Reading Horse Behavior to decrease dangerous moments

I'm very excited about the seven-day upcoming online course "Reading the Horse" ( https://bit.ly/horsecourseonline ). One of the great opportunities for learning from these videos of seven different horses will offer people to learn to SEE and put value to all of the numerous and continuous ways they communicate. I know that may sound funny, but often the more time folks spend around the horse the more "routine" many of the interactions can become.

This builds unintentional mindlessness in the human and the horse or "autopilot" responses between the two. If this is the case, the human may miss when potential concerns begin to build in the animal until "all of a sudden..." he does something and it totally surprises the human.

In other cases, the person may see what the horse is physically doing, but not put value to the behavior or recognize the connection in what is currently happening to where it may lead in future actions of the horse.

Often folks are also hopeful. People will "wait" until the horse is committed to an unwanted response and then attempt to intervene at his peak concern. What the human may not have realized is that their initial pause or delay in communication with the horse has taught him that he is "on his own" in a stressful situation. The problem is this consistently, (often unintentional) unsupportive response from the person, teaches the horse that when concerning moments arise, he needs to fend for himself. As he does so, it can create an overwhelming feeling in the handler or rider.

So remember even the seemingly most "mundane" interactions are teaching and conversation opportunities between humans and horses. If folks prioritized quality interaction with their horse during these times, they would be diffusing and diminishing potentially dramatic and dangerous ones in the future, without even realizing it.

Keep in mind horses do not one day randomly become "trained" or reasonable. Even with a horse that has had years of training, someone can "undo" the training depending on how they interact.

Every moment the horse spends time with a human is a continuous learning opportunity. The person can teach the horse either desired or undesirable responses depending on their approach.

What has the quality of your conversations with the horse been lately?