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Working With a Blind Horse
Question: I have been
following your articles for a several years and I wonder if you have
any advice for me on handling a horse that has gone blind in one
eye. I have tried to research this area but have found very little
information. I would like to know about handling, riding and doing
ground work with a blind horse.
Over the last 15 years I have
worked with a number of blind horses, probably three or four dozen.
Most have been blind in one eye, some totally blind. Through
practical experience I’ve come to find that when a situation like
this happens, the horse wakes up one morning and can’t see and life
goes on. Unlike the human reaction where we, with our mental
processes and rational minds, understandably fall apart until we
come to terms with it. We must become familiar with what we have
and with our space. We must learn to accept and cope with life.
With a horse, blindness comes much easier. They don’t have the
trauma of the loss of something and they don’t have the emotional
stress. I think with horses that are blind in both eyes, they learn
to rely on other senses just like humans, hearing and smell and also
a level of acuity. Like humans, they utilize their other senses to
adapt to the best of their ability. Obviously, it is easier for a
horse that is blind in only one eye but I have worked with horses
that were blind in both eyes and I could take them out on the trail,
do arena work and do probably 99% of the normal activities. The
only difficulty would be with cutting because a horse has to be able
to see to cut. Once you put a horse on a cow, the horse must start
tracking that cow. That would be the only activity limited by
blindness.
With a horse that is blind in
one eye or both eyes, it is really important to establish a
foundation. With a foundation you establish cues and they start
trusting those cues. We have a horse here now that used to be a
cutter. Now we use him as a reining cow horse and take him down the
fence. We have to show him when to cut into the fence but that is
the only help that he needs. He is fine on the trail and is
actually more calm and relaxed on his blind side. With his sighted
eye he starts seeing things that he wants to react to.
I treat both sighted and blind
horses the same. I sack them both out with objects and train them
both to do round pen work with inside and outside turns. The thing
to remember is that when you approach a horse that is blind in one
eye or both eyes, it is important to let the horse know that you are
approaching. Eventually, they gain a perceptual sense of where you
are at. For example, we pony our horses from one end of the ranch
to the other with a golf cart. The horse that we have here now had
to learn to gage his distance from the cart on his blind side. We
helped him learn this by teaching him to move off of pressure with
ground work first. When, at first, he got too close to the cart, I
just reached out with my arm and bumped him away. I also used a
dressage stick, which gave me more length, to tap him on the
shoulder to move him away and show him where he needed to be. Now
we don’t need to do this. He has learned to gage his distance from
objects through sound and feel.
When working with a blind
horse, most people want to placate and protect it. In other words,
they want to help the horse by limiting him. We are not helping the
horse by making him feel handicapped. I don’t treat a blind horse
differently than a sighted horse. I treat them just like a sighted
horse when I am doing ground work, I start teaching concentrated
circles and teaching them to back up on both sides. The only
difference is that when I step over there, I cluck and let the horse
know. With the horse I have now, I no longer need to cluck because
he has learned to feel and sense my presence.
A horse that is blinded can
still be very functional. We are teaching this horse to do ranch
versatility since he has one eye. A horse that is blind in both
eyes can certainly do arena work and go on the trail. A totally
blind horse can be turned out to pasture and can certainly be turned
out in a corral by themselves. You just have to let him know where
the boundaries are. He can be turned out with other horses and can
benefit from a buddy but you have to make sure the other horse is
not aggressive. You need to watch them closely at first to make
sure they get along as a blind horse is easily bullied and can get
hurt easier than a sighted horse.
The only things that may hinder
the learning of a blind horse or determine how quickly he learns,
are the horse’s personality and his emotional level. If you have a
horse with a high emotional level, it will take a little longer for
him to understand the lesson. If you have a real willing horse, a
horse that likes to learn and moves off of pressure easily, he’s
going to learn quicker. How quickly the horse learns and how
successful you are really depends on two things, his personality and
emotional level. I hope that answers your question. Treat him like
a sighted horse but just be aware that he can’t see.
Charles Wilhelm
It’s Never Ever the Horse’s Fault |
