06/11/2024
“Being skilled doesn’t mean you’re immune to ignorance💡.”
How to Make a Horse Spooky😫
This photo was taken 10 years ago. While it’s easy to pick apart what I clearly didn’t know at the time, one thing I can tell you is that I was very confident💪.
If you’d asked me to train that horse in any behaviour, I could. If I needed to get that horse to do something, I could. In that photo, I was skilled in training behaviours. I could get horses to do things, and I felt the power of that.
But this horse, Saxon, was spooky, and it took me a while to realise that, despite my confidence and skill, I had accidentally made him this way.
It was almost comical—going from a nervous, inexperienced rider who was making her horse spooky, to a super-confident, skilled rider who was doing the same thing with a different horse😱!
By then, I was working with many horses who weren’t spooky, so why was this one?
How was this happening? What was I doing wrong?
There were a number of reasons, but the biggest one was that I was only seeing everything as behaviour. I didn’t realise that while I was riding him, I was also influencing how he felt…and I was making him feel pretty terrible.😔
Why? Because I wanted perfect behaviour, and I was relentless. I was micromanaging him, flooding him with constant pressure, overworking both his mind and body.
From his perspective, I was making him feel threatened. When I was on his back, he felt alarmed. If something in the environment added to that sense of alarm, it would result in reactivity, as he couldn’t process his surroundings with an overloaded sensory system. So he would spook—or, at the very least, move with tension.
There were other things I was doing wrong. But this story shows how sensitive, spooky, nervous, tense, reactive horses are created in a variety of ways—and being confident or skilled doesn’t stop you from making mistakes.
Being skilled doesn’t mean you’re immune to ignorance💡.
It also says something about me. In both extremes—the nervous rider creeping around, trying to protect my horse from the world, versus the confident, hard-taskmaster micromanager—I was trying to control uncertainty. Nervous-rider me was trying to control the environment, while confident me was trying to control the horse.
Now, I realise it’s not control I’m seeking but influence, and it’s more than just training. It’s about the decisions I make on what and how to train, where and how I do it, and basing each of those decisions on how the horse is feeling—all to build their trust and confidence.
This journey requires creativity, grounding, and humility to keep ego in check.
I released The Sensitive, Spooky, Nervous Horse Resource a few days ago. Its purpose is to raise awareness of the creative, strategic approach we need to build a partnership with a horse❤️.
This process requires an understanding of the horse as a species. Saxon was just being a horse, and his responses are completely predictable to me today. It also requires self-awareness—understanding that, regardless of what you think you’re doing, the horse’s reactions may show it feels threatened, and you need to figure out why. Along the way, you’re bound to make mistakes that might seem logical at the time but aren’t.
But can it be worked out? Absolutely. It’s about understanding, awareness, and strategy so you can make the best decisions for your horse’s welfare🤓.
Details are in the usual place⬇️.
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➡️If anyone wants to find out more about me go to calmwillingconfidenthorses dot com dot au
