10/31/2026
This!! 🩵
When a horse is fresh, reactive, or difficult, a lot of riders will problem-solve by working the horse harder. Equine welfare advocate and author Shelby Dennis argues that approach can miss the more important question: Why is the horse behaving that way in the first place?
Dennis, author of Secrets of the Horse: A New Approach to Training and Understanding Horses, sees training used as a way to physically exhaust horses so unwanted behavior becomes less likely to appear. “A lot of horse training is used to physically exhaust the horse to stop unwanted behavior from happening instead of addressing the source of the unwanted behavior,” Dennis said.
A horse who becomes difficult under saddle may be responding to stress, discomfort, or another underlying issue. More exercise might make the horse tired enough to behave differently in the short term, but Dennis argues that it does not necessarily change the underlying state driving the behavior.
Instead, she encourages riders to start with another question. “Why is my horse behaving this way?” she said. “How can we address it to make them feel safer and more relaxed in their nervous system?” Instead of trying to stop the horse from expressing something, the rider begins looking for the reason that expression exists.
There is another practical problem with relying on physical exhaustion: horses get fitter. The more consistently a horse is exercised, the harder it can become to simply tire the energy or behavior out of him. Dennis describes this as a self-defeating cycle. The rider increases the workload to reduce unwanted behavior, the horse gains fitness, and eventually the same workload has less effect. The underlying problem may still be there.
Dennis’s argument is not that exercise is bad or that horses should never be worked hard. Horses need appropriate physical preparation for the jobs they are asked to do, but using fatigue shouldn’t be the primary behavioral strategy. Tired and relaxed are not the same thing. A horse may look quieter after a long schooling session because he is physically spent. That does not necessarily mean he feels safer, more confident, or more comfortable with the situation that caused the behavior in the first place.
Dennis uses a different approach with horses she has trained, using more rewards-based methods from the beginning. Those horses tend to develop a different relationship with training and are more willing to engage in the learning process. That foundation can also influence how much work the horse needs in order to be manageable.
“I don’t need to constantly be trying to physically exhaust them to try to keep them safe or have them being ridden all the time to be safe because that foundation of trust and understanding is there,” she said.
đź“Ž Continue reading this article at https://www.theplaidhorse.com/2026/10/30/stop-trying-to-tire-the-behavior-out-of-your-horse/
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