Highly Aggressive Horses - Long but NEED advice!

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Tia

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We have a newish livery horse are our farm who is incredibly aggressive. She is 2 years old and came here from over 3,500 miles away about a month ago.

She is here with her 16 year old mother who although is a little narky, she is quite a simple horse to deal with. The daughter however is not.

When I first met the two of them I decided that I would put them in my witches herd. There are 4 witches in this field and about 3 others who are lovely and down near the bottom of the pecking order, so I thought a good match. The field is about 10 acres; they have ad-lib hay in 3 separate areas of the field. They have a large barn to go into; mineral licks and auto-heated water on tap. The horses are all fed a good ration and everyone is happy.

Now when they first went into this field, the filly decided to take on the witches!
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She was very very aggressive with them and was double-barreling out at them and trying to attack them with her teeth bared. My witches (2 owned by me and 2 other liveries) did not stand for this and although none of them are kickers, they did show their disapproval and non-violently told her that this was not on. Wonderful I thought - they will teach her to be a good equine citizen without the risk of her being injured.

Sadly this was to be short lived. This filly has now overtaken 2 of the witches and my own 2 witches are holding their own, however have certainly dropped their standards as one of them is now allowing her to eat out of her feed bowl. Jess, the boss mare won't let her eat out of her bowl, however she will share licking up the other bowls with her. This is the absolute worst situation I can imagine happening here.

When anyone enters the field, she can be way over the other side of the field and she will leave the rest of the horses and trot over and once close to them, she will attack them!
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Whizzing round to double-barrel and lunging with teeth. She will do this to me also, so she isn't fussy! If I have to go into that field I always take a lunge whip with me - quite ludicrous, as I have to go in a number of times a day to throw buckets out and check on the other horses.

Once feed time is over and buckets are removed from the field, so long as I am not in the field, she loves me. She will stand for as long as I have time to offer her, being scratched etc. However from past experience I know fine well if I were to go into the field and do this, she would not hold back with trying to kill me.

This is totally a new one on me (not the aggressive horse bit, but the fact that all of the things I normally do with aggressive horses hasn't worked with this one!) and I have tried a number of things to try to rectify this BIG problem. I have a number of boarding horses in this field and I am concerned about one of them being injured by this filly.

My thoughts are to move this filly out of the field where her mother is. I don't want to put her in with any other horses as I have seen how she weedles her way up the pecking order and then I won't have solved anything. The only free field I could have would be a 5 acre field which runs the length of our driveway and is part of the paddock where I have my foals. There is a gate and the 2 parts of this field are fenced so it can always be split whenever I need it. The only problem is that if I were to put her in this field then I am unable to run her into it so I will have to lead her up the driveway to get her there.......not something I am particularly looking forward to I have to say. I've led her about a few times and she is frigging dangerous the way she spins and lunges at you.

My thoughts are to run her from her own field into the main corral and then run her into a small sub-corral off there. After leaving her alone in there for a few days then I'm thinking that she may be a bit more mellow for the journey way up the driveway. This is absolutely not the way I would normally go around moving a 2 year old, however she WILL have a chifney in her mouth when I do take her to her new field.....and believe it or not, but I WILL be wearing my very best hard hat!!

The owner is a lovely person but she won't have anything to do with this filly as she has been attacked aswell. By the way, this lady bred this filly.

I have been nice to this filly, I have been incredibly firm with this filly and absolutely nothing is working. Her moving to another yard is not an option for her owner, so she will be here for a while; therefore something needs to be done.

The reason for the move right now is that I have the farrier coming soon and she has to be out of this field before he comes as she is an absolute nightmare when all of the horses are being done - never mind what she is like when we do her! Crikey, both the farrier and I take our lives in our hands and I think it's time we didn't have to do this. She hadn't had her feet done before she came here, by the way.

Any ideas on how to try to alter this filly's attitude or any better suggestions on how to sort out this increasingly dangerous situation?
 
If she were mine, I would be giving her another 6 months and if still no joy then yes I would, for certain, have this horse destroyed.
 
Animal doesnt sound normal, I would have vet check it out, other than that lethal injection, someone is goin to get badly hurt.
Micheal Peace does all the Equine behaviour stuff, be interesting to see what he thought.
 
She sounds awful, really dangerous.
My little section A colt was a bit like that when I first got him. He would canter across the field to kick and bite people. We had him gelded and it calmed him down a bit. We also turned him out with a very dominant 16 hand TB gelding and he tried to take him on!
We were initially a bit concerned about this as Fred was head of the field and we didn't want this pony getting the better of him.
He didn't in the end, and got firmly put in his place by Fred, but it was amusing watching this squirt of a pony beat up a big TB!
 
She certainly isn't normal AT ALL.
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I've had a few lightly aggressive horses come here over the years; every single one has totally altered their demeanor within a few weeks, but not this one. In fact I believe she is getting much worse since feeding has resumed over the winter period.

I can't call the vet to her as she doesn't belong to me. Her owner has completely given me carte blanche with how best to handle this situation, but that doesn't include spending any money on the filly.
 
Any ideas on how to try to alter this filly's attitude or any better suggestions on how to sort out this increasingly dangerous situation?


MAKE the livery move the horse or deal with her problem. It may get either you hurt or another liveries horse....which in turn you could be liable for I imagine. I would for certain get some panels out and make this filly a makeshift small area ALONE for winter is she simply cannot go.


Either that or we could put her in with Chester
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Not sure who would be left standing

He is an agressive SOB too...never with people though and that is what concerns me most about *your* filly..

You seem knowledgable about horse behavior. If all you have tried has not worked I am left to assume this filly could be a near lost cause.

If it were mine it would be gone....to Canada if you know what I mean
Did you mean the mother is bred again or the filly?
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If the filly.... WHY did she breed a 2 yo anyway? I know it is done but it always makes me ill. Is this lady ok?
 
You see this is exactly what I expected to happen to this filly. My little mare (herd leader) will normally do all the work for me.....but not this time.

The filly is a big filly by the way. She is very stocky and about 15hh, so quite a bit bigger than the rest of the QH's and Arabs in that field.
 
Perhaps, as Vicijp has already said, try to get her owner to do more with her, and turn her out alone. Your plan for trying to mellow her out might work to get her up to the other field.
 
I agree with vicijp, separate it (any old how) and work it. And then, if it is still a nightmare (no pun intended) you might have to think of the extreme option. Sounds like if it stays in the field much longer, nobody will ever get near it again.
 
What was her situation before she came to you I mean field wise?

Will she keep her weight on if she just has hay and no hard feed?

I would def get her out of the witches field.... why upset a whole herd for one little madame!
 
Horses like that scare the heck out of me...
I personally wouldn't keep it. Had a real bad horse, he was (is) an evil monster and has hurt a few people. Trapped me a few times and highly dangerous. I would have him shot.

Your filly, maybe there is a chance of re-educating due to the age? If it were mine, I would muzzle the thing, keep in a smaller area near but not with others, with headcollar on permanently, and do things daily with her. Maybe lunging, or some sort of exercise and wear her energy out.. If she doesn't improve I would not have her at my place, too dangerous.

Unless you have time to devote to one horse to educate and sort behaviour problems out, I would say, move her on.
 
You know, that may not be such a bad idea GTs. I'm serious, you could well have given me the best piece of advice. This horse is definitely not right.
 
Can't do the work part unfortunately as this would cost the owner more money.

I do somewhere have a hard hat lurking in the depths of my tack room - just have to find it! You know I'm deadly serious when I start mentioning wearing hard hats.
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Oh poor you, what a truly horrible situation! She sounds like a total horror. I am sure you are right and basically this youngster has found that aggression works! It not only works with the horses lower down the pecking order, but also even the 'alpha' horses back down in the face of prolonged aggression. Now that thats worked she is using the same tactics with humans. I think you have done everything right and its a huge shame that one of the witches hasnt stood up to her, but she has clearly got the upper hand (with the other horses and somewhat with the humans too). As we all know youngsters always try it on with their field mates, but there is always an grown up that puts them in their place. Somehow she has got to learn that there is a more important horse/human than her.

The only time I have come across this was quite a few years ago and it was a young horse that had been gelded late (due to bad temperement!) and it was a total nightmare - would fly at you with teeth and hooves/ditto other horses. What the owners did in the end (it was the last option before the bullet!) was to get one of those dog controller collar things that you can remotely activate and which gives a small electric shock when the button is pushed. They attached it to his headcollar (or could have been rug, not sure). They waited until he showed signs of aggression to one of the other previous leader/top horses in the field and then zapped him. They kept doing it until he came to the conclusion that it hurt everytime he stepped out of line in the pack. Funnily enough once he became less sure of himself in the field he became quite nice to handle by humans!

I dont know if this would work in your situation and also I dont know what reaction you would get from the horse. Is he they type to panic? Would he charge off and hurt himself? I cant answer this, its certainly totally unothodox but all I can say is that it worked for these people!
 
She sounds delightful!!! Just the type of horse you need around to liven the day up! I'd seperate it...... and totally agree with what you say about it being yours and giving it 6 months!
 
No the owner bred this filly. She's owned the mare for a few years.

If she were my filly, yes she would be going to Quebec in the very near future...
 
phew, what a dominant horse, what about putting her on regumate or something to make her not come into season, or just electric fence and put her in with her mother or something, is she dominant over her mother as well?
 
The owner won't do anything with her - she is terrified of her. I tell you, when this filly had me on the ground once and was about to stomp my head in, although I wasn't terrified, I was certainly incredibly stunned. I was only saved by her indecision as to whether to kick the cr4p out of me, or whether to rip me to shreds! I'm nowhere near so gung-ho with her nowadays.
 
The liveries in this field have started not wanting to go in to collect their horses without me and the lunge whip
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. So she really is causing trouble here.
 
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