Some might say a safe horse is a trained horse. Some might agree a horse that has lots of miles on it would be considered a safe horse. Yet another opinion is a well bred horse would be considered a safe horse with the proper training.
Although all of the above might be true to some extent, the safest horses are the horses ridden and or handled by knowledgeable people. And even that isn’t a guarantee that everything will be perfect.
On average a well trained horse that has left the training barn will revert back to the level of his rider in about 3 months time. Sad isn’t it? All that time and money invested, in roughly 3 months the owner is either looking for another trainer or taking the horse BACK to the training barn who has had the horse to begin with.
What if you’ve bought a horse from the sale barn? Well, now you are taking an even bigger risk. You never know what you are going to get at the sale barn. It’s a crap shoot. It can go either way. You’ll get lucky to find a suitable horse or you’ll get someone else’s problems.
The fact is, people buy and sell horses all the time. Every time a horse lands in the hands of another owner, that horse is going to learn things that are good for him to know…or not so good to know. These behaviors can make the horse more reliable or more dangerous to be around. There is a good chance you’ll have to make up for what was done TO the horse, by accident, by people without knowledge of the horse himself.
Let me give you an example of this. A horse that doesn’t know his space while being lead could run you down if something spooked him! Another example would be a horse that doesn’t have a good stop on him. He might run away with you in a scary situation.
If the horse has never been given the training to teach him to have a good stop or knowing where his space is when being lead can’t be blamed for this behavior. Now, if he’s come to you with good manners on the ground and a good stop on him and YOU didn’t have the information to keep the good things going, then I’m sorry to say it is the responsibility of the rider/handler and the horse still should not be blamed. People have a really hard time taking a look at them selves when things go wrong with horses. But truly, it is our responsibility to learn these things.
What we have to realize is that we are dealing with this thinking, feeling, reactive animal that makes animal based decisions to preserve his own life in scary situations. His instincts tell him to do this. It’s our responsibility to learn as much as we can about our horse’s innate characteristics and get lessons from the trainer who trained our horse so we can keep up with the maintenance of his training.
On the other hand, if we have a horse that needs help with something in his training, we need to get that information as well. An example of that would be a horse that wants to kick when asked to pick up his hind legs for the farrier. We need to understand first, WHY he is kicking. Then go from there to build confidence within the horse to trust us enough to let us have his hind feet upon request. If we can’t understand WHY, according to how the horse thinks, we will end up forcing the horse by accident. Horses can only do the best they can with the information they are receiving from us.
In the end, our horsemanship skills will keep us safe with horses. Take the responsibility for your safety around them. Continue to learn about the horse himself. Strive to be the best horseman you can be so that your horse will continue to be or become safe to be around. Learn to become the leader your horse deserves so that he will respect your decisions and become your partner in your own little herd of two.
I spent 20 years learning what NOT to do with horses. I used to think it
was all wasted time. But I’ve learned better since then. Over the past 16
years I’ve gone from being a frustrated, scared, unhappy horse owner to a
successful adult learner, teacher and have been dedicated to the education of
people ABOUT the horse himself.
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