Control Your Horse, Not the World - Rick Gore Horsemanship

It continues to amaze me that so many people try and control the world and the environment around their horse in attempt to feel in control and safe with their horse.  I see people who run around and try and prevent things from happening and try and prevent things from scaring their horses.  These people run around and say don’t drive the tractor when I ride, it scares my horse.  Don’t use a whip when I ride, it scares my horse.  Don’t run your horse because it makes my horse want to run.  Or one of my favorites, I can only ride alone since other horses scare my horse.

I often wonder if these same people could stop planes from flying, cars from driving, people from walking and just stop the world so they can ride and think they are safer, would they do that as well?  There is no way you can control everything that happens when you ride your horse, so people should stop trying.  Work on controlling your horse, work on training your horse to respond to you, work on being a strong leader to your horse so he will not worry about every little thing that happens around him.  Build confidence in your horse and yourself.

A horse needs fear to survive.  It really is OK if your horse gets scared, in fact I think it is healthy for them.  It keeps them alert, keeps them paying attention and prevents them from becoming dull.  If you really want to ride a completely safe horse that will not hurt you, ride the ones on the merry-go-round.  If you ride a real horse, then you need to accept that they are strong, made of pure bone, muscle and emotion that can never be completely controlled.  No matter how big the bit, no matter how strong the tie down, no matter how strong the rider and no matter how much you try and control the world, a horse is never completely under control.  I always say no matter how good or perfect your horse is, if a plane crashes in the field or arena where you are riding, your horse will react, spook and run off.  Nothing you do can prevent this and you can't train this out of a horse.  If a bear rushes out of the woods while you are riding, your horse will run and will not care if you hang on or fall off.  No bit will stop a horse when it is running for his life.

You can read about sacking out a horse on my Horsemanship of my site:

www.thinklikeahorse.org/index-3.html

So, all you can do is improve your chances with good consistent training, good leadership, lots of practice and lots of confidence.  How do you get confidence?  By knowing and understanding your horse.  You need to be aware of how your horse handles fear.  If you spend your life trying to avoid scary things and protect your horse, then you will never learn to read your horse’s fear, you will never learn to help your horse through his fear and you will always be reacting to his fear, with your own fear.

Sacking out is a term many in the horse world are either not familiar with or don’t understand it.  This is the most misunderstood and neglected part of horse training.  It is so important to you and your horse, yet most “life long” horse owners don’t do it and don’t understand it.  A horse has to get scared to know it does not have to be scared.  This is such an important step in horse training.  By scaring your horse, under controlled conditions, you remove fear from your horse and teach a horse not to run instinctively when scared.  By running around telling everyone else what not to do so your horse will not get scared, only makes you neurotic and makes your horse more scared and creates less confidence in you.

Research the term “Sacking out”, learn about it, understand it and apply it to your daily horse handling and training.  I have a more detailed explanation and examples of this on my horsemanship page of my web site, www.thinklikeahorse.org.   Be aware that the old style of sacking out was cruel and was used to break the horse’s spirit.  It has modified and improved over the years with more understanding of the horse, so don’t get misled with bad information.  When done properly, sacking out builds confidence in you and your horse, it removes fear, it teaches a horse that it is OK to get scared and then helps the horse deal with fear in other ways besides their instinctual reaction to run.  It teaches you to read and respond appropriately to horse's fear, which builds confidence in you and your horse.

Most people are already doing this without knowing it.  Since sacking out is desensitizing a horse, most do this with a saddle, a lead rope, loading in a trailer, a loud jacket or other things that your horse has to accept in his daily life.  Advanced desensitizing is dragging things, plastic bags, hobbles, ropes under the tail, coving the eyes and many other things.  One of the most important things to remember when sacking out is that you are learning to read and observe your horse’s response to fear.  You are learning how he gets scared, how he deals with it and when to intercede or get involved to help him find the correct response.  The goal is to stop or reduce the fear before the horse reacts.  Release teaches, so when you stop before the horse blows up, you teach the horse the right response is not to blow up.

Sacking out is much more fun and beneficial than trying to control everyone and everything around your horse.  The more you sack out, the more your horse will have confidence in you and you will have more confidence in your horse.  With confidence comes trust, with trust comes better understanding and awareness of your horse and with that you get a better relationship with your horse.

Happy Trails,

Rick

www.thinklikeahorse.org