This is a funny one: A horse trying to say hello to a foals’ statue.

Some may think about how beautiful this horse is, how gorgeous, graceful, proud he looks. But some may think about the way he is trying to say hello to a statue. Either way, his action is a funny one.

When we work with horses there are certain situations we are bound to run into sooner or later. We have all had a horse refuse to do something we asked him to do. When we encounter this situation, how should we deal with it? There are different forms of refusal and they should be dealt with appropriately. There is the confused horse that did not understand what you asked, or the resistant horse that does understand but refuses to perform, or the horse that confuses a statue with a real horse.

Confusion is an emotion that we do not always allow our horses to feel. When you work with your horse, think about the horse as being always right. Most horses want to please us, so when they respond to a cue, they respond the way they think we want them to.

Sometimes a confused horse will respond with aggression and that must be dealt with before finding a new question. Some horses have never had to make a decision. They are often horses low in the pecking order and ones that have never had any responsibility. Some horses have had little or no handling and horses that have learned how to evade. Some of these horses, when faced with the stress of training, refuse to think their way through a situation.

There is the potential for these horses to lash out aggressively at the source of the stress. Changing the way you ask for a response will not always change the way a horse reacts when in this frame of mind.