When the focus should be on the horse learning to relax, not just on preventing fear.

The sentence above may sound strange, and it's something I’ll try to explain further here. I often experience that people come to me with a single problem they need help with regarding their horse—not a simple problem, as in uncomplicated, but rather, it’s the only problem/challenge they believe they have. However, I’ve never found this to be the case. Most often, it’s a series of issues or gaps in the horse's education and understanding of our rules that need to be addressed. If we take the first sentence and imagine a horse that easily becomes scared and reacts by jumping aside, running off, or doing something else, I will often get a rider who wants to focus precisely on this issue. This is understandable, but it’s not the right approach for solving the problem in the long run. For such a horse (and this applies to all horses), I would start by working from the ground to make the signals as clear as possible and to take as much pressure off the horse as possible when it reacts as desired. The focus here would also be on observing how the horse uses its body—where are its strengths, and where are its weaknesses? Often, it is on the side where the horse is weakest that it protects itself the most and reacts most to what’s around it. However, if you have a horse that has learned to say no, it will resist the most on the side where it is strongest, as that is something it has learned. I make sure the horse understands where my boundaries lie, and that if it gives me a good work ethic, I will give it security—calm, rules, and clear boundaries create security. This gives the horse the belief that when it finds itself in an uncomfortable situation, it’s not alone because it sees my signals as a help, whether it’s from the ground or from the saddle. This also places high demands on the rider, as the rider must be able to assist the horse calmly and set aside their own emotions—something that can be really difficult. It’s important to maintain an overview and be aware of the signals you are giving because the more you use your leg and reins without aim or meaning, when the horse becomes scared or insecure, the more dangerous everything seems to the horse, as it associates what’s scary with discomfort caused by the rider, and then it becomes a self-reinforcing situation.

Additionally, a horse that easily becomes scared is often very tense in its body, and since all riders add weight and, to some extent, imbalance when riding, it’s easier for both the horse and rider to relax the horse’s body from the ground and release tension. You can’t guarantee that a horse won’t get scared, but the more relaxed it is in its body, the more effort it takes for the horse to get to the point where you end up in a dangerous situation, and the easier it is to get it out of that situation again. It’s like a bottle that is almost full: only a little water needs to be added for it to overflow. On the other hand, if the bottle is empty, you need to add a lot more water before it overflows. It’s also important to mention that you can’t expect a horse to know what it means to be relaxed and calm. If the horse doesn’t know what it means to be calm, it’s hard to teach it not to be afraid of things because it doesn’t know how to reset. It’s similar to meeting a person who is naturally anxious and tense; you can’t just tell them to relax because they may not even know what that means, as they are always tense. I see this often both in humans and horses.

So, first and foremost, it’s important to have a solid starting point and foundation to build upon, and this applies to both the horse and rider. When this foundation is established, where the horse is relaxed in its body, understands the signals the rider gives, accepts them, and sees them as a help, then we can work on what the problem was in the first place, which often resolves itself along the way. I often experience that many think the process is too long and prefer a quick fix, as the alternative seems too complicated, although I’m happy to meet more and more people who are willing to invest the necessary time.

I compare this to a discussion that often comes up when it comes to dressage, where there is sometimes disagreement about how things should be viewed—whether it’s important not to see a dressage program as a series of exercises the horse must learn, but rather as exercises the horse can perform because its body has been properly trained in accordance with the training scale.