What does Warwick Schiller say about horses that are pushy or muggy around feed time?

Warwick Schiller addresses pushy behavior at feed time in the context of his broader thinking on horse behavior and the importance of distinguishing between a horse that is being dominant and a horse that is anxious about food security. His treatment differs for each. A horse that is dominant at feed time — that pushes other horses away, pins ears at the handler as food approaches, or crowds the handler's space to get to the bucket first — is displaying behavior that reflects a social hierarchy belief that the horse is the most important animal present. Schiller teaches responding to this the same way a dominant horse in the herd would respond: immediately driving the horse away from the food and from the handler's space with clear, direct energy. The handler does not retreat from the pushy horse; the handler advances, driving the horse backward until it yields, then proceeds to deliver the feed. The horse learns that crowding delays feed rather than accelerating it. A horse that is anxious at feed time — that paces, weaves, screams, or pushes forward at feeding because it is genuinely worried about whether food will come or whether other horses will get its share — needs a different approach. Schiller's position is that responding to anxiety-based food behavior with correction escalates the anxiety rather than resolving it. For these horses, the priority is establishing a consistent, predictable feeding routine that the horse can rely on, and working on the horse's general anxiety level through relationship and confidence-building work outside of feeding time. Clinton Anderson's approach to feed time manners is consistent with his broader framework: the horse should move back from the handler when asked, stand at a respectful distance while the feed is prepared and delivered, and not approach until the handler steps away or gives a cue. This is trained the same way all ground manners are trained — by making the wrong thing require more effort than the right thing, every time.