WHY DO HORSES FREAK OUT WHEN THEY SEE OTHER HORSES?

Why Do Horse's Freak Out When They See Other Horses!

It is actually caused by a few things...firstly, horse's are hardwired to pick up on the emotions of others. In a herd horse's collectively process things that concern them. The herd is knitted together with a whole range of horse's with varying abilities to process and assess change in their environments. Therefore, change in an environment triggers them to be concerned and look to others to work out if they are ok. Part of training a horse is teaching the horse to look to us for this process (more of that later).

Therefore, when an new horse arrives on the scene or one comes galloping up to the fence as you are riding along. This change in the environment and the emotions this triggers can lead to arousal being triggered and horses can get "up". The greater the training and connection cultivated between horse and rider or handler the less the horse will be impacted. This is because training helps develop the horse's skills to process change and to look to the human to help in their assessment of things they are not sure about.

Therefore, these are the reasons why horses can get "up" when they see other horses. When can reduce the impact of this situation by investing in strategic training the develops the horse's ability to emotionally process change and to connect to you in these situations instead of other horses. However, if if you are ever in a situation where a horse gets "up" when it sees another horse the bests thing to do is allow the horse to move and you can guide that movement using groundwork or if ridden a figure of 8. Also, moving away can also help. However, given time to move and process horse's will typically come down pretty quickly. Generally things tend to escalate if riders or handlers try to restrict the movement of the horse and they feel trapped or try to stop them from looking or become stressed and aggressive to the horse.

Working through my reboot program from the round yard, groundwork and foundation riding is a way of learning the skills to be able to build a connection with a horse and handle these situations.