Horses spook, react, fixate, get triggered, and revert to prey-animal behavior in a thousand different situations.

Often, the strategy for repairing these prey-animal behaviors is directly linked to the circumstance. If your horse spooks at a dog, then desensitizing him to the dog seems like the obvious solution.

Now, it's not wrong to puzzle over how to build his confidence. But that's only half the story—and half the problem.

One half is confidence. The other half is attention.

Pop quiz...

When your horse spooks at the dog, you should:

A) Get a new dog.
B) Get a new horse.
C) Desensitize your horse to the dog.
D) Ask your horse to focus his attention on you instead of the dog.

Can you guess the answer?

If you guessed A or B, you get my humor.

If you guessed C, you're not wrong, but you may be missing an important piece of the puzzle.

If you guessed D, you're in the right mindset to help your horse not only with dogs, but with future distractions of EVERY kind.

The real question is this:

Do you train your horse to engage with the scary thing until it becomes less scary, or do you train him to forget about it and focus on the rider instead?

The answer is both—at different times.

For instance, during a horse show, you don't get to stop in the middle of your pattern to investigate the judge's booth, the dark corner, or the fluttering flags. The show must go on.

Knowing this, a clever trainer intentionally uses distractions—dogs, bicycles, flags, wind, or other forms of controlled chaos—as peripheral pressure. These become opportunities to teach the horse one simple lesson:

"Don't forget about me."

In more extreme situations, however, it's appropriate to purposefully engage with the scary object and prove to the horse that it's safe.

Can you see now how both C and D are the correct answer, just at different times?

One goal of a great trainer is to help the horse feel safe. One powerful way to do that is by earning and keeping his attention.

It's ironic how often we assume that if a horse feels safe, he won't become distracted. Yet many skilled trainers have discovered that at least half of helping a horse feel safe begins by gaining his attention first—and then keeping it, even in the middle of simple, controlled chaos.

One last pop quiz.

A) Do you make a horse feel safe through desensitizing?
B) Do you make a horse feel safe by teaching him, "Pay attention to me"?

The answer is the same as before.

Both, but at different times.

The beautiful part is this: when you truly have your horse's attention, he's far less likely to keep searching the environment for hazards.

That's a useful thing to know.

Getting your horse's attention in the middle of chaos is difficult—but it's far from impossible. Start small, build gradually, and remember that attention is a skill worth developing just as much as confidence.

May the horse be with you.

If you'd like help applying these principles to your own horse, I'd love to help. Click Here to schedule a free consultation and let's build a safer, more connected partnership together.

​Don Jessop