Hack Chat: Teaching Horses to Meditate

OK guys, I’ve been thinking of doing this for a little while now. I think we need to start doing some hack chats because I’ve been hacking a lot of young horses lately and it’s always a good time for the brain juices to be flown. The topic that I wanted to chat about today is the fact that I believe horses in the work should not be able to reward themselves. I use positive reinforcement and boundaries for my training. I’m the most success when I let horses choose what direction their life goes.

I just think that there’s a common misconception like when horses start to struggle with something mentally, they’ll start evading contact and not necessarily in the way you think, not in terms of putting their head up in the air or anything like that. It’s more so like they’ll start grabbing onto the lead rope, they’ll start grabbing onto the reins, they’ll turn around and start biting at your foot. They’ll start itching like crazy. They might start pawing, they might. There’s a lot of things that they’ll do.

And if you’re on the ground, one of the things that I noticed is that they’ll start reaching for cookies. I just reward them for doing the work. And so when they’re in these moments of being insecure and nervous, they’ll start doing all these little tricks and habits and whatnot. And I refer to that as self soothing. So a lot of horses will, like I said, they’ll start biting at your foot, they’ll start biting the lead rope, they might start pawing, they might start grabbing onto the cross ties.

They just do all of these things. And it’s because they’re trying to figure out how. They don’t really want to deal with their emotions. So what I do, especially when I’m working a lot of these young horses is there are very specific signals that I will do and wait for. And everyone knows the licking and the chewing.

Be careful with that because you want it to be a very soft looking to chew. There are some horses that I think have learned that looking and chewing gives them cookies. So then they’ll just start looking and chewing like crazy. And that is not the same as releasing a release is just a very relaxed small gesture. The other thing that I really try to wait for is a breath.

But you might reward them a couple of times because they gave you a couple licks and chews, but you don’t really want to move on until they’ve taken a breath because they really just need to let go whatever it is that they’re holding on to. And like I said, for the most part, it’s insecurity, it’s worry. And I notice it a lot. Like when I’m doing groundwork or even on these hacks where I really make them stop and process things before spooking and all of that sort of stuff is they’ll start reaching for grass, they’ll start reaching for trees, they’ll start reaching for anything that’s insight before they stop because they’re like just trying to muscle through it. They don’t want to actually have to deal with it.

It’s actually really hard. I’m sure we all know people who like do all sorts of stuff to keep themselves busy all the time. And you’re like, Oh my God, if you just stopped and hung out for a second, you maybe would get to the root cause of why you feel like you can’t stop. And that’s basically what we’re doing in the training is we’re trying to get to the root cause of all the things and that. But yeah, so you, you basically want to when they start doing these things.

The other thing is tripping. If you’re on a hack or you’re walking up in the arena and all of a sudden your horse just starts tripping out of nowhere. They maybe hadn’t tripped all ride or whatever. So you might notice before your horse Spooks, but maybe they let out a couple of trips. That’s them telling you that their nervous system has kicked into high gear and they’re getting ready to flee from a predator.

That predator is usually their own internal feelings about a situation or something. Sometimes it’s physical pain. Sometimes it’s mental pain. Sometimes there is literally squirrels in the bushes making the bushes move. Yeah.

You just always want to think. I don’t really want my horse to reward himself. I want my horse to release and then I want them to be able to be rewarded by me. And that it’s so important because that’s actually how you instill confidence. If your horse gets nervous and then you deal with those nerves by giving them cookies, you’re reinforcing the fact that like they’re acting right.

And it might be that you’re trying to get their brain or whatever, but I never like to distract my horses out of the insecurity. Now there’s a time and a place, right? If I’m horse showing a horse, and maybe it’s on her first horse show, she’s gone to a handful and knows the job. And then something happens where you might be in the test or whatever and you have to teach them, hey, no, we can keep going through some of this. But for the most part in the training, they need to learn that they on their own can reduce their insecurity.

And then but you can find out where does this insecurity stem from? Maybe they’re really quiet, maybe they’re whatever and they’re just always a little spooky, or they’re always a little this or they’re always a little that. Usually it stems from the facts that their nervous system is an OverDrive and they just need to like meditate. And that’s literally what it is. I’m going to now explain to you how I get my horses to meditate.

With horses, it all starts from when you get them right, either from the paddock or from their stall or whatever. How you pick them up is where you have to meet them at. If you put your halter on your horse and he’s trying to bite the lead rope and he’s stopping a lot on the way to the barn, instead of getting mad and pressuring him to keep going, I would in that situation ask my horse to stop and back up. And then I would try to get to the end of the lead rope. And I do not want my horse to follow.

I basically want three to six feet between my horse’s nose and me. And anytime my horse takes one step forward towards me when I haven’t invited them in, I make them do 2 steps backwards and they need to just stay there. And you’ll notice as they stay there, that’s when they might start pawing. That’s when they might immediately look and chew and take a deep breath and proceed on with their day. But you want to be prepared to like not even ride that day.

And yeah, it might be like, Oh my God, if I’m not riding then what’s the point? That’s on you. If you don’t like spending time with horses then maybe you’d need to find pick up biking or motorcycling, but for the most part I think we all love spending time with our horses outside of the saddle as well. And if your horse is super annoying, this is actually going to help. Maybe bridge that gap and bridge that relationship a bit.

So you’re basically going to stand at the end of the lead rope or whatever, and anytime they come up to you, you send them backwards. And it’s not because you don’t want to be with them. That has nothing to do with it at all. It’s because you want them to soothe themselves. So if they come up into your space and they start rubbing and loving on you, and although it’s really nice and affectionate and whatnot, that doesn’t solve the problem, right?

The problem is that they came out of their paddock or came out of their stall with tension, insecurity, whatever. And you want them to turn to themselves to figure it out because then when you’re struggling with your own nerves, it’s not up to your horse to figure it out for you, right? You realize that you need to figure out your nerves. And so it’s the same with them. And we just need to give them the space to meditate and the space to pause and the space to work through their own emotions.

And that is what creates actually long term mental health for horses is that they know when they get up regulated, they themselves can down regulate. They don’t need you to do anything. And if they’re in the paddock and something scary, they can bring their heart rate. And these are like the Super important things that when people are talking about basics in terms of writing, like to me, these are basics. And I know not everyone is going to necessarily appreciate what I’m saying right now.

But I just think we also as riders feel safer when we know we’re on a horse that can deal without shutting down. And that doesn’t stem from getting them to shut down and riding them through that. Because you don’t ride horses through shut down like it doesn’t happen. So yeah, that is today’s Hack Chat, and I appreciate you guys for tuning in for this little snippet. And let me know in the comments if you like it.

And don’t forget to give me a follow because we’ve got a lot of really exciting guests and conversations coming up. Thanks guys.