06/27/2024
A LESSON IN HOW HORSES THINK
You don’t see many Haflinger horses in Australia. Even fewer when I was a kid than nowadays. So when a Haflinger gelding named Enrico arrived at the riding school it caught my attention. Enrico had been bought by Laura who was a very nice lady in her late thirties. She had seen him in a paddock every day for months and finally got the nerve to go to the house near the paddock and ask if he was for sale. Laura had grown up in France (her dad was a diplomat) and had great childhood memories of riding through the countryside of Normandy on her Haflinger mare.
Enrico’s owners were very glad to be rid of him. He had been bought from a dealer for their daughter, but it had all gone terribly wrong from day one. Enrico was almost impossible to catch and when he was finally caught he couldn’t stand still long enough to get a saddle on. The owners had had enough and wanted him gone. They said that if Laura could catch him, she could have him. Well, it took some doing, but after finally running him into a neighbour’s stockyard and getting a rope around his neck, Enrico was caught. Laura later told me it took three large fellows to manhandle the little 13.2 hh Enrico into a truck. And that’s how he came to be at the riding school.
I got to see quite a lot of Enrico because he was kept in a yard about half the size of a tennis court and it was my job to feed him and clean his yard each day. He was a very skittish little guy and would take off to the far end of the pen and shake whenever I entered. Laura didn’t have much luck with him either. Every day she came and tried to approach him, but poor Enrico would run wildly as if being chased by the devil with a pitchfork. After a bit, Laura would leave in frustration. It wasn’t too many days before Laura told me she wondered if she had done the right thing by taking him.
I had almost the opposite approach from Laura. I would enter his yard with a wheelbarrow and manure fork and go about my business. I would let him run to the far end of the yard and figured that eventually he would be so used to the routine that he would realise that I was no threat to his safety. Each day Laura did her thing and each day I did my thing. Laura started using food as an enticement to ease Enrico’s worry and it made some change in him. But after three weeks it never got a whole lot better. Enrico would sneak a bite of food and jump away before Laura could touch him. And if she did move when he was nearby he would take off running.
I too wasn’t making fast progress. Enrico got better to the point that he would see me approaching the yard with the wheelbarrow and before I entered he would wander to the far end of the yard. But at least he wasn’t running wildly like he did the first few days. I still couldn’t get close to him without him shaking and threatening to jump over the top rail. As Yul Brenner said in the musical, The King and I, “It was a puzzlement!”
I didn’t realise that Walt was behind me one day when I was cleaning out Enrico’s yard.
“How ya goin with the taffy fellow, Matey,” he asked.
“Ah Walt, he is still really scared and won’t let anybody near him. Are all Haflinger’s like this?”
“Well Matey, I ain’t seen too many of ‘em, but ya know they were bred for carryin packs in them Austrian mountains, so I expect they would normally have pretty steady minds,” he answered.
“Well, this one hasn’t, Walt. He must’ve got swindled when they handed out brains.”
“I wouldn’t judge him too harshly, matey. I think ya can be pretty sure somebody has taught this little fellow to be as scared as he is,” Walt surmised.
“Do you think he can be helped, Walt?”
“Sure, matey.”
“How,” I asked.
“Change how he’s feelin,” Walt said as if the answer was too obvious and wasn’t I stupid for not knowing?
“Yeah, but how,” I asked.
“Well, don’t let him feel that bad.”
I was beginning to feel like I was missing the obvious here and Walt was trying to explain to me that water was wet.
“Okay, Walt let’s start from the start. I do not understand the point you are making here. How do I get a horse that is scared of people change to be not scared of people,” I asked in the hope of an answer that would make sense to me.
“Alright matey, let’s take the way you clean the yard as an example.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Well matey, why does the horse run to the other end of the yard from ya when you come in,” he asked.
“Because it is the furthest point from me and he feels safer being far away from people,” I answered.
“That’s right, but why does he still do it after three weeks of the same pattern? Why ain’t he learned that ya ain’t gonna kill him and he don’t need to run to the other side?”
“I don’t know. Because he’s dumb?”
“No matey. It’s because it works for him. When he first arrived and ya came into the yard, he ran to the other end. Ya left the yard and he was still alive. Ya taught him that if he goes to the other side of the yard when ya come in he will survive. So each day when ya take that wheel barra into the yard he wanders over to where he knows he will be safe. It is a pattern that has successively repeated itself over and over for three weeks. He has learned what he needs to do to stay safe, so why should he change it? If he changes the pattern, he knows there is a possibility he might die. So he figures when ya on a good thing, stick to it.”
“I never thought of it like that, Walt.”
“That’s because ya think like a human does instead of how a horse does, matey.”
“What can I do to help him,” I asked.
“Well, the horse runs to the other side of the pen because he thinks that works for him. Change that. Show him it don’t work for him no more.”
“How do I do that, Walt?”
“Lots of ways, matey. For instance, when he runs to the other side, go towards the other side and make like ya have to pick up poo nearby. When he runs somewhere else, head that way as if ya have to go and check if that fence rail has a nail stickin out. When he goes somewhere else, wander over there and see if ya dropped ya watch on the ground not far from there. Let him work out that runnin ain’t workin. But don’t do so much that ya force him to jump out of the yard or run ya down. Do enough to get him to search for another strategy other than runnin to the opposite end, but not so much that he thinks he will die. Eventually, he will figure out takin off to the far side ain’t workin and he will take a moment when he will stand facing ya and look at ya. That’s when ya walk away. Build on that each day until in a couple of weeks ya will walk into the yard and he will stand quietly and check ya out. Then ya on the way to him feelin it’s ok to be caught.
Of course, I needed to get Laura to go along with this new strategy because we both had to be consistent if it was to work. She was very excited because she could see the sense in Walt’s thinking. It took about a week and a half before both Laura and I could walk into the yard and approach Enrico to pat him.
It has been a long personal journey to understand the concept that I could effect a change in a horse’s feelings by teaching him that the feelings he has don’t work or are not in his best interest. He can change the way he feels and change his ideas because I can show him a different way to respond which will work better for him. I’m not talking about just teaching him to do what I want him to do but to actually change his feelings about what I want him to do. This is a tough concept to grasp. I wish I understood it better than I do. But I think each year and each horse gives me more insight.
Photo: Haflingers on the run.
