The number one trust builder is to be predictable by being consistent! Be consistent with your energy level, emotions, and how you show up around your horse. Stay consistent with your communication, always sending and receiving messages in the same way — a way that both you and your horse clearly understand.
If you're struggling to gain a horse's trust, seek out help and have others watch you—they'll catch on faster than you about what cues you may be giving the horse. They'll see what you can't. Also, let your horse guide you. He won't lie to you; he either thinks of you as the leader or not.
Common Displayed Behaviors:
dragging you to a patch of grass in order to graze. refusing to walk any faster when being led. jerking their head up when you ask them to lower it. not picking up their feet when asked.
Horses DON'T form attachment bonds with their owners despite what equine enthusiasts might think - but they do regard humans as 'safe havens' Horses think of humans as 'safe havens' but don't form attachment bonds with their owners - despite what equine enthusiasts might think, a new study reveals.
Make coming to you pleasant
Instead, you can play some games, offer treats, or give the horse a massage. Then, turn the horse back out without asking anything more of it. Once you do this a few times, the horse starts to associate leaving the pasture with something pleasurable and will likely come more willingly.
The number one reason your horse doesn't trust you is because you aren't believable. He either learned not to trust all people or you in particular. Frustration is a common result when your horse has little or no trust in you. Prey animals are hard-wired to doubt, to run before thinking, and to fight when trapped.
A horse's social condition can negatively affect him during turnout or even with regards to whom he is stalled next to, making him grumpy. Some horses have difficulty with changes in management styles; a horse used to a rigid feeding and turnout schedule may have a tough time swapping to a more-leisurely lifestyle.
Groundwork can mean asking the horse to stand still, leading him or doing circling work. Every time you work with your horse, make sure he's following your rules and moving out of your space—constant reminders that you are the leader. Make him feel secure by giving him easy and clear rules to follow.
In one study, the heart rhythms of horses and humans were analyzed over the course of various interactions with one another. The findings indicated that horses care capable of detecting when a human is expressing and projecting positive feelings towards them and is likely to reciprocate those positive feelings.
According to results of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, horses do seem to read some signals to indicate whether a nearby person is stressed or afraid, at least in certain circumstances.
Of 69 horse owners, 79 per cent of them reported that horses felt jealous, although the specific contexts in which this jealousy occurred, or whether a horse or human relationship was being threatened, was not explored.
In the wild, as well as in domestic care, horses will show affection to one another by sharing breath with one another. Horses will put their noses together and then share the air. This tendency extends to horses showing love to their owners as well.
Horses can read human emotions, too, often in uncannily accurate ways; alerting us to our sadness or nervousness, sometimes before we've even consciously registered it.
Horses may stare at you when they want your attention. If you are distracted or out of reach, your horse may stare at you to get you to focus on them. If there's a barrier such as a fence between you and your horse, they may stare at you since they can't reach you to nudge you.
So how do you get your horse's respect? A horse's respect is earned by moving his feet forward, backward, left, and right, and always rewarding the slightest try. Think about respect from your horse's point of view. When horses are thrown together out in a pasture, it's natural for them to establish a pecking order.