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Start Buttons! Give your horse a voice with this simple practice of consent.

Let’s talk start buttons! Start buttons are an easy way to work on the concept of consent with your horse. So much of what we ask of our animals falls entirely outside the bounds of what they are naturally inclined to do, and that can be scary for a horse! On top of being highly perceptive of their environment and aware of their ability or inability to remove themselves from what they think could be a dangerous situation, horses are neophobic (scared of new things), and we tend to ask an awful lot of them that goes against their very nature as a flight animal! Just the simple task of being haltered and tied is a huge deal for them, one that we often take for granted. It goes against every strand of a flight animal’s DNA to be restrained while having their ability to flee removed from their toolkit for dealing with stress. This is why consent is such an important topic for the equestrian community to start talking about! Even in situations where you’ve gotta make that dollar, and the horse has to go in the ring, providing them even just a small say in SOME of the many things we ask them to do has been shown to improve welfare for the horse. If your horse has no say in some of the more high stress activities they do, their choice to participate in the simple stuff matters all that much more, and can even relieve some of their anxieties around the things they don’t have so much of a say in! This means that even highly competitive horses can benefit from working on consent during simple, every day practices such as grooming. Teaching them to use their voice to exercise choice in the simple things will open up a whole new world to your partnership, especially in those highly competitive environments where horse and rider are pushed outside of their comfort zones and rely so heavily on trusting one another for the sake of you both walking back home safe and sound at the end of the day. So what are start buttons and how do you begin working them into your practice? Start buttons can be any behavior that leads to a predictable outcome for the horse. If we continue to use grooming as an example, a start button there can look like presenting each brush or tool to the horse and waiting for the horse to touch it before carrying on to use it. In this case the “start button” is their touching of the brush, which leads to the predictable outcome of being brushed. Consistency and clarity are your best friends during this practice! This means you need to get specific, almost picky, with both yourself and your horse. If you establish that grooming starts after they touch a brush, do not begin grooming after they look at the brush, or sniff the brush, only begin after they have TOUCHED the brush. No matter how tempted you are to go on currying like you normally would, it’s important that you don’t begin the activity until the horse has pressed “Start!” Listening to your horses lack of willingness to use start buttons can be an incredibly helpful early warning system for you as their caretaker as well! If your horse says “no” to an activity that usually is an easy “yes” for them, this gives you vital information to use in trouble shooting any potential discomfort or soundness issues. For example; say your horse generally hits the start button for saddling, and yesterday you tried a new saddle that your fitter brought out for you. If your horse says “no” to saddling the day after a change like that, there you have a wonderfully clear indicator that maybe this saddle you’re trying isn’t the best fit for your horse. You can try bringing out your regular saddle, but odds are they’ll say “no” to that one as well. Don’t get upset about it, maybe they’re just a bit sore from working in the new one yesterday and could use a day off to work that tension out. Try again tomorrow with your regular saddle and see how it goes. Working on consent with start buttons is a wonderful way to glean insight into your horses experience; anxiety, soreness, and even old traumas you were not aware of can come to light once you’ve established a clear and consistent line of communication with your equine partners. And with your continued consistency and clarity, you’ll find that anxiety dissipating, soreness being caught before becoming catastrophic injuries, and you’ll be both shocked and pleased by the information your horse allows you to become privy to… stuff you wouldn’t have been able to help them with before, had they not been given a system through which to communicate it to you. So go out there and give it a try! A horse with a choice is a horse with a voice, and a horse with a voice is a horse you can trust, even when that voice says something you’d rather not hear. They did their part to communicate with you, and now your job is simple. All you have to do is listen. #horsemanship #horsetraining