Problem Solving… Part I

No matter what horse you own, there will come a time when you need to fix a problem. Horses can display a wide range of behaviors that we humans view as being “problems.” This is where the difference between natural horsemanship and “normal” horsemanship really becomes clear.

In natural horsemanship we try to always figure out why the horse is behaving the way he is. A lot of people seem to think that horses do things at random, but that is very rarely the case. Everything your horse does whether it’s in your presence or not, has a reason behind it. You might not know what it is, but I can assure you that he/she does. What can we do about it? In the case where the horse is afraid to stand still, the worst thing we could do is punish him (that’s a predator response and as we noted above, prey animals don’t understand punishment… he’ll think he’s being attacked –and he is- by a predator. It will only make him even more upset and cause the situation to escalate), so we need to identify what he needs to feel safe. He’s lacking confidence in himself, in the situation, and in his human/leader. So we need to develop his confidence. If he were confident that we would never put him in a situation where he could get killed, then he wouldn’t display anxious behaviors.

My approach for problem solving is three-fold. First we identify the problem/behavior we’d like to change, we also figure out why it is happening, then once we know the cause of it we proceed with a series of steps to modify it. It sounds simple, but most people seem to get stuck where they aren’t aware enough to see the problem to begin with, or they don’t know, (or don’t care) why it’s happening. Instead of trying to modify the horse’s behavior they try the bandaid approach. They go out and buy more tools and mechanical devices to stop the horse from displaying that symptom.

You’ll see me use that word, symptom, a lot in my articles. It especially applies to this concept of problem solving. The behaviors in horses that we’d like to change, are not in themselves the problem, the behaviors are the symptom of the problem.

For example:

You bring your horse into the barn and tie them up to be groomed. They can’t stand still. They either move back and forth, or they start to paw.

This is a common situation. What most people do about it is they first yell at the horse to “knock it off”, then they proceed to smack him or otherwise discipline him for pawing. They’ll also often complain to anyone within earshot about this “bad habit” their horse has of pawing.

Given the same situation this is what I see. I see a horse who’s either anxious and needs to move their feet, or a horse who’s becoming impatient because they would rather be doing something else. Since they’re tied up they can’t walk around so they do the next best thing which is swerving back and forth, or paw. This is a horse with a lack of confidence in himself, and a lack of confidence in his human/leader.

Now given that different perspective, it would seem highly inappropriate to punish the horse for behaving in such a way. If he is displaying anxious behaviors, then gGiving him a smack for being afraid will do nothing but make him more afraid. This is what I mean about the bandaid solution. The mentality behind it seems to be “if I punish the bad behavior he’ll stop doing it.” And that doesn’t necessarily work. Like I said, it’s treating the symptom, (in this case pawing) instead of treating the problem. You can perhaps startle the horse by growling at him or otherwise yelling “knock it off” and for a minute he may quit what he’s doing, but it’s not really solving the problem unless you can redirect his attentions to some other task.

Horses are prey animals. Humans are predators. It’s important to remember that, but what does it really mean?

Prey animals are born fearful, anxious, panic driven, and have innate abilities to protect themselves from predators. They’re always on guard, and are highly aware of their surroundings. Their eyes are on the sides of their heads so that they can see all the way behind themselves, as well as above and below, but the downside to that type of vision is they don’t see well directly in front of themselves, nor do they have much in the way of depth perception. Horses are equipped to hear, smell, and see every little change in their environment. They are also designed to run from danger, and if they cannot run, they will fight. They are not particularly food motivated (at least not as much as a dog) because in their natural habitat food is all around them. Grass is everywhere. They don’t care about praise and recognition Horses do not understand punishment. They just don’t care about that. So what does a horse care about? Safety is the most important thing to a prey animal. Comfort is the second most important, and thirdly, they love to play. In play, horses practice the skills they need to outrun, and outfight a predator, they also use play as a determining factor of who is going to be the leader of the herd, and who will be at the bottom of the hierarchy. Horses use their bodies to communicate instead of verbal language. As a prey animal it would be unsafe to make noise that would attract predators.

Another important thing to take note of is that horses are not afraid to get hurt. They are afraid of being killed. This is a big difference. A horse will run through a barbed wire fence and tear up his body in order to avoid being killed by a predator (or perceived threat). People often wonder why a horse will get so upset that it hurts itself thinking it must be stupid to do such a thing, but they don’t understand that the horse is not afraid to get hurt, he’s afraid to die.

Predators operate entirely differently. We are not generally anxiety driven; we can relax and don’t need to be nearly as aware of our surroundings because there’s very few other animals out to eat us. We are very food motivated. Most dog training, for example, relies on supplying treats as rewards for good behavior. Dogs and people get along well because we are both predators. Dogs and humans also like praise and recognition, and we also respond to punishment. We have eyes on the front of our heads so we can see how far away our prey is. We have depth perception. We’re also a highly verbal bunch. Dogs and humans both make a lot of noise to communicate.

This is what makes the horse-human relationship so unique. We’re trying to combine a prey animal with a predator and expect everyone to get along.

Now let’s return to the situation of the horse pawing while being tied up and apply our problem solving formula.

1) What is the problem? He’s pawing, and won’t stand still.

2) Why? (this is crucial!) Because he’s a prey animal and he’s nervous about being restricted in his movement (By tying him up, we are preventing him from running off should a predator appear, understandably, this makes him anxious) OR he’s impatient and doesn’t respect our leadership enough to accept confinement.

You’re probably now wondering what exactly can be done to increase his confidence and/or to prove to him that no matter what situation we place him in, he’s safe and can relax because we’re taking care of things. This is where problem solving becomes difficult. We know he needs confidence, but how? Maybe he’s just fine if we bring another one of his horse buddies in to stand beside him. Maybe he’s fine when he’s being ridden (because he gets to move his feet and has a job to do) and his only problem is standing tied, or maybe he’s a nervous wreck all the time. Without looking at the entire horse, we simply cannot say “this is what you need to do.” Each horse is an individual and needs an individualized approach.

What this horse needs to learn is that it is ok to be in the company of humans and we will not only not kill him, but we are going to protect him. He needs safety, and comfort, and how we give this to him is thru play.

We can learn to play horse games by horse rules, and develop our leadership skills along the way. This is really well outlined in the Parelli program. Now people are often turned off when they hear “play games with your horse” but that’s an entirely different article. I don’t mean that horse training is always fun, that it’s always a “game” but that we can use horse behaviors to our advantage. I would give you some examples here but I highly recommend that you seek out information at the Parelli.com website, and thru a list of other links provided at the bottom of part 2 of this article.

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