Reader: I don’t understand why my horse does really well at home or the training facility, but when I go to a show he acts nervous, rushes into the arena and does not listen to my aids. What should I do?”

Charles: This is a question I’m often asked at the beginning of show season when clients start trailering their horses to shows or trails. Quite simply, the reason your horse performs well at home is because he is comfortable with his environment. You take your horse into the same arena every day and go on the same trails weekly. When you go to a show, you are taking your horse to a totally new location which makes him nervous. You must do certain exercises at home to prepare your horse for either the show season, trails or other different environments. Here is what I would do:
At home, when a 2 year old comes in for training or an older horse for retraining, I always start the horse in the round pen doing ground work. I keep doing ground work in the round pen until I see the horse is focusing on the exercises and on me.
Next, I start working the horse in my covered arena. Here the horse may not be as quiet, soft and responsive, or as focused on me as he was in the round pen. This is because he is in a different environment with more distractions. But I continue doing ground work with the horse for a few days until once again he is focused on the exercise and me. Then I ask the horse to do ground work in areas all over the ranch--the outside arena, upper outside arena and the parking area.
The idea is to teach the horse to work in different environments, but to still focus on me. This desensitizes, or as I call it “despooks,” the horse. To add more to each lesson you can have your horse drag tarps, have someone ride by on a bicycle, ride over a bridge, walk over a tarp on the ground or drape a tarp on your horse.
When you feel your horse is ready to show, you can start taking it to shows to get it used to the experience. When I was showing, if I felt a horse was ready to show next year, I started taking it out this show season with other horses I was showing. I wouldn’t compete with the horse, but school it in this new environment. At the show I would school the horse on the ground or under saddle in the warm up arena.
For the next step, I would show the horse in a schooling show or enter a class with my number upside down (to show I was schooling and not showing). Taking this approach allowed me to prepare my horse for showing slowly. When I felt my horse was ready to show and I entered the arena, I knew my horse would not do anything unexpected, such as being totally distracted, calling out to its buddies, bucking, rearing or bolting in the show ring because it is so excited.
A handy tool I use to get a horse’s attention when I arrive at a new location is to put them on a 12 to 14 foot line and do the change of direction exercise. Even with my more seasoned horses that I take to horse expos, I find when I first arrive and work with them on the line their head is up, they are looking around and not focusing on me. This tool allows me to work with a horse’s natural reaction to rise (flight instinct) in a new environment and helps me lower its emotional level.
Some horses have a higher emotional level than others and require more time to adjust. So I send the horse out around me a couple of times, stop his feet (it knows how to do this because we practiced this at home, which is the key), and send it the other way. I keep doing this until the horse is focusing on me or its energy level drops.
Next I take the horse into the arena I will be performing in. If the horse is uncomfortable with any part of the arena, I do the same thing--the change of direction exercise.
Once I have done these exercises on the ground, then I give my horse water and tie him up and let him relax a bit. After a while I saddle him up and work with him. By the time I perform my horse is adjusted to the environment and is relaxed.
Now here is an example of what you should not do (actually, this happened to one of my clients): She arrived late to the show because it took longer to get there than she expected. Now she only had a half hour to prepare before her first dressage class, so she felt nervous and pressed for time. She didn’t have any time to lunge or prepare her horse. Consequently, when it was time to perform the test, her horse did not do well because it was anxious and not familiar with its environment.
Afterwards, my client went to the arena and schooled her horse. When she rode again in the afternoon, her horse was relaxed and she scored a 68. The fact that her horse was calmer and focused made a big difference in her score. If it was up to me and I was showing, I would rather scratch a class and take the time to get my horse in the right frame of mind.
For more information on the change of direction exercises, refer to my tape Ground Manners and Leading and my two books, Building your Dream Horse and Starting Baby Jaz. If you have any questions, please visit me online at www.charleswilhelm.com.

God Bless,

Charles Wilhelm
It’s Never Ever the Horse’s Fault