Ain't Gonna

This morning Star decided she was not going out to pasture. She balked in the gate and refused to move forward. This also blocked all the other horses as well.

Now, there are different levels of balking, or refusing to move. One is caused by human impatience. You don’t take time to remember the cycle of; from your brain to your muscles, to the horse’s muscles, to the horse’s brain, back to its muscles, back to your muscles, to your brain. This is a LONG chain of events and most people forget to allow for it. In other words, you did not allow enough time for all the information to be processed and acted upon. The horse did not balk, it just didn’t have enough time to do what you ask. Slow down.

There is the case of the true balk, but only for a moment. Something happens that the horse needs to study before deciding whether or not it should proceed. A good horseman will acknowledge the horse’s concerns before proceeding with the task.

Then there is the balk where the horse says it absolutely will not go where it is being asked to go. This calls for some serious thinking on the part of the handler. Is the horse justified in refusing to go? Are you asking your horse to do
something it cannot do? Are you asking your horse to do something YOU cannot do? All of these questions need to be reviewed before taking any drastic action.
If the horse truly is balking for no apparent good reason then the first action should simply be to attempt to untrack your horse, i.e. move one step to the side, then one step to the other side, until the horse moves forward.

The last and most serious type of balking is the most dangerous. All prey animals have a mode where they shut down. They cannot process any information. This seems to be nature’s way of dealing with the cruelty of being eaten while still alive. When a horse hits this mode you had best get away from it and wait until it comes out of this particular mode.

As quickly as possible, make certain you have some control of your horse, get the reins over its head and go to the end of them (be sure you are off to the side, not in front of the horse). If it’s in an enclosure of some sort tie the reins out of it’s way and get away from the horse. Some horses will just suddenly come back, shake themselves off, and be ready to continue. However, there are horses that will explode wildly out of this mode, and begin fighting for their lives. You do not want to be near the horse that does this.

If your horse has displayed such a behavior you need to review what you were doing. It is important to determine how to make certain you don’t stress your horse so much that it feels as if it is being “eaten alive”. In other words, you need to learn how to stop acting like a predator.

The reason Star was balking? A neighbor's dogs were in the pasture and she wasn't going out there until they left. Lucky for them as her usual mode for dealing with dogs is to roll them up and play soccer with them.