Reactive Riding - Horse Help & Tips

 Reactive Riding

When people sit down in that saddle their brain tends to focus solely on themselves. Instead, if they treated their horse-like they were "on the same team" and told the horse what the PLAN was ahead of time, the horse would have a better chance of offering the desired response toward the rider. 

To have a plan, one must be THINKING AHEAD of time of what, how, and when they will ask something of the horse. People tend to HOPE their horse will figure out what is going to be asked of them without ever offering any physical, spatial, or verbal communication. Then when the horse doesn't respond as the rider had wanted, the horse is reprimanded but never shown what the desired response had been. So the horse continues to stumble mentally and emotionally, therefore physically, due to his continual existence in the "gray" area when interacting with a human. 

Eventually, the continual criticism overwhelms him and he mentally checks out. Once he's mentally gone, there's increasing physical resistance. When a horse reaches this point, they have certain coping mechanisms- shutting down or fleeing. Many people term them as being "naughty," lazy," "disrespectful, 'bad," etc., when in fact this is not the case at all. After trying all of his "options" if there is no clear communication from the rider, the horse eventually gives up trying to figure out what it is that the person is asking of them. This is how people take the "try" and CURIOSITY out of their horse.

By being HOPEFUL you will end up WAITING AND SEEING how your horse is going to respond in the future. This teaches the horse to anticipate and carry tension.

RIDING REACTIVLY causes the horse to be operating in the "gray" area which adds to their mental chaos, will contributes to taking the TRY out of him and will cause stress to both of you.

Start to learn to break down where you become unclear in the communication. Notice how often you are jumping ahead in what you're communicating versus addressing at meeting the horse where he is currently at. How often do the disregard the feedback he offers in his communication? How often do you follow through and address each of the horse's counter offers until he can mentally let go of what he is trying and address what you are asking?

The horse is doing the best he can. If we aren't liking what we are seeing in his behavior, the change starts with us. For most people that is uncomfortable, and they don't like the responsibility of having to experiment, observe, and learn. In the traditional teaching of the horse, we often were taught to blame the horse for undesired responses rather than being accountable and recognizing all of the intentional and unintentional human behaviors that created the undesired equine responses.

Taking the time to slow down and break things down to become clearer and more refined in our communication and our recognition of the horse's communication changes everything in the riding experience for human and equine alike.