By Patty Wilber
Many times when a horse won’t do what they are asked, people call them stubborn. In my estimation, horses are rarely stubborn. More often they are scared.
I have two horses right now that have had the the unlovely behavior of stopping and going backwards when we tried to go up my driveway and out on the road or trail, alone.
This is annoying at best and dangerous at worst.
In both cases, the horses were lacking confidence. We can tell because they both breathed heavily and kind of snorted a little, they both looked around more than a confident horse would, and they both put their heads up high, pricked their ears, and got stiff in the neck. Despite this, neither horse had a tendency to spook or run off, buck or rear.
Here are a few things that can help horses like this.
- Build confidence with groundwork in the round pen and arena.
- Review their riding basics in the round pen and arena. They should go forward, stop, back, go sideways, move their hips, and move their shoulders. This will also build confidence because they know how to do these things with the rider. Also, it is helpful to be able to steer when a horse is worrying.
- Don’t get mad. Be prepared to take a lot of time.
- When they claim they can’t possibly go forward, and urging them on isn’t helping, try a variety of things such as:
- Changing directions and walking back to where they were confident, then turning around and returning to where they were stuck. Repeat.
- Backing them past the sticky spot, then turning and trying to go forward.
- Riding forward in circles.
- Riding forward in zig zags.
- Getting off and leading them along the scary path. This is not “losing the battle”. This is allowing the horse to feel safe. Get back on and ride.
- Go riding with a steady horse and be the follower. Then try to be the leader.
- Recognize that as they progress, some days will be grand, and some will have regression.
- As they gain confidence, we can expect more and insist with our legs or a flapping rein when they start to bog down–but this is AFTER they are generally moving along well.
The more a person works with a horse in a constructive way, the more confidence a horse has in the person, and the more the team can accomplish together.
Excellent tips. I was always on my own, and have used most of the tips appropriate for that except the backing up. Never even occurred to me!
Dogs aren’t stubborn, either. It might look that way–and in those terms, one of mine is the most stubborn dog I’ve ever seen–but there’s generally one of two things behind it, in my breed: one is lack of confidence, and the other is that they’re bred to be independent workers and they’re quite certain that They. Are. Correct. In fact when they realize that they aren’t, then often it’s necessary to rebuild confidence. I call them dogs with a hard outer shell and a soft soft center. Probably no surprise that my breed gets called stubborn pretty much by default. (When someone is truly obnoxious about it, I tell them that in order to train one, the person has to be smarter than the dog.)
Appaloosas get called stubborn a lot also, though neither of these horses are Appaloosas. But yes. One must be smarter or at least more persistent than the horse!