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Question:
My horse is
starting to nibble at me. He is generally well behaved but recently
he has started to nip at me while I am trying to halter him. I
don’t know the cause but I would like some ideas on how to stop this
behavior.
Answer:
Before the bite
comes the nibble and you do need to correct this behavior right now
before he actually bites you. If you have ever watched horses
together, you may have seen how they groom and bite each other.
They nibble along on the neck and then they bite. They can take
teeth a lot better than we can. Nibbling is not good and nudging or
crowding into your space is not good either. Some people allow
their horses to rub their heads on them. This may seem like a
loving gesture but it is not a loving moment from the horse’s point
of view. All he is doing is scratching his head and using you as a
fence post. If you allow your horse to be in your space, whether he
trying to scratch or looking for a treat, you are teaching him that
it is okay to crowd you.
Biting, a good
percentage of the time, is the result of hand feeding a horse
treats. This is a pet peeve of mine as it often leads to pushy,
rude and even aggressive behavior. I have been bitten many, many
times. I have had a lot of horses here at the ranch who were
dangerously aggressive because they had been hand fed. It has taken
a lot of assertiveness on my part to correct this behavior. There
is also a small percentage of horses that can be hand fed and will
never do anything that would be destructive or cause anyone harm.
By the time you find out if your horse fits into this category, it
may be too late.
I have a
personal friend who was bitten and lost 30 percent of the use of his
left arm because a horse bit into his muscle. A woman acquaintance
of mine lost part of her breast. Neither of the horses involved
were aggressive, they were just looking for treats that they had
come to expect. In the case of the woman, she always kept the
treats in the breast pocket of her shirt and the horse knew that. I
have been picked up by the back of my jacket by a horse and thrown
across the stall. I trace this behavior back to the horse getting
aggressive looking for food. A horse has very strong jaws and can
do real damage.
It also might
be fine to hand feed your horse if no one else is ever around him.
The problem is that there are always other people who come around
your horse from time to time. If you are at a facility, there are
other riders and stable hands near your horse. If you stable at
home, there is the farrier, the veterinarian and other family
members. It may not show up immediately but down the road, a horse
that is hand fed treats may become pushy and aggressive. When a
horse comes into my space looking for treats, I correct it because
if I don’t, it can be a bigger problem later on. Horses learn by
pressure and release. When you allow your horse to be in your
space, whether or not he is looking for food, you are teaching him
that it is okay to crowd you and he will do it again next time. To
correct a horse from crowding we must be assertive and back the
horse up using the lead rope or a dressage stick. There must be
enough pressure so that the horse moves his feet. Correction does
not mean beating the horse but it must be more than pushing his nose
away and it must be done immediately. It must be enough to let the
horse know that he needs to back off. We don’t usually have a
problem with this behavior here at the barn and I want to keep it
that way because the rude invasion of our space can quickly turn to
aggression and get out of control.
The way that we
can give our horse a treat is to put the food in a bucket or a
feeder. The horse may learn to go to the feeder to get a carrot and
as long as there is no negative behavior associated with that, it is
not a problem. The idea is to keep the situation safe. I
personally believe that a horse can understand the difference
between being hand fed and getting a treat in the feed bin. I truly
believe that you can give your horse a treat in the bin and go on to
work the horse and the horse will be well behaved and not look for
additional treats as you are handling him. I am a behaviorist and I
see where the behavior problems around ground manners arise. Even
the people who clicker train (training using treats as an incentive)
recognize that hand feeding can cause a horse to become pushy and
rude and come into the trainer or rider’s space.
I have a hard
time convincing my clients and those who come to me for clinics the
importance of having a horse with consistently good ground manners.
How am I going to be able to teach the horse to accept treats and
then teach him to behave when he is not going to have a treat? In
my experience, the horse usually gets the upper hand. I’ve had a
lot of horses in training who have really gotten aggressive when
they were hand fed. There is an element of danger when working with
a horse and we always try to stay on the side of safety.
Just a little
over a year ago, there was a young lady on the ranch who insisted on
hand feeding her horse, even after I asked her not to. She lost a
finger tip. It was a simple mistake; the horse was not being
aggressive. The horse simply took the cookie and the tip of her
finger got in the way. The good news is, the finger tip was
recovered and was able to be reattached. Horses are dangerous
anyway and this is simply a safety issue. Most of the horses here
at the ranch are good minded and quiet but you never know and we try
not to set up dangerous situations. We need to use common sense and
good judgement to set ourselves and our horses up to be successful
for the safest and most enjoyable riding experience.
Charles Wilhelm
It’s Never Ever the Horse’s Fault
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