Trotzkopf – When a Young Horse gets frustrated

Everyone who has raised children, knows temper tantrums. Some children have them occasionally while others have them regularly. It depends on the individual child and its character -there is not much you can do about that- and also a bit on how good you are at parenting.

With horses it is very similar. Some horses are almost picture perfect and never throw tantrums, others do it more often. You cannot really change the character of your horse but you can manage temper tantrums well and you can manage them badly. 

Of course, the term is not 100% correct to use it with horses, as the horse’s brain is less complex and thus there are simpler explanations for their behaviour. If you consider a temper tantrum a sudden outburst of anger because of an unfulfilled desire, the term does not really fit. However, horses have emotions just like us. They do get frustrated and can have fits of rage due to frustrations which are displayed by pinned back ears, a swishing tail, stomping feet and finally charging, biting and kicking. Once the stimulus which has caused this rage to happen is taken away, the horse calms down immediately. They are not aggressive, so they cannot really express anger as as we do or throw temper tantrum such as a small child which cannot yet express himself and might withdraw into sulking for a long time, even if they finally acquire what they originally wanted. So of course the analogy does not work completely here, but I use it to give you an idea how it feels to us humans normally.

Rajmani definitely gets frustrated if things don’t go the way he likes them to. He has a low level of tolerance and he easily loses confidence and withdraws into a kind of temper tantrum. Not all the time and definitely not every day, but once in a while. We had a bit of a temper weekend and I want to write about it here, so that if you have similar issues, don’t despair. These things happen and you cannot do much about it except trying to manage them well.

So what happened during our training on the week-end? And what are “temper tantrums” in horses?

You ask the horse to do something and he reacts in a defying way, refusing to do it. He might shake his head, do something else, rear up, stop dead, etc.

That something can be really easy to do and he might have done it before without any issues. With Rajmani it was changing direction on the circle. I asked him to come inside and change directions. That is nothing big, in fact it was something he has done perfectly well before.

Now of course, this can have a lot of different reasons, particularly pain! Your horse could show you that something hurts him or he is uncomfortable with something! This should always be considered before anything else! But sometimes it is also a young horses testing his boundaries, trying out how far he can go or checking if he can decide the rule of the game.

In the case Rajmani I was pretty sure pain was not the issue here. He had been fairly good for some time and now was his time to test this boundaries and check out how far he can go. Being mouthy and trying to nip and bite had always been a problem and I have been wary when I am around him pretty much all the time, even though he has stopped trying to nip me when he realised that I don’t let him get away with it. But then during the last week-end he suddenly decided he did not want to change directions anymore as he had done fairly well before. He started to stop, face me and refuse to continue. He shook his head on me, stomped his feet and tried to bite the stick when I put pressure (not by whipping him of course, just using it as the extension of my arm). If I increased the pressure he reared up. He did not strike at me with his legs, he just stood still with two legs in the air. I think, he has been trained to do that on some clue, because he did this without any kind of nervousness or balancing issues. He does not even rise up that far, just lifting his body a bit up. Same goes with putting his weight from one front leg to the other. If he did not want to do what I was asking him to do, he would do that instead. The more I pressurized him, the more hectic he got.

What did I do? Number one: I tried to stay calm! It was not easy and I did lose my temper the one or other time, but I know quite well, that this does not solve anything except giving me a vault to vent my anger on the danger of escalating the conflict with the horse make him lose his trust in me. Of course you need to set boundaries while working with any horse, let alone a teenage, recently-gelded, ex-stallion, but staying calm and composed is really the most important point and working with frustrated horses throwing “temper-tantrums” is almost equally about mastering our own emotions. Anger has absolutely no place between you and the horse!

Then I tried to find out, why he suddenly had the issue with this exercise. I videoed myself working with Rajmani and checked my body language. I tried to be more concise as I realised, it was contra dictionary at times, even though these contradictions were minor and I don’t think they were the cause for his behaviour. Still, self-improvement is always helpful!

I did a lot of Friendly Game with my stick as his reaction was so extreme to it and he constantly tried to bite in the stick and went back to working on the Seven Games with him.

This is a concept of working with horses developed by Pat Parelli, a famous Natural Horsemanship Trainer. While I do not endorse everything he postulated, I do like the Seven Games as they are a pretty good foundation of horse training, involving all the basics the horse should know. I will probably do a separate article about the Seven Games as they deserve a mention and might help other people to work with their young horses, but I will just comment on a few basics here. The first and most important game is the Friendly Game which basically means that I can touch my horse everywhere on his body with my hand, the rope and the stick. I can also play this game with different things the horse might be afraid of. By using the method of advance and retreat, I get the horse to accept it and ultimately not being afraid of it any more.

So, I did a lot of Friendly Game with the stick trying to get him over the biting reaction. Bit by bit I managed it, even though he still does not like me to do the Friendly Game with the stick from the front. I also used the stick to move the forehand and hind quarters around. He had no issues with the hind quarters but did not like to move his forehand around. As there is more weight on the forehand, this is not unusual, but Rajmani was a bit extreme, trying to bite into the stick every time I touched him on the shoulder. But finally, he came around and moved his forehand just one step which is enough for the beginning. At the same time, his turns got better again. Still he would stop, but when I waved the stick at him and clicked my tongue, he would move again while earlier he had just stopped, reared up, gone backwards or started to paw or shift his weight from one front leg to the other.

Rajmani is also a bit head-shy which probably comes from the fact that people slapped him when he tried to bite them. Horses soon develop that into a game. Let’s see if I can bite you without getting hit on my head by your reaction! That is a very common game and does not prevent the horse from biting, but makes him dislike your hands on or near his head. It is a vicious circle really. That is why I never hit horses on their head. If they try to bite me, I leave my hand or elbow standing there so they hit themselves. If they do that a few times, they will soon stop it as they hurt themselves. The behaviour pattern becomes less desirable to them and they drop it. But unlike me punishing them, which is a concept horses do not understand, it is self-inflicted.

So, I am still working to get him accept my touch on his head. It is not that he does not let me touch him there, but he is clearly not comfortable with it. Whether I clean his eyes or slip the halter over his head, he tries to get away as soon as possible. As a consequence, I do everything slowly and gently to make sure he does not experience discomfort with me touching him. Before I slip on his halter, I rub it on his nose and try to get him to lower his head which is he does quite nicely now. Not yet perfectly, but we are getting there.

On a positive note, I finally sat on him. It was quite unspectacular and did not involve any rodeo. As I wrote before, I have started placing him next to a mounting stand, actually different ones. First a log, then a bench and finally a wall. It does not matter what it is, the importance is to get him stand parallel to it and not move. Not moving is extremely difficult for Rajmani as he is extremely fidgety and has an urge to move his legs all the time. But I got him so far that I can direct him while standing on top of it by voice and my stick. And if I give him something to chew on, he stands nicely for a few minutes. I then started to lean over him and finally place my leg on top of his back. He accepted it nicely. Then one day, it just felt right to slip on his back. He was surprised and turned his head towards me, trying to bite into my boot. He then moved a couple of steps forward, but was clearly not overly concerned. I slipped down again and finished work for that day. The following day I did the same again, always placing this work at the end of a lesson so I can finish it there and then.

Again, I sat on his back two days later, no saddle, just bareback. This time I had tied the end of my lead rope to his rope halter, fashioning myself a pair of reins so I had a bit more control if he turned his head towards my leg. Once more, he did a few steps forward and turned to sniff my leg. I talked to him and when he calmed down and stood still, I slipped off again. 

Consequently, I can say, that things are going quite well, despite a few hiccups. I managed to deal with his temper tantrums and even though I have not found a remedy to his urge to constantly chew or bite on something, we are on track. About this urge to chew or bite, you might say: “Well he is a gelding after all!” I have trained three stallions and one gelding so far, none of them was quite so mouthy. Why he so extreme, I can only guess at this point. Maybe it is his inner nervousness which might outgrow itself eventually. Maybe he just needs more time to settle and find his place in the herd. Even though most horses tend to grow calm and relaxed if you keep and treat them in the proper way, I must not forget, that he has been here only seven weeks and he has yet to find his place and position with the other horses, something he has never experienced before, as he was kept mostly or even exclusively by himself due to the fact that he was a stallion and has been gelded only by the end of last year. So with patience and work, I am positive that he will turn out well.