Horse confidence, trust, bravery, courage, experience

Horses have many different traits, different horses differ in where they stand on the spectrum of each trait. Some are braver, some are more intelligent, some are more human-friendly, etc. It is one of the things that makes each horse unique.

In each field of horse riding (jumping, racing, trail riding, endurance, dressage, ...), some of these traits are more important. And you should work on them with your horse. Yes, part of the trait is intrinsic, but it can improve with training.

Maybe you know or maybe not, but I'm in the field of horse trail riding. Although I'm not an expert but in this post I want to speak about 5 horse traits that I think are important in horse trail riding. I will go through:

1. How some merge these 5 traits into 1 trait, and I think it's wrong
2. What are these 5 traits, and why are they important for horse trail riding

My horse is just a coward

If you have been a while around horse riders, horse clubs, or you have some horse riding experience yourself. You might have heard or even said by yourself things like:

• My horse is spooky
• This horse gets scared of motorcycles
• My horse is scared of underpasses, it won't go through them
• This isn't that much of a brave horse

People usually simplistically say my horse is spooky or isn't brave, but in my experience if you look it more thoroughly, watching different horses and how they change you will see it isn't one trait that shapes these kind of behaviors. Let me give you some examples from my experience.

Experience

We had bought a horse that had spent most of her life in a public club. Just coming out of the box to manege, people riding her and going back. We brought it to our farm and went on a trail ride. I remember it was winter, and it had snowed the day before. We went out, and I was like What is this horse It is spooky toward snow, she doesn't know how to walk on dirt roads, and don't mention motorcycles. When a motorcycle goes even with 50 meters distance from her, she just wanted to run (I don't know where).

After a couple of rides, most of these had just gone away. Yes, she still gets scared when we have to ride very close to a construction machineries, but she manages to go through. In my opinion,n the problem was inexperience. She wasn't outside for a long time and didn't have trail riding experience. I'm not saying she is a very brave horse, but she is moderate and, with some work, well-suited for trail riding. Her name is Kajal.

Trust and Courage

We bought a foal, she looked firm. Before bringing her to our farm, we set up a coach to train her for riding. We told the trainer what we wanted, and I liked how he worked with her. In the meantime, I tried riding her twice, I fell off her both times 😄. I was like, it's probably a training issue. We took her to our farm, and I rode her again, didn't fall this time, but still, riding her was problematic. She was spooky of plastic, bottles, flags, a shovel, and many different things. The things she was spooky about then were uncountable. I called her a coward several times.

With time and riding more for about a year, she got much better. She still gets scared but manages it. Especially when going out with a familiar rider (like me), she almost doesn't show anything. I call this trust and courage. Her name is Azar. She is the second-most ridden horse in our club.

Confidence

We got another horse, between 3 and 4 years old. She was scared of water, even a tiny bit. She wasn't calm even when leading her with a rope. One of my relatives rode her when we had just brought her to the club. After two years, he came and rode her again, and he didn't believe that this was the same horse. He kept saying, Is this the same horse? Last time, while riding her, she was always looking around, giving a lot of attention to the environment, but now she is very calm. I think the answer here was confidence. She didn't have confidence in herself. Her name is Ipak, the most ridden horse in our club by far. She is the only horse I trust children riding in the manege. She is even calmer than myself in riding. One time, she stepped on a can of Coke with a serious noise coming out of the can. I got spooky to the sound, but she didn't care even a bit.

What do I mean by each trait?

Let's wrap this up. I tried to explain 4 of these traits with one of our horses and how they improved. Bravery is more obvious, so I skipped here will explain a bit more later.

In reality, it's always an improvement in the mixture of traits. Ipak not only improved in confidence she also improved in other traits. Just for making my case and emphasizing, I pointed out to single trait which I think may be more relevant.

Being brave means having less fear in different situations and less or no fear towards most things. Some horses aren't scared of cars, tunnels, etc. They just don't get fearful from the beginning. Some will have fear at first but it will get resolved easily.

Having courage is about how the horse deals with fear. It doesn't mean not having fear. The horse fears, but can it manage and go on, or not? Is she or he going to run away and throw the rider? Or it can bypass the obstacle even fearfully. Courage is about reacting to and dealing with fear.

Confidence means the trust a horse has in her or him self. Means like no matter the difficulty of the situation, I can do it. In a trail ride, especially in mountain trails where the path is so narrow and steep, having confidence is a key trait.

Trust means how much the horse trusts the rider. The willingness to follow the rider. It's also a two-way relationship. It's like I'm scared of going through this underpass, but the rider is telling me to go. I will follow the rider. He/She wouldn't ask me to go if it were very risky.

Experience means how much I've been in the same situation before. Is it the first time I'm seeing a big car or no its the 10th time.

I will talk about these traits and how to improve them later.