Your horse hasn’t turned against you. In Horses of Hoofprint Bay, green hearts appear only when a scritch actually raises Confidence, and that stops once Confidence passes the upper marker on the bar or the horse has had 10 good scritches that day. A horse that stops giving hearts because its Confidence went up is doing well.
Pinned ears are a separate problem. They mean your hand touched a wound, so check the horse’s body before you assume it’s the scritching.
Find the itchy spot
Move the hand slowly over the horse in the stable until it changes shape, then leave it there. Each horse has one itchy spot, and it’s one of seven places: belly, bum, chest, chin, ears, mane or withers. That spot never moves, so once you’ve found it, you’ve found it for good.
The hand changes shape even when hearts have stopped, which makes it the reliable test. The horse also keeps playing its happy pose, with half-closed eyes and its muzzle lifted.
You don’t need to click or rub. Rest the hand on the spot and the horse takes a scritch about every 2.5 seconds by itself.
Why the hearts stop
Each row below is a reason a scritch gives no hearts, with what you can do about it.
| What happened | How it works | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Confidence is above the upper marker | The upper marker sits at 80 out of 100. A scritch at exactly 80 still counts, and that’s the last one | Nothing. This is the goal |
| 10 good scritches today | Only the first 10 per horse each day raise Confidence. The count resets overnight | Come back tomorrow |
| More than 10 treats today | Scritches stop raising Confidence for that day, unless the horse has the Cuddly trait | Scritch first, or hold the treats |
Scritching is for horses still below the marker. Your starter mare begins at 95, already past the cutoff, so don’t expect hearts from her straight away. They’ll appear once her Confidence falls to 80 or lower.
Every horse loses 1 Confidence a day. A horse above the marker with nothing else going on drifts back down, and the hearts return on their own.
Raise Confidence past the marker
Riding is what takes a horse above 80, because training has no such limit. The Confidence guide covers every way to raise it, including the fastest. Enigma went from 94 to 99 in one clean run of Cavaletti Training, then reached 100 with a second.
Be careful with a horse that’s short on strength, though. One failed run with 2 refusals and 2 knocked rails, ending with the horse out of breath, cost Enigma 14 Confidence in a single attempt. That’s two weeks of daily loss gone in one run, so don’t push a tired horse through a course.
Cuddly horses gain 1 or 2 Confidence per scritch, so they climb to the marker faster. The vet can’t test for Cuddly and foals don’t inherit it, so keep scritching a low-Confidence horse if you want to find out. It reveals itself as you go. The Traits and Quirks guide covers what every other trait does.
If your horse looks unhappy
Match what you’re seeing to this table. The middle column tells you what the horse is reacting to.
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Half-closed eyes, muzzle up, no hearts | The happy pose. The scritch landed, and there’s just no Confidence left to gain | Nothing |
| Ears pinned flat, neck stretched | Your hand touched an abrasion, cut or saddle sores | Move your hand away and treat the wound |
| Head down in the bowl, pawing | The horse is hungry. Body condition has dropped into the lower orange zone | Feed it |
Treating a wound doesn’t stop the reaction. A treated abrasion still pins the ears until it heals, so steer around it for now. The reaction also lingers for a couple of seconds, which can make it look as if the horse dislikes the next spot you touched as well.
Hunger is the easy one to miss, because it has nothing to do with your hand at all. The hungry pose replaces the horse’s normal idle, so it can look like a sulk even when Confidence is high. Enigma did exactly this at 85 Confidence on day 2, after being ridden without any extra feed.