Before I show you the step by step process I used to cure this buddy sour horse, there’s something you need to keep in mind.

Horses never do anything right or wrong.

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Horses do what you make feel good to them.

So if you make one action feel better than the other, they will always follow the path of least resistance.

How do you make one action feel better than the other? You pave that path by showing them which is easier than the other by using pressure and release.

Make one path easy and make everything else more difficult.

Think about deer. They have game trails that they walk on through the woods.

Why? Because walking on the trail is easier than walking off the trail. Animals (and humans too) will always look for the path of least resistance, and once they find it, they will take it.

To be a master horseman is to become a master of paving the path of least resistance. Once we get this down, the horse will almost train himself.

Imagine a horse that rears up when asked to back up. Is it not easier to back up than to rear and flip over backwards? Well of course it is.

But you have to be able to see that, in that horse’s mind, he is convinced that the best thing to do (to alleviate the pressure from the reins) is rear.

If he knew of something better to do, he would do that instead.

So many times we see a horse that is trying his hardest to figure the human out, but with the approach the human has, he simply cannot do it.

And then the horse gets blamed for being disrespectful, lazy, inattentive, etc.

However, the horse has no other choice but to do these things. He’s doing the best thing he knows to do for the situation. Our job is to pave a different, easier path. It’s never the horse that makes the adjustment.

It’s always the human.

Now that I got that out of the way…

I was at a local barrel race just hanging out and visiting with some of my friends. The event was almost over, and Amber walked over to me to see if I’d be willing to spend a few minutes working on her buddy sour (herd bound) horse.

I didn’t have anywhere else to be that day, so I told her I’d be happy to. She explained to me that she had two barrel horses, and whenever she would ride either one of them, they would start acting up and fight her to get back to the other horse.

Let’s pause here for a minute. Why do you think that the horses liked being together? One reason was because whenever those two horses were together, they didn’t have to do any work.

Amber’s horses were worked a lot because they were competing regularly at barrel races. And whenever she finished working the horses, she’d tie them up together, feed them, water them, and let them hang out.

So the horses were associating being together as a better deal than working with Amber. The easier path, at this point, was to stand at the trailer and eat food. Our job, as horsemen, is to pave a different path.

So here’s what I did. I told Amber to stand out in the middle of an open pasture and hold one of her horses. I got on the other one, and I crossed my arms and made the horse start moving.

This horse was so buddy sour that he began doing circles around the other horse. So I ramped up the speed (pressure), started kicking the horse, and made him work and work and work.

Eventually the horse decided he’d had enough of that, turned his nose, and began walking away from the horse Amber was holding (he made a change).

What do you think I did at this point?

I immediately stopped all of the pressure. I let the horse just chill and relax.

That didn’t last long. He decided he wanted to go back for some more. So as he started walking up to the other horse, I dropped my reins and amped up the pressure once again.

Round and round we go! I just kept with it until the horse decided he’d try something else.

As soon as started to cut away (made a change) I let him relax and chill out.

It only took about 14 minutes for this horse to realize that whenever he was around his buddy he had to do a lot of work. It was much easier to stay away on the other side of the pasture and relax.

He didn’t even want to be anywhere near his buddy once we were through. I simply made the right thing (leaving the buddy) easy to do and the wrong thing (staying near the buddy) more difficult to do.

You could do this exact same thing to a barn sour horse. If your horse is always wanting to rush back to the barn, then let him. But when he gets to the barn, don’t take his saddle off and let him relax.

Make him work when he gets back to the barn. Run him in circles, lunge him, or just do something. It really doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re making the horse work.

Pretty soon he will associate the barn with harder work and he’ll quickly lose that barn sourness. It’s all about making one option easy and making one option difficult.

(This video is part of the Problem Solving Series on Horse.TV. Click here to get a free 7 day trial to Horse.TV and watch the entire series!)

Carson James
Carson James

Carson James' background is in Vaquero Horsemanship. For the majority of his career, he worked on cattle ranches where he rode horses all day, every day. He was often in situations where he either had to figure out how to help the horse understand, or it could easily turn into a life or death situation. Carson now travels the country putting on training clinics teaching people the fundamentals of Horsemanship. He has a unique way of breaking things down where they're easy to understand, both for the horse and the human.