October 2007 • VOLUME 26 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

Startling Beliefs Chasing Your Horse Away

Join us as we question and examine one of the most prevalent ideas behind many of our training systems in this three-part series on training - fear and the horse! You may or may not agree, but the fun is in the discussion and the examination of long-held beliefs.

If we are to be the best horsemen we can be, we have to always be ready to engage in challenging ourselves and our training belief systems. To not challenge, to not question, is to stop learning, to stop progressing. This article presents alternative information that challenges many of our current training models.

In this first of three parts we examine:

What is fear and how does it impact upon our horses and our training?

How do we use fear every day?

Are there any consequences?

Many horsemen would not deny that the horse is a flight animal. An instinct which is genetically hardwired into the horse. An aspect of our horses that we learned to tap into eons ago and that we continue to use in our training.

What is fear?

–noun

1. a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.
2. a specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling.
3. concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone's safety.
4. that which causes a feeling of being afraid.

–verb (used with object)

6. to regard with fear; be afraid of.
7. to have reverential awe of.
8. Archaic: to experience fear in (oneself).

–verb (used without object)

9. to have fear; be afraid.

—Synonyms 1. apprehension, consternation, dismay, terror, fright, panic, horror, trepidation.

In horses, fear expresses itself in the flight response. The horse will attempt to flee from what it perceives as a threatening situation. In the horse, fear “is strongly associated with the movement of the horse’s legs.”

Fear, some would say, is the activation of the flight response.

The concept of fear has been studied and reported on by Australian Equine Behaviour Centre.

“The flight response involves the animal's entire body. Behavioural scientists describe all levels of fear as the HPA axis (the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis). This unwieldy name suggests the origin of the flight response - the brain and the adrenal glands. A structure deep inside the brain called the amygdala, sorts out stimuli as to whether they are fearful or not. Fearful stimuli receive special recognition by the brain in terms of remembering - unlike other information, once learned, fearful responses are not forgotten.”

From a trainer's perspective, knowing that once activated, this fear response is not forgotten, only impresses upon us more deeply why we must be so careful, so gentle, to carefully take our time with each and every horse, with each and every step of training. Carefully ensuring that we do not activate the fear response. We do not want to activate the fear response even once, as once activated, it might be there forevermore.

"While most things we try to train the horse to do involve a number of repetitions, unfortunately the flight response can be learned in just one experience.”

Which truly, if we think about it, makes sense. “Patterns of escape that result in surviving a predatory attack need to be instantly recorded for later use - there's little room for trial and error when you are lunch for a lion. It is for this reason that during training, when it comes to fear behaviours, the best solution is to delete the fear and give it the least chance of practice. “

Thus error-free training is something that we should be striving for.

It may also explain in part why the prospect of re-training is so fraught with difficulties and limitations. Once a mistake is made, will we be able to take it back, if in the process we have invoked the fear response in our horses?

Identifying fear

It is important that, as horse trainers, we learn to identify the flight response for what it is. Universally, horsemen get this wrong at all levels of equestrian skill.

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