05/09/2025
No matter how much you believe in your intention to be with your horse or your ability… we all have the capacity to be the chimp here are described by Dr Shelley Appleton Calm Willing Confident Horses
I was chimp yesterday with my mare Kyra.
I sat on very tired, exhausted and disconnected…. The result, a very disengaged and disconnected ride nearly ending up in ditch. 😬
I shouldn’t have got on yesterday and my lovely girl did her best to try and listen to what I was saying to her/ even though I struggled to listen to her.
I’m so very grateful for the strength and foundation of our relationship years ago that could have ended very differently……
Not Naughty. Not Stubborn. Just Threatened.
The way I like to explain horse behaviour is simple: most of the “difficulties” people face with horses don’t come from some deep equine conspiracy against you. They come from one thing: the horse feels threatened.
I found this image of an ape riding a horse. The horse looks horrified - as if Godzilla just mounted up. And the tragic punchline? That’s often exactly what your horse sees when you climb aboard.
We humans love to overcomplicate things. We write essays about "stress releases" and "calming herbs", we argue over whether our horse is "sensitive" or just a "chestnut", and we spend small fortunes on gadgets designed by people with more marketing flair than horsemanship. But when you strip it all back, horses are embarrassingly simple: if they feel safe, they’ll try. If they feel threatened, they’ll try to survive.
Let me explain - and yes, I’ll use this image to do it.
This is the hardest thing for people to swallow: we can make the horse feel threatened.
The behaviour you call “naughty,” “stubborn,” or “difficult” is just your horse reacting to the primate clamped on its back like a panicked cat on a rollercoaster.
- Sit like a sack of potatoes and grip like a crab? Threatening.
- Move in the saddle like you’re auditioning for Riverdance? Threatening.
- Sn**ch, pull, or hang on the reins? Threatening.
- Force their neck into a yoga pose they didn’t sign up for? Threatening.
- Strap on tack that pinches, rubs, or restricts? Threatening.
- Demand pirouettes while they’re already internally screaming? Very threatening.
Before long, your horse isn’t just threatened under saddle - they’re threatened at the mounting block, when the saddle appears, or when you walk into the paddock with that “today’s the day we nail it!” look in your eye.
When horses feel threatened…
- They become hypervigilant, nervous, spooky.
- They turn resistant, anxious, reactive.
- They buck, rear, pig-root, strike, or charge—because when you’re a prey animal and someone feels like a predator, the natural solution is to make them regret that life choice.
- And the chronic fallout of being regularly threatened? That’s a story for another day—but let’s just say it isn’t solved with a new bit and a tub of magnesium powder.
So what can we do?
It’s not rocket science. (Or pseudoscience, for that matter. 😎)
- We teach.
- We train.
- We manage their health.
Above all, we help the horse understand, feel comfortable, and feel secure. That’s it.
Horses are ridiculously easy to train. We love to say they’re “prey animals” as if that excuses everything, but really, so are we. Their gift is being wired to notice threats - and their brilliance is that they learn faster than you can scroll through Facebook. Honestly, they’re easier to train than dogs. You just have to know how.
And that’s why I’m here. Not because horses are complicated mystical unicorns - but because they’re simple, and humans are the ones who make it complicated. Once you learn how not to feel like Godzilla on their back, you unlock the part where they are brave, trusting, and extraordinary.
We’re all just primates doing our best. The shift comes when you learn how not to be the monster in the saddle. And that’s easier than you think.
👉 Check the first comment - I’ll point you toward some resources that actually work.
This is totally counting as Day 15/365 of my notebook challenge—where I spill good ideas straight from my obsessive notebook collection. Collect them, share them, scribble them in the margins of your own life. Just don’t copy-paste (plagiarism is so last season).
⚠️And if the satire stings a little—don’t be offended. It’s meant to both sting and be funny. That’s how we crack things open enough to actually see them. ❤
