Dealing With An Aggressive Horse Behavior

I’ve noticed that a lot of people have problems dealing with an aggressive horse or a dominant horse. Often, because people don’t really understand horse behavior, they aren’t sure what’s going on. This problem arises because of the predator-prey difference in our relationship with horses. Being prey animals, horse behavior can be hard for us to truthfully understand at times.

One way to get a handle on aggressive horse behavior is to go out into a pasture where there are several horses and just watch them. Find out who the dominant horse is. Something you’ll probably notice is that a dominant horse moves the other horses around. Sometimes, a dominant horse will make a more submissive horse move out of the way just to show whose boss. He might do this by motioning to bite or kick at the more submissive horse, or even actually doing it. Its hard to believe for some people who are new to horse life, but horses can be very aggressive and mean with each other.

At other times, the dominant horse moves other horses out of the way for a practical purpose, while also showing that he is boss. For instance, if there is a large hay stack, he might make a horse move out of the way so he can eat. If horses in a pasture are fed in bowls with grain, the dominant horse will eat first and make the other horses move off so she can do it.

In the wild, the dominant aggessive horse will decide when and where the herd will go. Once again, this involves getting the horses to move. They do this with body language.

Getting insight into this can help humans who own their own aggressive horse to deal with aggressive horse behavior that arises from dominance issues. One of the first things we need to teach our horses is never to invade our space. All too often, people let their horses pester them by invading their space, maybe the horse appears to be looking for treats or something. People think its cute, but the horse might actually be testing you to see where you stand in the hierarchy.

To deal with dominant aggressive horses, we can act to turn negative situations into positive situations. One way to do this is start moving an aggressive horse behavior around instead of letting her move you around.

Lets say that you are going out into the pasture where you have an aggressive horse. Give yourself a leg up and add some confidence by always taking a tool with you. This can be a crop or a lead rope, just something you can use to make yourself look bigger and put some pressure on a horse with.

If a horse comes at you, take the end of the lead rope and whip it around like a helicopter blade. Don’t be afraid to smack the nose of an aggressive horse with the end of your lead rope. This can be really helpful. I know I used to be intimidated by aggressive horses, and being able to swing a lead rope or whip in the air was really helpful in giving me the confidence I needed to keep a horse from chasing me out of a field.

Something else you can use is kick dirt at the aggressive horse and make a hissing sound like a snake or just say “psssst” as you do it. When an aggressive horse behavior comes at you or won’t move off, assume a confident stance with your body language. Then look down at the ground toward your right foot, and kick some dirt toward the horse. While you are doing this make the “ssss” sound (think snake). This is pretty effective at getting horses to move off. And remember horses will have a tendency to yield to you, even if they are aggressive or dominant-provided that you show them you are not intimidated.

Step two is to start doing some groundwork with this horse to let the horse know YOU are in charge and the mare IS NOT. To do this, you need to start using your body language to communicate to the mare in horse language, which means body language, that you are in charge. Can you catch this mare? If so catch her and put a lead rope on and perform these simple leading exercises:

Leading Exercises

The idea of this exercise is to lead your horse using body language that communicates leadership and teaches the horse to respect you. I know we all want to bond with our horses, but you cannot really bond completely until the horse respects you. Its just like human friends. Can you really be friends with someone you don’t respect? Your horse needs to respect you.

A good exercise is to start every day with a groundwork session that begins with the hook-on:

Horse Hook-On in the Round Pen

That will go a long way to teaching your horse to respect you as a leader and make your horse easier to catch (if that is an issue with you).

Now, a great way to deal with a dominant aggressive horse is to give them more than their share of backup exercises. Horses do not like to back up because of instinct. They are prey animals, and even though they are domesticated and live in more or less safe environments, their instincts have them on the look out for lions and tigers all the time. So walking backwards where they can’t see makes them uncomfortable as a general rule. But the alpha mare can certainly ask them to backup. So assume the role of alpha mare and put a lead rope on your horse and ask her to backup. If she doesn’t listen shake the rope aggressively. Spend 20 minutes a day doing this until her behavior improves. Its easy for you do do and produces results.

Also, take some time out to do other exercises that just involve moving the horse around. Remember as I said the dominant horse gets other horses to move off. So you do that to your mare. Make her move her forehand left, then right. Then ask her to disengage her hindquarters. Then repeat. This is all tedious, but it will get your horse to respect you so that she will not chase you out of the field. A horse that chases you around like that does NOT respect you. And would you want to ride that horse? Probably not a safe idea.

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