How to Stop a Horse From Getting Spooked

A horse by nature is prey and therefore when approached with danger his instinctual response is to run away. When a horse gets afraid and tries to flee we call this spooking. As part of your training and building a relationship with your horse, you want him to learn to look for you for safety when he is spooked not run away. Read on to learn more.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

1. Learn to relax yourself when relating to or riding your horse. Often what happens is the horse owner anticipates the horse spooking and remains tense. The horse can read your body language. Often you can stop a horse from getting spooked just by learning to relax yourself. Practice deep breathing or sing a quiet song while riding.
2. Redirect the horse's attention. Horses can only think about one thing at a time. If you can get her attention focused on something other than what spooked her, she will usually calm down. Turn her in another direction or tell her to take a few steps forward.
3. Teach your horse a calm down cue. For example, teach a command that means the horse should put his head down to the ground. When the horse gets agitated or shows signs of spooking give the calm down cue to make the spooking stop.
4. Help your horse cope with the things that spook her by increasing her exposure to them. For example if the lake spooks the horse, walk her down to the lake and then turn and come back. Continue doing this daily increasing the amount of time you remain near the lake until the spooking stops.
5. Desensitize the horse who spooks easily by exposing him to an assortment of scary and noisy items until he gets used to them. Put wind chimes, plastic bags tied onto sticks, and other items that will move and make noises into the field with the horse. Remove them and add new scary items as the horse gets used to the old ones.