I still remember the look on Monty’s face – all those years of danger and punishment and now he was soft and happy and she was filled with joy.
This old article reminds me of the spectacular success that’s possible with gentle and effective techniques for biting horses AND how the same principles can expand that spectacular success into ridden work as well. I found this up the back of my website when I was writing the last biting horse blog.
I have a strong affection for Monty, pictured here – because he was my Bobby’s brother. I’d even float trained him way back when he was a yearling getting ready for sale.
Some of the best and most spectacular horses can seem to be the most difficult. I wonder if it’s because they’re brave enough to hold out for us to be everything that we can be? Certainly that was the case with my Bobby.
Monty had become a difficult and dangerous horse. He was aggressive. He’d savaged Gina’s non horsey partner, who was no longer willing to go in the paddock. He fed him if he had to, by leaning over the gate with a piece of poly pipe in his hand to protect himself and no matter how hard he got whacked, or how often – Monty just kept on charging and kept on biting.
Gina herself had sported more than a few bruises over the years from being bitten and the ridden behavior was problematic too. (my Aussie understatement there!) Her friends had told her to her face that they were worried about him killing her.
Gina was a competent rider, working hard at it, riding most days, having regular and frequent lessons from excellent dressage teachers. She had tried bit changes, saddle changes, teacher changes, riding style changes and although she got some results, as you’ll read in her own words, she still had a dangerous horse.
Gina:
“Although I was working with a very understanding and skilled dressage teacher, who has a wonderful kind training method, Monty still had some very dangerous habits, on the ground and under saddle. He was constantly biting – no matter how much I reprimanded him, he would not stop.
He was often difficult to catch and would charge at me, teeth flaring. I wasn’t sure how to deal with this, so I would fill up his bucket with carrots and apples, so that he would come happily. But if he decided he was not going to leave the paddock, he would go backwards instead and we would spend half my riding time just trying to get out of the paddock. I tried to never get angry, because that made him even more dangerous.
Under saddle he would often use his energy for evil instead of good. There were many times that he would do things like not going forwards properly or going backwards and not going forwards at all. If I forced him, he would get angry and throw his whole front end in the air, twist his body and basically do anything that he could, to not do what I wanted. 17 hands of incredibly strong and determined warmblood fighting with me was very difficult to handle.
I am happy to report that all these things are now of the past. Monty now comes to me nicely when I ask him to, with no biting and with a nice look on his face. He follows me to the gate and then I put the head collar on, again no biting!
He walks out of the gate nicely and happily I no longer even have to tie him up cos’ he stands there nicely for me and no biting still! It’s just so exciting! I have shed so many tears of joy that my Monty comes to me and follows me around like a puppy with no biting and a soft face cos’ he wants to be with me.
The riding has also improved dramatically. He can now carry himself for longer and longer periods of time in the most relaxed, soft and rhythmical way because he is my partner now and working with me. I am having so much fun with Bobby’s method, both on the ground and in the saddle. I think it’s made me a calmer person in general.
I know my partner enjoys the success cos’ Monty doesn’t bite him any more either and he no longer needs to feed him with a piece of poly pipe in his hand and can even grease his hooves.
I hope you have enjoyed my success story and I am sure that there’s a lot more good things to happen. Well done and thank you to Jenny and Bobby for sharing this with us.
A very happy Gina and Monty.”
Gina’s Understating The Improvement In Her Ridden Work
Gina is so excited by their progress on the ground, that she’s understating the improvement in her ridden work, which was also dramatic. When she applied our principles to her ridden work, on the first day of riding in the clinic, Monty found self carriage on the buckle of a loose rein. When a horse is in self carriage, their stride is soft and rhythmic, they lift their back up (which means they can carry a rider with strength and ease for long term health) and they are a heck of a lot easier to ride. Whether it’s dressage, cow work or trail riding – whatever you do – self carriage is the foundation for a long, happy and healthier ridden life.
By the end of four days, he was only coming out of self carriage occasionally. Six weeks later, using some new material that Bobby had given me that has been included in Bobby’s Diaries, he was elevating his back even more powerfully and using his body spectacularly – still on a very long rein and dancing into her hands.
One of the loveliest things about helping these two find each other, has been listening to the admiring jokes about “Just leave that horse in the paddock for me on your way out” and “I’ll give you a dollar for him”. All these comments are much nicer than “Get rid of that horse he’s going to kill you!”
See… there’s nothing that unusual about this success story – eighteen years later I’ve got hundreds of them now. The word transformation is so overused these days that it’s losing it’s real meaning. But what else can I call it when a horse changes from gobsmackingly dangerous to soft co-operation in one morning?
Here’s the thing. Can YOU do that?
I don’t know if you can do it THAT fast, because each of us have arrived at this point in time in many different ways, with many different things in our background. What I DO know is that if you commit to doing it differently from now on and get support, that YOU CAN DO IT TOO.
Our Comfort Zone Model had the key.
You see, Monty had only ever been reprimanded for biting in what I call his “Oh Shit I’m Dead Zone” where no one – horse or human – learns anything, they only react on auto pilot the same way they’ve reacted in the past, whether that got them hurt or not. So even the poly pipe wasn’t enough to change his behavior – it was on auto pilot.
This is an excerpt from Bobby’s Diaries that talks a bit more about Monty.
So here Gina was, doing her brand new leadership at liberty work and doing it beautifully. And here was Monty coming into her with soft legs, soft eyes and the most beautiful energy and then with the most beautiful energy … he bit her again!
I’d never seen anything like it and it took me a moment to figure out what was happening. This was a horse who had only ever been told biting was unacceptable when he was in his oh shit zone. In the oh shit zone, the horse (and us too!) only program reactions, they don’t learn to think or respond. The way the brain works, he was reacting the same way all the time, even though that reaction was getting him whacked and not serving him at all. He had reacted to the whacking, but never actually learned that biting was unacceptable.
Just pause for a second and think about that. All those years of punishment and he’d never actually learned that biting was unacceptable. That’s because he was never working in the part of his brain where he COULD learn.
To fix this biting, she had to change the way she was dealing with it. Instead of punishing him for biting in ways that put him into his oh shit zone, she aimed to keep him in his not too sure zone where he could still learn new things, where he could learn that biting was unacceptable to her – where he could learn to co-operate and try – and where he could respond instead of just react.
When he went to bite her, she defended herself with her elbow or whatever she needed to do to actually keep herself safe, trying to keep him in the not too sure zone with however she chose to defend herself – then she waved her rope at him, sent him away and changed speed and directions with the right attitude (no “blame” or “bad boy” – just “no thankyou, that is not acceptable”).
In a very short period of time – under an hour – he had stopped biting at her altogether. This had been going on for ten years, so this was a pretty amazing deal!
We’ve grown a lot in the last 20 years.
We’ve changed a lot since those days, got better at communication, we’re a lot more gentle, we teach people Feel for their horse now which is even more effective and faster in results. All those years ago I had a different view of leadership and thought that the most effective learning took place during short periods in the Not Too Sure Zone, but later on I discovered that’s not true and the most beautiful training takes place with curiosity in our horse’s Comfort Zone. Most importantly, I discovered that leadership has nothing to do with making a horse do what you want.
We’ve been doing variations of this work, getting better and better at it, faster and faster for 20 years, with the last 14 years focused on online training.
Register your email to get notified of our FREE live seminars and to hear about all kinds of other opportunities to get what these folk got.
Today’s photo is Gina and Monty, taken 6 weeks after that initial clinic where he made the biting breakthrough. He was dancing into her hands, reaching into the long reins and generally being an utter delight. The same principles that fixed their biting problems translated into beautiful saddle work as well. I have very fond memories of Gina’s internationally known dressage teacher coming up to me at Equitana with congratulations in his heavy accent for “beautiful work… beautiful work”.
If you haven’t been here on our website before and a biting horse is a problem for you, there’s another excellent article on biting horses here.
