Chesapeake, Virginia One-On-One Clinic
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Sylvia Scott Natural Horsemanship Clinic
Blue Horse Mukwa Equine Retirement & Rescue Center Chesapeake, Virginia AGGRESSIVE HORSE! Sylvia begins the clinic with an in depth discussion of Natural Horsemanship and prey animal psychology and what it's like to be a herd prey animal. 
An owner brought all the way from New Jersey his seriously troubled quarter horse to the clinic to see if he could find some answers for his extremely dangerous aggression problems. While the QH had been through several failed trainer attempts previously, he unfortunately got progressively worse as more and more force or brutality was used against him as past trainers attempted to turn him around. QH's problems: he reared, bit and attacked aggressively almost nonstop. This is about as bad as a horse can get! In gathering more history on the QH, it is learned that he is a 13-year-old quarter horse who was a dominant stallion probably his entire life right up until the owner acquired him through a trader only months before. Now gelded, the QH's aggressive stallion-like behavior was long ingrained, so did not disappear. The owner was naturally afraid of the horse, as anyone would be, but he didn't want to give up hope on the horse as his heart was invested in getting better answers for himself and for the horse. Deciding to give it one last shot, he trailered the QH down to Virginia for some Sylvia Scott Natural Horsemanship therapy. Sylvia decided it would be best to begin with at liberty round penning work, because the horse was just too aggressive to work with hands on yet. It was time to make the right thing easy, the wrong thing hard for this horse, but also not make him feel trapped and allow him choices to find his way back to the human, compassionately, step by step.
But also, safety is crucial when working with such an aggressive horse. The QH had been in the round pen for about 20-30 minutes to get accustomed to it alone while Sylvia gave her opening lecture. There he reared and bucked and snorted and strutted his familiar stallion stuff. After he settled, Sylvia began her work.
The round pen gate opening was not kept latched, but instead, was dutifully manned by an astute helper to allow for quick emergency exit for Sylvia if needed. Stallion-like aggressive behavior can be potentially risky and all precautions for quick exits need to be securely in place. Sylvia entered the round pen carrying a training wand with plastic tied to the end, as well as a 12-foot lead rope to spin to keep the horse off of her if necessary. Generally, having that double visual protection barrier makes a horse think twice before actually pulling off the attack. As Sylvia entered the round pen, the horse charged and reared repeatedly, hoping to use his front feet to strike out, but via shaking the wand with plastic assertively, noisily, and twirling the rope widely simultaneously, smacking the ground loudly with it, Sylvia kept him at bay. |
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