The Tough Love of Leadership: Teaching a Reactive Horse, Part Two

My trainee a little further on in his training--a good boy.

by Mary Gallagher

Continuing the story of “Teaching the Reactive Horse to Think..”, posted June 5, 2024. I described
helping a young, adrenaline-fueled gelding to find his feet and settle down enough to solve problems. He had spent his early years in an institutional environment with no way to learn about being a horse in a world he found confusing and scary. His new owners had sent him to me for some basic reorientation and connection training. -MG

My reactive young trainee had been lunged a lot but not taught to think. In his previous situation, his turn out privileges had been taken away because of his incessant running, which left lunging as his only other option for exercise.  For him, the round pen, too, was just another place to run away while checked out.  This disconnected behavior was not solving his problems, gave him little or no relief, and left his humans feeling beyond frustrated.  As I saw it, it was time to give this oblivious, hyper energy some purpose.  

Through the years I’ve learned that simply stopping a behavior is a slow and ineffective way to teach, as it only bottles up the horse’s emotions and energy. However, redirecting the energy to a more useful purpose has worked well for me over the years, with both horses and dogs.  

As you recall from my June post, I had introduced static obstacles to the gelding’s pen to get him paying attention to his immediate surroundings by adding consequences to his anxious, frenetic movement. After the first few charges into the strategically located obstacles, he quickly learned to be in the present, mind his feet, and focus less on the far horizon. Over a few days his feet settled down and he was much easier to connect with, as well as catch.

But outside of his pen, the environment could still be distracting and worrisome. He still kept his head high and eyes on the horizon and was ripe for his next “be here now” experience. The round pen was our next training area, and I knew I’d need to provide some more dynamic learning and moving obstacles seemed just the way to help him get his head in the game and be present. Enter Noble and Victor, two kind, stout quarter horse geldings. They had arrived from a long career as trail horses together, quite pair bonded and their own established herd.

I needed something to interrupt my trainee’s tendency to process anxiety with incessant spooking and running, and I trusted Victor and Noble to help check that behavior so  I could install new information. My pair bonded assistants set a very strong boundary which quickly got the new guy’s attention—there would be no invading their space! Any attempts at running over the top of Victor or Noble met with immediate and very tough lessons from them, this was crucial information for a horse with poor boundaries!

Noble reinforces a boundary..."stay away from me and Victor, new guy!"

Horses need to have specific boundaries that they can initially test, and then count on later. Immediate feedback from herd mates introduces order and discipline to their lives, dissipating the fear and anxiety that naturally come with being a prey animal.

It was my trainee‘s mission to find comfort and a sense of safety inside the herd dynamics. The new gelding, naturally at the bottom of this new hierarchy of three, was subservient to the other two geldings, and Victor and Noble were subservient to me. I could now work with them as a whole. This was my trainee’s first steps toward taking direction and trusting the leadership of a human.

Referring again to my Optimal Teaching Environment chart [include], as my trainee was schooled into boundaries firmly set by Victor and Noble, I was now in the leadership state to ‘observe, observe, observe’.

Here is a sample of new guy's interactions with the herd. 

He tries pushing back, but Noble is definitely running interference!

It was very interesting to watch the new guy learn to work with the dynamic, moving herd boundaries. Because the area was small, he was not sure how to stay out of the way of Victor and Noble. Every time he wanted to run by them, Noble chased him away from Victor. That gave new guy’s running new purpose—how to stay out of the way of those big hooves, and even better, how not to provoke the two geldings in the first place! Mission accomplished—our trainee now had to think through the situation and learn proper survival techniques.  He was well on the way to learning to use his mind and body to effectively solve problems.

Giving it some thought... "...boundaries, huh?"

Stay tuned for Part 3! You can also review my related earlier posts:

The Leadership Gauge (Part Two of "The Horse, The Environment, and You")

The Horse, the Environment, and You (Part One)