A lot of people in the world have a lot of fears and these fears are usually drivers of insecurities that we might have until the end of our lives if we do not fight them. Apart from fears, there is another stronger feeling of fear which is a phobia, something that people may have or may not have. However, a huge percentage of people in the world have a lot of fears.
My point is that the same thing happens with animals as well. They have a lot of fears and phobias, of course not of them but still, there are things that you can’t convince your animals to do because it is more difficult for them to fight their fears compared to us. If their fear is in the level of phobias then it will probably be impossible to try to convince them to do something that involves their phobias.
You can’t treat animals the same way as people as the level of control in fear is way lower for animals compared to humans. If we can understand that something is not dangerous, it will take a longer time for animals to understand. That is why all of these people involved in sports and disciplines with animals, more specifically horses, work really hard to fight the insecurities their horses have so on the day of the performance they will put on a beautiful show with no complications occurred.
In the video below, you will be able to see two horses who both show the fear they have in different ways. They are close to jumping in a water place, however, they react completely differently. The first one touches the water first and then when he sees that there is no problem entering, he, together with his rider, get in together. The second horse seemed to be more confident after he saw his friend jumping in so he immediately jumped after his friend from a long distance and at the same time, his rider fell as it was unexpected. Please have a look at the video below and let us know what you think about this situation, given the fact that a lot of people were not happy with what happened.
https://www.facebook.com/HORSE.TRIBUTE/videos/424530127930951/