A standard grievance from horse house owners is that their horse is mouthy when haltered. The horse mouths or nips them, or the halter or leadrope, once they attempt to put the halter on or take away it.

Horses behave this fashion for a number of causes. For instance, the horse could wish to interact socially with the human, however as a result of they haven’t been taught acceptable methods to take action they resort to behaviours they may use with one other horse. One other widespread motive for mouthy behaviour is nervousness. Identical to with individuals, a horse who’s anxious could fidget and have interaction in behaviours which will delay the beginning of an occasion they really feel is disagreeable. For the horse exhibiting such nervousness when haltered, they might have discovered that what comes after haltering – like coaching – is aggravating or scary.

Widespread recommendation for this challenge is to make use of punishment: smack the horse, again them up, transfer their ft, and so forth. There are a number of issues with utilizing punishment to attempt to remedy this challenge:

1. Punishment would not handle why the horse is behaving this fashion within the first place
2. Punishment can solely say ‘No’, to the undesirable behaviour, and once we use punishment we aren’t educating the horse what it ought to do as an alternative.

3. To be efficient, punishment must occur at each single incidence of the undesirable behaviour. It additionally must be disagreeable sufficient to trigger the horse to by no means wish to do the behaviour once more. This normally means hurting or scary the horse sufficiently, in order that they discover this consequence for performing the behaviour simply not price it.

4. Because of downside #3, utilizing punishment could cause the horse to concern the coach or something related to the coaching occasion. This may injury the belief between horse and human.

5. Routine use of punishment throughout coaching decreases the horse’s need to be taught.
6. Punishment can worsen the present downside, and create new undesirable behaviours.

When I’m working behaviour instances, I typically want to offer individuals ‘triage’ recommendation, to assist them lower the frequency or depth of undesirable behaviours within the quick time period, earlier than a longer-term retraining plan can start. Triage recommendation retains the horse and human secure, and prevents the horse from getting extra ‘practiced’ on the undesirable behaviour. Moreover, in instances the place feelings similar to concern are on the coronary heart of the behaviour downside, it permits the horse to have a mini-vacation from feeling anxious or fearful earlier than retraining begins. This little break from stress primes the horse to be higher capable of be taught as soon as we do start the retraining course of.

The recommendation given within the above clip could also be useful in case your horse is exhibiting mouthy behaviour when haltered. For some horses, it might even be all it’s essential do to eternally resolve the problem. If nonetheless, your horse exhibits different indicators of concern, nervousness or stress of their each day life, please search the assistance of a certified horse behaviour marketing consultant. They might help you get the basis of your horse’s downside, and resolve it with out scaring or hurting your horse within the course of.