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“I have an amazing horse, but I don’t feel confident riding him.”
“As soon as my horse speeds up, I get tense in my entire body.”
“If my horse just gives the slightest signal that he might shy away, I am the one that spooks!”
Fear of (enjoying) your horse, it’s more common than you might think.
It can be as small as a bit of anxiety when you’re getting on or so big that it paralizes you when you even think about riding your horse.
And nobody likes to be afraid, especially not when it involves something you love!
Fear can come from a number of things. Maybe you’ve had an injury after your horse spooked.
Or someone you know has had an accident and caused you to be more cautious.
Fear can also come with age. We get older, we might not heal as fast and we are aware of that.
And what about responsibilities? You might have a family or need to get to work on Monday.
What I’m trying to say is, fear is very personal.
But they all have one thing in common:
Don’t get me wrong, of course there is trust between you and your horse.
But only to a certain amount.
When it comes to the part where you get anxious or scared (that can be riding, but also tacking up or leading your horse), you don’t have trust anymore.
And that is ok! Because we work with big, powerful animals that could harm us very easily.
There is absolutely no shame in admitting that.
But it can be hard for the people around you to relate.
They might try to help you by telling you that there’s nothing to be afraid of, you just have to get on, don’t worry about it, etc.
Instead of acknowledging your fear, they try to push you into trusting your horse again.
But did you know that feelings of trust actually help to remove the fearful feelings out of your brain?
This is because of the brain chemical oxytocin. It blocks the fear-processing part of your brain, therefore preventing you to be afraid.
So, in conclusion: the more you trust your horse, the less you will be afraid of him.
Sounds easy, right?
And where do you begin?
It’s not like you can ask your horse ‘please don’t spook today’ and then trust it won’t happen.
So that’s why you have to start with the same subject that I started this blog: what is the cause?
Why does your horse spook, speed up, explode, bite, etc?
Taken in account that your horse is physically fine (no injuries, fitting tack, etc.), the cause of your horse’s behavior is perfectly natural.
Because all horses are born only knowing how to survive in nature.
They operate on the blueprint they have of the world and rely on their natural instinct, which is fight of flight.
And there are plenty of things in the human world that will seem life-threatening to a horse.
Because when your horse knows and understands how he can control himself in situations that would normally cause him to spook or rear, he will start to rely on that new pattern.
And when he uses his new knowledge and discards his natural instincts, he is also giving you the chance to start trusting him again.
In the video below I explain which three steps I take when it comes to teaching a horse to manage himself.
By working on the groundwork patterns, the tools and under the saddle, you get to know your horse better.
You learn what his weaknesses are, what signals he gives when he’s tense and how he reacts when he’s relaxed.
But when your horse isn’t noticably scared or tense, you might have another situation:
These horses seem relaxed most of the time, but will explode all of a sudden or when something in particular happens.
And that moment is where you don’t trust him anymore.
Because how can you prepare for that or even solve that?
Well, whether a horse is constantly in a tense state or only suddenly, in both cases we have the following problem:
With some horses the signs of them being tense are very obvious (tight in the body, head up, calling out to other horses, short, irregular steps etc), but a horse might also try to ignore the thing that’s causing tension.
And then he can seem fine up until he can no longer ignore the pressure and then you get the ‘big explosion’.
But what do you do when your horse spooks?
Well, you can then use something that I call the safety pattern.
The safety pattern is a pattern you can use whenever your horse is getting tense, bolts, spooks, etc.
The movement is something he already knows from the groundwork patterns, so he can make the connection with his body ánd his mind.
Because the safety pattern is actually moving the hind legs at the moment that your horse becomes tense.
By then turning the hind leg, you are reminding him of his body posture.
“Hey, you’re getting a bit tense. This will make you feel better, remember?”
Your horse will make the connection, relax again and you are able continue your riding.
I taught the safety pattern to the owner of this horse during one of the Horse&Country TV episodes.
The last step of getting the trust back, is learning how you can control your own level of tension when your horse spooks.
If you have a horse that’s a little bit nervous or that’s prone to spooking, your anticipation to that spook is creating tension in your body.
It’s a natural reaction, but it will definitely create tension and anticipation in your horse’s body as well.
So what can you do to prevent that?
You can try to create a simulation of the situation where you think of your horse spooking and then going through the steps of what you would do in that situation.