# My mare is MEAN! to the point where it's difficult to ride her with other.



## Rachel1786 (Nov 14, 2010)

My mare, Bella is a 14 year old OTTB mare, i've had her for almost a year(5/24) She was always kept at my house with my 2 other geldings, the gelding i've had before her she is totally fine with but the gelding i got 2 weeks after her she showed signs of aggression to, i just thought it was because she wanted to maintain her place in the small herd. In the beginning of April i moved her up the my riding instructors boarding stable and recently i have begun riding with others and she is TERRIBLE especially in the indoor, if anyone(horse not human) gets within 10 feet of her the ears are pinned and if they get any closer she will start swinging her but towards them to kick, she is so bad she was practically chase another horse away with her but(kinda quickly move sideways) I don't know what to do, saturday there were 4 other horses in the indoor and i could barley ride her because there was always someone too close for her liking, now none of these horses are in her pasture(yet) so i don't know if she would be better riding with a pasture mate, i did notice she isn't as aggressive towards Alibi since we ride together often(and her owner and I often switch horses during a ride) but she did still pin her hears and threaten to kick her, just not as aggressively as the others. Has anyone else had a horse this agressive towards other horses? How do you deal with it and correct it? I give her a firm no when she does it, but so far it's not helping


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## .Delete. (Jan 7, 2008)

IMO that behavior is unacceptable. I dont care for the reasoning behind her aggressive behavior, do not let her get away with that non sense. Ride with a crop and every time she starts to be aggressive growl at her and give her a good whack. In my own personal experiences this has worked rather well. Eventually your mare should get the idea and you would only need a growl to correct her. She is not only being a danger to the other people around but a danger to you and thats not something that should be taken lightly.


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## NorthernMama (Mar 12, 2008)

I started to read the OP, but gave up. Sentences with periods and capitals make it much easier for us, please.


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## pintophile (May 18, 2011)

Rachel1786 said:


> Has anyone else had a horse this agressive towards other horses? How do you deal with it and correct it? I give her a firm no when she does it, but so far it's not helping


Yes, I have. When we brought the newest herd member home, my other mare absolutely HATED her. Would chase, charge, bite, kick, not let her anywhere near her or the other horse. Generally when the middle horse (like my mare) picks on the lower herd members, a good leader will step in and give that abusive middle guy a good bruising, just to teach him that such behaviour is unacceptable. Well, since there were no strong leaders in that particular herd, I had to do it myself.

I had someone else hold the new girl and brought my mare over. Whenever the mare pinned her ears and started looking mean, I gave her one good, hard, loud crack on the shoulder with the end of the lead rope. She only tried it about three more times, and then there were no more problems. At all. She'd move the submissive guy around a lot at first, but no more aggression, and eventually she stopped that. They'll never be best friends, but I don't have to worry about anyone getting hurt when I'm not there to watch them.

What do you do when you correct her? Just say "no"? The horse doesn't know what that means-you're probably just irritating her more than you're getting a point across. Basically, what .Delete. suggested. Carry a crop and give her a real good crack when she starts being aggressive towards the others, and make it count. Little love taps aren't going to do anything besides p*ss her off. 

Besides that, I had a minor aggression problem with riding-that same mare didn't like others to crowd her. I would ride beside other riders and she'd start getting tense, but then a few weeks later we were sandwiched between two teams pulling wagons and she didn't bat an eye, and I wondered why this was. I found out it was because I would always tense up when other riders approached, and the mare detected this to mean that something was wrong when other riders came near, and she wouldn't let them. As soon as I relaxed, she didn't react anymore. My point is, be sure that you are relaxed and calm around the other riders. It could be that you're horse is just reacting to your tension.


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## flytobecat (Mar 28, 2010)

More of the same. My grey has a problem with this, and I have to watch her carefully during practices. If she even tenses when a horse comes up beside her or pins her ears I give her a smack. She's gotten a lot better about it.


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## Kayty (Sep 8, 2009)

Ahhhhh too many merging sentences. Please put some paragraphs in there so we can read it without needing to squint!!


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