Imagine what it would be like to truly understand what your horse is thinking. We look at some of he key horse behaviours which, one you understand them, make you “alpha leader” and your horse “putty in your hands”.

OK, so there are a couple of basics to understand. Firstly horses are flight animals, meaning that to avoid danger they are “programmed” to run away rather than to turn and fight.

Horses are herd animal, meaning that they are wired up to be with other horses and want to follow the herd

The above two points may be pretty basic, but it accounts for an awful lot of what we human term “bad behaviour” e.g. spooking and napping (flight) and wanting to bolt off when other horses get excited and start running around (herd instinct)

Getting more subltle now, is the art of horse whispering and “join-up” where the horse is lunged and “pushed away” by the trainer, as would happen in the wild by a dominant horse, eventually being allowed back to join up with the trainer. At this point the trainer has established himself at leader and the horse subservient. Fantastic training and totally humane.

Monty Roberts and Robert Maxwell are probably the most famous horse whisperers. I had the privilege of watching Robert train a horse that was terrified of loading into a box. After just 15 minutes of training, the horse followed Robert in to the box, quiet as a lamb.

Robert had established himself as leader through the join up process and, because of the herd instinct, the horse was desperate to follow. Fantastic.