Buddy sour Nervous horse

I have a 8 year old gelding and he is awesome on the trails he is very buddy sour and is very nervous if I take him out away from his environment. I always make it a good experience I believe, and I take him away in the trailer by himself to ride with others and sometimes he trailers well and other times he freaks. He is a nice smooth and willing horse he just seems like he needs time but hes been away alot and has had lots of time and is not changing his behavior. He acts like he is 4 instead of 8. He does not buck or rear he just seems sometimes like he will expode without his buddies or some horse he trusts needs to be around him. This horse I have had for 3 years and he does not seem to be interested in people just his horse buddies no matter how much time you spend with him. What can I do???

I sure am not a trainer, but you may want to check out some sort of supplement, whether it be a B-1 type of daily supplement or something more just when you are trail riding like Calmex.

Personally, I had a jumpy type horse who was on the B-1. It did help, but doesn't help with all of them. You would just have to try and see. If you do try, you should start to see some improvement after about three or four days. At first, start with one scoop then add gradually if you don't see any change at first. Mine was on 3 scoops at each feeding. You cannot overdose them on it as B vitamins are water soluble and will just leave their system if they are not needed.

Good luck.

Perhaps it's not the amount of time you spend with him but what you do when you are spending time with him. I'm not saying that there aren't horses who will always be like you describe no matter what you do, but I think I can say with certainty that if you find activities to do with him that engage his mind and make him interested in you, that you'll find he wants to spend more time with you and trust you more.

What I am interpreting from what you say is that he has trust issues. He is more concerned with what his buddies are doing than what you are doing. Therefore when he's in a situation that causes him stress, you are not the person he is looking to for comfort. I'm not sure how into Natural Horsemanship you are, but I'm going to make a suggestion to you. I am not an advocate of any particular trainer. I have found things I like and dislike about everyone I've seen and found that a mix of this techinque with that technique tends to work the best. It all has to be custom to what you like, what your abilities are, and the personality of the horse. That being said, I think the Parelli Games are a good place to start for you. Some would say that Parelli is too commercial and have criticisms for them. Whether or not you like them personally, the fact is that their "games" open up a communication pathway that would benefit you and your horse in this juncture of your relationship. There is a parelli trainer on this board. She would be able to help you start if you were so inclined. Another way to begin getting your horses attention is to go the clicker training route. This tends to get immediate results and enthusiasm from your horse, but you have to be detail oriented or it can go astray. You have to be careful to follow the guidelines (they are easy, you just have to be sure to follow the steps in order). Here is a link to the magazine archives where the clicker "how to" is located under the Clicker Training Column: http://www.goinggaited.com/zArchiveGaitedMulesFebruary2010.html I've done it with my horse and it's wonderful. I'm the most exciting part of his day...

If you want to think those things over, but want to start with SOMETHING, here is one more thought for you. Your horse needs to learn that you are going to take care of him. Take him for walks. Let him see you navigating him around holes and over logs. Swat flies for him. Walk past obstacles and let him see you [not] react. Put yourself in the role of leader on the ground for a while so he can better visualize you as the leader when you're mounted. Talk to him when you're going past scary things on the ground, use a cue like- putting your hand on his neck or shoulder and saying, "it's ok" or whatever with a gentle but firm voice. Let him look into your eyes and see that you are calm and confident. He will begin to associate that cue and that tone of voice with reassurance and calmness.

Just some thoughts for you.. Good luck!

Lee

Two items first and foremost

quote"he is awesome on the trails"
First item. He is NOT an awesome horse on the trails, if he is buddy sour. That's a contradiction of terms.

quote"he has trust issues"

Second item. Horses are incapable of trust. Need to get that notion out of your head post haste. Horses respond to stimuli. They are incapable of giving trust. It's easy to confuse trust with proper training. That makes the job much more difficult if you think your going to get a horses to trust you. It will not happen.

To overcome buddy sour, barn sour issues, the horse must to taught to do what the rider asks, when the rider asks, and nothing more, and nothing less. Now that sounds very easy, but it is not real easy. Just imagine. You are expecting the horse to only do as you ask. That means you must ask the horse to do every thing it does. No free rein. No walking forward on it's one accord. What your after is to ask the horse to do something, and then don't change until you ask it do something different. When you master this, all buddy sour, barn sour, spooking, issues, etc, are gone. And you have a well trained horse that is a true pleasure to ride and enjoy. Notice I said "YOU MASTER THIS", Not the horse. These issues are rider induced, not horse induced.

Wow, Bob, those are some strong words. On the notion of trust, we'll just have to agree to disagree. As strongly as you believe they are not capable of trust, I would have to disagree just as strongly.

I do agree though that consistency and "being the boss" is the key. The horse cannot be permitted to make his own decisions about speed and direction and it can and will be a battle of wills at first.

If your going to train animals or, in this case, a horse, it is very important you understand the basic nature of the horse. The concept of thinking a horse will come to trust you, will get you hurt, and prevent true training from taking place.

NO, animals do not trust us, though they may appear like it to a greenhorn. It is primarily about predictability, in other words if you become predictable to the horse it will feel more secure (content) with you, because it knows who you are and what you will do, or better said, what you will not do. That is why a genuine horseman must be, and I emphasize, must be an honest human, not a being of pretences and stealth, because when not honest and direct the person becomes unpredictable to the horse, and the horse will feel insecure (discontent or irritated) on account of it.

There is no trust in the animal world, but acceptable predictability is the correct term, which gives the horse security and contentment. We speak of trust, because we deceive, while horses do not, hence they do not trust.

If you do not acknowledge the horse, his movement, it will perceive it as if you have not seen it, hence in the eyes of the horse you are handicapped, week and vulnerable.

When you are approaching a horse have your heart in front of you not your hands. Horsemen must be brave, perceptive, honest and fast, which any one can see when watching them around horses, hence horsemen are not self-declared but they are simply that who they are and horses adjust to all these attributes very easy, because men like this are very predictable to them, there are no tricks and stealth when genuine horsemen deal with horses, and 99% of the time it is very, very calm and content.

Horses like and dislike, they do not love or hate, but they do resent, the latter caused mostly by prolonged annoyance and irritation caused by either human or an animal. This is caused mostly by the lack of acknowledgment of the horse and its reality by the handler.

This is why the Monty Roberts Join up works so well. It is not the horse, but the handler that becomes predictable to the horse and accepts the handler as someone that will not harm him. It is also why the technique does not work for everyone. If you are inconsistent and do not repeat your motions consistently you can not train the horse Ditto, with a lot of the natural horseman methods.

Horses process a man as follows: man cannot see, cannot smell and cannot hear. Why would the horse go where you want him to go? Would you go with such man and have him lead you or tell you where to go and what to do? This is not only against reason and logic it is against the nature and reality. You cannot ever earn the horse’s trust, it will not happen. In addition, there is no trust in nature anyway; it does not get processed, it does not compute, hence there is no betrayal either. It is all about the predictability by the horse. There is no love in nature, it does not process and does not compute, but pleasure (joy) does in everything alive as much as pain does. It is not about trust; it is all about the heart. People think that horses trust us when they appear like it. They don’t! They process and compute, adjusted to it and live with it. They have no choices, only we think we have them, again we think.

The problem with horses is that their equipment for living in our environments is too refined. Imagine your eyes can see all around you, you can smell things 100 yards away and you can hear things from 100 yards, like people talking and such. It is just too much for the horse to process, he misses too much of it, hence he feels insecure, often nervous. Sometime they walked by something several times, but it was never processed. One day it is processed and the horse jumps and we wonder how come he is afraid of something that he saw before. He never did see it, or better said he did, but it was not processed, he missed it.