Understanding the Confused Horse

When we work with horses there are certain situations we are bound to run into sooner or later. We have all had a horse refuse to do something we asked him to do. When we encounter this situation how should we deal with it? There are different forms of refusal and they should be dealt with appropriately. There is the confused horse that did not understand what you asked or the resistant horse that does understand but refuses to perform. For the scope of this article I will concentrate on the confused horse.

Confusion is an emotion that we do not always allow our horses to feel. When you work with your horse think about the horse as being always right. Most horses want to please us so when they respond to a cue they respond the way they think we want them to.
If your horse does not respond the way you wanted him to it means you gave him the wrong cue. Think of horse training as a game of Jeopardy!_ your horse always has the right answer and you must come up with the right question. When we do not have the right question and the horse is not doing what we want we can become frustrated. This frustration can cause us to get stronger with the same cue but the horse still will not perform. The stronger we ask the stronger the horse becomes in his resistance until we either force him to perform with gadgets or we overpower him.
Sometimes a confused horse will respond with aggression and that must be dealt with before finding a new question. There are some horses that have never had to make a decision. They are often horses low in the pecking order and ones that have never had any responsibility. There are horses that have had little or no handling and horses that have learned how to evade. Some of these horses when faced with the stress of training refuse to think their way through a situation. There is the potential for these horses to lash out aggressively at the source of the stress. Changing the way you ask for a response will not always change the way a horse reacts when in this frame of mind. The aggressive behaviour cannot be overlooked if it is not dealt with effectively and the horse is put away we could be confirming that