Zen Horse

Training Tip of the Week:

Correct Your Horse's Sorry Attitude at the Feed Bin with the Outback Exercise

By Clinton Anderson

Horses by nature are programmed to be dominant around food. If horses in the wild don't fight for their fair share of food, they'll die. It's the survival of the fittest; the strongest, most dominant animals survive and the weaker animals die. It's your job to get your horse respectful towards you and establish yourself as the leader whether food is involved or not. Every time you go to feed your horse and he pins his ears at you or gets pushy and disrespectful, and you dump the feed and run out of his space, you're encouraging his behavior.

One of the best exercises to do with a horse that develops bad behavior at feeding time is backing. Most of these horses will pin their ears and try to force you out of their space by running you off. Well, backing is the complete opposite of that, instead of the horse running forward toward you, he has to back away from you. It's best to work with your horse in a round pen where you'll have room to move his feet and stay in a safe position. I don't recommend correcting his behavior in a stall until you've gotten the situation under control in the round pen first because the small space makes it easy for you to get hurt.

Place a bucket of grain on the ground in the middle of the round pen. Then use the Outback Exercise to back the horse away from you and the bucket of grain.
Ideally, you should just have to wiggle the lead rope to back the horse away, but if he's really disrespectful, you'll have to wave the Handy Stick in front of his chest or even tap his chest to get him to back out of your space and away from the grain. Then draw the horse back up to you by combing the rope with your hands. Don't let the horse come up to you unless he has a pleasant expression on his face.
He shouldn't have his ears flattened against his head or be barring his teeth like he wants to kill you to get to the grain. If he comes up to you aggressively, immediately back him out of your space again. Of course, a horse that has been disrespectful for a long time isn't going to automatically change his attitude and smile and prick his ears at you when you back him away from the feed. However, if you keep working at it, his behavior will get better. In the beginning, you're just looking for small changes. By practicing backing your horse away from the feed and then bringing him back, over and over again, he will learn to focus on you and not focus on the feed.

Happy Trails,

Danna