“The horse couldn’t be wrong,” says science-based horse trainer Andy Booth, an Australian who lives and teaches learning theory in practice in Southwest France. “So of course the horse has learned that there’s no reason to go inside that trailer.”įor us, it’s the wrong choice. “We pet them and give them carrots while they’re standing in front of the trailer, and when they step back, we let go and reassure them some more,” Waran says. Add to that a bad memory of a trailer trip where the driver might not have been careful enough around turns and at stops, and you have a horse who’s smartly decided that it makes more sense to stay outside that trailer. And our own training mistakes-such as poor timing in releasing pressure when the horse moves, or “reassuring” the horse when it refuses-accentuate the problem. Horses naturally prefer to avoid dark, enclosed spaces. Trailer-loading is a classic example, she says. “What we see as a problem is very often a normal horse response as a result of some event or interaction, whether we knew about it, or understood it, or not,” says Natalie Waran, PhD, equine behavior and welfare researcher and professor at Eastern Institute of Technology, in Napier, New Zealand, and co-founder of the International Society for Equitation Science (ISES). And, most of the time, humans have taught them these solutions. They buck when we ask for a gallop.įor our horses, though, these aren’t problems.
They won’t move forward from our leg pressure. They won’t stand still for the fly spray or clippers. We tend to consider a lot of the things our horses do “problems.” They won’t load into the trailer.
But if we want to be fair-and want to improve our horsemanship and our horses’ welfare-we should be asking ourselves, “Is it my horse … or is it me?” A good honest look, combined with a skilled understanding of equine behavior and learning, will most likely make us notice the three fingers pointing back toward ourselves. Pointing at the horse when things go wrong seems like the easy way out. Horses aren’t trying to be good or bad they aren’t out to show appreciation by pleasing us and they don’t come with a built-in work ethic. These are all interesting arguments that might apply to certain species (or a single species actually: humans).
It’s awfully tempting to just drop the reins and my head and say, “She’s not listening!” or “She doesn’t want to work for me!” or even, “She’s just trying to see what she can get away with.” The ride is a real workout and, frankly, it’s not very fun for either of us. I’m definitely a rider who’s sitting on a horse and trying to communicate clearly and subtly … and not getting very far. But I swing my leg over Urraca, and that striking unison of rider and horse is gone.
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