09/13/2026
I am increasingly worried about owners becoming afraid to set boundaries with their horses.
And I know more extreme pages are using examples of this as a way to dismiss entire methods of training. But I don’t think pretending these examples don’t exist helps anyone.
I think many of the people who are afraid to set boundaries are coming from a genuinely good place.
They want to be kind. They want to listen to their horses. They don’t want to use fear, intimidation or unnecessary force. They’re learning about other methods, getting snippets of the science, and questioning a lot of what they were traditionally taught about horses.
I think all of that is INCREDIBLY valuable.
But increasingly, I’m seeing videos where a horse does something genuinely dangerous and the person handling them seems hesitant to intervene or react. And I’m not going to pretend these examples don’t exist just because they’ve become a bit of a “meme” among the cowboys.
A horse aggressively drives into their space. A horse swings its hindquarters and kicks out toward them. A horse lunges or strikes at them. A horse barges through them with enough force to knock them down.
And sometimes I get the impression that people are genuinely unsure what they’re “ALLOWED” to do in that moment without betraying everything they’ve learned about agency, choice and reducing the use of force.
That scares me.
Because you are allowed to protect yourself. Not just allowed. You NEED to.
My horse cannot bite or kick me. My horse cannot run through me. My horse cannot aggressively crowd me and make my space dangerous.
Those are hard boundaries we should all have.
That doesn’t mean I need to hurt my horse to teach them. It doesn’t mean I need to punish every mistake, establish dominance or routinely use force to maintain those boundaries.
But if a horse is ACTIVELY putting me in danger, safety becomes the immediate priority.
And I think we’re starting to muddy the line between using force as a training method and physically intervening in an immediate safety situation.
Those are NOT the same thing.
I’ve had this conversation many times. If a horse is about to kick me and I have to move them away from me, that is not equivalent to routinely hitting a horse to shape behaviour. If a horse is coming through me and I have to physically stop them, that is not equivalent to using heavy pressure or punishment as my training system.
An emergency response is NOT a training methodology.
Once everyone is safe, THEN we can look at what happened.
Why did the horse behave that way? Do they have aggression I don’t know about? Were they frightened? Frustrated? Over-aroused? In pain? Was food creating conflict? Did I put them in a situation they weren’t prepared for? Have I actually taught them an appropriate alternative behaviour? Is there something about my management or training that needs to change?
Those questions matter enormously, because simply stopping dangerous behaviour in the moment doesn’t teach the horse what we want them to do instead. And this is where I think another distinction is important.
Not everything we call a “boundary” actually is one.
“My horse cannot bite me” is a boundary.
“My horse should stand quietly beside me” is an expectation.
“My horse cannot run through me” is a boundary.
“My horse should walk politely beside me on a loose lead” is a behaviour I need to teach.
If a horse isn’t meeting a behavioural expectation, that doesn’t automatically mean they’re “disrespecting my boundaries.” Sometimes we need to stop framing training problems as boundary problems and simply train the behaviour better.
But when there is an immediate threat to someone’s physical safety, I don’t want people standing there wondering whether protecting themselves is “ethical.”
You can believe deeply in agency. You can give your horse meaningful choices. You can listen when they say no. You can train however you like. You can reject dominance-based explanations and unnecessary force.
AND you can still have hard boundaries around your physical safety.
I think we need to be careful that in trying to move away from an industry that has normalized far too much force, we don’t swing so far in the other direction that people become afraid to intervene when they genuinely need to.
Showing your horse kindness should NEVER mean giving up your safety.
Understanding why a horse kicked doesn’t require you to get kicked.