Hack Chat: How to Read Your Horse in 3 Seconds

Alright guys, we are back with another Hack Chat, and today’s hack Chat is an interesting topic and I’ve been trying to figure out how to actually vocalize it, so we’ll see. This could end up being a complete and utter ramble about nothingness, but we’re gonna try to give it a shot. So I want you to think about how your horse takes cookies. And you might be like, well, it’s not where I thought she was going with this. Hear me out.

When your horse takes a cookie, although they’re happy and excited, maybe you want them to feel like their lips are just like jello and they’re just like these supple kissy lips. And when you go to give your horse a cookie, and this is very noticeable with things like positive reinforcement, you’ll notice that maybe the way they take their first cookie is not the same way they take maybe the third cookie or the cookie that they take when they’ve immediately let out this like nice deep breath. And I think this is a very underrated tell that doesn’t get spoken about a lot. And I’ll start working with a horse and horse comes to me with XYZ behavioral problem and I go in the stall, it sniffs me, it gives me a lick in The Chew. I give it a cookie.

How that horse takes that first cookie is like the biggest telltale sign to me about how they’re feeling beyond just what I can like, see and feel. So if they take that cookie and their lips are really tight, right? That’s how their whole body is, that’s how their brain is. They’re not quite sure. They’re not relaxed, they’re not supple.

I’m telling you that there is 100% better way and without me knowing your horse, I’m looking at your horse. I tend to find that there are three camps of horses. There are horses who are super tight lipped, there are horses who are normal Gumby lips and then there are like the excessive like big open mouth. And you don’t want either of those extremes, right? Because the big open mouth horse is it just they’re like neurotic, right where the tense tight lipped horse is like a bit more shut down.

And so you want to think, how do I get my horse to just take a cookie normally? OK. And so when I’m doing this, when I’m working with horses that are, we’re going to start with the type tight lipped ones because that’s the most common. So as you start working with your horse on the ground, you give them their cookie and you notice, oh, actually, yeah. The way their lip feels.

If you, if they’re just standing there and you press their lip, it’s Gumby. You can like, literally just press around and your fingertip goes right into their little lips. But when they take the cookie, their lips tighten up and they just like take the cookie bread out of your hand and maybe not in a mean or aggressive way. It could be very soft. But you just noticed that when they, those lips touch the palm of your hand, touch your fingertips or whatever, it’s just not Gumby.

And so that tells you that your horse is in fight or flight. And how does that tell you your horse is in fight or flight when horses are specifically geared towards flight right there flight animals. So that’s their their preconditioning. Horses that freeze, although we may like those as riding horses probably weren’t going to make it very far in the wild. So horses predisposed to being flight animals, it’s nothing new.

But what you may not know, and maybe you do know this, but is that when your horse is in fight or flight, all of their blood rushes from other parts of their body and goes down into their legs. So it basically causes this lack of circulation through the rest of their body and creates excess circulation in their legs just so that they can be prepared to boom, get out of there. I like to do is when I give that horse a cookie. Remember, we only really give cookies after liquor chews. Or if you’ve introduced them to a new thing and you’ve give it, they’ve done it for one step.

You stop and give them a cookie and say, yeah, that’s exactly right, good effort. But when we’re working them on the ground and we’re just like trying to get them out of the barn, let’s say I don’t want you to leave your horse’s stall until they have taken a deep breath in the stall with you. Because there are a lot of horses that do not know how to feel safe even in their own stall. And this isn’t because we have inherently done anything wrong, but just overall, none of this is natural to them. And some horses just cope better than others.

So you want to think, OK, my horse isn’t, we’re not leaving the stall. And it’s not a, my horse isn’t allowed to do this. But it’s like a we’re just not going to leave the stall until you take a deep breath and notice how they take the cookie as they start to get more comfortable with you. And it’s really uncomfortable to realize the like of your horse has been in fight or flight around you the whole time because we love our horses, obviously. But even me, I have a horse who’s been a tough cookie to crack and I started doing this with her.

I’m like has completely changed the relationship that I have with her and and that horse is a very not brave horse. She’s bold, but she ain’t brave, which isn’t a great combination. She’s like galloping towards things, but then she’s like speaking away from side to side. So yeah. So tangent for another day, but basically with your tight lipped horse, you want them to almost feel like they take control of the situation a bit.

Maybe they get a little curious, maybe they get a little in your space and they might even start asking you for cookies. If they start asking you for cookies, just have them pick up the stuff because they need to deal with their own feelings on their own, but they should all be in a very soft way. You’re basically going to go back to those fundamentals of OK, we’re just chilling and then you’re going to relax and then I’m going to give you a cookie and maybe we move on. Maybe that’s it for the day, but overtime with you do that for four days straight. Maybe every time you get a little further, maybe you say, hey, I’m actually just going to see how quickly we can get you to take a deep breath in your stall and then maybe we can get this under 5 minutes and then that’s all we have to do for the day.

And they become so much more comfortable in their stall. The tight lipped horse I think is a bit easier to work with because it’s basically about forcing us to soften. So these horses, they’re our neurotic anxious types. I’m not saying tight lipped horses aren’t also anxious, but they tend to feel like they have a lack of control in their life. Their body is tense so that they have control of when they can run away.

Impulse control horses, right? So they’re the horse that’s as you’re hacking around. Maybe they try to go for a bite of grass, maybe they try to go smelt the poop. Maybe they try to do whatever. These horses are actually basically the complete opposite of the tight lipped horses.

So with tight lipped horses, we’re going to basically be thinking, OK, yeah, I want them to take control of the situation and I want them to be a bit curious about their surroundings. Maybe they go and sell a pile of pooper when they normally just stand there. Those are all the things that you want to start exposing in those horses with the loose lipped horses. Those horses are searching for boundaries. I’m not saying, OK, guys, it’s time to beat your horses.

But even if these horses are a bit neurotic, those types of horses tend to make people to be tore around them a bit because you go, Oh my God, they’re just a bit weird. You really want to think, oh, OK, we’re going to, when you act on impulse, I’m going to send you forward. And This is why this is really great to do on the ground. And the best example that I have for this is like a horse who maybe tries to go for grass on your way to the arena or on the way to their paddock or whatever. So you want to think, you want to have like a 10 foot speed rope minimum or even just hand walk them with a lounge line on.

And you want to think every time you go for a blade of grass, you’re just going to pick up the truck, maybe pick up the canner depending on how bad they are. And again, you’re not chasing them, you’re not reprimanding them really. You’re just saying OK, when you act on impulse you need to work because what’s happening is that so like with the tight lipped horses, they’re in fight or flight. With the loose slipped horses, they’re in their head so they’re thinking and they’re OK. That blade grass looks good.

All let me go smell this poop. Oh my God, there’s a bug that I need to itch and well, buddy, just take a chopper. So you need to get them back into their body. And if they’re older, I’m not saying you need to like lunch them for an hour, but I’m just saying like literally for three circles, send them out. Just send them out of the can.

Just say go, you need to get back in your body and then stop them. Bring them into the circle, tell them that they’re amazing and call it like every time you leave them and they act or go to act on impulse, you send them out onto a circle. And then this is where it gets exciting because you’ve noticed them start to make decisions. So they because it’s a process, right? You’re not going to do this one time and your horse is going to be beyond perfect, right?

This is a process and probably something that they’re an addict. Basically, you want to think of an addicts need to go to a A even when they’ve been sober for 20 years. Because once they stop holding, once there’s this level of accountability that’s not being met, the biology takes over. So you want to always think that you can do this whenever, but when you’re leading them and you notice that they eye the grass and then they turn back straight and keep walking, that’s when you hold them and give them a cookie, right? Because like at that point, they’re making decisions that go against what they’ve conditioned themselves to do.

And when you’re lunging them, say they they go to reach for grass and you go, come on, go Kenner, do whatever, go when you decide that they’ve done enough and turn to have them come back into you and they give you a lick and a chew or they give you a breath, you cooking them. And this is because we’re trying to rewire when you feel nervous or neurotic or whatever you need to, you need to look to me. And some people don’t want that responsibility or they think that the horse needs to think for themselves. But this is a partnership, right? So it’s the way that I think about it is that they’re going to be sometimes when I ride to a horrible, beyond horrible distance and I want my horse to make a decision that’s a beneficial for us as a team, right?

Either they get there and they’re like, absolutely not. I cannot jump this, we should not jump this or we’re going to die. And they stop. And I say, OK, that’s fine, good job. Or they go, hold on, mom, you rode like crap.

But I got this. So it’s if I expect them to bail me out when I ride bad, then I want them to expect that I’m going to be there for them when they’re going through these kind of mental transformations. And you might say, listen, lady, like I’m just trying to give my horse a cookie. I promise that when you discover how much impact this has on their bodies, all of a sudden a lot of the riding issues just go away. And I know that sounds a bit too good to be true, but listen, my goal with all of this is for owners to have the power with their horses.

And again, we know our horses better than anyone. And so, yeah, your trainer might look at you a little sideways if you say, hey, I actually don’t think I should listen today. My horse is tense. And they might look at the horse and be like, the horse is normal. And you get to say, and when I gave them their cookie, they like, took it in a way that just let me know where they were at.

And they’re not in a place that like I’m trying to set us up to build good habits and a lot of issues go away once horses nervous systems relax. And so I guess that’s what the whole gist of this hack chat is about is there are such subtle ways that we can see and feel how our horses feel before we even start tacking them up or whatever. And this is really, if you have a horse that is horrible on the side, like 100%, they probably have really tight lips when they go to grab that cookie or when they’re nervous and you go to give them a cookie, their lips are all over the place. And it’s because they’re stuck in this state of overthinking. And we just want to say, hey, buddy, no, it’s OK.

We’re going to be in the present together. And also the other thing is if you want to still ride these horses while you’re going through all of this, but the neurotic horses, I really actually recommend hand walking them to and from the arena because it’s just way easier to create those boundaries from the ground. But with the tight lipped horses, if you decide you just want to get on, drop the reins to the buckle and just let them wander around for 10 minutes like they might want to just go back to their stall. And again, that lets you know they’re not here with you. Not all of this needs to be seen from the ground.

It can be felt under saddle. I just think for the majority of people, we probably all give our horse a cookie when we first see them. And so it’s just a great gauge to be like, OK, this is what they’re struggling with today. They’re not in their body or they’re only in their legs. I need to get them to use their brain and be curious.

Again, like I said, I think we see a lot more of those tighter lipped horses then the looser lipped horses. But both horses exist. And if you walk out to your horse and you give them a cookie and they just like gently take the cookie out of your hand with these pliable lips and their eye looks nice and soft and whatever, congratulations, you have a normal horse. It is important to just understand who they are. But they, and that’s why I think giving cookies is such a, and I say cookies very broadly.

I use alfalfa pellets as treats because I just don’t like the excess sugar. I think with especially with the impulsive horses, the loose lipped horses, they can hijack their brain and it doesn’t really help solve the problems that you’re looking to solve. So yeah, I hope this helps and let me know in the comments what kind of horse you have and if you found this to be helpful at all. So thanks guys. I’ll chat with you in the next one.