10/19/2026
Your Horse Isn't Stupid. Unfortunately, That's Part of the Problem.🔥
I have a confession to make. For a considerable portion of my equestrian life, I thought I was rather good with horses. I could ride them, make them do things, compete on them and persuade them to participate in all sorts of extraordinary activities. (Disclaimer: Well, most of the time anyway.) Naturally, I assumed this meant I understood what I was doing.🙄
Of course, there were the occasional difficult ones. The horse that wouldn't lead without diving for grass, the lunatic that rushed everywhere, the hard-mouthed one responsible for my impressive biceps, and the sensitive one who appeared to consider every leaf out of place a potential assassination attempt.🫣
Fortunately, the equestrian industry had thoughtfully provided an impressive collection of equipment and products to address these apparent personality defects.
Horse won't lead? Buy a nose chain. Horse won't stop? Stronger bit. Horse won't steer? Tighter noseband. Nervous horse? Here's a calming supplement. Horse won't stand at the mounting block? Get someone to hold the bloody thing while you scramble aboard.🤷♀️
Problem solved. Sort of.😬
What I didn't appreciate was that horses are such extraordinarily good learners that they can make a relatively clueless human look remarkably competent.😎
And herein lies one of the great ironies of horsemanship. Our horses can become so good at compensating for our shortcomings that we never discover we have them.🫠
I've invented a name for this unfortunate condition: Restraint-Induced Competence Illusion (RICI).🤓 It's entirely fictitious, although I suspect it affects a substantial proportion of the equestrian population. I certainly suffered from a spectacular case.
RICI occurs when our ability to physically control a horse convinces us that the horse understands what we expect it to do. We pull on a rope and the horse follows. We pull on the reins and it turns. We hold a horse still just long enough to throw ourselves into the saddle, desperately search for our stirrups as it trots away, and casually explain that "he's always been like that".🧐
Meanwhile, the horse is busy working out what on earth we want, which of our signals actually matter and how much pressure it needs to tolerate before we finally leave it alone.
And because horses are such brilliant learners, they often figure out enough to get by. We can even accomplish extraordinary things together, blissfully unaware that the horse has been doing much of the intellectual heavy lifting while we've been taking the credit.😵💫
The trouble is that getting a horse to do something and teaching it to understand how to do it are not necessarily the same thing.
Consider the horse that requires constant leg pressure to maintain a trot. We call it lazy, conveniently overlooking the possibility that we've taught it our leg signals are largely meaningless. Or the horse that needs considerable rein pressure to turn. We call it hard in the mouth, rather than questioning whether we've ever systematically taught it to respond to something lighter.
Of course, pain, fear and physical limitations can also explain these behaviours, which is why good horsemanship requires more than a training theory, an enthusiastic opinion and an impressive collection of tack.
But here's what changed everything for me. I began to understand how systematically we can teach horses to recognise and respond to remarkably light signals. I discovered that behaviours I'd previously attributed to difficult personalities could sometimes change surprisingly quickly when I addressed gaps in the horse's learning.
These days, one of my greatest pleasures is helping people make the same discovery. Watching someone realise that their horse isn't necessarily being difficult, but may simply not understand what they've been asking, is enormously rewarding. And watching that horse begin responding with clarity, confidence and considerably less physical intervention is even better.❤
This is why I love teaching people how horses learn, how to recognise what they understand and how to develop the practical know-how to communicate more effectively. It changes far more than one troublesome behaviour. It changes how people interpret their horses, how they approach challenges and what they believe is possible. Their confidence grows because they are no longer simply hoping their horse will cooperate. They are developing the knowledge and skills to help make that cooperation possible.💪
The wonderful thing about horses being such clever learners is that once we become better teachers, their abilities can really shine. And so can ours.🫶
So, if you've ever wondered whether your horse is stubborn, lazy, naughty or simply determined to make your life difficult, perhaps it's worth considering another possibility.🤔
Your horse might be considerably cleverer than you've been giving it credit for, and you might have been benefiting from that cleverness for years without even realising it.🤓
Fortunately, RICI is treatable. Unfortunately, the treatment involves learning something yourself rather than buying another bit.😆
Collectable Advice 319/365. Please SHARE with all those RICI sufferers out there who don't even realise they have got it.🔥
IMAGE📸: Wining ribbons does not guarantee you don't suffer from RICI 😎
