Disciplining Your Horse - Part 1

I see problem behaviour develop in a horse that has seen little or no handling and before he has had any training. This is not because the horse is bad in fact often he shows no sign of misbehaviour and it is not just bad manners because an unhandled horse does not understand that we expect him to behave in a certain way.
I see horses that are apparently gentle and easy to be around but do not understand how to behave like horses. These horses behave like spoiled children who have just been told they cant have a cookie. Horses learn to throw temper tantrums that result in an exhibition of extreme behaviour not out of fear but out of anger. These horses soon learn how to milk the system to get their own way. In many cases we are not prepared to effectively discipline this bad behaviour either we overdo the correction and get mad at the horse or we try to comfort the horse for being scared. Both scenarios only confirm the bad behaviour.

When I refer to disciplining the horse for problem behaviour I am not advocating punishment but saying that we cannot allow the bad behaviour to lead to a reward for the horse. The horse must reach his own conclusion that such tantrums are not effective before he will start looking for a better way to behave before he gets what he wants. A major factor in how we discipline is emotion. If we get too emotional about what is happening either we take it as a personal attack and get scared or we fight back with aggression. It is the emotional factor that changes the horses perception of the correction because then the horse is also taking what should be a simple correction as a