Horse is a prey animal. His first instinct
is to vanish into the horizon as fast as possible, if he thinks that there may
be some dangerous fiend jumping after him, such as horse eating rabbit. There is
no other thought going through a horse’s brain at that particular moment but to
get away right now, let’s see later on if it was in fact needed.
Well, there are no such things as killer rabbits, but how would the horses know? No-one has ever told them… or
even how they look like. But the instinct is there, and they will have to obey
it.
Our Jack had these kinds of spooky days
every now and then. Rustle in the bushes or any type of strange sound made him
spook or jump sideways. What helped during hacks was to kick him on. Once I was
having a nice and early morning hack in the fields with some lovely fast
canters. But I was a bit sleepy still and did not react fast enough into one
sideways jump in the middle of an uphill canter, and so he did another one, and
I fell off sideways. Gaaaahk, and I was properly winded… well, luckily nothing
was broken and Jack was munching grass beside me like nothing had ever happened
and this was the most natural thing to do whilst hacking out. I hopped on him
again (luckily managed to climb on him!) and straight to canter and continue
our hack. That is the best way to get rid of any nagging fears; just get on
with it and properly! I proceeded to do some real nice and fast trot and canter
work before returning to the stables. And made sure that I reacted fast enough
to any hint of any spookiness.
If Jack did not want to pass some obviously
hugely dangerous spots, like gates, we stopped him, backed him up, stopped,
moved forward, etc. Sometimes we’d turn him around and back towards the way we
wanted to go etc. So, we kept him in motion and schooled him extra, slowly
approaching the item of the devil…
In the school it helped to keep him in
constant motion in trot and make him do tasks continuously. That is, lots of
transitions, some laterals, and massive amounts of circle work. He would then
after a while settle and forget about the horse eating killer rabbits.
Our teddybear Finnhorse is a completely
different kettle of fish. Backing up does not work with him – he backs up even
more. But what does help is to keep him in a tiny circle. That is, I turn him
where he wants to go or the way he is leaning to so that his head is almost
touching me (other hand gives a loose rein), and woops, he is suddenly back the
way I want to go. I make a volt without him realising what is happening. Then I
ask him to move forward with my legs. If he doesn’t move, I do another small
circle. And so on. He usually gives up and moves forward after a couple
circles.
It is really important that you observe and
try out immediately in the beginning, what works with your horse in these kinds
of situations. It may be backing up, laterals, turning around, circling… if one
thing does not work, try something else, or combination of things. You have to
be smarter and faster than your horse.
Will Faerber has a very good comment on
spooky horses in his blog.
I did this as well with our boy. That is, I
strengthened his spookiness with stopping and letting him look at the dangerous
thing while patting him! Woops, shouldn’t have done that…
Early last winter, when the days were
getting shorter, our boy started to spook on one side of the school or even all
sides every now and then. We thought that he was scared of the darkness and
shadows beyond the lit school. Sometimes he was good, but other times he was so
bad that we were able to ride only on a circle in the middle of the school! As
mentioned earlier, with Jack we’d always put him to work, but this did not work
with our Finnhorse, who actually became even spookier as the schooling went on.
And at the same time unbeknownst to me I was strengthening the spookiness by
letting him stop at the dangerous spots to have a look while I patted him… So,
I was doing things pretty wrong.
Well, winter came and the school became
pretty bad at times. It melted one day and got refrozen another, so was
impossible to ride for a couple weeks. But we could just about lunge our boy in
the school. After the school was ok again for riding we were completely
astonished to find out that he did not spook anymore in any part of the school!!
Lunging solved our problem with his
spookiness with 100% efficacy! We lunged him in every part of the school; just
basically let him go until he calmed down. And then when we started riding
again, we had read Faerber’s advice and did not reward his spooking. This
problem has not returned and if it does, we know what to do. On the other hand,
this may be also due to our new classical training style (á la Faerber); our
boy has become even more relaxed due to it.
Thus, depending on the horse, spookiness may
be worked away with making him work harder or by lunging. But in any case, do
not reward spookiness with stopping, patting etc.. Avoid putting your own
attention into perceived spooky things as this already draws his attention to
it as well. If you are tensing up, your horse will surely follow suit and tense up as well.
Don’t let the killer rabbits rage around your
horse! Lets face the problems and solve them intelligently.
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