Confidence needs Horse Body Language

[Persianhorse]

Dear all DG:

To my little knowledge of Horse we should learn the Horse Body Language first to gain Confidence.

Why I say we have to learn because the horse dose not learn our language therefore the only way to understand the horse we have to learn their language , to know what they are saying to us sometimes they shout to us but because we don't know their language we don't know what they are saying.
It is very much critical for the horse people to learn the horse language.
The only way that we can help our horses is to learn their language.

Withe regards,
Persianhorse.

[ktk]

You can know every inch of your horse, know what they do inside out and predict nearly every move they are going to make and still have serious confidence issues.

[nic1]

Ktk i agree, i know my t/b inside out, i can generally tell how he will behave and what he is up to, but he is the main cause of my confidence crisis.
Not so much now as he is not ridden anymore, but it all stems back to him.

[Persianhorse]

Dear KTK :

What I mean is :

First we have to gain their confidence this will come first because we have no verbal language.
Confidence is like a tow way street and I take a step further and say their confidence on us comes first.

Every creature has a line of security , if we want to cross that line we have to establish trust
and confidence (trusting relationship) in that creature so they know we are no harm especially
in a PREY animal which has been food all his/her life and we have been as human being PREDATOR to them all our life.

What dose Mr Monty Roberts do in his Join Up and Follow Up?
What dose he do with the horse that the horse will go to the trailer with him ?
He gains their confidence and establishes trust in them so they will know where ever he goes
they could trust him and is harmless other wise he would not take them to what ever.

What I mean is (for example me on this Board) my language is not English , English is my 2nd language how could I have confidence on what I write if I don't know the English language?
I have %99 confidence if this board was in my own language but now this board is in English language could I say I have %99 confidence on what I write? the answer to this question is NO.
I can say I have %50 confidence on what I write on this board because English is my 2nd language.

How could we have confidence on something that we don't know his/her language?
To my knowledge the Horse Body Language is very much crucial, why?
Because horses talk to us with their Body Language and believe me they tell us everything
but unless we could speak their language how could we tell what thy are saying?
Most of the accidents before happening horses inform us but we could not hear them.
I have seen horse resisting to go in a direction or crossing something the horse tells the rider
but the only thing rider those is the action of the whip , the horse by force crosses and the
accident happens who do we have to blame?

To my opinion the only way to improve our understanding is to know their language.
If we understand their language most of these accidents wont happen.
If we understand their language we could understand each other with understanding
comes confidence.
If you would know that now I am not in the mood you would come back to me some other
time, if you would know that I am not in the mood you will ride me later or some other time,
if you would know my language you will know that I am not happy by your present then you
will take a step back and you will try to gain my confidence on you first then you try to approach
me.

The horses reward is to be able to communicate with predator (human in this case).

A herd animal always relies on leadership for survival and believe me horses rely on us in order
to rely on us they have to have confidence on us even during a simple riding or hacking.

If we reach a horse that his/her ears are both forward we know that he/she shows interest but
if we reach a horse which his/her ears are both are laid back we know he/she is telling us something unpleasant and danger we should stop and take a step back so we would not cross
the line of security.

I hope I have explained what I mean with this bad language of mine so please forgive me I am only trying to be helpful to you thats all.

With regards.

[ktk]

A herd animal always relies on leadership for survival and believe me horses rely on us in order
to rely on us they have to have confidence on us even during a simple riding or hacking

True to a certain extent. They do have to have a certain amount of trust in us to be able to do even the simplest of things, whether that be groundwork over/around monsters, teaching them new "tricks" or hacking out and encountering day to day things.

But tell me this, how does any of that reflect on the fact that we lack in confidence through a fall/bad riding experience/age/other circumstances? I will never and would never trust a horse 100% and expect the same thing back from my horse- its nice that they think for themselves and will get themselves out of trouble if need be. If we all had our horses from foals, knew that every moment of their upbringing had been perfect we wouldnt have half as many problems as we do.

I cant speak for most on this , but I have known horses for a long time. I have spent most of my life around them and learning about them. Like most I believe that I will never stop learning. THe reason I feel that your post is patronising is not simply a language barrier, it is that you are implying that those of us have confidence issues is because we dont known our horses "language", they dont understand us, and quite frankly are lacking any form of common sense which quite honestly is all good horsemanship is.

Yes we do have to help our horses, but I feel that its our horses who help us. While I still suffer with my nerves, my horses dont play up. They will do almost anything I ask of them. They will do things that their horsey brains are telling them is dangerous and should run a mile, they still do it.

I appreciate you are trying to be helpful, but you have to think about how your posts would come across to those who are experienced horse people, know what they are doing, but just have some serious confidence issues- usually in their own ability rather than their horses.

[Persianhorse]

Hi Ktk:

All horses could read our mind from distance.

I reply to your post later , I have to go for the time now.

I wish you the best.

[angblue]

I can see what you are saying PH & your horse does need the confidence in you to have a good relationship.
But my confidence issues have risen due to a fall on the road & now I find it really hard being confident for him whilst riding esp on our own.
On the ground I am super confident & I do know blue really well & I can read his body language well too but I still have nerves about riding due to the fall.
When I am not so confident neither is he & I really beat myself up about being so nervous as it has a bad effect on my boy but being able to read him doesn't help get my feelings of that fall out of my head.
Sorry PH I know your just trying to help

[Persianhorse]

Dear Angblue:

Let me tell you something that I believe in very strongly , I believe horses did not come to existing so we could ride them , it is their great ability and greatness that they allow us to ride them and for that we must honor them and have a great respect for them.

Honestly for learning how to drive a car , reading , practicing and all the steps that we have to take so we could get our drivers license and all the time we put on that comparing to driving how much of a quality time we have put to know and learn about horses before we put our foot into the stirrup?

Falling from a horse is %99 normal , all horse riders fall , actually if you don't fall you wont be a good rider so leave that behind and just try to get an example of your fall what I mean is put it in the experience part of your brain , try your best from now on based on the fall experience.

Don't say I have lost my confidence is best to say I am not the person which I was before the fall , Now I am a person with more experience and the fall gave me more confidence because I have more experience now.

I have learned from my fall what I did wrong or what was the accident or what I didn't know before and from now on because of my higher experience I am going to prevent anything like that to happen.

Now I have more confidence on my horse and I will observe my horse and make sure that he/she knows that I am establishing more trust in him/her and making a good bound.
I will put much more quality time with my horse , just to be with (that dose not mean all the time riding sometime we have to spend more quality time from the ground and try to know our horse better.

Best wishes.

[Lorraine L]

" I hope I have explained what I mean with this bad language of mine so please forgive me I am only trying to be helpful to you thats all. "

Hassan, I just wanted to say that your posts are very interesting. I notice that you are writing more and more on the board and your english and language are excellent. Well done and its nice having you on here.

[angblue]

Thanks PH that really makes alot of sense
We have come a long way since the fall last year due to finding this DG & kelly's books, I knew there had to be a better way & in these two things I found IH.
We now do alot of groundwork, playing, chilling out, grooming & we even did join up which brought tears to my eyes as he did it so well.....oh dear getting all emotional now, oh well so what I love him!!
I feel we have a better bond now than ever before, he always comes to me in the field & is happy to come out & do some work.
Also we are now bitless, treeless & barefoot & Blue is so much happier with this, he is a changed horse.
Blue was very fearful of ppl when I first got him home & I hope that through kindness & building on his trust that I have shown him that we aren't all bad & going to hurt him.
I'm going to head your words & now say "the fall gave me more confidence because I have more experience now" which is totally true because if it had not happened I might not have found IH & bettered myself as a horse owner.
Thankyou for helping me to think this way

[Persianhorse]

Dear Angblue:
I am honored and glad that I have been a little help but the real great help was in yourself and in your self confidence nothing to do with me I just post some words thats all you have done the great work.
I wish you the best and hope to gain confidence moment of your horse life.

Dear Lorraine L :
Thank you so much it's my honor to be on this board actually the only time that I enjoy when I am not with horses is the time spending on this board.

I wish you the best and great respect.

[fin]

persianhorse said:

Falling from a horse is %99 normal , all horse riders fall , actually if you don't fall you wont be a good rider so leave that behind and just try to get an example of your fall what I mean is put it in the experience part of your brain , try your best from now on based on the fall experience.

Don't say I have lost my confidence is best to say I am not the person which I was before the fall , Now I am a person with more experience and the fall gave me more confidence because I have more experience now.

That's absolutely true

It's hard to do, of course--self-preservation tends to scream 'Don't get on that horse again!!!' rather than being more analytical and seeing exactly why an incident happened. But I think that what you're saying, PH, is exactly what we're all aiming for.

I'm sure at some point my horse--when he's well enough to be ridden--is going to put me on the floor I think I'll have to remember your comment then, when I'm heading for hospital

[ktk]

I guess unless you have been in a position where you unlucky enough to have had a ball fall/nasyy riding experience, you cant really be giving out advice that makes much sense to those who have.

I can see that I have got defensive on this post, but why not? Yes every fall makes you a better rider to some extent because youll be sure not to make the same mistakes again. However, when it boils down to it, when you know that the hosptial had to phone your parents up saying youd had a really nasty accident and they needed to get there asap, your friends and family were scared you were going to simply turn up your toes... it doesnt seem to actually have anything to do with the horses anymore.

[sandy]

Hi Persianhorse, I really like reading your posts and you have some incredibly interesting thoughts and ideas to share with us. I absolutely agree with you when you say that 'it is their great ability and greatness that allow us to ride them and for that we must honour them and have great respect for them'. Everytime I ride my little mare I feel priviledged. Regards Sandy

[Persianhorse]

Hi:

We all have to experience all things in our life , it's same with horses they have to experience everything in order to get use to everything.

BUT:
We have BAD Experience's and GOOD Experience's ,
In order to establish trust and to gain confidence of our horses we have a great RESPONSIBILITY as human being to make these experience's GOOD instead of BAD this is the hard part for us as human.

The door Swings both way's,
The horse has to gain our confidence and we have to gain the horse confidence too.

I know many people that they ride horse's but they even don't know how to walk up to a horse they walk in a straight line towards a horse instead of walking in a curve line towards a horse so how could we gain the horse confidence if we don't know how to walk up to him/her?


Listening with OUR EYES:

As human over 60% of our communication is through Body Language.
When working with our animals , we want them to communicate with us and we want to be able to communicate with them.
We want to understand them and for them to understand us.
If we walk up to our horse in his/her box and if the horse looks back at its stomach the animals body language will instantly tell us to suspect COLIC.
If we ignore what the animal has to say , we run the risk of over reaching them and that increases the risk of an accident.
When the accident happens we blame it on the horse not us and accident's are the base of loosing confidence , horse looses confidence on us and us loosing confidence on our horse.

Best wishes.