11/08/2025
A great way to look at movement ! Still is not always calm! Communication is so important
Sucked Back: About the Scariest Horse Problem I Can Think Of
In an attempt to. make horses safe to ride, much desensitizing focuses on stillness. Stand still while you see/feel/experience this stimulus. I hear often that people absolutely require stillness from their horses for certain situations, and I agree that being still is an important part of safety for mounting, tying and such.
But the thoughtful horse person must very carefully distinguish between still and "stuck."
Stuck is when forward is removed from the horse's vocabulary - blocked, shut down, repeatedly denied. A horse learning will squirm away, squiggle around, and naturally want to move away from a fearful stimulus or something they don't understand. An intelligent horse person knows how to channel that energy into something constructive, as opposed to shutting the energy down.
In time, the horse learns that CONSTRUCTIVE movement leads to calm - not evasive movement being allowed to continue. Constructive movement allows the horse to process through movement (the very thing they were designed for) what scares them, until they settle into stillness.
This preserves their forward nature - allowing us to build on it in their training. For things like trailer loading of course, we need some forward movement. Shutting down a horse's forward movement will come back to haunt you a million fold in trailer loading by producing a horse that balks, sucks back, pulls back, or flat out plants.
Shutting down forward movement creates more rearing, bucking, and planting - none of these desirable.
And of course, it is impossible to create contact, connection, bend, and any other desirable way of going without forward movement. You can't shape lack of movement.
Don't confuse "stuck" for calm. Don't remove the forward out of a horse just for the illusion of safety - a horse that does not go is in no way safe - it is not a matter of if, but when, this horse will react dangerously - and it is a travesty created entirely by human fear of the forward nature of a horse.
As always, the solution is learning to ride, learning to love going forward - constructively, not uncontrollably.
Human fear of forward is one of the greatest causes of flattening out and repressing the most beautiful parts of a horse: their love of movement.
