What Makes Horses Safe?

Some might say a safe horse is a trained horse. Some might
agree a horse that has lots of miles on it would be considered a
safe horse. Yet another opinion is a well bred horse would be
considered a safe horse with the proper training.

Although all of the above might be true to some extent, the safest
horses are the horses ridden and or handled by knowledgeable
people. And even that isn’t a guarantee that everything will be
perfect.

On average a well trained horse that has left the training barn will
revert back to the level of his rider in about 3 months time. Sad
isn’t it? All that time and money invested, in roughly 3 months
the owner is either looking for another trainer or taking the horse
BACK to the training barn who has had the horse to begin with.

What if you’ve bought a horse from the sale barn? Well, now
you are taking an even bigger risk. You never know what you
are going to get at the sale barn. It’s a crap shoot. It can go
either way. You’ll get lucky to find a suitable horse or you’ll get
someone else’s problems.

The fact is, people buy and sell horses all the time. Every time
a horse lands in the hands of another owner, that horse is going
to learn things that are good for him to know…or not so good to
know. These behaviors can make the horse more reliable or more
dangerous to be around. There is a good chance you’ll have to
make up for what was done TO the horse, by accident, by people

without knowledge of the horse himself.

Let me give you an example of this. A horse that doesn’t know his
space while being lead could run you down if something spooked
him! Another example would be a horse that doesn’t have a good
stop on him. He might run away with you in a scary situation.

If the horse has never been given the training to teach him to have
a good stop or knowing where his space is when being lead can’t
be blamed for this behavior. Now, if he’s come to you with good
manners on the ground and a good stop on him and YOU didn’t
have the information to keep the good things going, then I’m sorry
to say it is the responsibility of the rider/handler and the horse still
should not be blamed. People have a really hard time taking a look
at them selves when things go wrong with horses. But truly, it is
our responsibility to learn these things.

What we have to realize is that we are dealing with this thinking,
feeling, reactive animal that makes animal based decisions to
preserve his own life in scary situations. His instincts tell him to
do this. It’s our responsibility to learn as much as we can about
our horse’s innate characteristics and get lessons from the trainer
who trained our horse so we can keep up with the maintenance of
his training.

On the other hand, if we have a horse that needs help with
something in his training, we need to get that information as
well. An example of that would be a horse that wants to kick
when asked to pick up his hind legs for the farrier. We need to
understand first, WHY he is kicking. Then go from there to build
confidence within the horse to trust us enough to let us have his
hind feet upon request. If we can’t understand WHY, according to
how the horse thinks, we will end up forcing the horse by accident.
Horses can only do the best they can with the information they are
receiving from us.

In the end, our horsemanship skills will keep us safe with horses.
Take the responsibility for your safety around them. Continue to
learn about the horse himself. Strive to be the best horseman you
can be so that your horse will continue to be or become safe to be
around. Learn to become the leader your horse deserves so that he
will respect your decisions and become your partner in your own
little herd of two.