Change How You Perceive Your Horse’s Actions
There is a moment in every new partnership where things start to shift. The quiet horse gets a little louder. The compliant horse starts offering opinions. The once predictable horse begins to hesitate, question, or move away.
People often call this testing. They say your horse is trying it on or pushing boundaries. They’ll tell you that you need to get firmer, get after them, or show them who is in charge. Just today, I read a for sale ad for a lovely Appaloosa gelding that stated “[He] is a male’s horse, he needs an experienced male to show him who is boss (or a strong natured lady). He is arrogant! And he needs miles! [He] is a big strong boy! He needs a home that is going to work him hard…”
I absolutely reject that kind of language and thinking around a horse. The subtext of an ad like that is that the sellers think he needs physical punishment and strength. These kinds of ads are all too common, and the language makes up a sadly familiar narrative in the horse training space.
I look at it completely differently.
What most people call testing is actually your horse communicating honestly for the first time.
When a horse enters a new environment or begins a new relationship, they often hold themselves together. They stay small. They stay polite. They stay inside the version of themselves they think is safest. You see this when a new horse arrives for training. The first few weeks are usually quiet. Polite. Almost too good to be true.
Then around the three month mark something changes. The horse begins to breathe. Their nervous system settles. Their guard comes down. And once that guard softens, their true feelings begin to surface.
This is not regression. This is safety.
Your horse is not testing you. They are telling you how they really feel. They are showing you the places that still hold tension or confusion or fear. They are revealing the parts of their training history that were rushed or misunderstood. They are communicating the exact spots where support is needed.
This is information. Not defiance.
When Amulet stopped tolerating the tacking up process, she wasn’t being naughty. She was telling me the way she had been tacked up in the past created pressure and discomfort. Once I slowed down and rebuilt that process step by step, she could finally relax.
Horses do not wake up looking for ways to challenge you. They wake up looking for safety and clarity. When you stop seeing behaviour as a problem and start seeing it as communication, everything changes.
The messy middle of training is not a sign that you are going backwards. It is a sign that your horse finally feels safe enough to express their truth.
Your job is not to shut that truth down. Your job is to listen.
And when you listen with curiosity instead of criticism, you give your horse a chance to heal. You give them space to work through fear instead of hiding it. You build a relationship based on trust rather than tension. You become the person your horse can rely on.
Inside the Library I teach this mindset in depth. Horses have to move through their concerns in order to find genuine confidence. They cannot skip this stage, and neither can we. I recorded an entire Live Q&A on this exact topic for members. The session explains when horses begin showing their truth, why this shift happens, and how to support them through it. It is the foundation for understanding every other training video inside the Library.
If you want a partnership where your horse feels safe to be honest with you, this is where it starts. Join the Video Library now and start learning a different way.
