The big day of the show is here. You wake up early, excited and a little nervous for the classes you signed up for. You and your horse have been working hard and you’ve pushed yourself to sign up for a level a little outside your comfort zone. As you hook up the trailer, you are mentally going over the packing list and realize you forgot you boots, which you brought inside to clean. As you run inside to grab them, you accidentally spill coffee on yourself. Now there is swearing as you hurriedly get changed, grab your boots and run outside. You are only a little behind schedule, but it should be ok as long as you can find a parking spot at the show that’s easy to get into so you don’t have to back the trailer up. You also left yourself 10 minutes to load to your horse, which should be plenty of time since you worked on loading him a few weeks ago and he went in a lot easier than usual. Luckily you locked him in a stall overnight, away from the mud in the field and the pony who likes to chase him around, so he should be clean and easy to catch. You open the barn door and see that your horse hasn’t finished his breakfast yet, but that’s good because then he’ll be hungry and want to go in the trailer to eat his haynet. How did he get so many shavings in his mane? He must have rolled. Now you must factor in extra grooming time, that’s annoying. You go to put the halter on and your horse is lifting his head very high. Why is he doing this, doesn’t he know you are in a hurry? Now you’ve wrestled his head into the halter and he’s squashing you into the stall door frame on the way out, what a jerk! As he drags you out of the barn he starts calling. The pony is running the fenceline now and calling back. Great. Pay attention horse, it’s time to get into the trailer, just like you did the other week. But now he’s slamming on the breaks. You try tugging on the lead, but he just backs up. You try tapping him on the rump with the end of the rope, but he just goes sideways. The more pressure you apply, the more he digs his heels in. Trying a different tactic, you coax with treats, but he won’t even sniff them. Why is he being so stubborn? Soon he has become a statue that you can’t budge even an inch, no matter how much you push, prod or chase. Next thing you know, 40 minutes has gone by and you’ve missed your classes. Feeling defeated, you drag your horse back to the paddock where to add insult to injury, he runs away to the pony and goes and rolls in the muddiest part of the field. He loaded so well the other week, and you had been working on your groundwork, so where did things go wrong?
Many of us have had experiences like the one described. While our first instinct might be to blame our horse for being such a knucklehead, or to blame ourselves for not doing enough training, a better understanding of what is happening at a neurophysiological level, both for ourselves and our horse, can shed some light on the situation. It can help us better understand why we feel what we feel and do what we do, why our horse feels what he feels and does what he does, and help us shift the relationship dynamic in a healthier direction and set us up for success.
It is vitally important that ourselves and our horses have some level of healthy nervous system regulation, and that we have a basic understanding of what that means and looks like before we attempt to address any “training” issues.
But why? Most of us have heard some version of the idea that we don’t learn when we are stressed. While this is an extremely simplified notion, it is very true, and is true not only for us, but also for our horses. Before you say “but isn’t that anthropomorphism?”, no it isn’t. It is certainly true that horses have a less developed pre-frontal cortex to humans, which means that the way they process information is different to ours. Primarily this means that they have less in the way of planning, decision making, and speech and language than we do. However, the horse’s limbic system, which is responsible for processing and regulating emotion, is remarkably like ours. You can read more about this in Jaak Panksepp's research on affective neuroscience. In addition, our horse's autonomic nervous system is also essentially a larger version of our own. So while it is important to understand the differences between ourselves and our horses, and to respect the nature of the horse, we can also learn a lot by understanding the ways in which we are the same. Once we have a basic understanding of the way in which our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) functions, in much the same way as the horse’s, we can begin to understand and work on creating optimal conditions for learning to occur. There are different theories as to the functioning of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, such as the Polyvagal Theory created by Dr Stephen Porges, which is a theory I ascribe to.
To sum it up very briefly, essentially our nervous system responds to cues of safety or danger, at a level below our cognition. Most people are familiar with the terms “fight or flight”, which is a sympathetic nervous system activation designed to get us out of danger. This can also be preceded by a “fawn” or appeasement state, which is where we start to see calming signals. Essentially this is the nervous system’s way of signaling to the danger “I am not a threat, there is no need to attack me”. If we are successful in escaping or fighting off the danger, our para-sympathetic nervous system, or ventral vagal, can kick back in, and we can return to a “rest and digest” state of safety. If we are not successful in escaping or fighting off the danger, then our nervous system hits the brakes hard and sends us into a “freeze” state – think the rabbit frozen so still hoping the fox won’t see him hiding. On the surface he is frozen, but his heart may be going a mile a minute, and his system flooding with adrenaline. If the freeze response is unsuccessful, or goes on too long, then it can go even further into a complete shutdown – think the rabbit completely floppy and immobile in the jaws of the fox. However, he isn’t dead, and if the fox was to drop him, he may reignite through the flight response (thanks to that stored adrenaline) and be able to escape.
These are all states that our nervous systems (and our horse’s) are designed to be able to move through as needed. A regulated nervous system will recieve the safety or danger cues from the Amygdyla in the brain, and respond appropriately, easily shifting between nervous system states. Problems can arise though if we spend too much time in an activated or shutdown state or can’t dispel activated energy and complete the cycle. Unfortunately, this is a common problem seen in animals in captivity (including horses and humans), that is rarely seen in the wild. This is mainly due to the chronic stress, over or under stimulation, or inappropriate living conditions that occur in captivity (or in our modern western, capitalist society for us humans).
In the example at the beginning of this article, we see the human start off the morning in an already activated state (worrying about the show), not to mention not being present and attentive or aware of this state. The horse has been locked in a stall overnight, separated from his friends in a stress state with no way to dispel the anxiety. The human, who is distracted and nervous themselves, doesn’t notice the horse’s stress signals, which does nothing to create a sense of safety for the horse. Once the activated human and the activated horse start interacting, both of their stress levels continue to feed off each other, furthering the activation. The trailer, which the horse was able to cope with several weeks ago while in a relaxed state, is now outside of his window of tolerance in this activated state. Because his system is screaming “DANGER”, his curiosity – including his desire to look for or eat treats is gone. His cognition is also starting to go offline as his system prioritizes focusing on the threat, so cues which he usually knows very well may no longer seem to work. As his attempts to avoid and escape are blocked, he goes into a freeze response, which is deepened more and more as more pressure gets added. At this point he is approaching a state of shutdown, and the only way out is back through the activated state that got him there, or by facilitating a safe container and providing a way for the activation to dissipate. Once he has been returned to the paddock and the safety of his herd, the horse finds a way to do this by rolling and shaking it off. The human however is likely continuing to stew, ruminate, and add pressure (“what will everyone think when I don’t show up at the show?”), which will not be conducive to healthy nervous system regulation. This baggage will be very apparent to the horse the next time the human pulls him out for trailer practice, and so the pattern may repeat.
In the above example, we can see the importance of staying inside of the window of tolerance for both horse and human. This window is the level of activation that the nervous system can tolerate while still being able to return to social engagement – essentially not going past the point of no return. This window can become very narrow in a dysregulated nervous system (think one small thing going wrong on your way to work and it ruins your whole day). The goal is to slowly grow the window of tolerance for both horse and human, so that they can handle stressful situations more readily. There are many different practices we can use for both horse and human to achieve this, including various mindfulness and attunement exercises, learning to co-regulate with a healthy nervous system, and titrating in and out of the stress at a manageable level – or pushing into the edges of the window of tolerance to slowly expand it without going over. This is best done with the help of a professional to help maintain a level of safety.
This brings us back to the whole “we don’t learn when we’re stressed” thing, or why we need to address the horse’s nervous system states before we try to do any training. Regardless of which quadrants of operant conditioning you use to shape behaviour, we need to be aware of what is happening beneath the surface. Let’s say we are using negative reinforcement (aka pressure and release) to teach our horse to walk on under saddle. If our horse is already in a slightly defensive state, any pressure we add will likely tip him more towards a bracing “freeze” type response. This might look like him lifting his head and bracing his underneck when we add leg, or appearing to ignore the leg completely, or become more and more dull to the leg aid over time. I’ll give you a positive reinforcement example as well. Let’s say we are using a clicker/treats to get our horse into the trailer. If we don’t address any underlying anxiety, and go straight to overshadowing with the treats, our horse can flip into an aroused seeking response, and override his own window of tolerance in his quest for the treats. He may get onto the trailer seemingly eagerly, but once he’s locked in and the treats are no longer there to stimulate the seeking override, or the underlying anxiety grows beyond a manageable point, he may spend the trailer ride quaking in fear, or be explosive to unload, seemingly out of nowhere as the underlying flight response comes to the surface.
The more we can facilitate a relaxed state throughout the training process, the more information our horse can retain as his cognition remains fully online. One piece of social engagement is curiosity, meaning your horse will be interested in learning or trying new things. The more safe your horse feels, the more his body will remain in a relaxed state, which will not only help to keep his mind calm, but will also facilitate healthy biomechanics. The less surprises we will have as suppressed stress which rises to the surface suddenly will be dealt with before it has a chance to build. We may even find that the specific training issue we were having disappears once we address the underlying nervous system disfunction or dysregulation (provided that there isn’t a physical reason for the unwanted behaviour such as pain).
Each interaction with our horse is a conversation within the greater relationship dynamic. If we can become aware of our own nervous system states and emotions, and how they affect each interaction, then we can have a clearer view of issues when they arise and be focused on working together with our horse on resolution rather than looking at it as a problem that the horse is experiencing in isolation. Just like any other relationship, it takes two to tango, and we must keep that in mind to be fair to the horse and to ourselves. If one nervous system is out of whack, it will be difficult for the other to remain well-regulated.
Becoming aware of yours and your horse’s states, and emotions, and how they lead to specific behaviours can seem like a daunting task to undertake. It is something that takes time, patience, and a willingness to look beyond what is happening on the surface. It may mean taking a step back, or asking for help which takes courage. But ultimately, I think it is a worthwhile venture that will serve to strengthen your relationship with your horse, facilitate healing for horse and human, and bring a level of depth to your training that is a joy to experience.