Why I don’t drive horses

This is one thing that will significantly change your relationship with your horse – for the better 

One of the things I noticed very early on when I first started teaching at clinics was that there were quite a lot of disconnected, shut down and robotic horses. In some respects, they could do a number of things but it was almost as if they were working off cue’s and in patterns rather than soft and connected with their owners.

So a lot of the help I am offering at clinics is not just to help people get by with un-training anxious horses or pushy ignorant horses – it is also getting our horses to understand us better; opening up shut down horses and re connecting robotic horses. Some horses which have had the most “horsemanship” training were often the worst. (Please don’t be offended by this, I just want to help more horses be happier.) I don’t think the original intention of horsemanship and being a better horseman was to produce unhappy robotic horses.

My interpretation of the message that comes from people like Tom Dorrance was to find a better way; to understand our horses; to help them operate with us and around us in a way that the horse remains confident in itself and happy about what it is doing (happy about us).

Something that I hear quite often to justify chasing/ pushing/ moving horses away is that horses move each other around and push on each other; that is how one horse shows dominance over another.  However, in a normal herd environment, this is something that happens, occasionally, but horses interact with each other in so many other ways far more often – pushing each other is only a minor part of their social order.

Think of it like this; if a 24hr day is 100%, how much of a horse’s time in the paddock is spent pushing or being pushed? When you bring your horse in from the paddock for a lesson this is your interaction time. If you do one half hour lesson what percentage of your groundwork time are you pushing into your horse? I often see the owner spending more than 50% of their time pushing their horse (pushing their horses away; moving their feet away; pushing into their horse) which means more than 50% of that interaction during the lesson could leave a negative feeling for the horse.

I don’t think it is about the firmness or the hardness of the push – a soft push can have the same feeling, especially if earlier on their education, that soft push was clarified with a firm push.  It’s like a bully pushing a kid. The bully may start by pushing the kid over and frightens the kid. After a few pushes, the bully just has to look and the kid backs off. I believe it is the same with horses. After a few pushes, horses may back off; but they are not happy.

Horses push each other for a reason. Perhaps to be dominant over mares, water or food. But most commonly it is only to achieve something. Once it is achieved, the pushing stops. It is certainly not that that pushy horse will spend the rest of that hour pushing. Generally, any annoying pushing horses are not liked by the herd. Our stallion will push our geldings away when they get too close; and then he leaves them. Sometimes he will leave the mares and go and play with the geldings for a couple of hours, and mutually groom some of them.

Unfortunately it seems very common for people to push their horses to motivate them – for example asking a horse out on a circle; yielding a hindquarter; or yielding the shoulders away. For many people, they believe it will help them to be like an alpha horse. But what is our purpose? It is to create dominance or movement?

And how does the horse getting pushed away feel about it? If we push a horse away, and cause it to feel negatively towards us, does that feeling get better because the horse is no longer being pushed or because they are moving away from us and our pressure?
We have to recognise their feelings and the direction of their thoughts when we push into them.

If we are educating our horses and doing exercises which involve moving them away or pushing them away from us, we can often be doing too many negative transactions. I believe this is one of the biggest reasons of why there are lot of disconnected horses out there. The ground work that we have been doing is causing too many negative feelings.  Horses are rewarded from stepping away from us. They are happier away from us. Things are easier – away from us.

From a training point of view, what I have found is that robotic and unhappy horses bottle up tension; they hold areas of brace and resistance; they have a tendency to spook more; they won’t collect or bend as well because of their tension; and they don’t perform to their potential.

I have helped many people over the years – and when I ask people what is the one thing that they think has changed their horse the most – the answer is usually “I have stopped driving them away”. Fundamentally this is one change in your behaviour that will directly benefit many aspects of your riding relationship with your horse.

There are a couple of sayings that I really like. One is “if you push a horse away, they will soon know where you want them”. Another one is “You don’t move your horses feet away to be alpha. You just don’t let them move yours”.

Let me give you a scenario back in the herd. A horse walks towards a trough. The horse can choose to put all its energy into pushing all the other horses way and then going to drink the water. This could cause stress in all the other horses and itself. That horse would get the water. The other horses would wait.
The second scenario is that the horse walks towards the trough, focussed on the trough. All the other horses near the trough are aware of this horse’s strong focus on the trough, so they move to the side to allow the horse in to drink. Depending on the horse’s strength of intention and where it is in the pecking order depends whether it will get to the trough or not. What is important in this simplistic concept is that it was the horses intention on the trough that caused the others to move, not its intention on the other horses.

We can still have intention and lift our energy to help motivate our horses but it is where we are directing that energy that may help make it less of a negative transaction. If you want your horse to enjoy being around you more and feel better about the education we offer, you don’t want too many negative transactions. You can assert an alpha horse relationship (if needed) by changing our focus; changing our body language (not moving); being centred; having clear intention and by being aware of our horses focus.

A further complication associated with moving our horses through driving pressure is that it often causes a horse to have its thoughts in the wrong direction to aid movement. For instance, if we are asking a horse out on a circle or we are yielding their shoulders away, if we are using driving pressure in the wrong way, the horse may get stuck with its primary focus on the driving pressure. The driving pressure overrides the horses confidence to think in the direction of travel (“I better watch that in case I am going too slow/ too fast/ it hurts me”).

I see it a lot when I watch people offer a leading hand when they are sending their horse out on a circle. The horse’s focus is usually through its inside eye – rather than looking in the direction of the leading hand. The focus is where the pressure came from.

If a horse moves away from driving pressure and chooses to escape from driving pressure, this generally means that when they get on a circle they counterbend (look to the outside). How you ask a horse on the circle is generally how well they will find the circle.

An alternative to driving pressure is to teach your horse how to follow a leading hand. Don’t ask with a leading hand and then blame your horse for not understanding it and drive it if you haven’t taught it to understand.  Teach it to lead first. Commit to leading exercises and leading with feel.  Get your horse to follow the leading hand with its thoughts. In everything you do you can get them better at leading (bring your horse in from the paddock etc).
When yielding a hindquarter, instead of initially pushing into their hips, just get them to softly bend and yield to an indirect rein.

Before I teach a horse to do shoulder yields and before I guide them out on a circle, I teach them to think with the feel of a lead rope. I can put that leading rope and leading hand in any direction and they will know to put their thoughts through it.  Horses will put energy towards their thoughts. They will then go towards their focus (not away). And are more likely to be better balanced because of this.

There is no need to drive.