One of the most interesting and most difficult aspects of horsemanship is learning to understand our horses and relate to them on horse terms. It always fascinates me that people consider themselves superior to animals and yet expect animals to learn our language rather than the other way around. Horses and dogs both learn to respond to complicated human demands but people often misinterpret basic horse and dog communication.
Building trust
As prey animals, horses have a very strong sense of self-preservation. Their instincts are to run quickly from any threat and to stay within the security of the herd. With good training and positive experiences behind him and a confident rider sitting on top, a mature horse will follow directions instead of instinct to a large extent. But we have to realize that the flight and herd instincts are just below the surface. It's our responsibility to build the trust that keeps instinct in check and the horse manageable.
Trust between people or between people and animals is built on a history of positive interaction. In order to trust someone, we have to believe they will respond consistently and appropriately in a given situation and that they will follow through with what they say. The same goes for horses. To build trust, we must respond appropriately and consistently to their behavior or anticipated behavior and once started on a course of action, follow through.
Understanding what horses are saying
Consistency and follow-through are simply a matter of self-discipline on our part, but appropriate response is only possible if we understand what we are responding to. In other words, we have to learn to understand what our horses are saying. After all, why should a horse trust a person who responds angrily to her fear on the one hand, or sheepishly to her bravado on the other?
Because people are verbal, we tend to dismiss other forms of communication. Horses don't use words. They don't even use sounds to any great extent. But watch horses as they interact with one another and with people. Their ears, eyes, muzzles, tails and body posture are all communicating.
Horses are social animals. As herd members, they interact with other horses continually and use a system of communication to let herd-mates know what they want and don't want. (Animal behaviorists disagree about how much animal communication is under conscious control and how much is automatic reaction to a stimulus, but that argument needn't concern us here.)
Calls, body positions, movements, and odors are all methods of communication. We can't sense the odor or chemical messages, but we can see and hear the others. Sit on the fence some sunny afternoon and be a silent spectator. See what signals you can recognize. The ability to understand horse body language makes our association with horses more rewarding and safer.
Equine body language
The most obvious signal is overall body outline. It's easy to tell the difference between the high, rounded outline of an excited horse and the flat outline of a relaxed one.
Ears
Ears are good indicators. They point in the direction of the horse's attention. Both ears pricked forward may look pretty, but when you're riding, you want at least one ear on you. Ears pinned back indicate anger or fear. (Fear and anger are closely related in people too.) Ears moving back and forth often indicate uncertainty. Some beginners misinterpret any backward pointing of the ears as anger, but it's the horse with ears flat back who's liable to kick.
Tail
The tail is also very expressive. 'High-tailing' is a well-known sign of excitement, but did you realize horses flatten their tails between their legs like dogs when frightened? A horse who scoots away from something with his tail tucked under is truly scared. Tail lashing is a sign of irritation and annoyance. A kinked tail is a sign of submissive fear and often precedes a buck.
Facial signals
More subtle for us are facial signals. In her book The Horse's Mind, Lucy Rees has a diagram of mouth and nose signals. A long nose and tight mouth show anxiety and fear. Horses will also show 'worry wrinkles' above the eyes. Watch a horse being taught something new. At first, his mouth will be tight. Then in the moment he understands, you'll often see the mouth relax and chew.
A wrinkled nose indicates annoyance and disgust. A horse threatening to bite has an open mouth and perhaps bared teeth. (Not the same as 'mouthing' in foals which is a submissive gesture.) A long nose with a slightly open mouth shows the horse wants to mutual groom, a gesture you may have seen while currying your horse. It becomes the characteristic long nose, drawn-back lower lip and extended neck when you find 'the spot'.
What I have mentioned here just skims the surface of horse communication. Thoughtful observation of horses combined with reading books and articles in such magazines as EQUUS and Practical Horseman will teach you lots. Learning to understand what our horses are telling us -- and responding appropriately -- makes a huge difference in our relationship with them.
Keeping horses at home has advantages and disadvantages. I have kept my horses in boarding stables and at home and can speak from both sides. When you interact with your horse every day, when you're the one who brings the food, when you can watch your horse just being a horse, you share a deeper understanding. At the stable, you only see your horse for a couple of hours a day and in a very structured environment. I find my approach to my horse is more businesslike at a stable because we're there to ride and train. At home, everything is more relaxed. Sometimes so relaxed I never get around to riding!
For me, the best of both worlds is to keep my horse at home during the summer and boarded at a stable with an indoor arena for the winter. If you are thinking of doing that, now is the time to check out stables and book a stall. If you wait until January, you may be out of luck.
When you're looking after your own horse, you can't, on a whim, decide to stay downtown after work and go to a movie. If your horse is unwell, you are the one who has to recognize that something is wrong. You have to decide when to call the veterinarian. You have to be there for the farrier. In other words, the full weight of responsibility of looking after a delicate life is on your shoulders.
Some people are very blasé about the whole thing. They've been very lucky and never had to deal with a horse emergency. Perhaps they don't know enough about horses to realize what could happen or don't care anyway. But most of us are very aware of the responsibility, especially if we've dealt with a colicking horse at 11 o'clock at night. I always advise new horse owners to start by boarding their horse at a good stable where they'll have support.
Veterinarians and farriers are vital allies in looking after our horses and it's important to build an ongoing relationship. A late night emergency call should not be the first contact with a veterinarian. While it might seem cheaper at the time to do innoculations ourselves, booking an annual veterinary visit has long term benefits. Horses' hooves need trimming and shoes reset if the horse is shod, every six to eight weeks. Rather than waiting until the hooves look long, or crack, or a shoe falls off, isn't it better to set up a regular schedule with a farrier and stick to it?
Typically in a boarding stable, routine veterinary and farrier care is provided for many horses at once. For example, a farrier might spend a whole morning at one barn, basically setting up his portable blacksmith's shop and attending to the hooves of one horse after another. Contrast that with going to an acreage for a single horse. (Keeping horses alone is another issue.) Hopefully the owner has the horse waiting in a barn or corral. Sometimes, an inconsiderate owner waits until the farrier arrives before going out into the pasture to catch the horse, who is perhaps standing knee deep in a slough. In the worst case scenario, the owner has forgotten about the appointment and the farrier has made the trip for nothing.
If you keep your horse in an acreage subdivision as many of us do, why not coordinate routine veterinary and farrier visits with neighbouring horse owners? Your vet or farrier will appreciate being able to make several calls in the same area instead of wasting time travelling. A good relationship with these professionals makes looking after a horse much easier.
I just got done with several interviews over the past few weeks and was reminded of a question that I am OFTEN confronted with: Why do you live all the way out in Lancaster and work down here in Los Angeles?
I think the reason that I work down in LA is fairly clear to understand…there is work in LA and not in Lancaster (at least for software engineers any ways). After a handful of interviews over the course of a few weeks I landed a job. Normally I interview for a week and pick one of a few job offers the next week. While I can’t say that this last process was quite that picture perfect I still found a new job a couple weeks after looking. In this economy that is not too bad!
The other question is usually harder to answer: why do I live all the way up in Lancaster. I try all sorts of routes to explain to people why I live 75 miles away from where I work. I have 6 kids and don’t want to raise them any where near LA. The town that I live in is considerably more friendly than most towns in the valley. I want to own a ranch and owning a ranch in LA is either not possible or not financially possible. I have horses and like to ride them. So on and so forth.
Well – this evening I was reminded of one of my better reasons for living this far away from where I work.
I tacked up my Paso Fino, Chester. I then rode around the block to a friends house to pick her (DJ) and her Paso Fino (Bizan) up. We then headed south towards the park. Once there we cut through the park to head over to the Vons parking lot. Once in the Vons parking lot we crossed the street to a field that opens up to the national forest. Then we rode up towards the Aqueduct. The sun had started to set and there wasn’t going to be a moon. For this reason we turned around just before reaching the Aqueduct and started to head back home. On the way home we stopped at El Pollo Loco and picked up two orders of “3 piece dark, veggies, mash potatoes and gravy, and some soda”. We then walked to the center of the parking lot where we ate our food. As we ate some folks rolled up in their pimp car bumping some loud tunes. They asked “can we pet the horse?” “Sure!” So they got out and asked questions and so on while petting the horse. Then they left. Another fella walked up with his dogs and chatted us up for a bit. Also petting the horse! We finished up with our food, saddled up, and rode back across the street to the park. By this time it was very black outside so we did some full speed laps across an empty soccer field (this is very fun!!). Then we headed home.
Try doing this in LA! I would be afraid of someone trying to rob me and steal my horse shoes from me. Or worse, coming home to wash the spray paint off the backside of my horse. Sorry for the image quality…iPhones still don’t have flash or high ISO capability!
My name is Andrew Siemer and this is yet another blog that I am going to maintain. I am a father of 6, ex Army Ranger, software engineer, father, and over all nerd. I am adding to this the fact that I have always loved horses and have recently been able to extend my life into the world of horses. I now have 4 horses. Rowdy, Daisy, Nemo, and Chester. I almost had a 5th horse “Cookie Monster” but he has turned out to be more monster and less cookie…so his feed lease with us is up!
Rowdy
We first got into horses when we were out looking for houses (bad market for some…great market for others!) and we came across the Pet Kiss Ranch. We decided to stop in and see what they had (for sale). This was in November of 2008. We were allowed to go for a ride on some of their horses to see if we liked it as much as we thought we would. We did and started to take some lessons there (each of us going for a small ride in their large arena). We did this for a while and got to the point that we decided to start looking for a horse that would be a good starter horse for the whole family.
My father-in-law, Bill Thompson, knew a lady that bred dogs (whom he purchased his Labrador Retriever from). She just so happened to also have a bunch of horses on her property. She was in a position that she needed to get rid of one (/some) of them. Bill thought that one horse in particular would be a really good horse for us. He was a really big pony in fact.
The whole idea of having a pony at the time didn’t really appeal to me all that much. I am a pretty big guy and my riding a pony didn’t conjure up anything but a silly smile! I was in doubt.
We went out to this lady’s place one day (in early December) to take a look at this “pony”. As it turned out it didn’t look like one of those normal bloated funny looking ponies. This guy looked like a normal size horse in thickness but that had been squished into a shorter not so long body. We were told that he was a quarter horse / welsh pony cross and he was painted white and an orange-ish brown color. He was a cute little guy.
We walked up to meet this 11 year old pony named Rowdy. He seemed really nice – not “rowdy” at all. He came up to meet each of us. Then the kids each took a turn riding this little guy around his 40’ x 40’ stall. The Bill ponied the pony around with one of my kids on his back. He seemed mellow enough. Then my wife took a turn. All was well.
One thing for sure though, this pony didn’t like big men! He got a little snorty when I came close. Oh well…this little guy was not slated to be my primary horse. We came back a week later with a trailer and picked him up.
Once we got back to our home town we met up with Bill Pursley from the Pursley Ranch. Bill helped us get Rowdy out of the trailer and into his new home (mid December). All was well!
We spent some time with Rowdy to get him cleaned up and ready to be a part of our family. Each day we would spend time with him, groom him, muck his stalls, etc. We got his feet taken care of. Rowdy was turning out to be quite a happy little pony. We then got some tack from Grandpa Bill Thompson for Christmas. Of course we couldn’t wait to get home and ride our pony. We got so carried away that christmas that we got all (6) of our kids everything they needed to dress up like a cow boy/girl. From boots to hats…they were ready to ride.
Once we got back from our Christmas vacation we were quite excited to get a saddle on our new little pony and go for a ride. We got Rowdy out, cleaned him up, tacked him up, and walked him to the round pin.
Now we know why he was named Rowdy!
Rowdy took off and ran about that round pen. Keep in mind that we are still very new to horses. Learning with Rowdy may not have been the best idea. Long story short we enrolled Rowdy into a training session at the Pursley Ranch with a man named Josh Avilla. This was our first experience with a horse trainer. As it turned out the guy was a “cowboy” style horse trainer (more on this topic later). We let Josh play with Rowdy for the enrolled 30 days.
We were so very happy to now be horse owners. The kids were happy too. We went to the ranch every day to take care of our little pony.
Daisy
As I said earlier, I never had any plan to ride our new little pony. Going out to the ranch to take care of Rowdy was very enjoyable but didn’t ever satisfy the urge to get out there and ride a horse. So in the back of my mind I was always looking for a horse that was better suited for me.
While out house hunting we came across the local Gymkhana. We had passed this seemingly empty lot several times. That day it was alive with action as many competitors were there for the fun. We stopped by to see what was going on (as we had never seen a Gymkhana before). As we walked up the main road we encountered the biggest horse I have ever seen in person. Daisy.
Daisy was a Percheron baby from a PMU rescue. She had a fairly big fella on her back and they were walking to the warm up arena to get ready to compete. I asked the guy what sort of horse he was riding, how she rode, etc. The guy said that he was feed leasing her to compete in Gymkhana and that he loved her. He said that she was very very sweet 3 year old mare!
We hung out to see how Daisy competed and how she went. She was pretty amazing. She was an absolutely HUGE horse…but very light on her feet. Apparently they were currently in first place for there area. Now that I knew the type of horse I was interested in having…I was happy. I was one step closer to find a horse for me!
We left to continue our house hunting. We had a whole list of houses to check out that day. On our way back home after looking at a few houses found ourselves back at the Gymkhana. We stopped by again (though my wife wasn’t too happy about that!). We walked up to the main arena to watch the fun. They were doing some jumping!
As we got there, we were in time to see Daisy do a run. After her run was complete they called out her pretty fast time. Then came an odd message. As of that moment, Daisy was for sale. For sale? You have to be kidding me.
I started to ask around about Daisy. I heard various things about Daisy…some good some bad. (the bad later turned out to be more human politics related than anything Daisy had ever done). We located the owner of Daisy..followed her home…and went for a test drive on Daisy.
I WAS IN LOVE! I found my horse. I had the owner of Daisy hold on to her for me so that I could talk to my wife about possibly purchasing Daisy.
We started payments on her the following week (middle of January).
Finding Daisy was probably the best thing we could of done. Just because we found her. But also because we found another boarding facility that seemed to be more family friendly. And…they were just down the street from where we were currently located. We immediately relocated to the Ramsey Family Boarding facility.
At the Ramsey’s we met many new friends that were very much into sharing all of their knowledge. This got me into horse training. We were invited over to watch horse training movies (with cookies and coffee). Good friends, more group rides, all was good.
We also met up with Syd Thurman once we moved over to the Ramsey’s. She was the local horse trainer. With her guidance I have learned so much about riding horses, caring for horses, and training horses. She immediately fixed all of our previous issues with Rowdy. She also fixed the issues that our cowboy trainer Josh Avilla introduced (Rowdy was no so scared of men that he would cower at the back of his stall when Josh would approach him). And she helped me to show Daisy some simple ground manners.
WE LOVE SYD THURMAN!
Nemo
After having spent so much time with Syd Thurman I felt ready to start training my own green horse. I really thought that I wanted to get a horse that knew nothing. Our friend Josh told me about a lady that always picked really great horses and that she might have a quarter horse for sale. We met with this lady and this new horse Nemo one night. While he was not quite as untrained as I was hoping for, he was going to be the perfect horse for my kids one day. You could see that he was an absolutely stable minded horse. He smiled, hugged, and loved to be rubbed. Apparently he had spent his past 6 years as someone's backyard pet receiving nothing but love and attention of all the right sorts.
We immediately purchased him on the spot.
Our most loved trainer Syd Thurman immediately started to work with me and Nemo. Eventually she took over his training to put him on the fast track to being a horse that all could ride. He is now a very ride able horse. More importantly he always loves to greet you, and give you a hug!
Chester
Now that I have spent several months learning all that I could about horses I finally ran across a Paso Fino horse. For those that have never heard of or seen a Paso Fino take a look at this video or search YouTube for Paso Fino.
All of my new friends at the Ramsey ranch really wanted me to buy Chester. He is a very large (which is rare) Paso Fino that would be perfect for a big rider like me. We went to look at him at Lori Ebert’s place in Acton Ca. My wife and I rode a few laps on Chester to see what we thought of him. Initially we were not going to buy him (as we now had 3 horses that we were boarding) since we were still looking for a house to buy. But as things progressed Chester became the Paso Fino for me. My friends pushed and pushed and pushed for us to get Chester…so we did.
I have to say that Chester is the most fun horse I have ever ridden and is indeed my preferred trail horse. Their gate insures that there is one foot on the ground at all times. This makes them the mountain goat of horses. Also, many refer to them as the “border collie” or the horses as they are very smart and pick things up quickly. He rocks.
Now that we have Chester my wife is finally taking lessons and getting very much involved with the horse world.
Andrew Siemer
Teacher, Author, Engineer, Architect, Build Master, Scrum Master, Father of 6, Husband, ex Army Ranger
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