Equine Psychology

The body Language of the Horse

Reading the horses’s body to understand his mind

Do you remember what it was like when you first got into horses? You were told to watch out if the horse put his ears back because that was a sign that he was going to bite or kick you. But that was it! To this day, thousands of horse owners are no wiser than that about the body language of their horse. Body language is the universal language and, to answer an often asked question, is much more useful and effective than using your voice.

Pat often begin his seminars by asking people “put up your hand if you know how to read….a horse!”. Most people don’t know when a horse is going to run off, run over them, buck, kick, strike, is worried, frightened, defensive, bad tempered, bored or jacking with them. In teaching people to become horsemen, the single most important skill to develop is approach and your timing. An article is not the easiest way to teach you how to do this but it can start you intellectually on the path. After becoming more aware of what you are looking for you can start to study your horse. Sometimes you won’t have realised what you read until it is followed by an action. Then you can put two and two together.

Fear Vs Aggression

Here is where I think the greatest misunderstanding occurs. What a lot of people read as aggression in a horse is often fear. Horses by nature are flight from fear animals, they would much rather run away when threatened, but if they are trapped they will do whatever it takes to defend themselves: strike, charge, kick out… they can look like a Bruce Lee movie. There is nothing more awesome than a horse fighting for his life, he is an athlete of almost unparalleled skill. They say even a grizzly bear is no match.

Right brain vs Left brain

The thing to understand here is the difference between right brain and left brain modes. A horse in his so-called “right brain” is not thinking. He is reacting purely out of instinct because in the wild, if a predator is trying to get him, it’s his instinctive reactions that will save his life. He doesn’t have time to think.

A horse in his “left brain” is thinking. He is confident, unafraid and deliberately does what he does, positive or negative. Mules are a great example! How often have you seen a mule watch somebody coming up behind or beside them, size up the situation, measure how much rope he has, how close the approaching body has to be and wham! He delivers with skill and accuracy, it was very carefully thought out! I use mules as an example here because they are more left brain active than horses. The donkey part of them is the non-flight from fear prey animal and this counteracts the horse-like tendency to flee.

But this doesn’t mean horses won’t do this. Witness for example the young colt or stud horse that pecks away at his handler, sneaking in for a nip and recoiling awfully to avoid the swinging arm coming back at him. This horse is operating from the left brain, he is not afraid, he’s not even being aggressive. In fact he is playing a game.

So how can you tell the difference? Here are some signals you might observe:

When he’s blinking he’s thinking… when he’s not, he’s hot.

This means if the horse is starry-eyed, head high, nostrils dilated, tense jaw, tense wind pipe, tight flanks, tight and arched back, tight tail… he’s scared and defensive, he’s just got all his self preservation reflexes strung tight and if he blows, it’ll be so quick you won’t even know what hit you. And if he hurts you don’t take it personally, a horse will do anything to save his life if he perceives it being threatened.

A scared horse will not look at you with two eyes, he’ll even look away as you approach to put himself in position to get out of there.

A horse in his left brain has a lower head carriage that’s more level with his withers, and there’s no tension in his muscles. his eye is alert but blinking not wide and staring. A horse that makes the transition from right brain to left brain mode will blink his eyes, wiggle his ears, lower his head and lick his lips. At first you might only see the lip-licking part, but more and more you’ll start to perceive the other signs.

Don’t Blame the prey animal

Don’t Blame a scared horse for acting like a prey animal, Learn to identify it and them how to help a horse to become calmer and braver. Becoming calmer is not enough and many people fall into the trap of just trying to calm the horse down and avoiding anything that might bring his instincts up. This is by no means an effective solution, it’s like living with a time bomb. When it goes off because everything you’ve been trying to avoid suddenly shows up… you and / or the horse are going to get hurt. I believe that 90% of the horse-related accidents that happen are due to misreading a situation, having an unprepared horse, and because the horse went into self-defence mode.

Uncertainty vs confidence

Here’s the next thing to become more observant about. You can get a horse to do a lot of things, but at best he is often undependable. For example, take a look at the high level competitor whose horse blows up in the middle of a dressage test, refuses a jump, runs off at the ends when cutting or goes berserk just before starting the barrel race. Dependability is directly related to confidence in a horse. “But he’s done it all his life” you might argue. Sure, but maybe he was not confident doing it and that is what makes him liable to come unglued. And horses are so perceptive, they get to learn when that thing they’re worried about is going to happen they’ll start blowing up in advance.

Let’s use trailer loading as an example. I know a lot of horses that will go into a trailer without much resistance if you lead them in. But unless you shut the gate quick, he’s out of there. There are also a lot of horses that will go in but come rushing out, hitting their head or scraping off some skin on the way. A horse that is confident in a trailer will go in when you send him in (without you standing outside) and will stay in until you ask him out, without anything holding him in. And when he comes out, he’ll do it calmly one foot at a time. 

Building confidence

There are three things to be mindful of:

1. That the horse can do the task without hesitation.
2. That he does it in his left brain.
3. To keep doing the task until you have achieved both 1 and 2.

My experience is that people don’t ask their horse to do very much, they have avoidance behaviour which means “I won’t ask my horse to do anything that might cause him to resist or get emotional”. So they come to one of our clinics and the first thing we do is teach people how to play the 7 Games, they start pushing mental and emotional buttons in the horse that they’ve been avoiding or didn’t know existed and its like opening a can of worms. They find out just how mentally and emotionally unfit their horses are! “My horse was fine until I played the 7 Games!” Sure, if you don’t ask your horse very much or you mostly do what the horse want you to do, he’ll be fine! As soon as you ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do, all hell will break loose! The rest of the clinic is spent improving the horse’s confidence within the 7 Games and setting tasks to help him and you become increasingly braver and therefore willing to try new things. 

One of the tasks I often set on the second day of a clinic is teaching the horse to jump a single barrel next to the fence. First we ask the horse to go between the fence and the barrel, then gradually move the barrel closer to the fence until he finally has to jump it. But we don’t move the barrel until the horse can complete the task at the distance confidently, with relaxation, a kind of “oh, I know how to do that” attitude.

The common mistake people make is they finally get the horse to do it and they don’t ask it again either because they are afraid of what more resistance might come out of the horse, or they are sticking to that old myth of “when he does it, quit or put him up”. If you quit when the horse is in his right brain he will get worse, not better. The first time the horse jumps it he usually is pretty uncertain if not scared out of his wits, he’s in his right brain. You have to get him past this. If you want a horse to become more confident it is vitally important to repeat the task as often as it takes until the horse can do it calmly, confidently, without hesitation and in his left brain mode. This is the perfect time to quit. The horse will have made a significant mental and emotion change and the next time you ask him to do it, even if it’s a month later, he’ll do it with confidence.

If you were riding this horse that’s learning to jump the barrel you’d be shocked at how differently he feels jumping it when in right brain or left brain mode. Remember that a scared or unconfident horse will have a defensive body language. He head will be high, his muscles tense. Jumping over the barrel, those back muscles are strung like a bows and they’ll literally pop you off as they jump. It’s very uncomfortable to ride. However, once the horse gets confident he will feel totally different. His back will feel soft, he won’t over-jump, he’ll be athletic, smooth and easy to ride as he jumps.

Reading it

Uncertainty: the horse is right brained, head up, eyes staring, tense muscles, tight tail, fumble footed. He’ll rush into the task and out of it. His tendency is to escape, he is not thinking.

Confidence: the more is left brained, has a alert but soft eye, muscles are not tense, places feet athletically, can do the task without hesitation but does not rush, think his way through it.

This is what many people call a well-trained horse, and that’s why they’ll send him to the trainer. if I can get you to see that this is confidence, no just training, it will open a whole new set of possibilities to how much you can do to get results with your horse.

Additionally, here are some specific signs that can look out for: A horse that may…

Reading head and ear position

At the Horse Psychology and Behaviour clinic held at Parelli Study Centre in Pagosa Springs in 1996, Dr. R.M. Miller was the guest speaker. In lecturing on horse behaviour, he made a comment about head position in relation to vision which was very revealing. He pointed out that a horse has “tri-focal” vision. Rather than having a lens which adjusts for focus, the horse has three distinct parts of the eye which offers three visual options. When his head is level, he is looking through the centre of his eyes and can see clearly all around him. To see something far off in the distance, the horse will lift his head high and look through the bottom of his eye. To focus on something close, the horse will coil his neck, bring his chin in and look through the top of his eye. That’s why when approaching a strange object a horse will often arch his neck and even look at the object first through one eye and then the other.

Head position

A high head therefore can mean a couple of things:

1. That your horse has sensed something off in the distance that he needs to get a look at. His adrenalin will automatically come up as he prepares for flight if he is in danger. 
2. That the horse is worried, scared, unconfident.

Ear position

A the beginning of this article I mentioned that the first thing most horse owners start to read is the ears back sign. When they are flat back, the eye is hard and the nose is wrinkled too. It certainly is a warning that something aggressive is going to happen and a set of teeth or pair of heels often follows!

Observing horses interacting with each other you’ll see that the ears back signal is used a lot to drive another horse away. It means “if you don’t move now, I’ll make contact” and most horses learned how to get out of the way at an early age, so they move. They dominate each other this way, whoever can move the other or the one who wins the confrontation if they didn’t move is usually the more dominant.

Ears laid back in aggression is only one of the ear expressions you should get to know. A horse’s ear position will also tell you where they are looking. As you probably know, a horse has monocular vision. His eyes work independently of each other and you can often see by his ears where his visual or mental attention is being directed. 

Take for example a horse being circled in a round corral. If he is running scared, his ears will be half back and his vision on red alert being ultra perceptive to everything around him. As he calms down he’ll start to pay attention to you in the middle. You’ll see the outside ear facing more forward in the direction of travel and the inside ear will be cocked towards you and the next thing that will happen is he’ll stop and turn towards you. As you and your horse become more skilled at communication at liberty in the round corral your horse will usually have one ear on you to be perceptive to your signals.

A horse being ridden with great finesse and concentration will often have his ears cocked back in full attention to the rider and they will flick back and forth as he needs to focus on something in front of beside him.

Scared horse will have his ears facing the thing he is scared of and they’ll be really tight and tense. If the thing to be feared is in front of him, they’ll be strained hard forward. If it’s beside him the ears will aeroplane outwards, and if it’s behind him they’ll be facing back but not be pinned flat back as when he is aggressive. The ears can also be a great indicator of relaxation. When working on a horse’s confidence levels I’ll often play with his ears, pressing on the ends with my fingers and flipping them up and down to be able to feel how much more relaxed the whole horse is getting. They’ll gradually go from being rigid to completely soft. A horse’s tail will tell you the same thing, although I’m not recommending you got to the back of your horse to check this out! I can massage a tense tail until it is completely soft and know that the horse’s whole body has become relaxed because his attitude is no longer defensive or scared. 

The arched neck

Vertical flexion is a wonderful thing when a horse is confident and in his left brain. But if he is scared the worst thing you could do is rein him in. As his neck bows, his chin gets close to his chest, his back round, becomes powerful and his hindquarters become super-engaged. The last thing you want is to help a horse rear, buck or run off but this is exactly the position he will assume just before he lets fly.

When a stallion is courting a mare, he rounds his neck and back, gets powerful in the hindquarters and starts prancing (called ‘passage’ in dressage) or dances in place (called ‘piaffe’). The same thing will happen to you on a trail ride if you try to hold back an excited horse with two reins! If you keep holding on the next thing he’s going to do is lunge against the bit, rear and take off. Instead of pulling on two reins, bend your horse with one rein. This takes the power out of the hindquarters by disengaging them.

Get to know when vertical flexion is a positive or negative expression in your horse. If you have mental, emotional and physical collection, that arched back and neck will help your manoeuvres become better and better. But when a horse is scared, its the last thing you want to see! Use lateral flexion to disengage the hindquarters and keep working on that mental and emotional fitness in your horse to achieve clam confidence first.

Conclusion

A horse that is right brained and unconfident is apt to react defensively to just about anything you ask him to do. A horse that is left brained and confident is more likely to think his way through things, be more athletic and less likely to get hurt or to hurt you.

You can gauge how much braver a horse is becoming by how long it takes for him to get confident with new challenges. A high adrenaline horse that used to be a lost cause once he got right brained will come down off the adrenaline quicker and quicker until one day he will not ever want to go there. These horses learn to drop their heads quickly to get themselves off the adrenaline and trigger the release of endorphins that help them calm down and relax. (A horse is physically inhibited from producing adrenaline when his head is lower than his withers).

The more you learn to read horses, the more you’ll appreciate the simple value of the 7 Games and learn how to do more than just play them… you’ll learn how to win them so your horse emerges calmer, smarter, braver and more athletic as well as build a language so you can communicate and teach your horse how to yield to you in everyway. You’ll do much more than just overcome opposition and resistance, you’ll cause a profound mental and emotional shift in your horse as he learns to use his left brain as the primary mode. You’ll also be safer because you can read a horse’s tendency. You’ll know what’s going to happen by what happens before what happens happens!

Watch horses together, in all situations including a mare and her foal. This will be one of the best ways to learn more about a horse’s body language. Increasing your savvy around expressions, being able to read and correctly interpret a horse’s reactions will help you understand why a horses behaves as he does, be less likely to blame him or punish him for it. I hope you’ll also be motivated to keep building your savvy so you’ll know how to keep safe by properly preparing your horse and making the right decisions in all situations.

In essence, you are looking to create such a positive relationship with a horse that he pays good attention to you, with ears forward, when you are communication. It’s amazing how much brighter and more charismatic a horse starts to look.

SPECIAL NOT

• There are left brain positive and left brain negative behaviours.
• There are right brain positive and right brain negative behaviours.

In this section, we have covered more right brain negatives than positives because at this stage of your horse’s development you will be faced with more instinctive reactions based on self defence and therefore are “negative” when it comes to horse-human partnerships. However, as you continue to make progress, your horse’s good behaviours will become more and more ingrained until they are good habit. They will then become right brain positive behaviours. Things like seeing you approach and coming to you… your horse will start to do this automatically, without thinking. This is right brain positive.

Levels 3 and 4 will this much more.

Summary

Ears back, he’s going to bite is about the limit of what most of us have been taught about reading a horse’s body language.

Reading a horse, his tendencies, what he’s about to do, what he’s probably thinking will become an important skill.

Become aware and the observe your horse.

Greatest misunderstanding between horses and people is that the horse is aggressive when more often than not he is fighting for his life.

Right brain and left brain modes:

Right brain is the instinct side, no thought process, just reaction.

Left brain is thinking, confident and deliberate.

Most horses play games on people once they are confident and disrespectful.

Telling the difference between right and left brain behaviour:

When he’s blinking, he’s thinking…. when he’s not, he’s hot.

A scared horse will not look at you with two eyes.

Left brain usually means low head, soft eye.

Going from right brain to left: the horse will usually blink his eyes, wiggle his ears, lower his head and lick his lips.

Don’t blame a horse for behaving like a prey animal. Help him become calmer and braver. And don’t avoid the things that he’s afraid of!

Most accidents happen because of misreading a situation and lack of preparation.

A horse that is not confident is liable to come unglued.

They also learn what happens before what happens happens and they can blow up in advance!

Examine the difference of confidence in trailer loading: he goes in willingly, without you having to go in first and will stay in until you ask him out.

Confident equals being able to do the task without hesitation, doing it in his left brain, and to keep doing the task until you have achieved both of these.

Most people have avoidance behaviour, which means they don’t expose the horse to anything that might cause him to resist or get emotional.

All hell can break loose when you start pushing buttons…but the end results are worth it!

Most people don’t persist for long enough until the horse is left brain and confident.

This insight will help you know how often to repeat something and when to quit.

You need the mental and emotional change, not just the physical action.

A confident horse is even more comfortable to ride.

Uncertainty: right brained, head up, eyes staring, tense muscles, tight tail, fumble footed. Tendency is to escape.

Confidence: left brained, alert but soft eye, muscles not tense, athletic and graceful, doesn’t rush.

This is what is often called a well-trained horse, but its not training, its confidence.

Horses have “tri-focal” vison.

Looking through the centre of his eyes, he can see clearly all around him. To see into the distance, he’ll lift his head and look through the Botton of his eye. Top focus up close, he coils his neck and looks through the top of his eye.

High head means adrenaline. The horse is looking at something in the distance, is worried scared or unconfident.

Ears flat back is an easy to read signal… watch out!

Dominance games involve moving each other around and there’s a lot of ears back activity to do this.

Ear position can also tell you where a horse’s visual or mental attention is directed. 

Scared horse has ears halfback, tense look.

In a round corral, the inside ear can be cocked towards you in the centre. 

A horse being ridden with great finesse and concentration will often have his ears cocked back toward the rider.

Scared horse will have his ears facing the threat, often out to the side and he is tight and tense.

Relaxation equals soft and relaxed ears and tail. these are attitude barometers!

An arch neck on a scarf horse is dangerous. He gets more powerful.

Holding back on two reins empowers the hindquarters. use one rein to disempower them.

Vertical flexion can be positive once you have mental, emotional and physical collection in the horse.

Right brained horses are apt to react defensively to just about anything you ask. Is also more likely to get hurst or hurt you.

Horses learn how to get themselves off adrenaline when you teach them how to become more left brained.

Learn to win the 7 Games so your horse emerges calmer, smarter, braver and more athletic. Produce mental and emotional shifts. 

Study horse in all situation, learn to read their body language.

Savvy, reading the horse and knowing what to do when, is what safety and success is all about.

Right brain positive, right brain negative.

Good habits are right brain positive behaviours.

Share this...

Facebook

0