Reading Horse Behavior

[Music] [Music] this is an educational tip from certified horsemanship Association I'm Dale Rudin certified riding instructor and my model today is mr. gold lent an American Quarter Horse Association registered gelding today mr. gold lent tonight are going to talk about reading your horse's body language wouldn't it be nice if you knew what was going on inside of your horse's mind well you don't have to be psychic to know all you have to do is observe his body language horses express themselves with their body and when we learn how to interpret those signs that they give us those signals then we can have a pretty good idea of what's going on inside their mind and the reason why that's important is because it helps us to help our horse if they're having some trouble it helps us to know if things are going well and it also improves our safety because it gives us a little bit more insight into what's going on inside that horse's head and if it's something that might cause them to be reactive or behave a little bit dangerously the quicker we know that something is going on the better it is for us and for our horse here are the places you can look on your horse to help you determine what's going on inside of his mind the nostril the mouth the eye the ears the position of the neck the feet the legs in particular the tail his overall posture and you can also observe who there's tension in the horse's body and even the horse's breath so if we look at the horse's mouth and nostril a relaxed horse is going to have a very loose soft looking nostril he's going to be breathing normally because he isn't feeling the need to prepare for flight so his nostril will be more in a relaxed position and there won't be any wrinkling here above the ridge of the nostril what we want that to be nice and smooth when we have a relaxed horse and the same is with the mouth we want a nice loose mouth and you can see on this horse he's real relaxed and his lips are very loose and he's kind of almost flopped his lower lip a little bit as the fly moves on it so hey I'm annoying him so that was a little bit of a behavior that told me he was being annoyed is he took his head away so hey baby so we want soft a soft look here in the face and them in the muzzle and then when we turn to the eye this is a very soft and relaxed eye and we know it soft and relaxed because it's very smooth above the eyelid there isn't any wrinkling and he's blinking normal blinking so when a horse becomes tense he ends up widening the eye and holding it open in order to view the world around him more and get more information so this is a very relaxed and soft eye now we'll look to his ears and a horse that's relaxed is going to have ears that are just kind of softly observing the environment they're going to turn softly and and if something catches his eye they'll just basically be monitoring the environment so they may be a little bit forward they may be back they may be rotating a little and if we watch this horse for a moment you can see that the ears aren't moving quickly at all they're just taking an information in a very calm way so now he's looking at a horse that's off-camera and the ears are perked up in that direction but he is still staying relaxed in his muzzle and relaxed in his eyes so it's not of any concern to him and now if we look at the position of his neck it's very much in a comfortable relaxed position it's just very neutral I would call this a neutral neck and then if we look at the rest of his body and I'll turn around here then we can see that his whole posture is very soft and relaxed and and if we look at his muscles his muscles are soft and his legs are her in a relaxed position so he's basically just has his legs kind of standing underneath himself but he's just not he doesn't look like he's prepared to leave or to respond to anything that's going on around him or inside his mind and then we can look back at his tail and the tail is hanging very softly and quietly it's probably swishing flies a little bit here and there but it's also very loose when I touch it so again all signs that this horse is in a relaxed and comfortable state and if we watch his breathing I'm going to stand up here I don't know if you could hear that or see that but he actually just threw in a deep breath inside another great sign that this horse is very very relaxed so now let's look at a horse that's feeling a little bit more anxious I'm here with purebred Arabian gelding website RW we're gonna read his body language and see what he has to say we look at his nostrils they're flaring and he's taking shorter breaths okay watch the tension come into his neck here and his neck is elevating and he's doing that because he's becoming more tense and so he's letting us know that he's starting to get nervous and afraid of something that's that he's looking at this ahead of him so you notice his body language has changed his feet I'm gonna step back so you can see here his feet are spread apart a little bit more so he's more prepared to run or bold if he needs to notice that his nostrils are flaring more so right now his ears are really pricked forward so he's showing some signs of tension he actually backed up a little bit and you'll notice that sometimes you know if you look at his mouth he's a little bit more tense in his mouth he's Chee licking and chewing a little and that can be a sign of releasing tension so not necessarily that he's relaxed but he feels tense and that's a way for him to release it you can read your horse's body language under saddle as well and that's gonna help you prepare for any quick moves that he might make or be able to help him you know if he starts to get into a situation where he's feeling a little bit insecure so whenever we're working with our horse that's a very important aspect of safety is to be aware of what's going on inside that horse's mind horses are unpredictable and powerful fast movers so we always want to be as far ahead of their behavior as we can so being able to read your horse's body language helps you be safe and it also helps your horse be the best that he can be this has been an educational tip from certified horsemanship Association [Music]

Channel: CHA Horse

Views: 201,566

Rating: 4.7988939 out of 5

Keywords: Dale Rudin, CHA, Certified Horsemanship Association, horses, horse behavior, equine behavior, equines, ground lessons

Id: l2p8pwIWZAM

Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 02 2017