shouldn’t be punishing him in the first place. Instead, a good horseman will observe what’s about to happen and act before the horse has acted aggressively. You should tip his head toward the person or horse he was about to kick and use your leg to ask him to move his hindquarters in another direction. Or you might ask him to speed up or slow down. You might simply pick up on both reins and ask him to “drop” (another term for “tuck”) his chin so he gives to the bridle.

Think of it as “changing the subject” or redirecting the horse’s mind. That takes timing and foresight. You have to plan ahead so that rather than seek revenge for the horse’s misbehavior, you see his aggressive behavior shaping up and can then redirect it. You change his mind before he’s acted and move him on to something else.

Whether riding a horse or working with a kid, there’s no crime in saying no. But always saying no will take away all the horse’s desire to try, and pretty soon the horse or the youngster will believe there’s nothing he can do right. But saying no and immediately redirecting with “but instead you may do this” will head off inappropriate behavior. That’s all I think about when I’m riding a young horse. Instead of punishing inappropriate behavior after the fact, I redirect him before it occurs. Redirection is where the “instead” part comes in. Redirecting a horse gives his mind something else to do and takes him down a different road from the one on which he was traveling.

You hear a lot of talk about mentoring these days. It doesn’t have to be just talk. If we get to troubled kids early enough, we can impress things upon them not by being mean and threatening, but by providing discipline and guidance.

The same thing is true for troubled horses. If you extend the parameters too far because of sympathy, the horse won’t have any boundaries, and you will end up spoiling him. An “abused horse” that has been “spoiled” with sympathy is one of the most difficult kinds to work with: when you try to correct him, you end up putting him back in the same frame of mind he was in when he was scared. You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, because a spoiled horse may require you to be physically firm. Yet the physical firmness will bring out the fear and the terror that tells him he is in danger of losing his life. Finding the correct amount of firmness depends on the specific horse and the problem, but finding that balance is essential.

It’s your responsibility when you start working with a troubled horse to set specific behavioral boundaries. It is at this point in the horse’s life that we humans have an opportunity to show just how evolved we are. We can help the horse focus on constructive tasks that ease his fears and show him that he’s not alone in a world of predators. If we don’t, if we do nothing but sympathize, we’re allowing him to slip into another realm of trouble.

A horse that has made a positive change in his behavior needs an opportunity to “soak,” to concentrate on and digest what he has learned. He needs his quiet time. Given this opportunity, his response will be better the next time you work with him. Otherwise, to present a horse with a new problem to solve before he’s had time to soak up the old one forces him to disregard what’s he just learned in order to concentrate on what’s next. And if you throw too many tasks at a young horse too soon, you’ll destroy his willingness to try.

The same theory holds for working with children. If you don’t give a child enough time for a new idea to penetrate and to be committed to memory, if you throw too much at him, you’ll overwhelm him and destroy his desire to try, too.

Choosing the right moment in time to let the horse soak is crucial to his development. But also remember that he will soak on the bad as well as the good. If you have been fighting with a horse because he wants to buck you off or run away and you become discouraged and turn him out to pasture, he’ll soak on this bad experience. He’ll build on it, so by the time you work with him again, he is likely to be a lot worse off than he was when you turned him out.

On the other hand, if you’ve done good things before you turn him out and he soaks on what is positive, he’ll be a better ride than he was before. The important thing is to make sure the last word you have with the horse is good for both of you.

Buck works a group of clinic horses with a flag after they’ve been saddled, getting them used to the feeling of moving with saddles touching them and stirrups flying.

If horses are going to survive in our world, someone must lay down rules and then be persevering and disciplined enough to follow through. The same is true for kids. As parents, we have a chance when our children are young to turn them into good citizens rather than wait for the government to raise them for us. Once the horse or the human has grown older, there’s much more danger in working with them. You must be much more disciplined and sometimes more forceful in order to provoke them to a point where they’re ready to change how they live.

It’s a matter of timing and of patience. Although it may seem nothing is happening on the surface, there may yet be profound changes occurring down a little deeper. Waiting isn’t bad.

For me, these principles are really about life, about living your life in a way that you’re not making war with horses or with other people. It’s about planning ahead, rather than looking back and doing something in a reactive way. You need to be proactive when you’re working with young horses. If a horse is inclined to kick or bite, you need to understand where that behavior comes from, what it’s about, and how to redirect it rather than just punishing him for doing something you think is wrong. The horse thinks he’s right, or he wouldn’t be doing what he’s doing.

We’re supposed to be the smart ones, but it’s amazing how people put little thought into working with their horses. They don’t understand that a horse reacts the way he does because to him it’s a matter of life and death. I often tell people in my clinics that the whole class could get on their horses and take off running, bucking and bouncing off the fences. That chaos wouldn’t influence the horse I’m sitting on because he and I have a good thing going on. He doesn’t go anywhere without me, and I don’t go anywhere without him. Other horses and riders have no influence on us because my horse is secure within himself.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could raise our kids with that sort of independence? As parents, that’s really what we’re looking for. You look at kids who get into gangs or hang around a bunch of punks who will lead them down the wrong path. If the kids had been better equipped mentally and psychologically before they got around the bad element, the bad element wouldn’t have had a chance.

You can’t blame many kids who end up in gangs, and you can’t blame it all on the kids who lead them into temptation. If their parents had given them a better background, they never would have ended up in trouble. Working with young horses is the same deal. In a sense we’re parents there, too. We have a responsibility to help the horses become comfortable in their lives and understand how to fit in.

Herdbound horses are insecure, too, but for different reasons. A herdbound horse is fine if you go where the group goes, but quite often if you try to take him away from his pals, he may buck you off, tip over on you, or jump sideways out from under you. That’s the kind of behavior that can get you hurt.

The horse doesn’t feel secure with you because he doesn’t feel secure within himself. As the rider, you can help him to stand alone and be by himself. Horses are very social animals that are meant to be in a herd, yet if you increase his sense of security with himself, your horse will be fine away from the herd as long as he has you with him.

A herdbound horse may have been left in the paddock for so long that he doesn’t want to leave home, or he may be so used to company that he doesn’t want to leave other horses and riders on the trail.

To start working on the problem, I’ll have a group of people on horseback in a big pasture. They’ll just be standing in a small group with room enough for a horse to move between them. I’ll then pick a goal for my herdbound horse: a spot under a shade tree at the end of the meadow or some distant corner. I might loosen my reins and put them up on my saddle horn, start asking the horse to move with my legs, and ride near the group. I don’t steer him with my reins or try to direct him with my legs. I simply cause movement. What I’m doing is making what he thought was a good place to be—the herd—a little difficult for him. I want him to understand that being alone with me in the corner of the pasture or under the shade tree is where he’ll find the most security and comfort.

Rather than force my idea to become his idea, I allow it to become his over a period of time by making it difficult for him to stay with the herd. We simply walk and trot with nothing abusive happening. I tell the horse through my actions, “If you want to stay here with your pals, that’s okay with me. I have no problem with that, but the conditions I’m putting on your staying with them is that you have to be in motion. They might get to stand comfortably, but you have to be in motion.”

After a few minutes the horse may make a small circle away from the herd. When he does, my body becomes one with him. I pet him and rub him and am as soothing as I can be. Be still, and he’ll go a little way and come right back to the herd—the herd is like a magnet, and he’ll be drawn back with more force than I’ve been able to exert riding him off by himself.

After a few more minutes of keeping him in motion and thus making the herd an uncomfortable place to be, his circle will become a little larger. On the way out away from the herd, I pet him and rub him and praise him. When the herd draws him back, I keep a constant energy flowing through him. I turn the energy up in volume as we get closer to the herd, and I turn it down as we get farther away. It’s kind of like the “hotter-colder” game.

With a horse that has a light feel to your leg, you may need only to ride him with a little faster rhythm to encourage him to step out and be more alive. But typically, a herdbound horse has a tendency to pay more attention to the other horses and what they’re doing than to listen to you. He tunes you out, so you may have to keep a firm leg on him in order to initiate and then maintain his energy. Sometimes, you can tap him with the tail of your reins to get his “life up.”

Once you get the horse to respond, don’t allow him to stop moving at the wrong time. If you do, he’ll perceive stopping as a reward. Be careful not to let the energy diminish until the horse is in a place where you want him to be mentally and physically; that is, somewhere away from the herd or the barn.

Over a period of time, the horse’s circles grow larger and larger. At first, he may move a hundred yards from the herd and stop. When he’s in the general vicinity of the goal I’ve chosen, I pet him and rub him. He may not yet be sitting under the tree I’ve chosen in the corner, but he’s closer to it than he was a while ago. I’ll sit there for a while and I’ll rub him, and we’ll take a little break.

Then I’ll ask him to move his feet again with my legs. I don’t care where he goes. Typically he’ll turn around and hotfoot it right back to the herd, looking for that secure place. But again, as always, when he returns to the herd, I make it difficult for him to be there. Soon he starts looking again for that place where things were more peaceful, so he moves a little farther out away from the herd, maybe toward the place he was resting before or even a little beyond it. When he gets there, I’ll let him rest again.

The horse will build on what we’re doing because I’m allowing his mind to search. I’m allowing him to change, to make changes within himself, without treating change like a life-threatening emergency. Even a real problem horse doesn’t need more than an hour or two before I can comfortably ride with my arms folded to the tree in the corner of the pasture. There we’ll sit for long periods of time. I’ll pet him and rub him, let him enjoy the shade, and we’ll just be together.

When I ask him to move again, he may turn around and lope back to his pals, but when we get there and he tries to stop, I keep him working at moving. That reaffirms that being with the herd isn’t as secure or as comfortable as he thought it was. He’ll look for his “comfort” tree in the corner of the pasture.

At the end of the lesson, I’ll know that I’ve finished when the horse sits under “our” tree for a few minutes. Then when I ask him to move his feet, he’ll take a step or two and offer to stop again. At that point, my idea and the horse’s idea are one and the same. I’ll step off him, take my saddle off, and rub him down with my hands (hands are a lot better than a brush right then because of the physical touch from a human being). And then I’ll lead him home, maybe the long way. I’ll take him back to the house and put him up, maybe give him a bite of grain, and put him away for the day.

Over three or four days, I’ll set this exercise up the same way. When we’re in the herd, I’ll fold my arms with my reins looped over the horn and let the horse simply walk off with his ears forward, open to anywhere I’d like to ride him, knowing full well that the place he’s going to be most comfortable is with me.

Buck puts the first ride on a horse that an hour before had never been ridden.

The same approach with your own horse will build confidence in him. You’re apt to be safe: you won’t be bucked off or have your horse tip over on top of you as he fights you to get back to his pals. You’re allowing him to be with them, but you’re simply making it a little difficult for him when he’s there.

This is an approach in which nobody loses and everybody wins. Once you’ve fixed a herdbound horse, you can ride with other people and he’ll be content, not because other horses are with him, but because you are. It’s just you and your horse, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

Herdbound horses that can’t be taken away from a group, that are too insecure to live their own lives as individuals, can be dangerous. A lot of people have been hurt or killed on such horses. To try the hairy-chested horse-trainer approach—showing your horse who’s boss by sticking a spur in him or jerking his head off or whipping him when he wants to be around other horses—won’t work. Force and violence never do. All you’ll do is destroy what was potentially going to be a friendship between you and your horse. Plus, you’re likely to get hurt. The macho approach to problem solving is used in many areas of life, and it simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t work at all.

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Barn-sour horses are a lot like herdbound horses. Several years ago I did a clinic at the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch south of Livingston, Montana. The owner told me that he had a horse that his wranglers couldn’t get to leave the barn. The horse either wanted to stay around the barn or he wanted to stay around his pals in the barn—the owner wasn’t sure which, but both choices seemed pretty attractive to the horse. The wranglers had whipped and spurred him and jerked his head around, but rather than leave the barn lot, the horse bucked his rider off, rubbed him off against a fence, or flipped over backward.

When the owner asked if I would help work with the horse, I led the horse out of the barn, closed the door, and set things up so that he could move out through the barn lot gate and down the road if he chose to leave. I then asked one of the wranglers to step on and start moving him at the walk and trot.

I had the wrangler rub the horse and work his legs to keep moving. The wrangler rode the horse in figure eights and circles, all within twenty or thirty feet of the barn. I told the wrangler, “Make sure the horse understands that he can hang out at the barn with his pals as long as he’s willing to work at it. Don’t make things miserable for him, but don’t let him stop and rest.”

As I had done with the herdbound horse in the pasture, we were making the wrong choice difficult for the horse. It wasn’t long before things began to change. The horse’s ears went forward, and after years of being obstinately barn-sour, and generally miserable in attitude and expression, he trotted right out of the barn lot, through the gate, and down the road.

After he’d gone a couple of hundred yards, I asked the wrangler to get off, rub him, and let him stand. I asked him to pull his saddle off, leave it beside the road, and walk the horse the long way home. I then told the owner that if his wranglers repeated this process for a few days, they could turn the horse’s life around.

The horse was twenty-one years old. For most of his long life he had been trying to do the best he could with what he knew. No one had ever offered him the right deal or he would have taken it. It wasn’t as though he wanted to misbehave; he just didn’t know bad behavior from good. All he knew was what people had made easy for him to do. Now, after all those years, we were asking him to change. Imagine being sixty years old and discovering that everything you thought was right about your life was actually wrong and that you had to change your entire existence.

Change can be difficult for a horse if bad behavior has become a lifelong habit. Still, he can change. This is an important lesson for people to learn, especially since people have a much harder time changing their own behavior. For example, there was a mother-daughter combination taking part in a clinic in Agua Dulce, California. Their horses were herdbound because the mother and daughter couldn’t stay away from each other. The mother was spending too much time trying to help her daughter when, in fact, she was getting in her daughter’s way and keeping her from making progress.

The same mother and daughter then took part in a ten-day clinic at my ranch in Sheridan, Wyoming. They aren’t quite as bound together as they were, but the problem remains. I’m still working on weaning the daughter off the mother. They say it takes only twenty-one days to wean the colt off the mare. I’ve spent about six months with the mother-daughter combination, and we make a little progress every day of the clinic.

Every time I work with a horse—or a person—that’s troubled or scared, I think of how the problems and solutions relate to a human’s life, including my own. There are so many lessons, but it’s important to remember that they’re not all hard lessons and they’re not all unpleasant to learn.