Horses didn't want to go down a road - why did they react?

Hello! It may be that the horses saw, heard or caught the scent of something. It could have been an animal or something else they found frightening.

🐴It could also be that one horse picked up on something as frightening, which the other horse then read as danger, and so both became alarmed.

👻There need not have been any real danger. A stone that has always been there may suddenly have had a little snow on it, or a fallen tree or branch may have made the surroundings look slightly different from what they were used to.

🐴 Horses are flight animals with sharp senses, which means they perceive the world differently from us. They often notice far more than we do, and in a different way. Their field of vision, for example, is much wider, so they can see almost all the way around themselves, they pick up many more scents, and they hear better than we do. All of their senses are built to spot a potential threat quickly enough to flee before being detected. That is why horses react fairly often to things we know are not dangerous at all. For a horse living wild, it is better to react and flee one extra time than to be eaten, and that instinct often gets in the way when we try to ride or handle horses in our world, which is full of things they can read as life-threatening.

Try not to stress the horse if it becomes frightened. Let it look at and listen to whatever is scary. Give it time, praise it and talk to it. A frightened horse learns nothing, so there is no point trying to push a horse past something scary and then assuming it has got used to it. Take it step by step and praise every bit of progress. Or turn back and ride a different way, exactly as you did. The next time you return to the same spot, there is every chance they will not react at all.

Good luck🐴😊