Hindering is one of the most aggravating habits a horse can have.. You’re ready to go, but the horse isn’t and probably won’t be for a while. This is one of those challenging horse training problems..

A reluctant horse usually stops and looks back, as if expecting something to happen from behind, and is seldom disappointed, for the driver usually warms the air with a volley of words and the whistle of the whip. His words have absolutely no meaning to the horse and naturally he becomes more and more confused and his senses more and more dull. It would be better instead of shouting and cutting with a whip to sing a song and stand aside and cut through the fence. The horse’s confusion would turn to astonishment and it would probably turn away.

No horse resists simply because it wants to stop. There is no reason for a horse to resist the first time; several repetitions of the cause, followed by a further act, become a habit, and the habit remains when the cause has long since ceased to exist.

Resistance is a confused, inactive and almost insensitive mental condition that occurs when the horse is faced with two conflicting problems. For example, if a strong-willed horse wants to go to the stable and you jerk back to lead him in another direction, these conflicts can confuse him. Since he can only think of one thing at a time, he gets confused, angry, and stops. If the first swing or two of the whip doesn’t draw his attention to something else, the others will only block his mind and make him even more numb to his surroundings.

In another example, an ambitious young horse is harnessed to the side of a slow and lazy horse. The command “Get up” is given and the ambitious colt leaps forward, quickly, only to shake his tender shoulders and mouth, because the old horse did not obey immediately. When this is repeated several times, he becomes confused, for they jerked him forward and whipped him back, and in his confusion he could only stand and do somersaults.

This is the same as when a man of keen intellect, who is an entertaining conversationalist in ordinary conversation, freezes up when asked to give a speech. He becomes unable to say a word, and is so confused that he can barely say his own name and doesn’t know enough to sit up. It is something of the same mental condition that the resisting horse gets into. It would be brutal to abuse the man because his mind became inactive in the new environment, and it is even more brutal to abuse the resisting horse with his lesser mental powers. But that is exactly what many do.

The solution may surprise you, as may much of the advice Professor Beery gives in his series of books on horsemanship. Some is common sense, but some expert advice makes you wonder how it would ever work, but it works.

The way to keep a horse from stalling or stalling is right when it’s telling you with its eyes, ears, and head movement that it’s about to stall, say “Whoa” firmly, and give a hard yank on the legs. lines. By stopping him before he stops of his own free will, he has flummoxed him and put him in a thoughtful mood. When he feels that he has attracted attention from him by refusing, tell your confidant “Get up” and simultaneously yank the line sideways.

Of course, there’s more to it than that, especially if you’re dealing with a confirmed habit horse, so visit http://www.HorseTrainingResources.com for help with this and other horse habits.