• Problems : Physical •

Physical problems are usually pain related. Pain can be due to an injury or disease badly fitting equipment or whips and other devices designed to cause pain. Once the pain has been removed often the behaviour that developed due to the pain will remain until the horse has been retrained to realise that it doesn't hurt anymore.

Removing the pain is very important but unfortunately not always possible. I believe it is extremely important to use truly excellent therapists to work with horses. A good therapist or even a very good therapist is not quite good enough in some cases. If one physical problem is missed no matter how small it may have been it can make retraining hopeless, as it is just not possible to convince a horse (or anyone at all,) that something does not hurt anymore if it does in fact still hurt them.

Pain related problems often cause intermittent problems. Sometimes your horse will be perfectly happy to do something and a few minutes, or days later he will refuse everything you try. As I mentioned before even when you have the pain removed the behaviour may continue. An example is a horse with a bad back. Once the back has been treated the horse will still dread the site of the saddle as it associates the saddle with pain. This horse will usually need to be re-started

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