SWS032 V2.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy's goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall, and I'm here to teach you how to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. Today, I'm answering a question that involves a discussion on mental issues or training issues with horses. Let's listen to the question.
Hey Stacy. First, I want to thank you for the podcast, because for a world renowned trainer to be this much free content, it's just unbelievably good for us. Now to the question. A few years ago, I bought a four and a half year old gelding trained on basic flat work. Sorry, my heart is racing. I took him. Even though the owner was very transparent about how aggressive he was from the ground in, I wasn't scared. And I just thought, OK, this will just get better in time. Turns out he's 10 now and still have the same behavioral issues that may caldari in grooming. Tucking up a little unpleasant, I would say. I can tell if he got a little better or if I mastered some techniques to safely be around him. If you correct him trying to bite or our cake, he only gets more aggressive in under saddle. He's one of the best horses I've ever ridden a bit on the lazier side, but fairly easy to train. So complete opposites. Do you think there are horses will maybe have mental issues or trauma so serious that it makes impossible to fix certain behaviors? Or is it just me? I hope this gets on the podcast. Fingers crossed. Kamilla from Italy.
Thank you for being brave and asking your question. I promise. I don't bite. What I'm going to do to answer this question is let's discuss mental issues, training issues, and then I'm going to tell you about a little general idea that I have floating around in my head. That is 10 percent, 80 percent, 10 percent. Let's start with the mental issues. When I think about the truest mental issues I've ever seen with a horse, it makes me want to use words like a chemical imbalance. And before I go too deep into that, I want you to pause and think, what do you believe about chemical imbalances in humans and how that would affect their brain?
Or let's say in dogs, which is another area where it's been studied much more than horses, because I think some of our beliefs from one area of life will carry over into these other areas. For example, I believe in chiropractic because I experience a lot of relief when I go to the chiropractor. But I know other people who say I tried it didn't do much for me. I'm not quite sure I believe in it. So I think everybody comes in with their own opinions on these different things. But there are studies that have suggested that aggressive dogs don't have the same levels of serotonin in their body and that in humans when they note this, they also come up with things like impulsive aggression, depression, obsessive compulsive disorders and things like that. So in areas that have been studied a lot more than horses, there's some evidence that can say things can get a little bit out of whack for whatever reason.
Definitely not gonna go into that except to say, have you ever heard the expression, are you loco and loco? Weed is a pretty well-documented thing that happens to livestock and the clinical signs of a horse that's eaten loco weed or an animal. It can eat it and it can experience the signs weeks or months later. One thing that is often observed is altered behavior and often aggressive behavior. In another paper that I looked up, it says abnormal behavior includes sudden changes in temperament, aggressiveness, a violent reaction to routine management practices such as putting the halter on. And it also explained that horses often show more severe neurological effects than cattle and sheep. And here's the really interesting sentence. It is removal from exposure to the plant can result in some alleviation of the signs. However, behavioral changes may be permanent.
So what else could possibly affect horses like this? There'll be a lot of room for debate, but there is evidence that there are things that can affect horses mentally that could last for a very long time. I think in all of my experience with horses throughout my entire life, especially starting in college when I started to be exposed to hundreds and hundreds of horses, and I would say that out of all of these years of being around horses, there are probably two horses out of all those years that I've observed that I thought were seriously in this case. One of them actually did come from out west where it could very easily have been exposed to something like loco weed. And another one came from the east where it didn't really have a traditional exposure that would have been around it, but that one was observed by much more than me. A couple of different vets and people that were really experienced, more experienced than I was at the time that were like there is something seriously mentally wrong. But even when the horse was sent to OSU, they still couldn't come up with an absolute diagnosis of what was going on. But how do we know the difference or what do I use if I'm going to look for how is this different between being something like a horse that's gone loco or a horse that's having a training issue? And one idea at a point in your head and think about is that if the horse is truly having a real imbalance kind of a thing, you're going to see behavioral changes across the board. That means you're going to see behavior problems in the pasture.
You're going to see behavior problems in the stall, you're going to see behavior problems in hand and you're going to see behavior problems when ridden. So, for example, the on diagnosable horse that went to many vets would become randomly violent, not just towards people. I mean, if you were around him, then you may be exposed to this. But he was also just violent to himself, like he would just kind of look like he just snapped and was having some kind of a breakdown and they never could figure out what was going on. And the key there is that it didn't matter if it was in the pasture or in the stall or when he was being led or when he was being ridden. And that's when, you know, there's something very deep going on for that horse. The vast majority of issues that I've seen over the years with horses have been training issues. Now, if we want to look at this a little bit like the teeter totter that I'm always using for analogy, we could put these extreme like the logoed horse over on to the far side of the teeter totter. And we could say that there's this tiny percentage of horses that could have something really serious like that going on. But all along that that teeter totter, all along that balance beam, all the way to the middle where it seems like supernormal and all the way to the far side. And I'm going to discuss that in a minute where it seems like, boy, this horse is just super gold all along the middle. There's a low a lot of ranges that the horses can have as far as behavior.
So I do believe that in abuse or mishandled, meant or basically experience, the horses could be treated in a way that you could create something that would be pretty severe and possibly even almost present itself as though this horse had a mental chemical imbalance or let's just say, for the example, had eaten loco weed. So in my mind over all these years, I came up with it years ago. It's just super rough so that it helps in a conversation like this so that everybody is not just running around diagnosing their horses really, you know, off and finding that this huge percentage is has got this really realistically tiny, tiny problem. Here's what I came up with. This is not scientific. This is just my own observation. I like to say that there are. 10 percent of horses that are exceptionally good. And this is what we're talking about, we're talking about temperament right here for a minute. We're talking about temperament and 10 percent are just golden. That means you can go around the world and you can go around. It doesn't matter if it's a big professional show or a backyard, get together. A trail ride doesn't matter. The experience level of the people handling the horses. You'll find 10 percent of horses that are just golden. They're just so good all the time. Then I believe that we could maybe even go as high as 10 percent of horses out there that really need an expert.
Maybe it's only 1 percent that have eaten loco weed or have some kind of chemical imbalance. I really don't know where that breaks down, but I do believe that there's a good shot out there, that there's 10 percent of horses where you really need an expert because there's some serious problem happening. If you ever saw the movie book, that was an example of one of these 10 percent where. Whoa. Something really bad is happening here. And I believe there's an 80 percent in the middle and that 80 percent is what the majority of us deal with. And those horses are greatly influenced by how they're handled. So that means if they're handled really poorly, they can be influenced to look way down that side of the scale. That's like the bottom 10 percent. They're really struggling 10 percent or they can be influenced to look like they're way at the top there. They can appear as though they are the nearly indestructible golden child, children of horses like these, these just perfect little ponies that just don't take a step wrong, no matter who's handling them, no matter what pressures put on them. And I think it's a really neat thing, because that means that 90 percent of the horses out there.
Are really, really good horses. They've got this potential in them to do great things. And I might even be overestimating when I say 10 percent. But again, if you break it down that that there's gonna be a smaller percentage inside of there. That's more of what I'm gonna call a chemical imbalance or some kind of damage along that line, like the local weed. And then there's gonna be some other ones that have lingering damage from training and behavior, which I do believe is more what you actually see in the movie Buck. From what I understand, from watching the movie. What this means to me is that when I'm looking around and I'm looking at the horses, I'm saying, what creates this? Is it the horse in general, meaning like that top ten percent is almost indestructible. So something in their temperament is doing that because you can find that top 10 percent in situations that aren't so nice and the horses still just keep on trying. Have you ever met a person like that? They're just always happy and they're just really, really on that side of life. And it's amazing to be around them because they can have these experiences that other people kind of fall apart in and they're still just these solid citizens. Well, I experienced that with horses, but for the 80 percent, there's a combination of temperament and experience that the horses have that really influence them.
And what I've seen there is, especially with some horses that have the temperament to be a little more creative, ask a lot more these questions, they really try to figure out, you know, these different rules. This is when you can find these horses that can end up working the system a little bit more. And you've probably noticed throughout the podcast or maybe on my blogs or YouTube videos that every once in a while I'll use this phrase. I definitely use it a lot when I'm out at horse expos and I'm teaching. And I'll say the one thing when we're doing groundwork we don't want to do. We don't want to let this horse know that we're squishy because if they figure out people are squishy. This is a bad thing. And when I say it generally elicits a laugh. But at the same time, there is immense truth in this, because at the end of the day, when I'm handling a thousand pound horse all day long in every situation, if that horse finds out that it's bigger than me and can push me around, then I am at risk because there is a big problem there with this size difference and power difference. Thankfully, the horses tend to be so trainable and they don't.
They don't explore this very much. But you will find horses that find out that the rules on the ground are a little bit different than the rules on their back. I remember growing up whenever horses misbehaving. I wanted to get on top of it because in my teenage mind, on top was much safer than on the ground, because on the ground it felt like they could step on me, they could bite me, they could kick me, they could squish me against something. I generally didn't have a lot of groundwork, control, and I felt really vulnerable there. And in my mind I was like, well, geez, when I get up on their back, you know this, as long as I can stay on top, this feels a lot safer. And that over the years I've actually seen horses that learned to rub people off up against things or go lean against a wall and try to squish the rider's legs. It's amazing the number of things you'll see when horses get creative or the training is lacking in different areas. There can be some very interesting thoughts that come up in these horses minds, but I would say that unfortunately or maybe the reality is there's a pretty good chance that this horse has learned some different rules between the groundwork and the written work. If this horse were having issues across the board, you know, it was throwing itself down the pastures, throwing itself down when you were leading, it knows throwing itself down when you're riding.
It was it was doing some different things. I would think, oh, geez, this probably has like some kind of mental imbalance going on that's across the board. But when we start to see it really whittled into one area like the groundwork, it's got this set of rules. It's really aggressive. You go to correct it and it's like, oh, you want to correct me? Let me show you what I'm willing to do. And it's kind of willing to step up. But then when you ride it, it's not. This is much more of a traditional red flag to the idea that the horse has learned that there are different rules. And the reality is they really are bigger and they really are powerful. And it is so much easier if the horses don't discover that. So prevent, prevent, prevent. The old saying of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is for sure true. When we're training the horses to be in that safety zone or that respectful zone, a very short conversation on a huge topic would be how retrained BBL are they? And typically they're pretty re trainable. I'm definitely not saying that they don't have preconceived notions, and an example of used a lot of times is, you know, if you if you were a person who smoked cigarets for 20 years and then you quit.
Typically there's a greater chance of a very low. Apps from that into that habit again. Than somebody who never smoked. So we just know that there are certain habits that once you have them, you're more likely to maybe have a relapse into that. Now, you're for sure going to meet people that don't have a relapse into that. And there's all kinds of exceptions to this rule. But the thought would be prevention is a bit stronger. And then is it changeable? Yes. But what's interesting is a lot of times it goes back to that grandmas rule that grandma has rules that I talked about in an episode where I said they'll change according to the handler. And I see that in a in a much smaller degree all the time at my clinics, I'll take hold of the lunge line and ask the horse to do something. And the horse read my body language and goes and does it. And then the owner takes it back and the horse goes, wait a minute, we have a different set of rules. So it is a big topic of this. Could there be mental imbalances? Could there be training issues? Is it temperament? Is it experience?
And I think it's something very worth pondering as you're around horses and you're watching different things. Thanks so much for leaving your message. And thank you all for listening. And I'll talk to you again in the next episode.
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