RE S P
FOUR WAYS TO TEACH YOUR HORSE
RESPECT.
These seven letters are absolutely essential
to a happy, healthy and enjoyable relationship with your horse. Whether your
vision with your horse is of precise dressage circles, long ambling trail rides or
eventing, if you don’t have respect on the
ground you won’t have it in the saddle.
Gaining your horse’s respect is a simple
and essential part of horse ownership that
helps you build a strong relationship with
him, and it starts with understanding
why your horse is the way he is.
UNDERSTANDING
YOUR HORSE’S NEEDS
Horses belong in a herd; evolutionarily speaking, horses are prey animals
that benefit from numbers. In a running
herd, predators have trouble focusing on
and bringing down a single animal in a
group of 20. An essential part of this herd
is its hierarchy. If you spend a day watching your horse in the pasture with other
horses you will see constant movement;
at first this movement may seem random
and aimless, but if you look closely you
will see that all movement begins with
one horse that sets off a chain reaction
among the others. Horses will move and
shift constantly, from patch of grass to
piles of hay to watering trough, moved
around by the boss of the pasture; while
6 • Walking On
your horse may favor one section of grass
or area of the pasture, the boss can move
him off at will, pinning her ears and
lowering her head, perhaps with a snaky,
swaying movement or teeth bared, moving towards what she wants with very
pointed energy. If your horse does not
move when presented with these obvious
physical signs, the boss will proceed with
more physical interventions, biting or
kicking to get the reaction she is looking
for. If there are horses lower in the hierarchy than the horse that was moved off,
that horse will proceed to move another
horse, and then another, and so on until
they have all moved to a different patch of
grass or pile of hay.
The hierarchy of the dominant horse is
fairly stable but can change; even something as simple as putting on a fly mask or
a turnout blanket ca