Many years ago with my first pony, long before I was well versed in horse body language, with absolutely no idea of behaviour as communication – back in the days of ‘don’t let them get away with that’ I had an incident with my first pony. Her name was Tiki

We lived near horse racing stables, so that’s where our help came from, my non-horsey family navigating a horse-mad daughters new pony.

Tiki was kept in a yard with a pipe rail fence under a big moreton bay fig tree, cool and lots of shade. We had a garden shed inside the yard with her tack, and most importantly with her horse feed inside!

Her yard was in a corner of a local park, where she was ridden and hand grazed. We also did lots of riding around streets, to other parks, riding to beach, riding to pony club. After every outing obviously Tiki would go back to her home/ yard under the tree.

Well one day she wouldn’t.

She baulked a good 80 feet back from her yard (yep back in the days before metric!!)

I would have spent well over half an hour, alone, trying to encourage Tiki to return to her yard /home!

Head high, worried expression (even I knew that one!)

Her yard looked the same. There was nothing out of place, nothing I could see. Nothing I could attribute to Tiki not wanting to return to her yard. I left her grazing at one stage and went and investigated myself – no, the human couldn’t see anything.

After many many attempts and much time, chances are even some crying on my 14yo selfs part (I needed to go home, but couldn’t if Tiki wouldn’t go to her home) eventually Tiki’s more obliging nature over-rode whatever was causing her to baulk (really it was that I was very insistent, and basically said ’sorry but you DON’T HAVE A CHOICE, you are going to do this)

Finally I got her in her yard and fed her. I hung around a bit then, watching. All looked good so I turned to leave.

Crack – HUGE crack,

and down came a 2 feet wide 20 foot long branch, landing in poor Tiki’s yard. First crack she was over that yard fence so fast, luckily unscathed as she bent the top rail getting away.

All behaviour is communication – even when we don’t know what they are trying to explain.

Poor Tiki knew that something was very wrong, and her baulking was her way of trying to communicate that to me. Human didn’t understand so ignored the message.

Tiki only went back into her yard as I FORCED her to, by never giving up trying. Luckily for me, and more importantly for Tiki (as I didn’t listen to my pony) she was unharmed.

Footnote – once that branch was safely on the ground, Tiki was happy to return to her yard, to her feed and to her home, even sharing with the offending branch.

It certainly made me think about what horses know, and how they try to communicate that to us, and how we should listen even when we don’t quite understand.

It also shows why we should never force them to perform behaviour they are uncomfortable doing - as chances are the horse has a very good reason!!

Written By Vicki Conroy of the PPGA Equine Sub-Committee