Two horse blogs in a row…wow! Not to worry, I’m working on an essay about an Ernest Haycox Western that I hope to get up this week.

“Trust” is one of those big buzzwords in horse training. We’re supposed to be cultivating it in the horses we work with, so that we can ask them to do—whatever—and they’ll willingly do it, no matter how scary.

One aspect that doesn’t get talked about as much is building your own trust in a horse. I’ve found that trust is a two-way street. If you aren’t trusting a horse, how can the horse trust you? Which means—it doesn’t happen overnight, or even in a few months. Trust is an ongoing process of building up a relationship between horse and human.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, especially after a couple of incidents with Marker that showed me the degree of trust I’ve developed with him. One thing we do—it’s a game my husband started with him, and something I’ve continued—is to slide a cookie across the tailgate for him to grab. Sometimes he misses and the cookie falls off. Since he’s tied to the truck (a trust relationship in itself), he can’t reach to the ground and pick it up. I bent over, my behind to his chest, and at that moment when I picked up the cookie I realized that I wouldn’t do this with just any horse. Marker has proven to me that he isn’t going to do anything more than stand there and wait for me to retrieve his treat.

It's an unconscious assessment on my part, coupled with two years of experience with him. I wouldn’t have been this casual during our first months together, for good reason. Since then, he’s learned self-regulation skills and isn’t as pushy.

Another incident. I was working on tying a hay net to the fence while on the phone, when I felt the soft brush of a nose on my neck, from behind me. Again, allowing this behavior is an exercise in trust—and it was one of the first ways that Marker showed his trust in me. He first did this four months after I bought him, during a moment when I was yelling at another horse who was kicking at my old mare. Marker slipped in behind me and briefly rested his chin on my shoulder—reassurance to me, or seeking it from me? I’m not sure. In any case, it was just a light touch, and he moved away without running into either me or Mocha. Since then, he’ll often give me an unsolicited light touch on the neck or shoulder. Very light, sometimes a request to exchange breath, then move away. No squealing, no striking, just—checking in.

This contact around my face isn’t something I allow most horses to do, except those I’ve worked with for a while and know well, because without that trust relationship it’s not safe. Period. By four months, I knew that Marker wasn’t going to lunge at me to bite or strike. I wasn’t going to feel teeth on my face, neck, or shoulder. That moment marked a reaching out on his part to express confidence that I wasn’t going to smack him for presuming to show affection and concern. He’d already shown me that he was a very “touchy” horse—brushing a nostril against my hand for reassurance after we’d had a “discussion” (aka argument) over boundaries. He’d learned that I didn’t accept him lipping my hand (lipping leads to nibbling and nipping) but that a touch was fine. Letting him touch my neck was telling him that “yes, I trust you too.” That I knew he wasn’t going to knock me down or bite me. I was using my many years of experience to make a judgment call.

(this is not something that I recommend anyone do casually due to the risk of injury)

We’ve come a long ways since then. Oh, we’ve had our moments—the yak incident was one, but between the yak coming off of a mound of dirt, dogs barking at the same time, and me falling down when he dragged me as part of his spook (I had dismounted), the combination of Scary Things Happening was enough to send him running off. But we recovered. I realized after a second incident when I tripped over a mat and almost fell that he finds me falling down to be very frightening (something to work on with a horse owned by an elder). Plus I realized that while dismounting was a good strategy with my old Mocha mare in a similar situation, Marker feels more confident if I’m in the saddle when we encounter something scary.

Live and learn.

Building trust is an ongoing situation. From the human side, one builds trust from the horse by being consistent and predictable in handling behaviors, including reprimands. The horse in turn builds trust from the human by being responsive to the human’s handling behaviors.

One trust area I really work on (besides being consistent and structured when training a horse) is dealing with scary stuff. Too many people have a “one size fits all” attitude when it comes to their horse being afraid. I remember a young wannabe trainer telling me I had to force my rather reactive Mocha mare past something that worried her. That was Young Trainer’s take on what you did when your horse spooked.

Well, that approach worked for a couple of school horses in that barn who tended to be reactive and jumpy but would settle if pushed past the scary places. However, by this point I had been working with Mocha for several years and knew that this was the wrong approach for that mare. I let Mocha stand, look, then asked her to move past it. Which she did, then had no problems the next time we passed it. I explained my reasoning to this person afterward (this was an unsolicited piece of advice on her part, and not only was she not working with me, she had less experience than I did).

Taking this approach really helped several years later when Mocha developed a cataract in one eye that impaired her vision to the rear. Over the course of one summer riding the roads, I taught Mocha to slow, turn her head so that she could see the problematic item better, and relax. Forcing her to go by something she couldn’t see well would have just created more issues. Mocha was still a rather reactive horse at that age, but because she had learned to trust me, she knew that she could ask for more rein to turn her head so she could see better. In return, I knew that I could trust her with that much rein, and that when she asked for it, she wanted to look at something.

Marker is much the same way, though my voice works as a soothing agent more than it ever did with Mocha. Early on, I taught him the “go touch” command for something that worried him and was touchable. “Go touch”—then allow him to take his time sniffing and touching it to confirm it’s nothing scary. He’s learned that when I give him that command, it really isn’t something to be afraid of, but that I will give him time to make that decision for himself. Sometimes, though, touching isn’t a good idea. “Go look” works for those cases.

Would establishing such routines with those reactive school horses have worked? Possibly, but because they had multiple riders, perhaps not, either. Not every rider is ready to trust a reactive horse in that manner. Not every rider has the skills to handle that situation should it not work.

Which circles back around to trust being a mutual relationship between horse and human. It’s not something that gets built overnight. Like any relationship, it grows and develops with time and experience with each other. And, most importantly, if the human doesn’t develop trust with a horse, the horse is going to be slow to trust the human.

Remember that young trainer I mentioned above? She hadn’t learned—yet—how to develop trust in the horses she worked with. Therefore, her toolkit was based on force, not cooperation and trust. I lost contact with her when she moved to another barn, but I hope she learned that lesson.

Trust is built in everyday interactions and observations. Trust is built in horse and human understanding each other and how we react to each other. It is not a simple thing—but if you want a horse to trust you, then…you have to learn how to trust that horse. And that is not something achieved in a few short weeks.