Treats. Treats? Treats!

Every pony person at some point ponders whether to give treats to their partner. Horse people have the same wondering. Some of my ponies get treats and some of them don’t. I’ve had the bad experience of giving a pony a treat that I shouldn’t have. It took months for the pony to come back around to not begging constantly and being pushy looking for me to give it something to eat. Because of that sort of experience, I’ve always said that some ponies can have treats and others can’t.

However, I started thinking about the topic differently thanks to a master horsewoman. She suggested the idea that ponies can be taught to have good manners around treats. It was a statement that seemed so obvious when I heard it but one I had never considered before. This horsewoman, Carolyn Resnick, believes in beginning all her training at liberty and beginning it around food. Her point is that if you don’t have good behavior at liberty and around food, how can you expect to have it when doing other things with the equine constrained in some way by tack? It is a fascinating study.

This begging behavior needs to be reshaped before the pony receives a treat. She needs to seem uninterested, preferably standing back in a relaxed manner with ears not back.

These weren’t completely new ideas. I ask my ponies to have good manners around feed buckets, for instance, which definitely improves our relationship. They aren’t allowed to eat after I put the bucket before them until I give them permission. Carolyn points out that the starting point around giving treats is to understand what good behavior around treats looks like. I admit I had never consciously considered what good behavior would look like when giving a treat; I just recognized bad behavior and then didn’t see the opportunity for reshaping it!

Carolyn also says that we create food-aggressive equines by the way we feed. This, too, was a new idea to me, in part because, again, I had never really given it much thought. But now it totally makes sense. If we feed our equines without recognizing the opportunity for shaping good behavior, some will end up taking advantage of the situation by becoming pushy, or worse, such as rearing or biting or kicking. I have seen all these behaviors in my ponies at some point, including in foals around their mothers! I am thankful for Caroyln’s Waterhole Rituals for the opportunities they present for shaping good behavior.

For the moment, for the safety of people such as outside buyers and visitors, I will continue to say that some ponies should not be given treats. And when I can I will suggest that there is another perspective!

© Jenifer Morrissey, 2022

There are more stories like this one in my book The Partnered Pony: What’s Possible, Practical, and Powerful with Small Equines, available by clicking here or on the book cover.