Finally, as much as possible stay out of crowded arenas and be extra vigilant about where you are in relation to other riders, keeping your horse's focus on you and your aids. It is your responsibility to protect the other riders, not their responsibility to avoid you.
Message: "I'm the boss around here."
When a horse kicks to tell you he's in charge, you've got a serious problem. In the wild, kicks are used as a last resort to enforce the herd hierarchy, which is necessary to keep order and establish breeding rights. When a horse tries to gain dominance over a human handler, however, it's a sign that bigger training issues are afoot: The horse has learned, somewhere along the line, that intimidation is an effective way to deal with people.
Bossy kickers tend to be dominant mares or geldings. They posture and threaten before they kick with pinned ears and "mean faces." They will usually aim their rump toward you and cock a hoof before letting a kick fly. Unlike horses who kick from fear, they do not try to escape a situation before they kick; they respond to things they don't like with a threat. These horses may be aggressive in other ways, such as lunging over their stall doors at passersby. They also tend to have little respect for the personal space of others, crowding handlers in a stall or barging past them while being led.
Typically, bossy kickers act this way because it works for them. At some point they got what they wanted--usually to be left alone--by threatening to kick or actually kicking someone. It doesn't take long for this lesson to be learned. I once rescued a 3-year-old filly who kicked whenever you asked her to do anything she didn't like. Even at that young age, she had learned she could make humans fall in line by letting her hooves fly.
Reforming a bossy kicker can be very difficult. If you have the time and inclination, you may want to review the very basics of training, possibly with the help of a professional trainer, to reestablish the ground rules of hierarchy and personal space. Unfortunately, for many older horses, kicking is such an ingrained resistance that this approach isn't successful.
Punishment is another way of letting a bossy horse know that you are not intimidated by kicking. Some horses, particularly those who are testing the bossy kick for the first time, can be corrected with a tug of a lead shank or smack of the palm and a sharp word to remind them of their manners. Other horses will respect a tap with the crop on their hindquarters, but it has to be delivered instantly to be effective and you'll need to make sure you are standing out of striking range.
Indeed, I cannot stress enough how risky it is to punish a kicker. It requires the ability to read a horse's body language quickly and accurately and consistently mete out the appropriate punishment, no more and no less. Because of the precision and risks involved, I recommend that you entrust this assignment to a professional trainer.
Which leads me to the most troubling of kickers: the aggressive horse who has kicked to get his way for years. This horse may simply take any punishment as a challenge and respond to it with a more forceful, more targeted kick. This is a fight you cannot win and one that puts you and other people in danger.
Personally, I will not own an aggressive kicker. It's not worth the risk. If you choose to own a horse who kicks to demonstrate dominance, recognize the risk you are taking on and do everything in your power to minimize it. This includes being very open and vocal about your horse's tendencies, letting anyone who may ever deal with him know his habits and posting a prominent and clear warning on his stall door or pasture gate.
Kicking serves horses well. In addition to being a powerful weapon against predators, it's an effective form of communication. The injuries that a kick can inflict, however, make it one of the most dangerous behaviors in a domesticated horse. Whenever a horse kicks, then, it's a call for an investigation to determine why--and whether something needs to be done to keep it from happening again.
Jennifer Williams holds a master's degree and Ph.d. in Animal Behavior from Texas A&M University.
This article originally appeared in the August 2005 issue of EQUUS magazine.
