First - I agree that really getting after a horse has to be done only when the horse's reactions are not going to make a bad situation worse. ?I also agree that you need to know the horse, to be able to judge what its reaction to discipline is likely to be.
Sometimes it is only necessary to make the horse **think** you are going to kill it. ?We had a young TB mare that nipped. ?However, she only nipped at me, not my husband. ?It was very definitely a dominance issue. ?One day, she nipped while we were working on the corral, and I had a rope handy. She picked a bad spot, as she was in the corner, and further boxed in by a tree. ?I hit her hard - twice - on the neck with the rope, backing her into the corner. ?HOWEVER, I then shifted my aim to the tree right next to her head, and totally beat the tar out of the tree, screaming at the top of my lungs. ?It scared the heck out of her, but since she was NOT actually being hit (saved by the tree ! ), was not provoked into a defense, as I believe she would have been if I had hit her more than twice. ?She never nipped at me again.
On Jan 29, 2008, at 7:34 AM, Rebecca Fabiszak wrote:
I guess I should have qualified this by saying that this?is how the horse should have been treated the first time it exhibited this behavior. ?... She nipped me once after this, knew she was "in trouble, mom's pissed" tried to leave the area quickly as she was without a halter, reared up as she left the stall, slammed her head on the wood as she exited the stall, fell backwards onto her side and thought that I had done it to her. Nothing like self-discipline.?She has not offered to nip since. Beccy
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If there were many horses in even moderately close quarters,
going after one's horse like this causes the horse to back up,
spin, do anything to get away--oblivious of any other horse
or person in its path.? The reaction spreads like dominos.
It could easily be more dangerous to more people to
correct the horse in this situation than to let the misbehavior
