How to Get a Horse to Trust You

hey everyone today I wanted to answer a very important question that many horse people are asking how can you tell and how do you help your horse learn to trust you so today I want to show you what I first do with my horses when I get them just to help them learn to trust me and learn to look to me as their leader and before we get started make sure you like this video and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos [Music] okay so first let's talk about how can you tell if your horse trusts you so my personal horse tucker is goofy she can be very stoic sometimes and sometimes I can't really get up feeling for whether or not he likes me or what he thinks but as I've gotten to learn his personality I see you some things that show that what he actually does think about me I've had him like four years now so I've done a lot of work with him so one thing that he does and this actually makes me feel really good about myself because I was talking to some people and apparently when they go out in the field and go over to pet him he like runs away from them but when I go out there he always lets me catch him and he's always really good it shows that he recognizes me and he knows me as the person who takes care of him and he trusts me that he would allow me to catch him another way to tell what your horse thinks about you is to look at their face what does your horse express on their face horses are very expressive so it's easy to get a read on what they're feeling so if a horse trusts you they're gonna be way more relaxed around you and way more focused on you compared to if they don't trust you they may be wide eyed and nervous and really just watching other things and not focused on you so horse I trust you is gonna look to you as their leader and that means they're gonna demonstrate signs that they think of you that way so what this means is respecting your personal space paying attention to you responding well to your cues and what you're asking of them so in the wild every hurt has a lead horse just go watch your horses in the pasture you'll probably easily be able to pick out that one horse that is the boss of everyone all the other horses will respect that lead horse they're gonna give that horse space they're gonna let that horse be the first horse to the feed or to the water and they're just gonna clear out of the way when that horse comes around so one way to tell whether your horse trust you or not is that they're gonna respect your personal space and get out of it when you ask and also not running to you and all that other stuff a horse that trusts you will be more willing to do what you ask of them compared to another horse so look at your horse in certain situations and see how they react so like I mentioned Tucker he's a quirky dude he is very spooky about a lot of stuff um but I have noticed that as my journey with him has progressed he's become a lot more easy to handle and he's just been more willing to look to me for what to do in situations compared to just freaking out and doing his own thing so that's one sign your horse trusts you they're gonna look to you in a insecure environment or an environment they don't know all right so let's get into our points my first point for getting your horse to trust you is to simply spend time with them this goes for basically any relationship on the face of the earth the more you spend time with someone the more they get to know you and they get to trust you in situations horses learn by repetition so the more that they see you the more quality time they have with you they're gonna grow a fond of you and they're gonna build that familiarity and that trust so what are some quality time things you can do with your horse to help them learn to trust you so one of those obvious ones is to brush your horse this will help your horse to learn that your touch is positive and not negative so brushing is really relaxing to horses it stimulates their muscles and helps them relieve stress and it just helps you get to learn to know them and touch them and then learn that you're not gonna hurt them you're gonna provide a nice calm and pleasant touch so that's one great way to get to know your horse and spend time with them another way you can spend time with your horse is to pet them very similar to brushing but I am specifically talking about petting their faces so horses can be really nervous about getting their faces touched by things or people that they don't know so um when I got pepper my thoroughbred she was very head shy and she did not like people touching her head but as our time went on and she got to know me and trust me she would allow me to pet her head and pet her and then it turned into something that was really relaxing for her so once again you're just applying that nice and gentle touch and they're learning that you're not gonna hurt them or harm them but that they can trust you one way you can spend time with your horse that is very natural to them is just letting them graze while you stand there and pet them or you can just stand there and read a book or just do whatever you want basically but as long as you're in that presence with them that's how horses get to know one each other in a wild they graze next to each other and they spend our whole day together and then just the graze and go to the watering bando go birds again one will sleep another will stand guard so just that constant presence will help your horse feel more comfortable around you and learn that you're not a threat but that you are actually one of their friends you're one of the herd and that they can trust you one great way to get to know your horse is to spend time leading them around you may ask why is this but leading your horse is a perfect example of that leader position that you need to establish for yourself and it will help them establish the trust position and so just spending time leading your horse in a bunch of different environments and places you can go lead them out on the trail go lead them out in the ring lead them through the barn into their stall all this other stuff it will help them start to envision you as their leader and start to learn to trust you and to follow you no matter the circumstance and that they can look to you for guidance and what to do in a situation one thing I like to do with my horses just to help them build trust is to take them in the riding ring and instead of riding we just play we'll just do a bunch of random weird and fun things just to engage the horses mind but also to teach them that I'm not always going to require work from them so horses will immediately correlate the ring or the arena with work because that's usually where we go when we work them so when you take your horse into the ring and you just have fun your horse is learning that you're cool you know that you you're just gonna let them chill sometimes and that they can learn to trust you on that aspect before they trust you in the work aspect and I just love that so much because horses have to trust you in every moment not just when you're working another thing you can do in terms of spending time with your horse is simply just talk to them I know we've covered a lot of points here but this one is important and I've learned that this one is really beneficial when you just spend time talking to your horse they're gonna start correlating your voice with just calm and your voice will be kind of something that's Miller to them so if they're in a situation where they don't really know what to do and you start talking to them they're immediately gonna recognize that familiar voice and they're gonna latch on to that and that will help them calm down or it will help them work through the moment but it's also gonna help them learn to trust you more my last point for spending time with your horse is to actually feed them and a lot of people are against using feed to teach your horse something and I am too because you know I don't want my horse to be doing something for a food I want them to be doing something because they respect me and you know they're looking to me for guidance but in this situation I think feeding your horse really helps so horses if you've ever realized this they immediately notice the people who feed them and so maybe you're out of burning stable word the barn staff will feed the horses regularly that's perfectly okay for the barn staff to do that but for your horse to recognize you in a positive manner I recommend that you take the time to feed your horse you know a few times a week or something and that will just help them learn once again to correlate you with something good and to learn to trust you for their sustenance and you know just their daily living because that's how they look to that lead horse in the wild my second point for getting your horse to trust you is to do ground work with them I am a huge advocate for ground work I think it's like the best thing ever but this is basically because ground work is the foundation of horse training so if you think about it in the wild horses get to know each other face-to-face and so when you do ground work with your horse it's the same thing they're learning to get to know you face-to-face because before they can trust you on their back they have to trust you on the ground so that's why ground work is important one thing that ground Marc is gonna do is gonna establish you as the leader in their relationship so this happens a number of ways and the biggest thing is when you do ground work you're basically kind of establishing your personal space boundary with your horse you're teaching them you can't come into my personal space or you need to get out of this space when I ask you to and so that correlates exactly to in the wild when that lead horse is communicating with they're horses in their herd all the other horses in the herd know that they cannot get in the lead horses space so they're gonna respect that boundary but then they're also going to learn to trust that horse as a leader so that's what ground work is helping you do in that situation it's also gonna help your relationship build both you and your horse are gonna learn how each other communicate on the ground and that's gonna be very helpful because if a horse doesn't understand how you're communicating with it it can be very frustrating for the horse and it can be hard for them to trust you but as the horse learns how you're communicating with them they're gonna learn to trust you and they're gonna learn to recognize what you're asking them to do rewarding your horse and releasing pressure is so important to building trust with your horse once again because this ties into how you communicate with your horse and how your horse understands your communication so if you're not releasing pressured your horse isn't gonna understand really what you're asking it to do so once again this is a great way to help your horse learn to trust you is buy that give and release and that pressure reliefs I always recommend if you're new to groundwork or the pressure and release thing you don't really comprehend or understand always get a professional horse trainer or your instructor to help you along with that just because it is so vitally important it's frustrating when you don't know what you're doing and it's frustrating for the horse when they don't know what you're asking and they're doing something right but there is no release to the pressure if you need help with this go find an instructor that can help you out my next point correlates to ground work but it also correlates to getting your horse to trust you so this point is being assertive being assertive with your horse will actually help them to trust you when I said being assertive I don't mean being rough or very hard with your horse what I mean is you know asking what you want and being consistent and not backing down but also being gentle and very rewarding when the horse does the right thing via herd animals horses naturally fall into the hierarchy of things where you have a leader you have another horse that's higher up on the totem pole and it just rips their way down so that's a natural thing for them so when they meet you it's gonna be a natural thing for where your level of the is our unit leader or is the horse the leader this is why it is vitally important to do ground work with your horse and help them learn that you're the leader in their relationship and being assertive will help you get there a lot faster if a horse is questioning your authority if that means that they don't really trust you if a horse trust your as the leader they're gonna respect your position in the relationship so by being assertive you help your horse look to you as a good leader once again if this is a point that you struggle with go find a instructor or a trainer to help you out we have a bunch of groundwork videos that you can go watch that talks about exactly what to do so you'll feel confident in yourself so that you can be assertive and communicate confidence to your horse okay another thing you can do to help your horse learn to trust you is to desensitize them so desensitize in your horse is basically getting them used to anything that they find scary or intimidating the reason this helps your horse learn to trust you is because they learn how to communicate with you in a different situation that they may not be 100% comfortable with so if you're introducing new items to them like a tarp or maybe a new noise or a scary jump or anything like that the horse is gonna be looking to you for how to react so that's why desensitizing is so great so in the beginning when you start desensitizing your horse to stuff they're probably gonna be really freaked out but I've noticed with my relationship with my horses as we progressed in our relationship when I go to desensitize them to something different it's way more easier because they start to trust me and the vibe I'm giving off and how they should react to that thing once again horses learn by repetition so if you're consistently introducing them to new things that otherwise could intimidate them a little bit they're gonna learn to trust you and see you as the constant in all those situations which will help them look to you for guidance when it comes to desensitizing them alright my last point that I want to share with you guys when it comes to getting your horse to trust you is to maintain a calm environment so horses feed off your emotions what they have noticed personally with myself is I've had a few periods of times where I was just really frustrated in horse training for a period of time not just a day for like a week or a month and I would notice that every time I worked with my horses they seem to be getting frustrated too and so that just goes to show the horses I'm gonna be having a good time and when they see you coming they're gonna think oh gosh we're gonna go and get frustrated again today when you create that calm environment you're just creating a great atmosphere for your horse to work in general and so if your horse is around to different people if your horse is around a calm person and a frustrated person you're probably gonna want to go with the calm person because they can feel that off you they can feel that radiating off you and so that environment is gonna help them learn to trust you and what you're feeling more going back to desensitizing so then when your horse is in a situation that they don't know what to do if they look to you and you're maintaining that calm level of composure they're gonna be like oh well I can do that too okay guys well I hope you found this video helpful if you have tricks that you need to help your horse learn and trust you comment down below and as always make sure you like this video and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos

Channel: Equine Helper

Views: 76,585

Rating: 4.9731183 out of 5

Keywords: How to Get a Horse to Trust You

Id: bFgCIkJlQQw

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 06 2020