The Language of Feet

waits to escape the harder it could be to get away so why wait?
If we want to change this behaviour we need to be proactive rather than reactive. Waiting until he has panicked is highly ineffective. Responding before the horse has flipped from rational to scaredoutofhismind allows him to stay involved and to actually learn to deal with the stress so he doesnt feel overwhelmed by it. If you are aware of your horses threshold for stress it is not difficult to work within it. We must be more aware of all the factors the horse is dealing with at any given time. His expression and actions will tell us when he is getting worried. We just have to correctly interpret what he is saying.
When the horse is moving his feet he is initiating a flight response. He knows that if he can move his feet he can survive. If the horse is allowed to move his feet often he can after a moment or two relax and stop his feet by himself. The more we try to stop him the more restrained he feels and the more he will need to keep moving his feet. There comes a point when if he is increasing the speed of his feet he will disengage his mind switch to flight mode and the intensity will increase substantially. If we are to help him stay calm we cannot increase the intensity of our actions that caused his feet to start moving in the first place. We also cant stop what we asked him to deal with so we wait for him to accept that although movement is allowed it is not necessary. He will then stop his own feet.
If the horses feet keep speeding up we must be prepared to slow him down to reengage his mind. Basically the faster his feet move the less he can think and the slower his feet move the more he can think. If he offers to stop give him a break to appreciate that he just dealt with something scary.
If he stays stopped for too long his feet can get stuck which is just as bad as feet going too quickly. A stuck horse is likely to panic in order to escape from what has him trapped. If your horse gets stuck you may have to abandon what you are doing and get him moving. Non