Lazy Horses

Before you label your horse as lazy, try thinking about things from his point of view. When you ask him to do something, have you ever stopped to think about what’s in it for him – how it looks from his side of things? Parelli Natural Horsemanship is a form of horse training that asks you to think about things from your horse’s point of view, and you will find that this approach is more helpful than anything for dealing with lazy horses.

You might be all excited about going for a ride, but how does your horse feel? Maybe for him, hanging out with his pasture mates and grazing on grass is more attractive, much less stressful and a whole lot more fun than dealing with the spurs, whips, heavy saddles and the stress of taking you for a ride on his back. Animals with this attitude are often labeled as lazy horses or stubborn horses, but very often they’re just unmotivated horses because what you’re asking them to do just isn’t much fun for them.

Determining Cause

Natural horsemanship begins the process of solving any horse behavior problem with the question: Why is the horse acting this way? Sometimes lazy horses are actually nervous horses or frightened horses. Sometimes the horse just has a laid back horse personality, or Horsenality™, as we call it in the Parelli method of horse training.   Understanding your horse and what’s actually going on with him is the basis of Parelli Natural Horsemanship. Once you have determined that your horse is neither scared nor sick and is simply unmotivated, we suggest you learn what excites and motivates your horse.

Motivating Lazy Horses

Rather than resort to mechanical approaches, Parelli uses psychology to motivate the horse. When you know what makes your horse tick, you'll have fantastic strategies to employ to get him so excited to see you that he’ll come running when you appear at the gate. Start by figuring out your horse’s personality and finding out what’s important to him. Find out what is important to your horse with our Horsenality™ DVD. Then check out the Calm Ride DVD, because there's a lot to learn about horse psychology in there and a very informative section on how to motivate lazy horses so you can have a calm, fun ride, without all the frustration these horses are known to cause.