Something I see a lot, especially with younger owners, is mistaking a shut down horse for a settled one. A horse standing still with a soft eye and a horse standing still because it's learned that reacting gets it nowhere look almost identical from the fence line. The difference only shows up when you ask something of them.
Genuine calm comes with curiosity still switched on. The horse will look at you, lick and chew, shift its weight, offer small tries. A horse that's shut down goes flat. No offering, no curiosity, just compliance because pushing back never worked. It's an easy trap to fall into with natural horsemanship methods that rely heavily on pressure and release, because pressure applied without enough release, or without reading the horse's actual state, can produce obedience that looks like progress on the surface.
A test I use: after a session, walk away and see what the horse does. Does it follow, turn to watch, show any interest in you as separate from the work? Or does it just stand there, waiting for the next instruction? That tells you more than anything that happens during the groundwork itself.
Not having a go at anyone's methods here, more just flagging it as something worth watching for, especially in horses that came from a rough start. What are people's go to signs that a horse is actually settled rather than just resigned?
Genuine calm comes with curiosity still switched on. The horse will look at you, lick and chew, shift its weight, offer small tries. A horse that's shut down goes flat. No offering, no curiosity, just compliance because pushing back never worked. It's an easy trap to fall into with natural horsemanship methods that rely heavily on pressure and release, because pressure applied without enough release, or without reading the horse's actual state, can produce obedience that looks like progress on the surface.
A test I use: after a session, walk away and see what the horse does. Does it follow, turn to watch, show any interest in you as separate from the work? Or does it just stand there, waiting for the next instruction? That tells you more than anything that happens during the groundwork itself.
Not having a go at anyone's methods here, more just flagging it as something worth watching for, especially in horses that came from a rough start. What are people's go to signs that a horse is actually settled rather than just resigned?