Play, aggression, or defiance?

by Megan
(CT)

When I free this horse that I'm helping to train, if I apply more pressure to go faster or ask for a quick change in direction, she tends to toss her head at me by twisting her neck and throwing her head toward me. I practice natural horsemanship (Parelli), but I am having trouble reading this behavior. I thought head tossing was an aggressive behavior, but her owner assures me that it is play behavior. She is a low-energy horse who I know is prone to defiance if I ask for too much too fast. I included a copy of a picture of her doing the gesture so you could see what's going on.





Hi Megan,

Great question!

This gesture can fall under all these categories depending upon the situation at hand. It is very important to acknowledge what request or asking happened the second before that created the behavior. (In your example it appears, "If I apply more pressure" & "If I ask for too much too fast".) I have a horse that does this too usually with the other horses and only when they are putting pressure on her to move somewhere. Under those circumstances it is a display of defiance, or more accurately, "Don't push me!" There is also a component here that a horse could be asking, "Why are you sending me away or why are you punishing me by sending me away?" (i.e. That's why chasing a horse in a round pen can destroy trust not build it. Also I would never send a horse away after freeing them. Instead I would thank them and spend a few moments next to them.) It can be a playful gesture but not usually with a human but another horse only. The key there is because you describe this horse to be low energy. A high energy horse might try with a human but only if it was encouraged through play and then could easily create aggression if the play becomes a test of dominance, strength and leadership.


Defiance is rather a strong word to use in this situation, it's more about resentment! Feel the difference? The good part about natural horsemanship is for people to understand how to use pressure and release of pressure to communicate a request. The bad part is this method is solely based upon negative reinforcement and for many horses (especially the low energy horse) this quickly becomes resentful because they feel they are being nagged, nagged, nagged what to do and would like to know why? What's in it for them? It's like constantly being criticized and told what to do rather than asked. That's where Clicker Training becomes indispensible! It is positively based and answers the question what's in it for them. It encouraging rather than discouraging and resentful horses find us more pleasing to be around and all horses understand us much, much better!

When I combine natural horsemanship and clicker training together my teaching sessions became shorter because I can be profoundly more accurate and now my horses really do want to be with me!

Elaine Polny