Why do horses react the way that they do when they spook?

Recently, I had an old client tell me that her horse has what she calls a violent reaction when he spooks. When I asked her what she meant, she said that her horse likes to take the bit and run and then he starts to buck. She then asked me what my advice would be to fix the problem.

While I hardly consider that to be a violent reaction, I do consider it a problem.

So I will address the spooking problem first.

To address the problem of spooking horses, we must first address the cause of what is making the horse spook. Most of the time, the answer to that question is rather a simple one, the horse was startled by something. For the most part, horses are very similar to us in the fact that when they are surprised they tend to be startled and jump. Not a big deal!

I am sure that a lot of you have heard of teaching a horse to spook in place. Well to be honest with you, there really is not a lot to teaching a horse to do that. The best example that I can come up with, being a relatively new dad, is that when one of my daughters falls down or bumps their heads, they always look at me to see what my reaction is going to be. If I make a big deal out of it, then they are going to let loose and start crying, if I look at them and smile and laugh, they look at me and smile, get up and move on.

The same goes for horses. How many times have you been sitting on your horse and something startled him, so he jumped? All you did was just sit there like nothing happened and all that happened was the horse only had that small little jump. It happens to me all of the time especially on the young horses. I just simply do not react to the situation so the horses reaction was minor. In in effect, I have just taught my horse to spook in place.

So what happened to my old client and her new horse?

I went to go watch her ride the horse. She would start out fine with him, but she was already afraid of him, and she would not let go of the horses face. The entire time that she was on him, she was hanging on his face, so the horse was already uncomfortable. (When a horse is uncomfortable,be it from a poorly fitting saddle or a rider hanging on them, the will look for any excuse to spook.) When the tractor went by the arena, the horse was startled and took off, because the rider clenched up. As soon as the rider clenched up, she became off balance, thus, causing the horse to buck.

Truth was, the horse was not reacting to whatever startled him, he was reacting to the rider!

At that point it became apparent, it was not the horses confidence that was the problem ,it was the riders confidence that was the problem for the horse.

Now, it is true that some horses will react in a big way to something, and there really is nothing you can do about it but ride it out. At that point you need to be a confident rider, but most of those reactions do not last long.

Just an FYI for you.........

I have lived in the desert my entire life and I have never had a horse spook from a rattle snake. Quite the opposite, horses are curious animals, most of the time they want to investigate where the sound on the rattle is coming from and are bitten on the nose.