Boundaries

                                                            by Laura Crum

            This is a trendy word nowadays. What I actually want to talk about is the lines that I will not allow my horses to cross behavior-wise. However good they are, however much they do for me, however much I trust them, there are things that I will not allow any of them to do. If they do these things they get reprimanded. The severity of the reprimand depends on the horse. Some only get yelled at. Some get a light swat with the leadrope. Sunny gets a good hard swat with the leadrope.

            I am not talking about a young horse or a green horse here. The rules are different with a horse who is learning what right behavior is. I am talking about a broke horse who understands what is expected of him. Such a horse only crosses these boundaries for certain reasons. 1) The horse does not respect you enough to heed the boundaries. 2) The horse trusts that you and he are partners and that you’ll let him get away with this transgression. 3) The horse needs to test to see if you’re still dominant. 4) The horse is scared enough to forget about the boundaries and 5) The horse is angry/interested in something else enough to ignore the boundaries. In 4 and 5 the horse isn’t thinking enough about you. In 2 and 3 it’s actually part of a healthy relationship. 1 is just no good. But in all cases but one the horse needs a reprimand of some sort (in my opinion). The only exception is 4. Sometimes the horse needs to sort out his fear (if it is genuine) a little before he can obey. It really depends on the circumstances and the horse how you handle 4.

            I am assuming here that the person is a halfway competent horseman who is not pushing a horse to do more than he can reasonably be expected to do, or expecting him to handle something he doesn’t understand and has had no experience with. In either case, even a good horse is liable to rebel.

            A lot of people don’t like these words “reprimand” and “punishment.” They want to use other words. I really don’t care what words are used. What I mean is this: I let the horse know in a way he understands that the behavior is not OK. And I let him know clearly and effectively enough that the horse ceases the behavior—at least for that day.

            Also, I correct every horse as his personality requires. With a good hearted horse like Henry who occasionally forgets himself, I’m firm but kind in reminding him. With a tough-minded horse like Sunny who likes to test, and did, in fact, end up kicking his former owners, I’m considerably more emphatic in my corrections. With gentle, sensitive horses like Plumber, Gunner and Twister, who are aghast at the notion of being reprimanded, I stick to a firm word and a gentle tug as a reminder to pay attention. They don’t need more.

            And finally, I don’t pick on a horse about stupid stuff that doesn’t matter. If you constantly nitpick a horse, you WILL end up with a problem. That said, I also think you need to consistently enforce certain boundaries, or you will end up with problem behavior in your good horse—behavior you don’t need to have.

            For instance, if you have a good, reliable trail horse, like my Sunny, who is also on the lazy side, that horse may offer a balk at the foot of a steep climb that he’s done before and knows is hard work. If I ask Sunny to go on, and he takes a step backward and switches his tail, I immediately over and under him. In other words, I reprimand him in a way that gets his attention and gets him moving forward and obeying my cue. Let’s say I don’t do this. Let’s say I kick him rather ineffectually with my spurless boot, and he takes another step backward and makes an effort to turn around and go back. Let us then say that I stop urging him forward toward the hill, and shrug and say, “Oh well, guess you don’t want to go up that hill today,” and I go another way. What do you think is going to happen the next time I want to ride up that hill? My good, broke and very smart little horse is going to balk once again, and when I urge him forward this time, he is liable to be pretty determined about his resistance and escalate to crowhops and such. I have just created a problem that I didn’t need to have.

            On the other hand, there is no point in punishing a horse for certain things. Let’s take my Sunny again, for an example. Sunny rarely spooks, but when he does, it’s a genuinely startled response. I ignore it. I let him look at the thing until I can tell that he isn’t afraid any more, and then I ask him to go on. If he is still worried and sidles by it, I ignore that, too. On the rare occasions when he is feeling a bit up, and tries to retreat or such, I do reprimand him and make him go forward, because I know Sunny, and I know he is not truly very afraid.

            There is also the situation (rare with Sunny, but it has happened) when a horse refuses to cross something (like a downed tree or a muddy ditch) because he is truly concerned about it. This sort of thing I play by ear. If I feel a little concerned, too, and the horse is an experienced trail horse, I will often let his decision stand. If I feel confident we can get over the obstacle, and I want to do it, I just keep the horse there and keep asking. Sometimes it takes time, sometimes I need to distract the horse from the issue at hand, sometimes I let another horse give us a lead, sometimes I get off and lead my horse, if I feel the horse is truly worried, and even a following a buddy doesn’t help (I’ve done the leading thing twice—both times with reliable horses and bridges that they had never been on before).

            I never punish a horse for jigging. It’s a wretched habit, but punishment will not help. Some horses can’t be cured of it. I prefer not to ride those horses. Most horses can be out-figured. There are many methods. With Sunny, I found that he only jigged (just a little, at the very end) when I did the same route too often. He was bored of it and eager to get done. Once I sorted this out I mixed up the routes and he hasn’t jigged with me going home in years. But I never reprimanded him for it—simply because it doesn’t work. Same for a horse that is high as a kite in the team roping box, or the start of a race/ride. Or fretting because the other horses have left him. This is anxiety and excitement and you will do no good with a reprimand under those circumstances (with most horses—there are always exceptions).

            That said, there are certain behaviors where reprimands work incredibly well--again, with most horses. I am assuming that we all have behaviors we find completely unacceptable. The horse that tries to kick or bite you, or pushes through you on the ground…etc. If you don’t find this sort of thing unacceptable and deserving of correction, than we are way too far apart in our thinking to have much of a conversation. The thing is, I think that you need to stop/prevent that behavior before it ever gets to a dangerous point—because that behavior can get you hurt or even killed. Thus my boundaries.

           

            So here are my boundaries for broke horses.

            1) The horse may never make a nipping gesture at me. None of my horses would actually dare to bite me, but that fake nipping gesture is absolutely not allowed. Many horses will assay  this gesture when being cinched. They always get a sharp punch in the nose for it. I ignore ear pinning or the slight shake of the head. That’s just expressing an opinion. But the nipping gesture is a form of aggression toward me, and it’s not acceptable. And what do you know—none of my horses have EVER nipped me.

            2) No horse may make a kicking gesture in my direction—under ANY circumstances whatsoever. This includes if they are really kicking at another horse, or it’s feeding time, or I’m doctoring a painful cut on their leg, or whatever. This is non-negotiable, because it’s too dangerous. My horses must be aware of me and careful not to kick in my general direction at all times, under all circumstances. If any kicking gesture is made when I am behind or near a horse, that horse gets a severe reprimand. And, yes, none of my horses have ever kicked me.

            3) No horse may crowd my space when I am leading them or when I am in their corrals. I am very strict about this. As in the above example, including when the horse is just not thinking. I require them to be aware of me and careful about my space at all times. No matter what is going on or how distracted they are by other things or how scared. It’s too easy to be knocked down and severely inured by a horse that doesn’t respect your space.

            4) No horse may step toward my foot—accidentally or otherwise. Same principle as the above. Sunny will try the oh-so-casual purposeful step toward my foot sometimes when I’m saddling, and I always kick him in the ankle, hard enough to hurt. He usually doesn’t try it again for awhile. And he has never actually stepped on my foot. None of my horses have. Of course, I stay aware of where my feet are and their feet are at all times—which is a necessity, because I often handle them in sandals. So far, not one smashed toe (!)

            5) No horse may move off while I get on—ever. This is particularly important to me because I am short and getting older and very vulnerable to losing my balance when I mount. All my horses stand perfectly still for me to climb on. If they don’t, they get corrected. Every single time.

            6) I will tolerate a horse letting me know he wants to stop and take a break on a ride, or have a good look at something, but the horse must move on when I say so. I try to be thoughtful. If my horse is truly tired, I allow a good long breather; if my horse is truly worried, I allow plenty of time to look and relax. But when I say step forward, I make that happen. See my example above about balking, and where it leads.

            7) No horse is allowed to eat under saddle or to jerk his head down to graze without permission when being led. I’m very strict about this. I understand that endurance folks WANT a horse to graze under saddle, and this makes sense. But I am here to say that for those of us who don’t do endurance, there are few more annoying things than to ride a horse who firmly jerks his head down to eat when he feels like it, or grabs at the tall grass as you ride through it. Someone let our good horse Henry do this in the past, and it is a habit that remains, despite many corrections. It’s perhaps the one true fault in this very good horse—and it is always an effort for my son to ride Henry across a meadow, due to this vice. None of my other horses have this objectionable trait, and unless you are an endurance rider, I can see no reason to let this habit occur. The same for allowing a horse to tug his head down to graze while you are leading him. I do hand graze my horses from time to time, but I give a very clear signal that permits them to graze, and they are reprimanded if they try to graze without permission, or tug me towards a patch of grass. It makes them much more pleasant to lead and handle and ride.

            8) I tolerate spooks and feel-good crowhops without a reprimand as long as the spook or crowhop is just a one shot thing. Spooking and then spinning or bolting is absolutely not allowed (if it’s genuinely fear-caused it’s treated very differently than if it’s an evasion—one has to know the difference). Bucking that’s due to cinchiness is treated differently than bucking used as an evasion. A horse that bucks because he is cinchy is like a ticklish person. They just can’t help it. My much-loved Flanigan was a cinchy horse and I was always very careful with his saddling and warm-up protocol. As far as I was concerned, it was my fault if he bucked with me.

           

            Anyway, there are a few boundaries that I think are important to set. Perhaps you can suggest some others. Or let me know why you disagree with mine.

Reprimands

by Laura Crum

I have blogged before about my little horse Sunny, who needs occasional reprimands. Someone said the other day that they didn’t believe in “reprimanding” a horse. Though I certainly respect everyone’s right to their own approach, I have to say that I disagree strongly with the notion that there is a practical, safe way to train or handle horses without occasionally reprimanding them. There are certainly horses that need very gentle reprimands. I have never met a horse that didn’t need to be reprimanded in some way from time to time.

With all due respect, the idea that one can get by without establishing one’s boss status through an appropriate reprimand is just contrary to the basic nature of horses. Horses want to see who’s boss, and this is established, amongst their own kind, through some pretty fierce biting and kicking. In short, some very direct reprimands for insubordination. It is a pretty human notion that we can always talk a horse out of things by “redirecting his energy” or “communicating what we want”, but horses are not humans. Some horses are indeed “pleasers”, who care what we want. Many horses only care what we want if we show them we’re in charge. They want and need us to prove we’re the boss if we expect them to obey us.

This does not mean we need to be overly harsh, or that we should overwhelm a sensitive horse. I have one horse on my place, my boarder, Twister, that you cannot even raise your voice to, it upsets him so much. Let alone hit him. And yet Twister, who is always treated kindly, will take advantage of us from time to time, tugging his head down to grab grass when he has not been invited to. We don’t hit him, we don’t yell at him. But we do give him a sharp pop with the leadrope to let him know that’s not OK. That’s all it takes.

If, however, you were to treat my Sunny horse like this, never reprimanding him any more harshly than that, I guarantee you’d have a monster on your hands. Sunny is a tough, cold blooded critter who needs strong reprimands. When I got him he had clearly been able to push a few people around and would offer to both bite and kick. He was hard to catch, refused to be fly sprayed or wormed, and was frequently hard to load in the trailer. Sunny was not afraid in any way. He was defiant and testing for dominance.

Basically I spent a lot of time whacking Sunny with the end of the lead rope in the first six months I owned him. This did not scare him. It did not upset him. If it had, I wouldn’t have done it. Sunny remained quite calm at all times. His eyes got a little bigger that’s all. But he began to look at me more respectfully. And his testing behaviors steadily diminished. Today he is a very pleasant horse to be around and only very occasionally needs to test me a bit. When he does, and I reprimand him, he appears satisfied and content. Nowdays Sunny usually meets me at the gate and sticks his head in the halter, and is easy to load, fly spray and worm, so I don’t think I’m too far wrong about his genuine need for reprimands.

Sunny is at one end of the scale. And there are certainly horses that want very much to please. Horses like Twister and my Plumber, who are unduly upset by any suggestion of harshness. I reprimand these horses with a light bump of the leadrope. But its still a reprimand. I’m saying, “No, you can’t do that.” I have never known one horse that did not need to be reprimanded in some form. That is, if you want to remain in charge.

Since remaining in charge is how we stay safe with horses, I think reprimands are very important. We need to be clear that we’re in charge. Any disrespectful behavior must be reprimanded—and effectively (whatever that individual horse needs in the way of a reprimand), or the horse will not continue to see the handler as the boss. We also need to be clear when a horse is misbehaving out of fear rather than disrespect. Fear behaviors may still need a reprimand—as in I don’t care if you’re scared of that tarp, you may not jump on top of me. Your horse, in essence, must be more scared of what happens when he trespasses on your space than he is of the scary object. Believe me, this is how horses respond to the alpha animal in the herd. You want to be that alpha to your horse. And your horse likes it like that.

The trouble with training systems that are based entirely on the horse doing what you ask because he “wants” to (whether he wants to because of treats or whatever) is when the day comes that he really doesn’t want to do something, you will be up a creek without a paddle. Because unless you’ve proved your boss status through a few appropriate reprimands, that horse is going to figure he does not have to obey you. He may figure he doesn’t even have to respect you. And this can be a dangerous situation, for both you and the horse.

Horses feel safe and happy when they trust that their human is a good strong herd leader. I do not think we do any of them any favors by supposing that they do not need reprimands from time to time. The trick lies in knowing what each individual horse needs. I think the biggest mistake we make is in supposing that horses are mostly alike—that what works on one horse will work on another. If I thumped on a sensitive horse the way I thump on Sunny, I would ruin that horse’s trust. It would be a very wrong thing to do. And yet Sunny probably lost his previous home because his behavior became unacceptable. I don’t think his previous owners had any idea this horse needed the kind of forceful reprimanding he requires. They did not provide it and his behavior got worse. It took me awhile to figure Sunny out, and it somewhat happened because I will not be bullied and simply did what it took, but in the end I realized that this horse was asking me to prove my dominance—and that he required me to do so fairly forcefully.

And Sunny still needs a “reprimand session” from time to time. Because he is mostly pretty good now, I tend to relax and let down my guard, and let’s face it, I don’t enjoy reprimanding him. This winter, when he tested me a little, I gave him small reprimands and mostly ignored him, telling myself he was fresh and felt good. And the other day, I got my come uppance. Sunny clearly felt good, and was determined to test me to see if I was still the boss. For the first time in almost a year, he walked away when I came to catch him and turned his butt to me. So I walloped him. He made one circle, faced me and made mouthing motions. I caught him and saddled him and climbed on, and this calm little guy spooked at the dog, tried to exit the ring, and then crowhopped when I booted him back in. He was literally forcing me to work him over. So I did. In soft shoes and with the butt of roping reins—not too much nasty weaponry there. A lot of lope, stop, back up, leg yields…etc. Stuff I don’t normally do. I sure didn’t hurt him any. But I got his attention and made him feel dominated (gee, this sounds kind of weird—not a relationship I’d want to have with a person). Did he act scared, cranky or resentful? Nope. All of a sudden I had a cooperative, light, responsive horse who loped in the nicest collected frame he’s ever managed to achieve. We ended the day very happy with each other. I guess I should just beat him up more often.

Here’s my point for today. I believe that most, if not all, horses require reprimands from time to time, even if they are only very gentle reprimands. And some horses require pretty firm reprimands. As much as I would like to never have to wallop Sunny again, I don’t think its gonna happen. Sunny needs his reprimands and I need to be able to provide them or our partnership will not work out. So what do you think about this? I would love to hear from anybody who either seconds this view—or disagrees with it. If you don’t think horses need reprimands, what would be your system for dealing with a horse like Sunny?