Communication Issues

Hi everyone! I recently received this email and thought it would make a great Q&A for the blog. Hope you enjoy it and feel free to ask follow up questions or provide other thoughts for Shelby! There's a lot to be said, and I only scratched the surface with this blog entry. Enjoy your horses!

Hello, Alex!

I am Shelby from Townsend. First off, I'm totally in love with you're grey mare, Justin's Pickles! Although I can't afford her, I've been eyeing her haha. Dreaming basically. Well, I have a question and personally, I need some advice. I've been looking around your site and I'm so impressed! Okay, anyway... I have this 5 year old mare. Some strange man gave her dam to us without knowing she was pregnant so we were surprised with a foal. I am only 18 so when I was 13, I started the foal myself. At first, I thought it was brilliant but now, I'm not so sure. I know nothing about my mare's breed, her dam or sire, nothing. She's very stocky but she doesn't have a lot of Quarter Horse features. Anyway, I have trained this mare from leading to the saddle but there's just a few problems. One, she is absolutely disrespectful because I never have been big enough to push HER around. Now that I'm old enough to get her attention, she still does not respect me. Two, she won't lunge and she becomes crabby when we try. Three, she will move her feet when I put the saddle on her but once I or anyone gets on, she won't budge. I have not tried spurs yet but I plan to. And last but certainly not least, she refuses the trailer.

I don't have enough money to get her fixed so I was wondering if you might have any advice for me. I'm sorry this was so long! But really, I want advice/tips from a professional trainer. Gosh, sorry again! I hope this wasn't too long or irritating. But thank you so much for your time (if you had enough time to read this ha..)!

- Shelby

Hi Shelby

Thanks for the email and the compliments! Glad you enjoyed the website.

Without seeing you and your mare together, I can’t give you exact answers, but I can certainly give you some ideas and hopefully get you started towards a better relationship with her.

It sounds as though there is a lack of clarity between you and your mare when it comes to what you are asking of her. I would offer you the idea that you don’t need to be “big enough to push her around,” but clear enough in what you are asking her to do that she wants to participate. In general, horses are very willing animals and when they display this sort of pushy, crabby behavior it is because they don’t understand what you are asking and are frustrated with the situation and lack of direction. This lack of clarity produces a lot of anxiety in a horse, and I think the behavior you are describing is an expression of this anxiety.

Imagine if you had a teacher, parent or friend that kept asking you to do something. When you tried to do it, they just asked louder and louder, using the same words but with a tone that told you that you were not doing it right. You kept trying, but they just seemed more annoyed at you, no matter how hard or what you tried. Then, suddenly, the stopped asking and walked away, with no clarification as to what they had wanted and if you had ever gotten it right. The next day, you run into this person again. The same thing happens. From then on, every time you interacted with this person, you had this same sort of experience. What do you think this would do to your mind, spirit and confidence?

If it were me, I’d get angry, and maybe yell back. I know other people that would probably get really quiet and nervous and some that would even run the other way when they saw this person walking towards them. Some people would try for a while and eventually just quit trying and give up, and whenever they saw this person they would just sit there and stare at their feet until the person went away. I know other people that would just keep trying to get the answer right, no matter how frustrated, scared or upset they were…and then maybe one day years down the road have some sort of nervous breakdown or explosion.

We are all individuals, and all respond to confusion differently. The same goes for our horses. You have had this mare from birth, and while you have some good stuff going, for the most part this mare has never understood exactly what you were asking, from leading to lunging to saddling to riding. This lack of understanding is manifesting itself in many ways. Sometimes, she runs on top of you and “disrespects” you. I see this as her trying to control a situation she finds stressful by pushing on you. She doesn’t know where her boundaries are and this is unsettling. Other times, she does not go forward (like when you try to lunge her or ask her to move under saddle), because there is no clarity to your request to go forward, so she is crabby about it, or simply ignores you. To her, you are just bugging her, over and over, louder and louder, without meaning. You are not important. When you try to saddle her, she is probably nervous and her brain is elsewhere, so she moves her feet to try to get her feet where her brain is—which is anywhere but where you and that saddle are.

You mention trying spurs on her, and I don’t think that spurs are your magic cure. If your horse were unable to move, she wouldn’t dance around when being saddled. Horses are large animals, and if she is dull in responding to your leg, or any other aid when on the ground, she will easily dull out to a spur if used incorrectly. It might irritate her enough to move her forward for a while (a day, a month or a year), but eventually the old behavior will return and she will just stand there and ignore the spur like she does your leg now.

Instead, I would recommend establishing a better line of communication between you and your mare, so that she can go through life with a quieter mind and a clearer understanding of what you expect of her. My guess is your biggest issue is that you cannot direct where her mind is. Her mind is stuck on whatever she is thinking about at that moment, and she is unable to let go of that thought. It sounds like most of the time she has her mind working on blocking you out and dissociating from the situation, which is why she is so unresponsive. After years of unclear signals from you, now when you make a request, she just locks down further, rather than engaging with your request and trying to answer properly. She is the person that tries to get the right answer for a while and when she can’t please you she eventually just sits there and stares at her feet until the annoying person goes away. When she just stands there not wanting to move, she is just waiting for you to go away. It has worked in the past, probably better than anything else she has tried.

I would start with working on her leading. When you ask her to walk forward, is her response dull or lively? In other words, do you have to pull her forward, or does she respond merely to your body moving forward, and follow without taking the slack out of the rope? Where is she looking when you are walking forward—at you, behind her, over you, to the sides, or bouncing all over the place? When you stop, does she stop exactly as your feet stop, maintaining the same distance between you and her, or does she keep walking and end up on top of you or walking passed you? Ideally, there is no tension between the two of you when you lead her. Everything is soft, she is focused, and there is a consistent expectation of attention and distance between you two as you interact. She should understand this and feel good about this, as the boundaries should be very clear and horses appreciate knowing what is expect of them, just like you and me. To give her this clarity you need to be clear about your expectations. You need to know where her feet and her mind are at all times. If she doesn’t stop when you stop, you need to fix that, every time. Be picky without being critical. She doesn’t know what you want, so don’t get mad when she gets it wrong, but don’t accept a wrong answer, either. Help her get it right.

Also work on directing her thought. There are many ways to do this, but I will give you one idea and you can experiment from there. Standing in front of her, can you ask her to look one way or another? When I say “look,” I actually mean think. Your focus should be on where her attention is, and her eyes are a nice window into her brain. Horses are perfectly capable of bending their neck in either direction without ever thinking in that direction. While you are reading this, try to turn your head and neck in another direction but keep your eyes on the computer screen. You can do it, pretty easily I would imagine. So can she. Make sure that when you ask her to look one way, you wait with your request until she actually looks over there, not just until her neck goes in the direction you are suggesting. You can ask in many different ways, whether it is with the lead rope, the halter, or gentle putting pressure on her nose to tip her thought back and forth. It doesn’t really matter how you ask, as long as you do not release whatever pressure you are using to request the change in thought until you see her truly commit to thinking in the direction you have suggested. Once you get this, maybe ask her to take her feet in that direction for one step, then two, then three, then a whole circle. But the second her brain isn’t where you are directing her to be, you need to make a change.

Don’t worry about asking with more force if she doesn’t get it right away, just keep asking with the same amount of soft pressure until she finds the answer. She might try some wrong answers first, when blocking you out doesn’t work, but that’s no problem. Just keep asking what your asking until she finds the right answer, then stop and pet on her. She’s so used to blocking you out, it is going to take a while for her to realize that there is another way to interact with you, so be patient and committed, and don’t quit just because she doesn’t know what you mean. The second you release your request, you have taught her that that was the correct answer, so don’t release until you really want to say Good Job! At first, Good Job might come after just a small try on her part, but by next month you will have much higher expectations. Don’t expect perfection on the first try, but always have it in your mind what you are aiming for, and only reward steps in the right direction.

While I have given you some vague exercises to work on, really what I would like to make clear is that this is more about communicating clearly and with consistency than it is about getting her to do something. Be clear with yourself about what you want, and then be clear with her. Once you can direct her thought around, many of the other issues will disappear, as really what you need to be concerned about with your horse is where her mind is and what she is thinking about, not what her feet and body are saying. The mind is what directs the body, and if her brain is elsewhere, it doesn’t matter how well you ask, she will not be able to comply because she will not be present enough to respond willingly.

If her mind is not quiet and soft, you will forever have a stuck, pushy, disrespectful horse. There simply is no other way to be in the world if you are constantly confused, worried and frustrated!

I hope this gives you some ideas about what might be going wrong between you and your mare. Good luck and keep us posted on your progress!

Alex