Have you ever given your horse a treat? Maybe to reward him for doing something well?
Most likely everyone did it at some point. I used to do it as well.
But now I haven’t done it for 15 years already, let me explain why.
Most people give their horses treats to reward them for something or to just show them that they like them.
Even the way to hell can be paved with good intention
We have a saying around here “Even the way to hell can be paved with good intention” The problem is that your horse perceives it very differently when you give him a treat than you do.
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I am sure you saw how horses in a pasture behave when you feed them. The moment you put that hay, or whatever else you feed your horses with, over there the “stronger horses” start pushing the “weaker horses” away, so they have all the hay to themselves.
Simply the “stronger horse” that has the respect of the other eats until he explodes without thinking about the others. When the feeding time comes it is easy to tell how the hierarchy between your horses work.
With this in mind think about giving your horse treats…
Horses probably perceive it very differently than you think when you give them treats from your hand
I believe that horses can often perceive it as
“I am weaker than you, so here is my food, you can take it because you are stronger and I know I have to listen to you”
After some time your horse can start watching whether you have treats in your pocket, because he thinks it’s his, because he is the stronger one.
And if you don’t have it, or you don’t want to give it to him, he can even bite you. Especially more dominant horses, they don’t think twice about biting someone who they consider weaker.
When you practice you spend 30 minutes telling your horse that you are the boss and that he needs to respect you, just to surrender your food in the end to tell him that you are actually not and that he maybe doesn’t have to listen.
Treats can cause significant issues with dominant horses, with other horse they might cause very little issues, or no issues at all.
However, the main thing is that by giving your horse a treat straight from your hand most likely sends him a very different message than you think.
