Can some horses just not hack?

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Hi, in people's experience are there horses who just do not have the mental capacity for hacking out? Horses who just get so stressed by the experience of being away from their familiar environment that it isn't worth persevering? Or does anyone have experience of this and got over it?
 
bonnysmum said:
Good to hear, but I wonder if they can get over this when they're fairly mature? 17 in this case, barely left her familiar yard before we had her.
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I believe she will, I used treats for BB. He was 10 when that all started with napping etc . Went onto hack brilliantly for 6 years till he died.
You need to be confident, take it slow and reward as you go. Add a little extra mileage onto your hack each time and always finish on a good note ☺️ soon be wondering what you worried about.
 
Depends on their mood. I’ve had wonderfully chilled and enjoyable hacks on my lad, where he’s happy to be out and enjoying the scenery and I’ve had horrible ones where he’s constantly on edge and can’t wait to get home, spooking at nothing. I tend to gauge his mood before I hack.
 
Also "confidence" and "mood" are the operative words when it comes to the rider (my teenage daughter). I fear she has totally lost confidence after a couple of spooking/ bolting incidents. So perhaps I should have said are some horse/rider combinations just unable to hack? And also are some horses just happier staying at home? (This is now a priority question because our horse has had to be retired from any schooling)
 
I genuinely think it’s a huge ask for some. Especially hacking solo. A confident rider can’t ‘cure’ spookiness by being confident but they can probably prevent escalation. I hack with a friend who has the spookiest warm blood and after ten years she still struggles. She’s very confident but he is serious!
 
"Especially hacking solo". Yup this definitely doesn't help, but she spins and jogs and bolts even in company. Thing is if it isn't of any benefit to her then we will simply stop trying. My daughter loves hacking but not with her own horse 😔. And my main concerns are the horse's health, fitness and happiness, but also (of course) my daughter's safety!
 
i don’t doubt there are some horses who can’t cope with it, but there is hope! lily was 10 when i bought her, and hacking alone was too big an ask for her - after a lot of trips to the same place with other horses, she’d now very content on her own and will even pretend to enjoy a canter😂

she’s 12 this year, we’ve had a few hair-raising attempts that were definitely a bit dangerous, but it was never the behaviour itself, so much as the fact she was doing it in the middle of the road! traffic being the one thing she isn’t scared of, she decided that in the middle of it was where she wanted to be🫣

she still has a look at “things” and to this day i still usually have absolutely no idea what she’s seen, but we can enjoy going out on our own now and i did think for a while she’d be one who just couldn’t hack
 
Yes definitely come across a few who didn’t hack.
One was an imported dressage horse from Germany who simply really hadn’t been outside since he was a yearling.
Whole yard had been undercover and he had no turnout.
Getting him happy and confident in a field was a challenge and hacking out was a complete no go. Tried with a nanny and then 2 Nannie’s. He just couldn’t do it. He was tense and terrified. I didn’t trust him to long rein although he’d happily go out short distances if you lead him from the floor.
 
I had one - Dutch horse. Would hack in a group but no way solo. It’s interesting as my skill set is completely different now so probably could have made more progress now with what I know, but he was incredibly spooky and very insecure. He would pull himself up xc and just not go any further and nap. I think with hindsight I just wasn’t a very good rider as he went well for my friend who was a pro.
 
My 8 year old gelding finds hacking alone scary. Having someone on a bike or on foot has helped. So has allowing him to snack on hedges and trees as we go along as this diverts his brain from finding things to be scared of. We do a limited range of routes that he is familiar with and keep it to under an hour. I am hoping that with time, we can go further.
 
Hacking is a job which horses need to learn
Just as a horse won't go out and do a dressage test or jump a round without being taught how to do it (and may never get especially good at it, even with training) a lot of horses need to be taught how to hack
I had one who was awful hacking to start with but once he got the hang of it it became his favourite thing to do

Also I think it's easy to underestimate the effect of our own confidence on the horse - how often does 'My horse doesn't like hacking' actually come down to 'I don't like/don't feel confident about hacking'
 
I've only had one in my whole life that I was unable to teach to enjoy hacking alone. I could make him, but he would never have chosen to hack out alone. He was afraid if a new daffodil grew where there wasn't one last week. He was a KWPN, but also found later to be congenital wobbler who had probably never been able to feel his back feet properly.
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bonnysmum said:
Hi, in people's experience are there horses who just do not have the mental capacity for hacking out? Horses who just get so stressed by the experience of being away from their familiar environment that it isn't worth persevering? Or does anyone have experience of this and got over it?
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Yes Bailey was a complete numpty on the roads at one point. He'd always spin (only ever to the right and never into the path of a car). It was firm riding and perseverance, employing tricks like making him stand still on the way home and reining back past the obstacle he was 'scared of' if he wanted to plant.

We got there in the end and he was a lovely, foward striding horse. I don't think I have a single photo of me hacking or riding with ears back!
 

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I had an import who turned herself inside out hacking but over many years became my most reliable horse - I didn’t notice it happening though it was very slow gradual progression from flipping over when asked to leave the yard (didn’t know she hadn’t been out of an arena before at this point), to napping at triggering things & trying to head home at speed, to being a bit spooky, to just … nothing. But by then she’d seen everything you could think of at least once though 🫣 that said it was a long, sometimes frightening experience that I wouldn’t wish a teen to go through unless they REALLY REALLY wanted it. I thought the sun shone out that mares backside so my stubbornness to show her life wasn’t so scary carried us through… I think the whole situation would’ve turned me off horses otherwise as a teen
 
Maybe it depends on the ambition - if you have a little safe route you want to make part of your riding, then fine - maybe a horse you can take out miles in strange terrain is more challenging.

So a couple of thoughts …

Choose a nice days when horse feels chilled

Do a mixture of walking in hand and ridden to begin. It as much training your horse this is normal as anything else - if I say ‘off’ my horse will stop dead while I dismount! (Treats help train this quickly!). Also I always give a treat when remounting which helps them stay quiet. Practice this - you dont want the horse to associate you getting off with tense situations!

Have lots of pony snack points, at least to begin. It’s spring and there are so many delicious nibbles, this will hopefully change his mindset.

Practice shoulder in - however badly you do it, as soon as the rider feels insecure this helps stop the horse from running.

Do scary stuff training at home, and have techniques for coping.

Basically, if what you are doing isn’t working you have to change both your and your horses mindset!
 
I had an event horse who just didn't enjoy hacking - he as brave as a lion cross country and I enjoyed hacking so tried to use it as a 'break' from schooling, he left the yard reasonably settled but came back like a spooky dragon.
Was happy as anything in the school, on the gallops, perfect with traffic, just didn't find hacking the relaxing tonic that I did.
I could get him round a hack, but it wasn't a pleasure.
I just pretty much stopped doing it as it wasn't fun for either of us. When I wanted to give him an easy day I 'hacked' around the gallop and he was happier.
As it wasn't his main job, I didn't persevere further but maybe if I had it would have got better, I got him at 13
 
I’ve never owned one that wouldn’t hack. I have owned a couple that preferred to go in company but with careful riding would hack solo relatively safely.

I’ve known a few that were bad hacks, but they were generally tricky characters anyway and as their primary job was for competition, owners/riders just avoided hacking.

My general thoughts on it is that the majority of non-hackers will have had either large gaps in their early training or will be being ridden by a poor/nervous rider and are picking up on their anxiety. There will obviously be some exceptions to this.
 
Mine is very worried about solo hacking. He is prone to panic, can spin on a sixpence and once he is worried it is hard to regain his focus. It hasn't helped that I am not able to ride very long and don't have the most confidence in the world. It's something I plan to work on this year with lots of inhand walking out with a friend and getting on/off wherever I can find a handy (massive) log. Our yard exits onto a 40mph road so I have to judge his mood before leaving it as the lorries don't have the greatest will to slow down.

He is usually very good in company (obvious triggers of scramble bikes and flappy things aside) so that will also be mixed in if I can find company that doesn't mind we're not the fastest combination.

eta: this has developed over the last few years. When I got him we would do three or four long (2-3 hours) hacks a week, mostly in company. As I've moved yards I have lost my hacking buddies, which has had a massive impact on me, and consequently, him.
 
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Thanks everyone, really interesting points and suggestions. I don't think my teen has the appetite for working through this with this particular horse, and if the horse herself is not particularly missing out on anything then I feel like I'm not going to put any more pressure on her. We were getting somewhere with walking out in hand but the other day my daughter was doing this with a friend and the horse spun around and tried to canter for home, which was pretty dangerous.

Ideally we should be doing circular routes but every circular involves a bit of road work and my daughter is just terrified of taking this horse on the road. So she's been turning back and retracing steps which obviously has a higher risk of triggering this behaviour. I and others have tried to tell her she'd be safer riding than leading in this situation but she just won't do it any more.

If this horse would benefit from learning to hack safely then I would even consider getting in a freelance rider to take her out, but if she doesn't enjoy it and my daughter will never trust her then there seems little point. So tricky to know what to do!
 
PS said horse needs a companion now we've moved yards and my daughter is desperate to find one that she can hack (I had been hoping for a non-ridden companion from a charity). In some ways this would be good if I could find someone else to ride the first horse and they could hack together and build confidence, but the stubborn part of me doesn't want to let her give up and another part of me worries that it would only take one incident to make her lose confidence in the second horse too. Thinking out loud here really 🥴

PPS I should clarify this horse really has never been happy out hacking, this is not just my daughter's anxiety rubbing off on her. Experienced adults can deal better with the spooks and spins and mostly stop her tanking off but she has done all of this with riders other than my daughter. And by "out" I mean as soon as she's away from her immediate comfort zone.
 
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I have one whose hacking career never quite took off, but she is very reactive in general. She came to me much worse as an 8yo and we made huge strides over the years, but hacking was never enjoyable on her. Anything man-associated, such as bikes, cars, dogs where triggers for spins (she's not good with sudden movements, and we have way too many pathways joining each other for her to cope). I retired her aged 18, after only backing her aged 14 - she was walked out before that and led from my ridden pony a lot, but a combination of physical and mental issues made it too much for both of us! She is much, much happier since retiring.
 
bonnysmum said:
PS said horse needs a companion now we've moved yards and my daughter is desperate to find one that she can hack (I had been hoping for a non-ridden companion from a charity). In some ways this would be good if I could find someone else to ride the first horse and they could hack together and build confidence, but the stubborn part of me doesn't want to let her give up and another part of me worries that it would only take one incident to make her lose confidence in the second horse too. Thinking out loud here really 🥴

PPS I should clarify this horse really has never been happy out hacking, this is not just my daughter's anxiety rubbing off on her. Experienced adults can deal better with the spooks and spins and mostly stop her tanking off but she has done all of this with riders other than my daughter. And by "out" I mean as soon as she's away from her immediate comfort zone.
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Given what you say here I would probably cut my losses and either sell or use this horse as a companion. Your daughter's confidence is more important in my view.

We have one like the horse @Ceifer describes at my yard. He is a darling to handle on the yard and in the field but will turn himself inside out if you try to hack him. He used to be a high-level dressage horse and I think had very little experience outside that and very limited turnout.
 
Surbie said:
Given what you say here I would probably cut my losses and either sell or use this horse as a companion. Your daughter's confidence is more important in my view.
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Yes. Selling is definitely not an option, I am not condemning this lovely - but definitely unsound -pony to an uncertain future. So I guess we'll somehow need to find the funds to buy a second ridden horse, unless we're able to find a suitable loan to move yards.

It's such a shame things have not turned out how we hoped with this horse in terms of riding, but she is a beautiful soul who we love very much and my daughter would never give her up.
 
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