traffic proofing

CharliesAngel

Well-Known Member
Jan 15, 2010
1,472
1,462
113
have any of you really improved a horse in traffic? Im desperate for Brook to be the one I can take places, I love riding her sooo much. It worries me that I may never improve her flight response though :( Id love to hear some positive stories from anyone who has successfully done this though. Ive got a good plan for this year.. Ive 2 riders waiting to come and ride Skye out with us but both are beginners and Im trying to get someone experienced to ride with me just the first couple of times but so far I havent found anyone, even anyone i can pay! Im booked into a 3 day confidence camp with brook in june too :)
 
I am having problems with billy with large vehicles, buses lorries, fire engines, home shopping delivery lorries, tractors and even transit vans. I'm hoping that soon i can say 'was' having problems.
He was mounting the pavement or did a 180 degree turn. I started trying to getting him to stop and stand if the bus came towards but as it got close he would bottle and mount pavement or spin.
I watched some utube videos on clicker training. There's a couple of good ones with someone riding round the area with a tractor in there and they were using clicker training. I was sceptical that it would work for me. I have a tractor but have no one to drive it round the field whilst i ride. So i can only clicker out on the road with buses etc. I was getting to the point that if i cant sort his traffic problem i will have to sell him. I had a clicker already so i have put it to use. Now 6 weeks on. My horse will stand for a bus, he is even walking on as they pass/come towards us. At first i thought this is fluke but i haven't had a single spin or pavement mount in 4 weeks. So I'm over the moon. Let me know if you want me to find the videos. I know i can't do what they are doing in the videos but i have adapted the ideas to work for my situation.
The big test is that there is a route that has big double decker buses every 10 minutes, sometimes 3 at once. In a few months I'm going to hack him down there and see how he responds. Hes not ready yet. In the meantime im just working on what we come across.
 
Some horses are naturally better in traffic than others. It depends how much No Fear is in them and how much No fear is in the rider. The rider has to have confidence and be someone who does more than just sit up there:)

The horse I recently laid to rest wasn't afraid of anything - zip, zero, nothing. I could ride him down the state with semis whizzing by and he wouldn't flick an ear.

One of my other horses was perfectly fine with traffic as long as the No Fear horse was with him, otherwise he would have a meltdown on the state highway. I could keep him moving but it was work and he never has been a safe horse to take into heavy traffic unless another, more confident, horse was with him.
 
Better yes, but not 100%, & he was more confident with me than another rider which suggests some at least was due to trust rather than traffic proofing.

A bit of history first. William was a welshxarab who came to me as an 11yo when I was 13. He'd had one too many driving accidents & so could only be ridden, even then he was a bit edgy with large vehicles. About 3 years later we had an accident out hacking that involved us going onto a car bonnet, over the top of it & down a ditch the other side of the road, miraculously neither of us were badly hurt but mentally he was badly shaken - even parked cards in the yard car park frightened him. I was frightened my parents would see how bad things were & sell him! So I set about with a plan. He'd be fed on the edge of the car park, and once he could calmly eat his feed there I'd move it closer to a car. Slow slow inches, never moving forward until he was calm. Then me sat in a car with the door open holding his bowl. Then back off a distance & have a parked car with the engine running repeating the whole slow procedure & never advancing until he was happy. Then cars would slowly move - I'm sure by now you've got the idea lol. I was lucky so many liveries were prepared to help & in the early days not pull in or out of the car park while he was eating. We progressed to doing without the feed, then riding round the car park. Then out on quiet roads boxed in by big horses - there were times when that was "interesting" & if my parents had seen he would have been sol or banned from going on the roads! But we got there, though he had to be ridden confidently & calmly.

About 5 years later & on a different yard I was hacking with a friend when she came off and was hurt. This was before the days of mobiles so it was a case of go & get help & her horse had left the area. There were two ways to the nearest house - about 20 minutes along quiet lanes or 10 minutes but involving a stretch along a busy main road with lots of lorries. He went along that road tense but totally obedient & never a stutter, I don't think I was ever prouder of him!!!

It can be done in most cases but you have to be prepared to put in the work & also honest enough to know if some of the problem is you. If a horse is nervous it will often take confidence from a confident rider, but if the rider is also nervous then the confirm the horse's doubts & matters get worse. You can't lie to them.
 
My boy in my avatar didn't like traffic one bit, he was genuinely scared. We had bought him from the field and he was sold as seen as a project so I knew there would be work to put into him. His main issue was traffic especially anything coming up behind him, not sure if he's had a previous bad experience, but he would rear spin and try and leg it! I used our fell pony to nanny him although at times he even managed to scare her and she's bombproof in traffic:eek: We used to hack the same route every day so he got used to the little things then we could focus on just the traffic. I'm not going to lie it took time and patience and big girl pants:p but eventually it was just big vehicles, motorbikes or people stood in bus stops:D Hes now is an awful lot better however will never be perfect, a lot of his issues now though are he gets wound up jogs and becomes over sensitive to everything then starts been spooky:mad: All in all though he has a really lovely heart, so he's been well worth the work.;) x
 
Toffee hates large vehicles. He just to have a meltdown and just go really low and shake, back up really fast, swing his bum and try and run etc but he's much better (as I have put in a lot of work exposing him in hand and ridden) providing they pass him wide. Too close and he panics. I got told that when it passes to follow it a few steps as it makes the horse think he's chasing it away and that boosts their confidence. I just exposed him as much as I could but then Toffee isn't a full runner. He will run a few steps (with the scary thing still in sight) and then asses the danger. He's never run more than a few steps. He's more likely to bounce on the spot, back up and run a few steps away. I don't know about full runners as I've been in the situation once and the horse had zero lateral flexion and zero brakes and it terrified me. Toffee isn't like that and don't know what I'd do if he was, I really don't. I think you could train it out a horse with time and work though.
 
Honestly I don't think there is any quick fix for this. It takes time and its just through constant repetition of the same route at first letting them get very familiar with the area and the more they see large lorries etc the more used they will become to them. It does help if at the start you can have some company, just someone on foot or even better on a bike..that's how i did it and my boy was the safest out hacking with all traffic, hedge trimmers, chain saws, lawnmowers, motorbikes, bicycles until we met the recumbent bike and it all went to pot :rolleyes:
 
thanks @joellie and everyone else . i think ive decided for now not to push it. Brook has spun off and taken off with me down the wrong side of the road like marley did with the bikes and i was lucky nothing was coming. Im able to hack her for 30 mins round the quiet lanes round our house and if I want her to go further I can trailer out somewhere, I can also ride in our fields. In terms of satisfying my lust for long hacks from home, well Ive got Skye now who is absolutely bombproof and Ive decided its silly to be taking risks with Brook in such a dangerous situation. The amount of bigger vehicles, tractors and other farm vehicles on the main roads is just not worth it with her.
 
Yes that's probably a wise decision. Skye seems fantastic, so at least you can still go out for your hacks on Skye and enjoy the lanes and fields with Brook.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CharliesAngel
newrider.com