At a guess, I’d say 90+% of horses I have met were pretty rude or pretty stressed when offered treats. Yet, we take it for granted that all our horses are relaxed and polite to be hand treated.
I received an email from a friend who has been reading my book, “The Essence Of Good Horsemanship.” She wrote, “…. the most frustrating thing about it is, the more I read of it, the more I question the ethics of riding which goes against everything I see on a daily basis.”
Our expectations of our horses tell the world something about our expectations of ourselves. Every horse and every rider has issues – that’s normal and it’s okay. But to be content to leave those issues inside our horse is not being a good horse person practicing good horsemanship.
I want to talk briefly about a technique that I see quite a lot from students and a few other professionals. It’s the use of pressure in a tugging or ‘on/off' fashion.
I think I meet 4 or 5 people a year who tell me that their horse hates men. Almost always the horse is a mare. They tell me how cranky their horse behaves when handled by men.
