Discipline and Natural Horse Training

There is another misconception about natural horse training that I feel the need to comment on and that is the idea of discipline. There seem to be two sides to this. There are those who come to natural horsemanship because they don’t want to ever “hit” or otherwise cause discomfort to their horse. These people are drawn to anything that is kind and gentle and requires no “violence” (and I use that term hesitantly) because they want their horse to be their best friend, they would never dream of offending them. On the opposite side are the people who truly believe that in order to control that 1000 pound animal you must force them to do everything. They will bully and terrorize the horse to do what they want.

I think both groups are missing something. I would never say that hurting any animal is the best way to have them do the things we want them to do, but at the same time you can’t expect to be best friends with your horse by always babying him either. This is where people get confused, so I’ll try to clarify what I mean.

I think there are few people who have as good of a relationship with their horses as my Mom and I do. We own 5 horses between us and they live together as a herd. To watch them interact is the single best way I’ve ever found to understand why one horse is respected and their leadership is never challenged, and they can ask their herd to do anything they please and the herd obeys, while another horse is pushed off their food, has to wait their turn for water, and they must follow and never lead.

Our horses, in order of most dominant to most submissive are: Diva (my Mom’s mare), Max (my gelding), Jazz,(my Mom’s gelding), Fiona (my mare), and Satin (also my mare). However, a herd hierarchy is never entirely linear, so although Diva is the alpha mare and leader of the group, Max is the absolute boss. Max is dominant to Diva in certain situations; he eats first, he drinks first, and he can push her out of his way if he’s going someplace, but when the time comes to look after the herd’s well being, Diva decides where they go, and she is in charge of keeping everyone safe. She is the one to alert the others to danger, or if someone else is worried about something, they look to Diva to see if it’s really something to be concerned with or if it’s nothing. Diva is dominant to the other 3 horses, and is the leader to Max which is why I listed her first.

Now why is Diva the leader? She’s not the oldest of the group, (Max is) and she’s not a bossy mare; she’s not aggressive, and she’s not demanding of the herd. She is simply a good leader. How Diva has accomplished her role in our little herd is exactly the way us humans need to establish our leadership, and brings me back to the role of discipline in horse training.

Diva does not bribe the other horses to like and respect her. She isn’t nice to them all the time and would never let them do exactly as they please all of the time or she would no longer be the leader. She also doesn’t scare the other horses into obeying her out of fear. That is the balance we need to find. You cannot be respected by a horse by being afraid to make them upset. By avoiding causing your horse to experience negative (or at least in our perception) emotions does not mean your horse will love you, in the same way that beating on your horse through excessive use of aids like spurs, whips (whether riding or on the ground), and mechanical aids like tie-downs, hobbles etc, will do nothing but make your horse resentful and will only either break his spirit, or will increase the problems you’re having with him.

Our quest should to be like Diva. To be the alpha; the unassuming leader that proves her skill by time and again keeping her herd safe, keeping them comfortable, and keeping order within the group through assertive behavior. Diva will not tolerate a lesser horse in her personal space, she will not tolerate a lesser horse eating first, she will not tolerate a lesser horse drinking before she does, and she will not tolerate another horse challenging her by biting or kicking, or any other such rude behavior. She has made this perfectly clear by disciplining the offending party in a way that does not evoke fear, but does tell them that that was the wrong thing to do. She also practices directing the herd by pushing each member around when they’re in her way, and when she wants the herd to follow her, or feels she needs to take them out of a dangerous situation, they follow without question. Isn’t that exactly what we want with our horses? That they follow our thoughts, our intentions without question? That we do things together to get a job done?

Once in awhile, Mom’s colt, Jazz, will get a bit full of himself (he’s coming 2 yrs old as I write this and is very playful and busy all of the time), and he will test Diva just to see what he can get away with. Diva doesn’t relentlessly beat on him to get him to behave properly around her, but when he does something to disrespect her position in the herd, she will take after him. She has no qualms about taking a bite out of his hide, or giving him a swift kick for his rudeness. This lets him know very clearly that he did the wrong thing. The most fascinating thing about this is that he respects her more for that than if she were to let him do whatever he wanted to, or, on the flip side, if she was excessively aggressive and over-reacted to his intentions, he would then have less respect for her, and not more.

To translate this to our human-horse interaction is fairly straight forward. Don’t under-react to your horse, but never over-react to them either. There is a middle ground. If my filly (who is also coming 2 years old as I write this), Satin, during the course of a training session, turns her hind end towards me (this is what she is more prone to do than to bite and she does this to the other horses as well) I have no problem giving her a swift “bite” from the end of my training stick/whip to tell her that she has done something offensive to me. She’s fully aware that she should never turn her hind end towards a more dominant horse and she’s being rude to me if she offers that behavior; she’s telling me that she doesn’t believe I’m above her in the hierarchy, and she is challenging me to prove it. If I let her turn her hind end towards me, either unconscious of her intentions/communication, or just because I didn’t want to “bite” her, then she would know that I was truly a lesser horse. Then the next time she did it, she might threaten me more by backing into me, or just plain striking at me. In order to gain her respect I will not be offended and take it personally thinking that she doesn’t like me because she turned her hip at me, but I won’t let her get away with it either. She must respect me before she can accept my leadership and before we can be friends. Pretty soon, if I’m consistent with my corrections, and the discipline I inflict is in proportion to the unwanted behavior of my horse, the horse will no longer offer those behaviors, and I won’t have to discipline as strongly or as often. Horses are always testing to see where the boundaries are, and some will test more than others, but consistency and fairness are the key to developing a willing partner. They will respect me enough to treat me with respect. I will become in our herd of two the type of leader that Diva is.

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