There are two things that can solve vast majority of all the problems you might have with your horse while working with him from the ground.
Those two things are always the first things I teach every horse I train.
These two things are explained in my video focused on this topic, but until you see the video lets take a look at how it works.
If you want to teach your horse anything, or if you just want him to listen to you and do the things he already knows, you need his respect, and you need him to take you seriously. Horses don’t understand what you say, the communication they understand comes from watching your behavior, and from observing the way you react on their actions.
Pretty much every horse is going to start “testing you” as soon as you approach him for the first time. He is going to be trying what is OK, and what is not. Most of the people however do not notice it, they are not aware that their horse is testing them, and they react wrong on their horses behavior, or ignore important signs coming from their horse. A lot of times people let their horse decide about, and do things that he definitely should not.
Let me give you an example, you walk with your horse on a lead rope, and you let him get ahead of you, and you tolerate when he bumps into you. If he starts going faster, you start walking faster as well, he looks around at other horses while you walk with him, but you get to where you wanted to get. Most of the people perceive this as their horse doing what they want.
What they don’t realize however is that all those little things he did on the way were tests. Horses like to test whether you are a worthy leader, and they keep trying whether your leadership is strong and they can be safe with you, or if its weak and you don’t really know what is going on. Most of the people don’t notice these tests. But for example if your horse start walking in front of you, for him it means that he was guiding you (and it doesn’t matter that you walked to where you wanted).
If he bumps into you, and you tolerate it, then to him it means that he can bump into you the same way as he can bump into all the horses bellow him in the hierarchy. By starting to walk faster, and seeing you just changing your pace according to him, he again just sees that he is actually the one giving orders. And by looking around at other horses he just tells you that all the other things are more important then you are. Horses always look at the things that they deem the most important. If he is looking at you, it means that he considers you to be the most important thing around. if he looks at other horses, then he considers them more important.
I have a video on this topic in which I show you the steps to showing your horse that you are worthy of being his leader. The video will teach you how to get respect and recognize when your horse tests you. If you show your horse that you are a strong leader, he will feel safer with you, he will pay attention to you, he will be more eager to learn and he will be getting less scared.
Just imagine being in a dangerous place, like a really bad part of some really bad town that you don’t really know, would you like to be there with someone who doesn’t know anything and lets you decide, or with someone who knows the area and can guide you and keep you safe?
You would prefer someone who can keep you safe I guess? Well it is the same for your horse. Horses always choose strong leaders and feeling of security over weakness (at least weakness as horses perceive it)
