He was a brilliant child. It was hard trying to always stay one step ahead of him.

But we did seem to have everything working smoothly on this day!

Mary

Mary

This often is an easy solution to eliminate a lot of these types of behaviors in colts.

He's already gelded, though, so I think I'm going to have to rely on training him to behave!

Mary

Great question!

I think it really depends on the horse and what's going on.

There's the angry/aggressive horse with ears back which is definitely not what we want.

There's also often ears back when the horse is thinking, trying to figure things out (although it can also be a sign of confusion or frustration). This is one place to be careful–in situations like these, the ears back often goes away over time. But, if it's not going away, consider your training, is the horse understanding what you are asking?

But, some horses just keep their ears a bit more back than others. I find this question can really depend on the individual horse.

Alexandra Kurland has a happy ears game. So, you click and reinforce for ears forward. Gets you thinking about where those ears are, and gets the horse more likely to have ears forward, some people also say they've seen a change in their horse's emotional state. This exercise is easy to add into others. Example– working on leading, and waiting to to click until the ears are both forward. (Sometimes you have to start with just one ear, or a hint of the ear moving forward.)

What do you think your horses' ears back means?

Mary