What to do when a horse wants to walk faster than you

A horse's sense of safety relies on the awareness of their herd members. If a herd member senses a danger, that horse's posture and energy will reflect the presence of a possible danger, and the other horses respond to that change in energy and posture. This is what helps horses be relaxed in a herd, every horse shares the awareness burden, so no one horse has to be looking out in all directions for possible signs of danger.

But if you add a new horse to a herd, who's posture and energy are never a reflection of what's going on, the other horses will usually chase that horse away. Many times this is a horse that has had the "horse" trained out of it by the way they have been handled.

When those herd members chase that horse away, it's not that they don't like that horse. They are basically saying "we cannot rely on your posture and energy to give us accurate feedback on the environment, so for our collective safety, we'd rather you leave". When that other horse starts having more appropriate responses to the environment, responses that the others can rely on, then they are welcomed back into the herd.

One thing I have to help people with a lot at clinics and in demo sessions at horse expos, is to be much more aware of their posture and energy. In our online video library, my wife Robyn Schiller has a whole section on nervous system regulation, so that people can show up to their horses with a regulated nervous system (and therefore have a relaxed posture).

In this short video, I talk about posture and energy when leading, and give a tip on what to do with a horse that wants to walk faster than you.

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