13/04/2026
Shutting horses down 🐴
I want you to imagine you’re really sore, you’ve perhaps got some hidden arthritis in your neck and the way you’ve had to compensate has made the muscles all down your neck and through your back really sensitive.
I also want you to imagine that you’re surrounded by people who you cannot communicate with vocally. They keep touching you and putting things on your body that make it really hurt and making you run around while you’re in pain. You now feel snappy and defensive about even the lightest touch as you know what might be coming, you are trying to communicate your pain to these people by pulling angry faces, trying to kick and snapping your teeth, they do not seem to understand and continue anyway.
A new person comes in and goes to touch your shoulder, you pull an angry face and he immediately starts violently flapping a flag on a stick in your face, you run backwards in fear but you can’t get away properly because he has you on a rope, he doesn’t let up, you eventually stop pulling the angry face and the attack stops. This is repeated again and again until the new person is able to touch you on your sore back and neck and you don’t react at all. You stand there with an empty smile on your face, as that is what you have been taught you have to do to get the horrible flag to stop. Everyone seems really happy with you now, you are still in pain, you no longer try to communicate.
This is what is happening again and again when we treat our horse’s communication as a stand-alone behavioural problem to be fixed. Pulling faces/nipping/biting is communication. When we use punishment to suppress behaviour, we are not treating the cause, we are shutting the horse down and it is a horrible way to treat anyone.
People often justify this sort of treatment as necessary for “safety”. Horses that bite are so dangerous and it will escalate! When you start to look at pulling faces and biting as communication, you can see that it won’t escalate if you actually listen to what they’re saying and help them. If you continue to make stupid choices then yes the horse may have to shout louder at you to try and get you to stop.
Even if the horse isn’t in pain, a horse that is resorting to biting is highly stressed, we help them by addressing that, not by putting them in situations where they bite and telling them to shut the hell up or else. Nippiness in hand is a sign of stress, tension and frustration, it is not a bid for world domination.
Sometimes I go out to horses with these issues and people are amazed their horse hasn’t bitten me as they have others before me. Its not magical, its not horse whispering its just listening and not feeling entitled to the horse’s space and body. Then the horse can start to relax around you, trust that you are going to listen and we can actually start to help them.
The industry is full of training like this marketed as ethical and good for the horse, misinformation about behaviour is everywhere, its so hard to navigate when we are so indoctrinated into this idea that the only way to deal with horses is to apply pressure to them until they comply. There are so, so many other things to consider and most of it looks nothing like conventional training.
If your horse is pulling faces at you, they are desperately trying to communicate their discomfort or distress to you, if you’re not sure what to do please reach out, my inbox is always open. 🐴
