Click here for Part 1 of this series if you haven’t seen that yet.
Click here for Part 2 of this series if you haven’t seen that yet
Today we are talking about the emotional causes of spooking / shying horses and what you can do to change that. There’s a written version of the audio below.
Click here if you need an alternate audio- Solving spooking horses Part 3
If you haven’t got them already, registration for the FREE LESSONS The 9 Keys to happiness with Your Horse are just to the right here in that big yellow box.
If you need it, here is the link for finding out how the on-line program Fast Track to Brilliant Riding can help you systematically eliminate all the causes of fear and anxiety behind spooking. But here’s the thing… If you just want to solve a spooking horse and keep everything else you do the same, I doubt whether Fast track will suit you – because it’s a LIFE CHANGER. It brings a depth of happiness and confidence to horse and rider that spills over into the rest of your life too. Have a look at how that happens here…
WRITTEN VERSION OF THE AUDIO
Welcome to Part 3 of our series on solving spooking horses.
Today we are talking about some of the emotional causes of spooking.
An old fright imprint or an old trauma will cause spooking.
Let me tell you what I mean about that. In The Second Key to Happiness with Your Horse, I talked about how when a horse is afraid and cannot take action to help themselves feel safe, they bury the fear inside themselves. Each of these suppressed fears is cumulative – each fear adds on to and intensifies the next fear.
When a horse has many such buried fears, then they can have a huge fright reaction to what seems to us like just a small thing.
The 7th Key to Happiness – the lesson called Healing of the horses mind, body and spirit by you, shows you how you can help your horse to release those old frights and traumas and get rid of this source of spooking.
Registration for those free lessons is the big yellow box on the right hand side, at the top of this page.
Releasing old frights and traumas for horse and person is also one of the big focuses (is there any such word?) of our on-line course Fast Track to Brilliant Riding. (Which is not free but is the best value, innovative and progressive course you could possibly imagine!)
Being in the Not Too Sure Zone for too long.
Chronic anxiety is the result of being in what I call The Not Too Sure Zone. And chronic anxiety on either your part or your horses, will cause spooky behaviour.
It doesn’t matter whether the anxiety is yours or your horse’s though, the answer is to take whatever action you need, to make BOTH of you feel safe. Make a commitment to yourself to to help BOTH of you feel safe.
This might take you a bit more time at first, but you will be surprised at how fast your progress can be together when it is laid in the foundation of a comfort zone and in the happiness of a deep comfort zone.
And what is your safety and the happiness that comes from that worth to you anyway? It’s just a short time…
I talk about the deep comfort zone, the Not Too Sure Zone and the Oh Shit I am Dead Zone in great detail in free lessons The 9 Keys to Happiness with Your Horse, so I won’t go into them in detail here. Have another look at them or if you haven’t got them yet, get those lessons to understand how to solve THAT cause of spooking – they are brilliant lessons!
And again, the online course Fast Track to Brilliant Riding spends 12 months supporting you while you work your way through your horse’s routine, finding and eliminating every source of nerves for your horse and even for you too.
And then you work through the things that you would LIKE to have in your routine, like cars and motor bikes and umbrellas and baby’s prams – all the things that your horse will see when they are out and about. You don’t HAVE to leave things like this to chance and risk your horse diving out from underneath you.
The more things you help your horse get into their comfort zone, the more they look to you for each new thing without spooking. And THAT is a seriously beautiful feeling.
Living in the Not Too Sure Zone.
You would be surprised and probably disappointed at how many horses live all their lives in the Not Too Sure Zone, being kicked out into the Oh Shit I am Dead Zone at the drop of a hat.
In hindsight, I owned at least two of them in the past. These horses are often seriously spooky behaving and are as absolutely fixable as all the other causes of spookiness.
It requires a systematic approach working through their routine to release their old buried emotional stuff and help them get happy with what currently causes them to be in the Not Too Sure Zone.
When you really start listening to your horse and eliminating all their sources of fear and nerves in their lives – you will be pleasantly surprised at how much they turn themselves inside out to co-operate with you. This is one of the things we do in the on line lesson program Fast Track to Brilliant Riding.
And of course, you can have more than one of these causes of a horse spooking happening at the same time.
I was browsing for a photo of a horse spooking and was saddened by some of the stuff you are being told about spooking. The one thing I can promise you – is that they are NOT spooking because they are being a disobedient horse or a bad horse, or a naughty horse and I promise you that they are not trying to get at you…
Eliminate the physical causes, set a foundation of happiness with everything in their routine and watch your horse turn to you for re-assurance when something new and potentially scarey happens. It is a seriously good feeling.
Feel free to add any other causes of spooking that you can think of, or YOUR own experience with a spooky horse to the comments below.
If you need it, here is the link for finding out how the on-line program Fast Track to Brilliant Riding can help you systematically eliminate all the causes of fear and anxiety behind spooking. But here’s the thing… If you just want to solve a spooking horse and keep everything else you do the same, I doubt whether Fast track will suit you – because it’s a LIFE CHANGER. It brings a depth of happiness and confidence to horse and rider that spills over into the rest of your life too. Have a look at how that happens here…
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