by Kathryn Kincannon
Dear Alpha Mare,
I have a mare that has a tendency to rear when she is frightened or presented with something she just does not want to do. She is a nine-year-old Thoroughbred, a bit high strung, that was never raced, but is quite the drama queen.
Both being ridden and on the ground, she will create a scene rather than deal with a questionable situation. How can I encourage her to relax rather than throw a fit?
In Need of Some Mare Medicine
Dear “In Need,”
A refusal to go forward can take many forms, rearing being one of the more extreme. A rearing horse is a horse saying “No!” in a big way, and is often the result of a horse being extremely sensitive about his front end being offended – both in terms of how it is being led on the ground and on the bridle.
While horses do indeed rear up on each other in play and hierarchy challenges in the herd, to do so with human beings – being as puny and clumsy as we are in comparison to their size and athletic prowess – is more often a response to what they see in us rather than strictly a threatening gesture. In other words, we inadvertently cause rearing, and because we don’t know that we cause it, we then react to their reactivity, and it all goes to hell in a hand basket.
How is it that we cause a horse to rear? Quite simply, by coming on too strong to a horse’s head and neck. If you think of it purely in terms of cause and effect, if someone marches up to a horse with his energy full on to its front end (which is what most people do without realizing it), it sends the message to “get out of my way – I am coming through!”
Our minds may have had none of this intention whatsoever, but as to the horse, it is what you do rather than what you say or think that matters. What a person just “said” with his body was “I’m cutting a swath through life, and you’d better get out of my way!”
Alas. The frightened horse will simply turn its tail and run. The stoic, stubborn horse will lift its head up high, as if to say, “Go ahead, make me move!” and quite often will not only stand their ground, but push back.
It’s the passive horses and the aggressive horses that will quite easily rear, as many of them have decided, through trial and error, that their best defense is a good offense. And they’ve seen that most humans back right off when they go up. Good trick indeed for telling offensive people they have no right to be “in my face.”
The first step in solving a rearing problem is to first look at yourself as the cause, not blame and then try to “fix” the horse. Care enough to see yourself through the eyes of a prey animal that looks at body language to determine its safety.
Learning to push the body and only block or draw the head of your horse allows a horse to view you as a user-friendly, assertive leader. If you do this consistently enough, they will come to respect the fact that you have boundaries, but show compassion to their needs. And they will learn to trust you if you adjust yourself to their level of need by reading the tell-tail signs that indicate their state of mind.
That said, a horse can still rear, even when you haven’t specifically caused it. Indeed, it can become a conditioned response to many different situations and scenarios.
Once they see that rearing works – i.e. they can effectively scatter an inappropriate person on the ground, or evade a misaligned request under saddle – they think “Aha!” and they will do it again.
A horse who has been around people long enough realizes they are, for the most part, confusing, passive-aggressive control-freaks who have an agenda they want the horse to meet, and really never make sense in how they ask. So it isn’t much of a stretch to realize that most horses don’t hold us in very high regard. For a variety of their very good reasons, some horses, like this mare, become chronic about rearing.
When you have indeed resolved, truly, that you are not or no longer causing the rearing, the next step is to give the horse a new mindset that lets it know – no matter the fears, resistance, or for that matter, your mistakes – that there is no need to go to such extremes in behaviour.
A horse came to us at the Secretariat Center off the track cut from this same cloth. Thoreau is a nine-year-old big bay Thoroughbred gelding who won almost $500K in his three years on the track, which tells you he is well-bred, highly competitive and no slouch in the presence and confidence department.
He didn’t come nasty or aggressive, just high-headed and full of resistance to people who he was just plain sick and tired of being in his face all the time. Track horses are forced to endure chains through lips, around noses, sometimes with double handlers who constantly shank on their heads. Not very endearing from a horse’s point of view.
So, by the time he came to us for retraining, this horse’s hard eye told us he was basically disdainful of the human race. “Just let me eat,” was his motto, “then go away.”
Not surprisingly, he was also light on the forehand to the point of easily rearing, both in groundwork and even more so under saddle. As our body language was correct with Thoreau (in his groundwork, in his stall, round penning, leading, and lunging) his on-the-ground rearing dissolved quite readily. If we didn’t offend his delicate sensibilities, he had no need to offend us in return. Riding was a different story.
Thoreau’s first anticipatory, knee-jerk response to having someone sitting on his central nervous system was “No way, I’m not going forward. Going up is all you clowns get!”
No doubt this had been his favourite evasion tactic with exercise riders, maybe even jockeys, so when it happened with us, we realized his sensitivity to not only needing his rider to be both balanced and aligned on his back, but softly connected with his hands on the bridle (a full-cheek snaffle bit).
We aimed for both and by the second ride, Thoreau stopped rearing, and in fact he has never threatened to rear since. To over-ride the rearing instinct in Thoreau, he had to see that every time we got on his back, we rode his spine.
Our core moved with him, every step, adjusting our centre to every change of bend he made, so that he felt the rider to be symbiotic rather than braced and locked up (as many riders are) and thus he could always stay comfortable.
Too many riders are “sitting pretty” on a horse they think should be push-button – i.e. just go when they say, “Go” and do what they ask it to do. Far from reality!
A horse’s movement underneath us is like a serpentine – if our hips and core aren’t swinging in alignment with theirs, all they feel is this uncomfortable lump of blockage on their back that inhibits their ability to move freely and well, which doesn’t make them at all interested in moving forward.
There is a difference between riding a horse and riding a horse well. There is a difference between leading or lunging a horse and leading and lunging a horse well.
“Well” translates into up into the bridle, relaxed and level-headed, moving inside to out, back to front, so that they enjoy the movement they are being asked to do. When you can do this for them, they stop feeling the need to say “No!” and adopt a new perspective that says “I actually feel better when I’m with you than I do on my own, so the answer is “Yes!”
Kathryn
Kathryn travels extensively with her husband, Chris Irwin, as a trainer and coach conducting clinics and “Train the Trainer” sessions throughout North America. They are currently developing Riversong Ranch Equestrian Retreat on the shores of the McLeod River just west of Edmonton. If you have a question that you’d like Kathryn to answer in a future column, please email her at alphamare@telus.net
