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01/02/08: Why do you say that food is not a good reward for horses?

01/09/08: I would like to see some follow-up articles that show what you do after the initial saddling and riding. I've seen some of your videos so I've watched days 2 or 3 of the horses' work, but what comes next? How do you start preparing a horse for the work he's going to do the rest of his life?

01/16/08: I am an English riding instructor from New Jersey & have done Join-Up with all of my horses & ponies ever since I saw you on a TV special several years ago. It has helped tremendously in all aspects of my training & relationships with them. I have been successful with every horse I have worked with except one. He was an independent Quarter Horse gelding. What can I do with horses that are so independent?

01/23/08: I was wondering about my head shy mare who was used as a driving horse but now throws up her head if anyone rides her. She is a sweet mare and is just wasting away in a pasture. If you have any ideas on how I could train her, I would appreciate your sharing.

01/30/08: I have a horse that loves to graze when we're out trail riding...He's a young (5 year old) Haflinger and very strong. I'm riding him in an egg butt snaffle and once he gets his head down, it is almost impossible to get him to lift his head back up again. Do you have any suggestions on how to break him of this habit? I'd like to get him to mind me without having to get to a harsher bit. Looking forward to you reply. Thank you.

Answers to January 2008 Ask Monty Questions

Question
Why do you say that food is not a good reward for horses?

Monty's Answer
When one understands the flight animal fully, it is apparent that they are usually grazers. They eat grass. All predators must stalk their food and use skills to capture it. That becomes their trophy. To a horse, food is not reward. No blade of grass has ever run from a horse. I believe that the person who feeds the horse from the hand will create a ‘biter.’

Of the three most common mistakes people make around horses, one is to feed them from the hand. In front of an audience of two thousand people, I was asked to deal with a horse that had some very common problems. The owner said that the horse would bite, buck with the saddle, buck with the rider, and rear up dangerously. Each of these serious behavioral patterns requires significant modification if you are to live with this horse in any reasonable fashion. I decided to show the audience how to deal with a horse that bites, recognizing that the owner was in big trouble. It was not hard to tell that all these remedial problems were likely caused by human error. The owner admitted to feeding the horse from her hand, and when asked why, she said she did it because she loved him so much. I could not resist the temptation to ask how she could love a horse that much who bites you, bucks with the saddle, bucks when you mount, and then rears dangerously. It was beyond me to detect what was left to love.

I often hear similar stories. Owners do, in fact, love their horses, but it does not mean that they understand them. This horse was ­finished with his biting in all of three or four minutes under my tutelage. In the end, I was offering him my arm and my hand; he was no longer in the mood for biting. If I were to check back on him today, it is likely the owner has this poor horse biting again.

There are professionals who use food to train their horses. This activity has been going on for hundreds of years and it is quite amazing to me that a knowledgeable professional will do this. I do not use food as a reward and it is a practice I would not teach my students. I feel certain that professionals trained in this art can accomplish their work without the side effects that the untrained person experiences.

Unless you are a professional who is trained to do this, do not train horses by feeding them from the hand. If you have treats, put them in his feed tub and let him find them. If, for whatever reason, your horse bites you or attempts to bite, do not hit him on the nose. When you hit the biting horse on the nose, several undesirable things occur. The horse will often bite and then, with your skin in his mouth, remember that he is probably going to get hit for it, jerk back quickly, and cause you more pain. An additional negative result is that the horse becomes head-shy. He resents the treatment, and it is rarely successful in stopping the habit, anyway.

The action I recommend you take is to watch closely, and when your horse reaches to bite you, swing your leg and bump him on the shin with your boot. If you are standing next to his shoulder, you can step on his coronary band with the heel of your boot and let it slide down his hoof. I am not recommending that you look down at his leg and violently kick him in the shin. What I am suggesting is that you continue to look wherever you were originally looking and swing your leg, as if by accident, bumping him on the shin. This is not meant to produce great pain and you will never injure a horse correcting in this fashion, but the result will be that after about six to eight repetitions, your horse will reach to bite you and then look down at his shin. What you have effectively done is to habituate to the extent that the horse connects the act of biting with another part of his anatomy. It is very effective.

The use of this procedure plays directly on the psychological phenomenon of distractibility. The flight animal is, by nature, very distractible. The experienced trainer can use distractibility to his or her benefit if he takes the time to learn the thinking process of the horse.

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Question
I would like to see some follow-up articles that show what you do after the initial saddling and riding. I've seen some of your videos so I've watched days 2 or 3 of the horses' work, but what comes next? How do you start preparing a horse for the work he's going to do the rest of his life?

Monty's Answer
Thank you very much for your question. It strikes the center of what I consider to be the future for me. I am in the process of developing a system for videoing advanced work, in other words, taking Join-Up to the saddle. While I have been doing this for decades now, I have not addressed it enough in my teaching. It is important that you realize that the ground work that I have been working on was essential to establish before I addressed the ridden challenges.

My daughter Debbie and a large portion of entire staff is in the process of creating editing facilities and production capabilities so that we can responsibly bring riding solutions to you. I don’t feel it’s good enough to just set up a camera and start to filming horses stopping, turning and changing leads without having the capability to clearly depict the maneuvers I suggest.

Stay tuned, as they say, because we will soon be coming to you with some highly technical means of bringing these educational aspects to your horsemanship in a way that I can be proud of. Do not rest if you don’t see things happening make some big noises and keep our noses to the grindstone. We want this as much as you do.

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Question
I am an English riding instructor from New Jersey & have done Join-Up with all of my horses & ponies ever since I saw you on a TV special several years ago. It has helped tremendously in all aspects of my training & relationships with them. I have been successful with every horse I have worked with except one. He was an independent Quarter Horse gelding. What can I do with horses that are so independent?

Monty's Answer
I suppose my first inquiry would be if he is an orphan. If he is an orphan, then one must consider the possibility that he knows nothing about his own language. Orphans present us with challenges that are so individual we must use our experience to tailor our training to the challenge on hand.

In the event that this is not an orphan I think it is fair to ask yourself would he be just as independent with me as he would be with you? I think not. As I travel the world I get at least 2-3 horses per month which come to me with a reputation for being impossible to Join-Up with. Granted, some are more difficult than others but I simply don’t have outright failures.

The fact that you have been successful with a large number of individuals would indicate that you are doing a pretty good job with your communications efforts. It is my guess however that there is a tiny flaw in your conversational skills where Equus is concerned. I would guess that if we were able to work together we would find some little defect and you would say “WOW” and then you might say “just that little difference – I can’t believe it.”

It is amazing to me how many times this scenario occurs and it is virtually never a unilateral fault of the horse, but instead, a slight misunderstanding between horse and human.

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Question
I was wondering about my head shy mare who was used as a driving horse but now throws up her head if anyone rides her. She is a sweet mare and is just wasting away in a pasture. If you have any ideas on how I could train her, I would appreciate your sharing.

Monty's Answer
I read into your question the implication that driving has something to do with a high head position. The fact is it is quite possible that this is true. Driving horses are most often equipped with a tie-up strap which keeps the head and neck in a position above the withers. When this technique is used over a significant period of time, horses can easily form the habit of traveling with a high head.

The use of the techniques I outline in the mouthing chapter in my textbook From My Hands To Yours can generally deal with this phenomena quite effectively. I explain the use of side-reins with elastics, the surcingle and the longelines. It just so happens that I am currently working with six head of horses in California to solve the very same problem that your question deals with.

I recommend that you accustom the horse to the surcingle, which can be accomplished in the round pen or even in a box stall. Once the horse can cope with the surcingle comfortably, I begin the process of mouthing. You should always take care not to have protrusions from the walls or fences of the enclosure you use for mouthing.

I will place a black iron snaffle with a brow-band headstall appropriately on the horse’s head. You don’t need to have riding reins on the bit as a pair of side reins are used instead. The bit should sit in the horse’s mouth so that it effects a slight smile on the horse. Once the bit is touching the corners of the horse’s mouth, the handler should adjust it upward until it is about one-sixteenth of an inch higher than the corners would be in a natural state.

I suggest that the side reins be adjusted quite loosely at first. I recommend that the handler loose longe the young horse in the round pen in sessions approximating 15 to 20 minutes in length. You can execute this event using all three natural gaits of the horse. It should be noted that exhaustion is not a part of training and you should be careful to monitor the horse’s comfort throughout the pro­cedure.

After the horse has accepted the surcingle and the snaffle bit with loose side reins, the handler should then begin a process of shortening the side reins until the horse is nodding off the bit. Take care not to tighten before the horse is fully comfortable as he could object to the tension and potentially suffer injury by rearing or acting out in another negative fashion.

The side reins should be equipped with elastic to allow the horse a flexible tension and not a solid one. The handler might continue to loose longe, creating impulsion by simply tossing a light driving line behind the horse to move him forward. Be sure the environment is safe. One should study the footing and the walls closely so as not to create an environment that could be dangerous for your animal.

After two to three sessions, you can often introduce driving lines using the side rings on the surcingle at approximately the same position where a rider’s knee might be. The handler should always be sensitive to how much work the young horse is doing and how he is accepting that work.

I recommend that mouthing should take place for 10 to 12 sessions before saddling and riding. The knowing handler will vary the length of time ­according to the needs of the horse. The nervous, fractious animal should be mouthed for a greater number of sessions than the quiet, ­cooperative one.

It is extremely important to use effective safety measures, only advancing when your equine student is fully prepared for it. I have provided an illustration here so that you can see each feature of the mouthing apparatus.

Many horsemen ask me how I suggest handling the horse that tosses his head while being ridden and I tell them that this mouthing procedure can be employed. It is most likely that a bad set of hands has caused this problem. I have found it effective to allow the horse to toss his head, simply meeting the side reins and stretching the elastics. Normally, horses will stop the head tossing after four or five ­sessions as recommended in this section.

I have used this method of mouthing a horse for well over 50 years now and have found it to be most effective. When I finally saddle and ride the animal schooled in this fashion, it is amazing how cooperative he is with his turns, stops and reining back.

Question
I have a horse that loves to graze when we're out trail riding...He's a young (5 year old) Haflinger and very strong. I'm riding him in an egg butt snaffle and once he gets his head down, it is almost impossible to get him to lift his head back up again. Do you have any suggestions on how to break him of this habit? I'd like to get him to mind me without having to get to a harsher bit. Looking forward to you reply. Thank you.

Monty's Answer
It isn’t fair to this horse to put a snaffle in his mouth and then expect him to respond to a soft touch. He has learned that he can push his way through the snaffle and you were probably being much less considerate of him by pulling his mouth like it was a tug-o-war.

The concepts that I described last week in Ask Monty and in the chapter on mouthing in my From My Hands to Yours book would most likely be effective when creating a better head-set and more attentive attitude in your horse. The use of a bit with a shank and curb strap is probably essential when challenged with the goal of causing the horse to listen to the slightest touch of the reins.

You have probably met spoiled children in your past. I suggest that you ask yourself if you’ve ever met a happy spoiled child. Your answer would probably be no. I don’t believe that I have ever met a happy spoiled child. They always want more and they never seem to be satisfied that others are doing enough for them.

It is my position that your horse is spoiled. That is to say he has learned how to misbehave enjoying the fruits of it and never experiencing negative consequences for the unacceptable acts. This does not work with children and, for me, children and horses are virtually identical in their behavioral patterns.

Violence is never the answer. Some would strike the horse with a whip for pulling your hands to eat the grass. I say that this is violent but also not effective. The horse must feel immediate negative consequences when he initiates negative actions. I refer you to P.I.C.N.I.C.. It is described in my From My Hands To Yours textbook and when you have put these concepts to use, please communicate the results to me.

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