Treats & Science Based Horsemanship Changed My “Crazy” Horse’s Life

Switching to using a predominantly rewards based program with my horses has changed my life, particularly with my rescue horse, Milo.

Milo was the quintessentially difficult horse. I adopted him from the BC SPCA as a 2 year old back in 2014. He was born into starvation and was eventually rescued as a coming 2 year old, so emaciated that he was just a 1.5 on the body scale and the SPCA initially had aged him as a yearling (a later dental clarified his age). He was nervous of people, exceptionally strong willed and “stubborn” in addition to being highly sensitive, highly intelligent and very anxious. The perfect storm of traits to make a difficult horse, the type of horse who responds extremely poorly to rough, forceful or high pressured handling.

Even a more “classical” or “gentle” traditional training approach using pressure and release was too much for Milo at times. He felt little incentive to do what I asked and despite being exceptionally tolerant of me despite his inner turmoil, he was very comfortable with outwardly voicing his anxiety through biting, bucking, leaping, refusing and sometimes, rearing. But, mostly bucking.

His bucking videos actually are what initially built my following on social media…

I fumbled through Milo’s training, doing the best I could to listen to him with the knowledge I had at time. While I pushed him way too hard, lost my patience with him and got frustrated and would be overly punishing at times, I will say that I do strongly believe I made a greater effort to listen to communication than many riders might have. Lots of different trainers, much more experienced than I, would encourage me to “show him whose boss” and punish him more than I was comfortable with. They interpreted his anxious behaviour as malicious, though I didn’t believe it was.

As Milo and I both grew older, I started to explore more science based training methods. I started classes in U of Guelph’s Equine Sciences program. I took human psychology classes at a local university campus. I learned more about Behavioural science and had previous misgivings reaffirmed by science and connected with like minded people.

Milo was my first horse to experiment on with what I learned and the changes I started to see were remarkable and undeniable. I started using rewards based methods more and more and then begun my deep dive into hoof care and natural horse care. The science behind equine stress and how many modern boarding situations are inadequate for horses due to lack of socialization, lack of free choice forage and lack of space. I applied what I learnt and saw the changes.

Good intentions but wrong application with hoof care had destroyed Milo’s hooves for many years before I made the big jump to look into transitioning to barefoot. His hooves already were not the most ideal due to his history of malnutrition but we underran the heel, lengthened the toe and made his already thin soles more susceptible to discomfort with how his issues were managed. Pads and wedges kept him more or less sound visually but did little to help with his discomfort and his hoof soreness definitely came out in behaviour.

Milo was so incredibly sore barefoot initially that he looked foundered. We had to utilize hoof casts, boots or glue on shoes initially because it was cruelty to have him be as sore as he was completely barefoot due to how dysfunctional his hooves were. It was a long, long journey fixing the damage. His posture adapted to handle the poor hoof angles so his whole body needed a full reset. His posture was created by the hoof issues but also contributed to the hoof issues, so it took a long time and a lot of adjustment to being more and more comfortable before he has started to consistently move and use himself in a way that is promoting healthy posture and hoof health.

We had some setbacks where despite my improving good intentions for Milo and my desire to follow a rewards based and science backed approach, I didn’t do right by him. We had a horrible trail ride where we got lost on trails, marked as horse trails, but not suitable. Due to the fact that they were in the mountains on a path we couldn’t turn around on, by the time we’d realized it was too late too turn around so we had to keep going. It was a stressful, scary and horrible endeavour for the horses and humans. Milo wore his FormaHoof hoof moulds completely down to nothing and I’m sure was very sore. But, he did everything I asked despite his fear and pain. I completely expended his entire emotional piggybank and I think it was the last straw for him after years of doing his best for me.

He needed to be treated for grade 3 ulcers, refused to go forward both under saddle and on the ground and presented with hoof soreness, particularly in his right front. X-rays on all hooves, ankles, stifles and hocks showed nothing. He’d had previous back x-rays and those showed nothing. The move was the save for an MRI, give him previcox to keep him comfortable and have a lengthy period of time off in hoof rehab and hope that would fix the issues.

That started what would be nearly 2 years of mostly time off rehabbing hoof soreness in the field, doing some flat and ground work but largely just existing as a horse and doing stretching/physio exercises.

His hoof soreness made him move around less which aggravated his issues and made him more aggressive to other horses in the herd. He was more crabby and stressed. As he started to let go of the hoof and body soreness this got easier and he became much easier to work with in training and in the field. He was clearly happier. The way he approached food in training became less anxious. He actually begun to willingly want to move forward.

When I did get an MRI, it showed the best case scenario. No significant damage to any inner structures with the vet hypothesis that his lameness was related to chronically poor hoof pastern axis angle and deep bruising.

His continued hoof and full body rehab has proven this hypothesis correct and he continues to get better.

Using food rewards to counter condition all of the negative associations Milo had developed with riding due to his history of chronic anxiety and pain has been my saving grace. It has quite literally helped to bring back the joy he feels in moving and helped me to have him willingly engage in exercises to rehab his hooves along with a locking stifle, both of which benefit from movement.

Prior to this full body reset Milo was a horse who post-trail-ride-from-hell would bite at me if I tried to mount him. Not for girthing or anything else, just for mounting. He made it clear he wanted nothing to do with it. He stopped wanting to be caught in the field. He was cranky during feed time to people and the other horses. He didn’t want to move or play with the other horses and spent most of his time standing and eating, gaining weight due to lack of movement. Even with food rewards, he didn’t want to move forward at liberty or under saddle.

Leading up to his MRI, I was worried he would need to be euthanized over some horrible chronic injury due to the lengthy time period of his on and off issues and the lack of findings we’d had in imaging. I was hesitant to believe that shoes and hoof angles that I’d seen in many, many other horses like him, could contribute to a problem to this degree.

But, as time has passed, it seems to be true. You really can see your horse do a complete 180 with a science based approach. You can really resolve lamenesses and issues that you believed to be chronic and career ending. You can really see changes that you believed to be impossible.

Milo isn’t perfect and he is definitely still rehabbing from the damage done to his body from chronic stress, hoof issues and more but I can see the changes in him everywhere. Every aspect of his personality has softened. He is so much happier. His body looks healthier, his legs look healthier. He looks like he has gotten younger, rather than older, despite the fact that he will be 11 years old this year.

I used to sneer at people who suggested a more holistic approach. I thought some horses just needed shoes and refused to believe there could be soundness concerns with a metal open heeled shoe since everyone seemed to do it. I didn’t think free choice forage or herd socialization was necessary. I thought food rewards made for aggressive horses.

But, I was so incredibly wrong.

And, I’m so thankful I realized that before it was too late to offer Milo a better life and fix problems that I contributed to causing for him.

I’m so thankful that Milo is willing to forgive me and start to find enjoyment and safety in working with me again, after I drained his emotional piggybank following years of taking more than I gave back to him.

I’m hopeful that I’ve finally begun to repay him sufficiently and not be so gluttonous with my expectations of him if I’m not offering much in return.

Judging by his behaviour, I think this may just be the case.

This is a longwinded way of saying that the fear mongering towards rewards based training and changing of the status quo in the horse world is rooted in ignorance and lack of desire to accept change. I used to be guilty of doing it and the feeling is intimately familiar.

As someone with a “crazy” horse who I could have used to justify all sorts of harsh forms of training and harsh training gadgets, I’m here to say that none of that stuff actually helped him. It just continued to deplete his emotional piggybank until he couldn’t take it anymore. If I had let him down when he hit that point, he could have ended up just like thousands of “broken” or “problem” horses do: at the auction, ready to ship for meat. And it would have been 100% my fault for having tunnel vision in training and making decisions selfishly instead of doing the necessary work on myself to be better.

The crazy horses are misunderstood. They’re the horses who snapped under unfair pressures and are honest and persistent enough to keep telling you this. They shout and they shout, even as they get yelled at, beat and mistreated for it. They don’t shutdown, they keep fighting. Humans hate these horses because they are difficult. They use these horses to justify their abuses, but these horses are this way because the abuse and neglect. It’s a perpetual cycle driven by humans who would rather continue to harass animals than look within and work on themselves.

A lot of the problems humans run into with horses are caused by our refusal to train the animals in front of us. They’re flight animals, yet so much of what we are taught to do with them revolves around denying this very nature. Studies continue to get churned out, identifying clear issues in modern horse training and care, but the industry denies them.

Organizations like the FEI contribute to this, claiming that “[horse] welfare is paramount” in their rulebooks, but doing nothing to acknowledge the growing welfare concerns from equine ethologists and other professionals in the equine science field. These empty claims that welfare matters are persistent, despite the growing research depicting clear trends of the industry’s inability to accurately assess welfare of horses.

Welfare isn’t an opinion.

It isn’t what we humans decide what we’d like to see.

It is what the horse feels.

It is the horse’s reality.

Not what we decide to rewrite of it using our big, egotistical predator brains.

It is exceptionally easy to fall into denying information that is difficult to hear. I did that to Milo’s detriment for longer than I would like to admit. My biggest regret with delving into science based horse training is the remorse I feel for being hyper aware of the mistakes I made for so long but not having started fixing them earlier. It’s hard to see the damage that you’ve done and not be able to go back in time to lessen it.

There is a lot of merit to seemingly “extremist” takes like the anti-open heeled metal shoes movement (aka barefooters) and the clicker trainers or “treat trainers” but it is being deliberately suppressed by our industry, making it comfortable for the masses to vehemently deny what is factual information that would benefit them and there horses.

People who do subscribe to rewards based methods are often mocked and labelled as inferior for doing it, despite the incredible lack of evidence proving that it is inferior to pressure and release. Being ostracized by the community for this is often enough of a deterrent for people to never want to try it, or to give up early.

There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that highlights the success of rewards based training across all different species of animals, horses included. There is little evidence showing it makes animals more aggressive. There is, however, plenty of evidence depicting a greater risk of injury to humans from stressed horses and higher concentrations of stress hormone release in horses in high pressure and/or punishing programs.

Humans are literally MORE at risk of dangerous behaviours from horses when they are stressing them out.

And yet, so many of us are taught to deliberately stress horses in the name of training.

I hope in sharing my story, I can convince people that they may just be getting lied to by the generally well intentioned beliefs in the industry that are rooted by blatant misinformation. There is absolutely no reason why using more rewards, more patience, more empathy and kindness in training will be detrimental to you or your horse.

There is no evidence of this.

But, being highly punishing and using painful training tactics and/or keeping horses in environments that don’t adequately meet there needs is incredibly damaging and has been proven to be so.

Don’t make the same mistakes I did for as long as I did.