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If you have a pushy or aggressive horse at feed time, then you are not on your lonesome. These wonderful beings who can do all these amazing things for us, can also act with competitive kind of instincts at feed time that can have us feeling pretty uncomfortable and even be downright dangerous.
Relax, it’s easy to fix.
But hey, our relationship with our horse is about a lot more than just fixing any feed time crappy stuff happening, isn’t it?
What about if we could fix feed time in such a way that everything else with our horse was improved as well?
Holly has written about how she fixed her feed time blues in such a way that she improved her all over relationship with her horse Gunny and she did it by using the principles in the free lessons The 9 Keys to Happiness with Your Horse.
Some of this isn’t going to make sense until you have see The 9 Keys, so if you haven’t seen those lessons yet, then click here to get those free lessons. If you have a big problem like Holly had, I suggest that you come back and look at this article again after The 9 Keys too.
Holly:
Feeding Time Aggression Resolved Peacefully
I remember reading the description for Jenny’s class, which is now called Fast Track. It had a very long and specific list of what would be covered and explained that we would be systematically resolving all the things that were getting in the way of your dreams with your horse. I began crying as I read the list because I was so near the end of my rope with my horse Gunny. We had been struggling for too long. My very supportive husband encouraged me to sign up. So I did and at the same time I signed up for the free lessons The 9 Keys to Happiness with Your Horse.
At that point, my relationship with Gunny was broken. He was very defensive, sullen, and unwilling. We could no longer even do the simplest things with any harmony or ease.
It was much worse than that though. He was hard to move away and would pin his ears as you approached with feed, or if you tried to approach while he was eating. Because this happened in all situations regarding feed, I felt that this was undermining our relationship constantly. He even broke a feeder one time when he kicked out, double barreled, and missed my kneecap by inches.
I began to receive the 9 Keys and decided to focus just on our feeding time issues. This was an area that had been difficult for the whole twelve years that I had Gunny – from day one, despite continuously trying to resolve the problem in many different ways. I felt that if I could resolve this issue, it would have a positive impact on the rest of our relationship too.
Within six months of applying the 9 Keys and the lessons in Fast Track, Gunny and I had harmony at feeding time nearly every day! This success was especially remarkable considering how long-standing the issue had been and that I had been “working on” it in some form or another those entire twelve years.
Here is a short clip of what our feeding time looks like these days:
Jenny: How cool was that video hey? It’s hard to believe how terrible the situation was at the beginning.
Holly’s first and most important key to success with Gunny is one that is so automatic for her that she didn’t even notice what a big key to her success it was. She didn’t blame Gunny for being a bad boy. She knew that there had to be something behind his bad attitude and she loved him enough to go looking for it.
Holly: The things that I did that made such a big change were: I sat down and defined what I wanted feeding time to look and feel like. (Key #6 in action, especially the boundary part of deciding what was acceptable for each of us)
Jenny: Holly thought through what she wanted feed time to look like. It’s impossible to to let you horse know what you want, if you don’t know yet. This might sound kind of “derr…”, but I remember back in the bad old days just not having a clear enough picture in my head. And that clear picture in your head is an important part of your communication with your horse.
Safety should be a deliberate part of that picture too. You want to be achieving your goal with gentle-ness, but you also need to do whatever it takes to be safe as well. You’ll see how you can do that in the video of The Sixth Key.
Holly: To focus on one area to begin with, because this took the pressure off of both of us.
Jenny: Holly talked about taking the pressure off herself by focusing on just this one issue about feed time. This is worth fixing as being more important than riding. Your riding is affected by what happens at feed time – yes I promise you that is the case, you AND your horses behavior around feed time has it’s effect on confidence together, trust between each other, your leadership being able to be subtle and gentle and yet effective, I could go on and on…
Holly: Trusting and committing to the process. This was our last chance, I had decided that if Jenny’s class didn’t work for us, I was getting out of horses.
Jenny: That made me smile. Holly is so gifted, that I brought her into our trainee teacher program. I am not such a fan of the word “trust” either. It implies making a commitment to something without any proof that it’s going to work. I would rather work with validation personally. Even worse, in our society the word “trust” often implies ignore your fear and “trust” that your horse won’t hurt you – ignore your fear and do it anyway. And that is the exact opposite of what I teach you to do.
Holly: I paid close attention to the feelings in my body and noticed what feelings seemed to connect with what actions from Gunny. (Keys #1-3 in action of The 9 Keys)
Jenny: an awareness of what is happening in ourselves is a key to being really good with horses. That is the basis of our sensitivity, without which we will be acting like a bull in a china shop. People experience their feelings differently and that’s one of the special things about our program, helping people to develop their feel and use it sensitively with their horse.
Holly: This allowed me to begin to notice my early warning signals, and to act with better and more effective timing. (Key #4 in action of The 9 Keys)
Jenny: Holly decided that she wanted to notice her early warning signal that something was Not Quite Right, so that she could take action BEFORE things got really bad. The power of that intention is HUGE.
Noticing that early warning signal is only the first step – then Holly took action on it. You will see all kinds of gentle actions as examples, in the video of me feeding my herd of 12 horses in The Sixth Key.
Holly developed her connection to her horse stronger and more sensitively as she practiced noticing and taking action on that early warning signal that something was Not Quite Right. As SHE got more sensitive and more delicate in her signals, GUNNY improved too. That was not coincidence!
Holly: As Gunny was eating I would occasionally remove the feed and wait a little bit before allowing him to eat again, gradually increasing the time I kept him away (Key #5 in action of The 9 Keys)
Jenny: This action won’t suit every horse as well as it suited Gunny and Holly’s circumstances together. In our programs we give you a heap of different techniques, and you use the awareness that you learn, to see which is most useful to you in your circumstances.
Holly: I retreated and waited for the Chew with every instance of “Not Quite Right” and no matter how long it took. Sometimes this meant waiting for fifteen or twenty minutes! Not Quite Right was anything that didn’t look or feel like my definition of how I wanted things to be. (The Seventh Key in action)
Jenny: The Seventh Key to Happiness with Your Horse is a VERY big deal. Having the patience and understanding to wait for Gunny to lick and chew Chew no matter how long it took was a HUGE key to Holly’s success.
It’s easier to have the patience when we understand that our horse processes and releases all kinds of old crap from the past and gets to think his way through what is happening in that time that you are waiting for The Chew (I write about this in much more detail in The Seventh Key to Happiness) This waiting turns out to be a big short cut in the long run.
Holly: Each day I would decide which key I was going to focus on and make an index card to take to the barn with me as a cheat sheet.
Jenny: When we are overwhelmed it’s easy to forget what we are meant to be focusing on.
Holly: So if you have difficulties with your horse at feed time, The 9 Keys to Happiness with Your Horse and Fast Track will walk you through figuring it out and resolving it for good. Sign up for the 9 Keys and begin to look at how you can apply each key to your unique situation.
Jenny back again:
If you want to be gentle with your horse, if you want a strong bond, if you want to be a confident rider on a confident and happy horse, if you want to be knowledgeable and know how to fix any problem that comes up with your horse – and if you’re open to doing things a little differently – then my programs might just be for you.
Grab the free lessons The 9 Keys to Happiness with Your Horse and see whether you like the way that we do things here. What we do is both revolutionary in the WAY that we achieve our goals and yet classical in its outcomes of a lovely rider in a safe and secure riding seat on a happy confident horse.
Thanks for that Jenny. I think everything that is happening ( or not happening) with me at the moment makes things that I know ( and get a brain freeze with) seem harder than they really are. I need to really look at myself and my feelings ( as you have said) and put things into perspective and not jump the gun. Like with feeding. I’ve allowed myself to let things be a bigger deal than they are, when I know I have the knowledge to fix them between us (me and my horse) I have to stop tiptoeing around him. Expecting him to be nasty, so I’m basicly setting myself up to be disappointed again. This is getting pretty in depth
When YOU are being and feeling safe (both are just as important) at the same time as you are, at feed time and in other areas maybe, helping HIM to be and feel safe (just as important as each other again), then you will be on the right track. I had another idea when I was using this as an example for my article for an upcoming clinic, could he have stomach ulcers to be that protective of his hay? There’s an article about preventing stomach ulcers by understanding what causes them, here on my blog under the Feed section of Ten top ways to reduce your vet bills.
Some horses can be subtle in their symptoms.
Hi Jenny, Really liked this video. Funny how this lovely boy of mine is aggressive around food. Good timing! Never had a horse with this. One thing I noticed in this video is that when Holly was standing next to Gunny stroking him he had his ears back, looked like he wasn’t impressed. That is until his head went in the bucket. Shiloh surprised me when he turned his back end to my granddaughter and kicked out, then swung his head to charge me, in saying that there wasn’t any hay left. I have started the ground games with him now but will also be doing this too! Thanks
I have a strong “all the way to my bones” knowledge that everything happens for a reason. Some things take a bit more figuring out than others, but this one is pretty easy Judy – from MY end anyway! 🙂
Food oriented horses are worth their weight in gold and can be sooo… much fun – once we get a handle on it, once we get leadership around food.
And that leads me to another possibility in the everything happens for a reason stakes – Leadership. I always say that co-operation is more important than leadership – and it is.
HOWEVER, some people’s dreams are big. And some dreams do need leadership and around food is the place where I can easily check out how my leadership is going. There are so many elements to REAL leadership with a horse, not the dominance variety that some people misunderstand as leadership, but REAL leadership, where a horse willingly follows what you want together because you have the same goals and the same things that you care about and you look after each other in a really special way.
Judy, the coincidence of this comment from you when I am writing the information for a new clinic in a few weeks time is just too much.
The focus of this clinic is understanding the flow of what we might be perceiving as a problem with a horse or with ourselves or with our riding. It’s about REALLY understanding what’s behind “everything happens for a reason” in a down to earth practical, problem solving kind of way that will change the way that you view problems in your life – forever.
And of course, SOLVING whatever that “problem” is what this clinic is about – in whatever way is appropriate.
Grab The Six keys to Happiness with Your Horse if you haven’t already, because the principles in those keys will help heaps with the practicality of dealing with a very food focused horse fairly and yet gently PLUS if you’re on that list, you’ll get the clinic information as I release it.
Jenny, thanks so much for these lessons. I’ve loved horses all my life, but never had much opportunity to be around them. So much was going on in my world–rebuilding from a devastating tornado that killed 160 people in our town and wiped out thousands of buildings and vehicles, taking care of an elderly mother-in-law who still resented me for stealing her baby boy after 40 years of marriage, and dealing with people at work that couldn’t be pleased no matter what. I was a basket case and holding on until retirement by my fingernails. My husband was relieved when I mentioned that I’d like it if I could somehow take some riding lessons; his great fear had been that I would want to buy one of the fearsome beasts. So, I got riding lessons for a Christmas gift right after I retired. It saved my sanity. Truly, I became a calmer person, and I learned to be “in the moment.” It’s much safer when you’re around horses!
Fast forward a couple of years, and I have my own horse now. We are really great together. I’m turning 63 in a couple of weeks, and I still haven’t developed my riding skills, but Bravo is such a sweetheart. He can be frightened, and I just have to put my hand on him and remind him that, “I’ve got your back, Buddy!” I had to put ointment in his eyes, and he held perfectly still to let me once I explained it would help him. Teaching him to walk across a tarp? Hah! He looked at me like, “Is this what you want?” and put all four feet on it. Oh, how I’m looking forward to trying these lessons, and then, the best part will be getting on and exploring our world together. Thank you more than I can ever express.
Wow, Gigi… Thanks for sharing your story with us. How often do people do that, I wonder? Hang on until retirement, hang on until the kids grow up, hang on until that mortgage is paid off, hang on until we get the promotion – because THEN everything will be better, THEN we’ll be happy. You are so blessed that you found horses then, because they truly can bring us a peacefulness and an understanding of our connection to others that makes the rest of our life sooo… much easier. Without the peacefulness path that horses can bring us to, most people discover that they cannot have a happy ending to an unhappy journey.
So you are indeed blessed. I am glad that you are enjoying the lessons.
Hi Jenny..Thankyou so much for this message..I have been reminded of so many important ways to be with my ponies..
I am a Transpersonal Counsellor and an Equine Assisted Therapist .My ponies have just been ‘started’..One of my ponies has been my challenge (in a great way)..I have been really nervous around her since she has been back and she seems really distant which has really saddened me??..As I reflect..I fell that I am a bit stuck in the trainers world and not embracing the tools I have only known on how to be with my horse!! I feel that I am also dealing with early stages of Menopause so I am a bit distant in my world..I will sit down over the weekend and re read your six principle and 7th
Vickix
Well “name withheld”, I suspect that the nervousness that you are feeling since your girl came back from the trainer is HER nervousness – your experience of your connection with her as I talked about in the Third Key to Happiness with Your Horse. So well done you for your sensitivity.
I have a theory about these times of hormonal changes in our lives – a theory that is rapidly gathering more and more evidence in my work as an alternative therapist. I believe that the hormone changes LIFT UP the emotional stuff to the surface and create an opportunity to “clear the decks” of old crap, so to speak – creating an opportunity to enjoy the next stage of our lives.
Enjoy the Six Keys and come back and let us know what changes for you with your young mare afterwards.