Blogs

#13: Are We Punishing Horses for Their Past Trauma?

This is an important and perhaps somewhat controversial topic we hope you’ll all read through to the end. Each horse you see in front of you—with all their habits and tendencies—is a complex tapestry woven from both their genetics/nature AND their life experiences/nurture. Oftentimes, trainers label a horse as "stubborn, lazy, or aggressive," but this overlooks the root causes of their various behaviors and anthropomorphizes the horse. It often tends to minimize their needs. In fact, horses do not possess a prefrontal cortex developed enough to plot or plan. Science has proven this!

Instead of pigeonholing them, it's our responsibility to act as behavioral analysts, understanding that a horse's habits and tendencies are often survival mechanisms developed in response to past or present trauma, pain, lack of sense of safety, or lack of clarity in training. This is critical for evaluation since it recognizes that a horse’s current state is not a fixed, unchangeable personality trait.

In our experience, horses generally fall into two broad behavioral tendencies, both stemming from tension: they are either too shut down or too reactive. A shut-down horse may appear stoic, disengaged, and unwilling to try new things, but are often assessed as “obedient”. They have learned that expression or exploration is unsafe, so they tend to retreat inwardly. On the other hand, a reactive horse is often excitable, high- strung, and over-aroused. They might seem "energetic," but this is often tense energy that manifests as a lack of focus and relaxation.

Neither of these extremes represents a balanced, confident horse. Even activities that require energy, like cantering or jumping are best coupled with relaxation and focus. Through positive reinforcement, we teach horses they can bring their OWN energy back to self-regulation. We do this by clicking on those moments of focus that we want to see more of.

Behavioral analysis helps us look past the surface behavior to the underlying cause. For example, our yearling Fabou often tended to bite as a young colt, even from days old. He was quite bold right from the start. Many would classify him as a “left-brained extrovert”. But science tells us it is not as cut and dried as that and perhaps we are doing our horses a disservice by attempting to fit them into a box when it is far more complex than that.

By understanding this, we chose redirection rather than confrontation. We disengaged when he tried to bite and offered scratches when he was calm, teaching him that relaxation led to getting him what he hoped for. If the unwanted behavior is severe, we may at first need to resort to protected contact. Obviously, this helps us to be safe, but it also allows our horses to feel safe as well, since they soon realize their lack of clarity on the subject will not lead to punishment.

After just a few repetitions, Fabou started to understand the boundary we established, and the biting behavior began to dissipate. This behavior wasn’t malicious in nature. He was simply trying to resolve his mouth pain but wasn’t sure how to. Meeting his discomfort with corrections (especially in this formative time of his life) would have only brought tension and distrust into the equation.

Many do not agree with this approach as they feel a colt like Fabou will soon become dangerous or even aggressive if we didn’t meet such behaviors with punishment. But this approach avoided creating a relationship based in fear.

This illustrates a crucial principle of positive reinforcement: we must meet the horse where they’re at without judgement. We should consider their histories and then guide them toward more desirable behaviors. We should also emphatically state, it’s best not to ignore or disregard unsafe behaviors, but instead address them with understanding. Through systematic positive reinforcement training and a process of redirection, we build a solid foundation of trust. Horses that trust humans, tend to be safe horses to be around.

Ultimately, our goal is to help horses become confident, relaxed, and curious learners who enjoy working with people. This requires assessing and treating each horse as an individual. Since a significant number of horses have experienced some form of perceived trauma due to common management and training practices, we must consider their past pain, trauma, and training histories as a focus in training.

By avoiding restrictive frameworks or personality evaluations and instead concentrating on the horse's individual needs, we can help them move beyond behaviors we’d like to see extinguished. The current traits a horse displays are often not their unchangeable personality; they are a starting point for us to build upon. This shift in perspective to a more unbiased observation, allows us to provide a more compassionate and effective training experience that honors the horse as an intelligent, sentient individual.