5 Reasons Why Horses Behave Differently for Different People

have you ever experienced the frustration of having someone else to ride your horse maybe it was your trainer maybe it was a friend at the barn and they did not experience any of the same problems or challenges that you have with your horse maybe you were telling them about these and they get on and they don't even feel anything your horse does great for them why does this happen that's what I'd like to talk about in today's video you're watching the weekly show here where I share riding information training ideas horse care advice and more and today I wanted to share a piece of a topic that I was asked to speak on and it was this question about why do horses behave differently for the trainer and I even expanded it a little bit more because I think that the same points here can give us information what a horse just reacts differently to one person versus another and as a riding instructor with we have a busy lesson bar we have many school horses I see this all the time the difference that one person will have with a horse the different experience compared to someone else so let's jump right in and discuss five big factors that go into this so let me just review these big five quickly and then we're gonna go into each one in more detail so the first one is part of the most obvious it can be the difference in skill in two people the second one is sometimes different cues from the owner of the horse or just from one person to another the third is a difference in emotional state between two people the fourth is a prior relationship history and then the fifth is changes in environment or management so let's start off with a difference in skill there's a few pieces that can go into this the first one could be at timing so this is the the timing that we release pressure or the timing in that we give a reward is going to be reinforcing or punishing whatever behavior preceded either that release or that that giving something or applying a new pressure so the timing of when we do things is so so important it can be the difference between a horse learning that tapping with a whip means going forward or learning that tapping with a whip means kicking out so the timing and being able to feel when the horse is responding and change quickly again whether that's a release whether that's fear using rewards giving a bridge signal but a way of communicating to the horse what we want them to do timing is so so important the other thing is the ability to break down a request and this is something that can take time to learn and to practice the skill of being able to you know we have the thing that we want the horse to do maybe it's just to go forward better but in order to actually get there it works best to break it down so we ask the horse to go forward they go a few steps we release pressure next time we ask for a little bit more and a little bit more but the ability to break something down when a problem is happening many trainers many experienced horse people kind of do this intuitively they ask for something it doesn't work well and they kind of change and they ask for a lesser version of it but if if another person just keeps pushing through and does it break it down they might end up with a totally different behavior so you have a horse that ends up after a few minutes session going forward really willingly or if that problem isn't broken down you end up with horse that's getting really resistant and maybe going into another behavior like starting to crow hop a little bit or kick out so the next is physical abilities and this especially in riding this is just skill this is just for you know hopefully your trainer has a higher level of riding skill than you have that's why you're going to them and getting their help so if the the trainer has just those abilities to be able to stay in balance with the horse to influence the horse with their weight and with their movement they're going to get different results and then also able to read the horse so there is this kind of goes in with breaking down things because when we can really read the horse notice the small things notice when the horse is just starting to change their emotional state and change what we're doing in our training in response to that it can really make a big difference in what the next behaviors are going to be now the next thing I have here is different cues so these are pictures that were just set up but this is an example of asking for the same behavior of walking forward and I demonstrated how there can be I like asked for this in two different ways I actually got a very different response from this particular horse but this is something that's so easy to do unconsciously so in this picture I'm asking for forward I've got an upright body position I'm looking ahead and I'm basically starting the movement more from my Center in this picture my hands look the same my feet look the same so I could have sensed like this could be two people thinking they're asking the same thing but in this picture because I'm looking at the horse I'm lean forward and I'm more leading the more forward movement with my shoulders and my upper body to the horse this could be a totally different keel and then there's also a difference in the emotional state that we feel so if one person has fear or stress or distraction our horses can absolutely pick up on that in fact there have even been studies done that show that horses respond to the emotional state of people in pictures and they also remember that person and will respond differently when they see them when they interact with them later on so it is the emotional state of two different people can totally influence how a horse is going to react and how horse is going to behave whether that's from the moment they come and greet them at the stall to the written work and the written behavior as well and then there's prior relationship with a horse so this is especially something I've experienced with like an owner when you're taking your horse to have training done is if you've had an accident with that horse or if there's already established patterns of behavior and this could just be things like you know your horse is used to with you they drag you around on the one on the the lunge line or on the lead line or with you they kind of ignore your leg because it's become an established pattern or when there's been an accident there can be an element of fear there and there the horse you know your horse himself can actually start to serve as kind of a trigger for you in feeling some of those those things that came out of the accident so that can be a challenge that affects the emotional state of one person maybe of you as the owner that isn't affecting your trainer in the same way and then a change in environment and this especially again comes into if you take your horse somewhere to have training done so this this too was a factor that I always had to acknowledge when horses would come in here for training because I found there were many times that a horse would come in with a list of behavior problems that I was going to be working on but once they were here in this setting at our farm here we have a lot of turnout most of the horses are out in fields and on 24/7 turnout so they're grazing even in ones that are like on dry Lots and don't have grazing we feed hay continuously we work to keep the horses in you know find a good group that they're compatible in and generally it's a pretty low stress environment so there were many times where horses would come in and just because of that change in management I would never even see the behavior problems that the owner was talking about but if the horse went back and then was in that different management and maybe was in a stall more then they would see the behavior problems come back up so this is a really important thing to acknowledge and to think about when you're taking your horse somewhere for training is it is going to make a difference for better or for worse when that horse is in different different situations so there's some references as well I will list them below if you want to do some more science-based reading on this topic and now I'd love to hear from you has this ever happened to you this experience of someone else having a different interaction with your horse maybe it was positive maybe was more negative could have been a trainer a friend what was that like what happened what did you learn from it so put a comment down below and I look forward to seeing you there in the comments make sure to subscribe as well so that you never miss another one of these weekly videos

Channel: HorseClass

Views: 58,470

Rating: 4.9484534 out of 5

Keywords: horse trainer, taking a horse for training, horse behavior, horse training

Id: 3BDbk0nnnSM

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020