Often equestrians, including myself, get into difficulties with their horse possibly due to a physical injury, behavioral problem, or ongoing medical condition. This can cause a lot of worry for owners and riders who seek to have healthy, safe and confident equine companions. While challenges and setbacks can be a frequent occurrence when owning a horse, there are many ways to reduce the likelihood of issues arising. When seeking to build a sustainable and thriving relationship it’s vital to gain a detailed understanding of your horse, their needs, limitations and strengths, as well as your future goals together. Whether you simply want to build a relationship with your horse, or are working towards competing, having a clear idea of what you want to achieve and what this looks like for you are vital for success.
Working to prevent problems in the first place is key, but if your horse has already developed an issue or has ongoing medical problems, going back to the basics by building solid foundations is where meaningful change begins. This is where creating an environment that sets you and your horse up for success is essential. Even if you have limited resources or ability to make changes there are always things you can do to minimize risks of illness and behavioral concerns. The main things to consider are as follows:
Nutrition – Does your horse have a forage-based diet? Foraging behaviours make up a large part of the horse’s natural behaviours. Naturally they spend 16-18hrs per day doing this. Therefore, we need to enable our horses to perform this behaviour as much as possible to maintain their physical and mental health. Even if your horse is on a restricted diet, foraging for longer periods can be encouraged by using a slow feeder, breaking up the overall feed ration into smaller meals throughout the day, choosing a lower calorie forage, providing multiple feeding stations to encourage movement, and steaming or soaking hay. Adding horse safe herbs and plant materials in small amounts such as parsley, garlic, milk thistle, blackberry, hawthorn, mint, chamomile, or willow can also help to provide variety and stimulate your horse’s senses.
Social companions – Horses are herd animals, therefore they must have contact with other horses to remain calm, confident, and healthy. If your horse can’t live out with another or is stabled there are still options to help your horse get that vital socializing time. You can choose stables with bars or a window in-between instead of solid walls, provide turnout next to another horse, exercise with other riders, or even get a non-equine companion for your horse such as a goat or sheep.
Physical health – Pain is one of the most frequent causes of behavioral issues and setbacks, so ensuring your horse has regular vet checkups is vital to get a good understanding of your horse’s health needs and to catch any issues before they develop into bigger problems. If your horse has ongoing medical issues, your vet can also provide appropriate advice on the best management practices to reduce the risk of deterioration or further injury.
Movement – Horses need to move! Being stabled for long periods of time is detrimental to both their physical and mental well-being. If your horse is stable kept, consider walking them in-hand, providing multiple feeding stations to encourage movement, exercising them daily, using a hay ball or other enrichment toys to promote movement, and looking at increasing turn out options where possible.
Environmental set up – This is important to consider both in general management and when working your horse. Creating living and training environments that suit your horse’s needs and personality is vital to set you both up for success. Often even small changes in the environment can make a huge difference to your horse so don’t underestimate the impact these can have. For example, could you train your horse with a companion in the area to prevent anxiety? Could you change your horse’s bedding to make it easier for them to lie down? Could you move your horse to a quieter stable if they are getting overwhelmed by a busy yard? Could you provide a scratching pad so your horse can itch themselves if they can’t get regular contact with other horses?
Break things down – Often training goals or problem behaviours can seem daunting, confusing, or complicated when first looked at. However, when taking deeper insight into the issue or goal you can gain relevant information and start to break things down into simpler, more manageable chunks for both you and the horse. Then, starting with the basics you can slowly and precisely work to create a solid foundation and build upon this.
Keep track – Having some form of documents or record keeping for your horse’s progress is extremely beneficial for ensuring you stay on target to meet your goals. These can be as simple or elaborate as you like, but allow you to recognize triggers, patterns in behaviour, consequences which may be maintaining or extinguishing behaviour, and things that work well or not. Records also allow you to monitor your progress over time, celebrate successes, and adapt training plans as needed.
Provide positive experiences – It’s not enough to just meet our horse’s basic needs. We need to be actively creating opportunities for them to have positive emotional experiences. This not only benefits the horse’s wellbeing, but also builds trust and connection in our relationship with them. It can even generate abilities we didn’t think our horses were capable of. Have fun with this! Learn and explore with your horse. Find out what they like, what motivates them, what calms them. You may be surprised at the difference this can make in your equine relationship and may lead you to achieving things you didn’t even think were possible!
Each horse will have different needs so it’s important to consider these when creating a management and training plan, or making any alterations to this. But again, don’t feel like you need to have a lot of time, money, or land - even the smallest changes can make a big difference! And whether you’re starting out for the first time or are an established trainer, going back to the basics and building desired behaviours from the ground up is a simple yet vital skill to remember in ensuring sustained and thriving equine partnerships.
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