There is nothing worse than a barnsour horse. You just can’t go anywhere with them and it can even be dangerous for you as a rider if your horse acts particularly bad either leaving or coming back to the barn. There are a few things that you can do to cure your horse of this horrible behavior.
1. Bring a Buddy Along for Training
If your horse is attached to another horse, bring his friend along with him to the round pen for training. This teaches your horse to seek comfort from you because he won’t have to work when he comes to you, but when he’s with his buddy you’re making it not as fun by working them both. This is really simple and can be really effective. If the horse seeks his friend for comfort, you apply pressure, either through body position, voice, a swinging rope, flag, etc., and you don’t try to drive them apart. Try to keep them together and keep them moving. When they are apart, you will release the pressure. Each horse will seek the comfort of your pressure release on his own. You just apply pressure until you see one seeking comfort from you and then you reward them with that pressure. Eventually, one horse will decide that it’s a lot easier to come to you and when he does, let him have that comfort. At the same time, however, you want to apply pressure to the other horse until he too realizes it’s easier to offer himself to you than to keep going in circles while his friend gets to relax.
2. Standing Still
Horses can be particularly impatient when they have to stand still. Saddling is one time that your horse will show this impatient behavior and it too is related to being barnsour because they begin to anticipate leaving the barn. If your horse paws or refuses to be still while you are saddling, there is no better place than to make the barn not such a fun place there is during this time. Work your horse on the lead until he decides that he will just stand still. You can do yielded circles, direction changes, sidepasses, anything that keeps him moving and shows him that he has to work at the barn too. When your horse stands still then you can proceed with saddling.
3. Don’t Force Him Down the Trail – But Work Hard at Home Instead
This concept is pretty much like number 2, except you’ll be riding him. If you try to force the horse away from the barn and on down the trail it will just be a matter of time before he decides to make a break for it. You may be leaving the barn when he does it or you may be miles away when he does it – you may even be on the way home. What you can do here is make the barn and his buddy’s work too. When he’s near his friends or at the barn, work him around that area and refocus his energy there. Ride in circles, serpentines, figure eights, patterns, yielding, whatever you have to do until he begins to yeild to you and you can begin riding away from his comfort zone.
4. Let Him Be Crooked – To Get Him Straight
Sometimes you have to do the opposite of what you want to get what you want. Oh, how true this is in training horses! Say you’re heading away from the barn and you’re walking down the fence line. Your horse keeps bending his nose back because he really wants to be going the other way. What do you do? You let him be crooked. You can also work on turning into the fence and making the horse give you his head. You can work on half passes, sidepasses, and even just let him walk all crooked with his nose facing the fence. Eventually, your horse will discover that this isn’t much fun and he’ll decide that going straight down the fence is easier and you’ll end up getting what you want.
5. Let the Trail Become Freedom for the Horse
Sometimes you just have to work backwards to get the horse to understand what you really want and don’t be afraid to work up a sweat. Make going to the barn and staying at the barn hardwork. Make going away from the barn easy. Soon your horse will discover that going away from the barn offers him more freedom than staying at the barn.
Remember that this behavior may take some time to work through and solve completely. You may never really make it very far from the barn, but each time you work on it you’ll be able to get further and further. Don’t try to solve this issue all in one day you probably won’t be able to. Also, safety needs to be at the forefront of your mind. If the horse acts up too much that you’re scared for your safety, move your training to the ground. You can lunge just about anywhere you need to, even if it is in the stable yard if that’s what it takes to show your horse that he’s not going to get away with making you stay at the barn with is friends. You can also do a lot of work on the ground with a lead line, for example, he may not like to trot in hand, but if that’s what it takes to make him see that he has to work at the barn too, then you might just have to do it. Just be certain that your surroundings and footing is safe to do this kind of groundwork.
Once you feel that you are getting somewhere with this behavior you want to maintain the good behavior. So simple things like getting off your horse several yards from the barn and walking back to the barn instead of riding can help you to keep your horse from going back to his old ways and trying to gallop back to the barn. Your goal here is to develop a compliant horse that will willingly yield to his writer.
