Hello,

I would appreciate your advice and tips on young horse training. My almost 6 year old gelding spooks when another horse approaches him in the arena. It is only a problem when the horse is coming from the front or diagonally towards us and when it is either trotting or cantering. My gelding spins around and gallops off, with no sense of self preservation. This lead to a few nasty falls, which have left their mark on my psyche. I was hoping this would fade with consistent and patient training, there was some improvement, however, now that Ive had bad experiences being thrown off I get anxious and tense when other horses do approach us. I feel like I preempt the situation and what perhaps used to be a geniune fear in my horse has overgrown into cheekyness. His spooking is a massive disadvantage at dressage competitions as it is difficult to ride in the warm up arena and we had to do a couple cold-starts as a result, which is far from ideal. Any ideas on how to break this vicious circle? Thank you

 I have had a mildly similar experience -- when my young horse (he's 6 too) was pastured with a semi-aggressive horse, it made him wary of all other horses, because he is very submissive.  He thinks that all horses with pinned ears want to attack him.  At our last jumper show, a horse in warmup just cantered around with pinned ears, it was just how he went.  My poor horse kept leaping sideways, thinking he was going to get chomped.  He avoided that horse all day.

For us, it was a horse confidence issue.  He is now pastured with a different, much less dominant horse.  He is also gaining confidence in me and in his training, so these instances are now rare.  He is learning to trust me and know that I will never ask him to do something unsafe or that he can't do.

I had a similar problem with my other horse too -- I got him when he was 10 and if another horse trotted or cantered up behind him on the trail he would LEAP in the air and spin around.  At half-QH, he could spin fast too.  Again, with time and exposure and building our relationship, this faded and was no longer an issue.

 Because you are experiencing confidence issues though, which are completely understandable, I would enlist the help of a friend or trainer to help you work through the problem together.  Your horse needs to learn to trust that you will take care of him and you will not put him in a dangerous situation.  You need to relearn to be that calm leading presence for your horse to rely on if he gets nervous.