Spend five minutes listening to any pop-psychologist, from Joyce Brothers to Dr. Phil, and the odds are that at some point you’ll hear the word "closure".  Every budding Frasier Crane worth his salt will tell you that, in dealing with life’s events, it is necessary to acknowledge and tackle the source of a problem before you can achieve closure and move on. Unresolved issues are bad for your mental health.

Not surprisingly, though, we all have some things that we’d sooner avoid, deny and work around, rather than admit, confront and resolve. At the time, it just seems easier. In the long run though, we know we’re just fooling ourselves. Unresolved problems don’t go away and frequently compound themselves the longer we avoid them. And it’s not just in our personal lives either. For many, it is equally applicable to the way we deal with problem behavior in our horses.

A while back my wife had a mare in for training whose owner, when she dropped her off, proceeded to rhyme off a laundry list of things that we “couldn’t do” with her horse: “You can’t use fly spray on her, you’ll have to wipe it on with a rag. You can’t touch her ears, she won’t let you. You can’t hold her hind feet up for very long... you can’t... you can’t... ” What this owner was really telling us was the list of all the things that she had avoided dealing with because it seemed easier for her to work around these problems than confront them. A month later she was amazed to watch her mare standing quietly in the cross ties while we sprayed fly repellent on her, hauled the headstall up over her ears and picked out her hind feet with no fuss. “How did you get her to do that?”, she asked . Well, like all training, one step at a time... the first step: acknowledge the problem; the second step: do something about it.

There are dozens of behavioral and training “issues” and the remedies for each might vary depending on the horse’s disposition, or the trainer’s, or the time and resources available, or maybe the phases of the moon. But here are some suggestions that ought to apply no matter what “unresolved issue” you have to contend with.

Just do it...

The are lots of reasons why owners might avoid dealing with problem behavior. Lack of confidence in their ability to correct it. Fear of being injured. Just plain being too nice (“aw, gee, I can’t get mad at him...”). Often, I hear owners making excuses for their horse’s misbehavior (“oh, it’s not his fault...”). So, of course, if the horse isn’t really to blame it wouldn’t be fair to correct him, would it? Regardless of the reason, though, until you decide to address the problem rather than avoid, deny or excuse it, it isn’t likely to correct itself. So screw up your courage, drop the excuses and, like the Nike slogan says, “Just do it.”

Never set yourself up to fail...

Letting a horse win just once can sometimes write-off weeks of progress, so it is essential, when correcting your horse’s behavior, that you win every round (at least in the horse’s mind). Perhaps the best example of this is the horse that avoids being caught. Once a horse has successfully evaded capture a few times, it will be progressively harder to catch ever after. We’ve all seen owners heading back to the barn for a bucket of feed to entice their wayward mount into a halter after he’s decided that he’d really rather stay in the pasture today. Score Round #1 for the horse (and Round #2 isn’t likely to be much fun). Walking up to such a horse in a 20 acre field swinging a lead rope is setting yourself up to fail. But if you’ve planned his approach, confinement and haltering in such a manner that the horse is convinced that getting caught is inevitable, thoughts of escape don’t even come into play. Planning is key, but so is perseverance. Whether it’s a runaway in the field or misbehavior under saddle, if the horse does temporarily take the upper hand, it is imperative that you continue until you have the situation moving back in the direction you want it to be. If you can’t have a perfectly willing horse (which is the ultimate goal), you can at least have one who eventually knows that “resistance is futile”.

Always work in a controlled environment...

Working in a controlled environment doesn’t mean that you never leave the arena or fenced paddock. It simply means anticipating the horse’s reaction and being prepared to control it. To correct a horse that shies away from movement over it’s head, for instance, you’re obviously not going to drop the reins and begin waving both arms madly. While this would provide the necessary stimulus to bring the reaction on, it wouldn’t leave you in a very good position to control it when it occurred! But if you gather the reins and get contact, knowing that the horse is going to react, you can gently wave an arm to provoke the spook and be ready to pull him up immediately when he does. (Do this a few hundred more times and eventually the horse begins to anticipate the correction... he may still not like things waving over his head, but he’ll learn that he’s not allowed to react to them). The key is to provoke a reaction, but never provoke more of a reaction than you can control. The gains made correcting a hundred small spooks can be lost if you let one BIG one get away from you.

Don’t start something you can’t finish...

I’m not really a big fan of “round pen reasoning” as cure-all for every training issue (I figure I can teach a horse more with my hands on him than when he’s circling me 30 feet away). But I’ve found it does have it’s place, particularly with youngsters who haven’t had much handling. Over the years, I’ve discovered that the effectiveness of this method depends largely on the success of the first session. And once I’ve begun a session, if I quit before the horse is responding properly, I might just as well never have started.

The same is true, for almost every lesson we begin with our horses. If you quit before you’ve achieved the desired response, all you’ll have done is wasted your time and confused your horse. But that’s no reason not to start. This is where a well defined lesson plan is so important. Decide what you intend to teach the horse and break it down into small component steps. Then take each of those steps and break it down further. Continue this process until it starts to get a little absurd (I’m serious). Now, every one of those steps can become a stopping point for your lesson, on two conditions: 1) that you can bring the horse to that step and get him to repeat (and be rewarded for) it at least twice, and 2) that next time out you go at least one step further. This way you have a flexible plan that gives you a choice of “finishes” and no excuse not to “start”.

Last year I had a front tire on my Dodge pick-up go bad. It wasn’t a big deal; a little shimmy at around 55 mph and slight pull to the right. I kept driving on it for most of the summer, not really noticing that it was slowly getting worse. It wasn’t until I finally got it into the garage and had the tires replaced that I realized how much I’d been compensating for the pull. I was amazed at the difference, how much easier it was to drive, considering that I hadn’t really been aware that it was taking all that extra effort.

Compensating for behavioral issues with your horse can be a bit like that. Avoiding certain things, accepting misbehavior or making excuses for it... it all becomes habit. It’s not until you’ve corrected the problem that you suddenly realize just how much enjoyment it’s taken from the time you spend with your horse. So take an honest inventory of your horse's behavior. Anything you’ve been avoiding? Excusing? Working around? Perhaps it’s time you gained some “closure” on these unresolved issues.