Why your horse doesn’t want to be caught?
Imagine, you have all the best intentions. . .
You leave your horse free in a large pasture, free to run and spend some time perhaps in the company of his herd mates, but then, when you may have to go home and have to put him back in his stall, you can no longer catch him.
He sees you, he sees that you have the halter in your hands, he turns and walks away or even runs away from you as fast as he can, maybe even with a nice buck.
“What frustration! I can’t get my horse!”
You try to run after him, hide your halter behind your back or in your jumper, grab all the biscuits and apples in the world trying to “buy” him with food and maybe, after forty minutes of frenzy, you can grab it, maybe even with the help of someone else.
Who hasn’t been in this situation?
Don’t worry, you are not the only one, I think that sooner or later, everyone has been in your situation at least once.
A horse that does not get caught generates an immense frustration in us, so much that sometimes it makes us lose our temper, especially because this kind of things happens when we have to catch it because we have to leave the stable and maybe go to make another hundred thousand commitments that we have agreed to make that day.
But why doesn’t the horse want to get caught?
5 reasons why your horse doesn’t want to be caught
1. He is fine where he is
And yes, it seems obvious. Maybe there’s some delicious fresh grass where he doesn’t have access every day and for as long as he wants.
He is with his friends, in company, where he finally enjoys his life as a horse in a large open space where he can move, stretch out and get dirty with a nice roll maybe in the mud.
If you think about it. . .
It’s like when you were a kid in the playground with your friends and your mom told you, you had to go home. A place where you know you’re alone and you have nothing to do, except maybe your homework.
What did you say to her?
“No, Mom, I’ll stay here. ”
So, it sounds obvious maybe, but your horse is telling you the same thing.
2. If you take him, he is expect something unpleasant will happen
Maybe in the past, after someone caught him after some time when he didn’t want to be caught, he was punished or scolded anyway.
As a precaution, you’d better not get caught.
3. He knows that he will do an unpleasant activity
I think this is the most common cause I have ever seen.
Usually, every time we owners go to pick up our horse from the pasture it’s mainly to ride it and put it to work.
If every time our horse sees us, he knows he has to come with us and we always make him do an activity he does not like, he will start to avoid us and not come with us.
4. My horse does’t want to be caught because he does’t trust me
Trust is earn over time. Maybe it’s a horse that has a history of abuse, has bad associations with us humans, so when you want to approach him he runs away from you out of fear.
Another aspect that falls into this category is perhaps that he is not convinced of our emotional state. Maybe we’re upset about the bad day we had at work.
He perceives it and is not convinced to come with us.
They feel that we are not coherent with our emotions and therefore we are not a reliable point of safety for them.
5. Experiencing pain in the poll region
This is often underestimated. If the horse feels pain in the poll area, right where the halter sits and creates pressure, the horse will begin to have a negative association with the halter because it knows that this is causing pain.
So what if my horse doesn’t want to get caught?
If your horse does not want to get caught by you, before getting angry (absolutely normal!) ask yourself the reason for this behaviour.
By solving the root of the problem you will not have any more problems.
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