Horses who are bad at emotional regulation

[Caol Ila]

This thought occurred to me during my two rides today.

Ride 1: Fin got very spooked by a woman at a house we regularly hack past wrapping up a tree in a plastic tarp. He spun, tanked (I stayed on and pulled him up!), then refused to go anywhere near that house. We had to go home another way, but he was aff his head and felt like sitting on dynamite, Type III fun when you have to be on the main road. Mr. Caol Ila said he was still tense when he brought him out into his field.

Ride 2: Mugdock Park has set up a bunch of Halloween decorations, designed to scare horses and small children, and Hermosa did a big leapy-forward spook at some crime scene tape flapping in the wind. I reined her in, we had a look at a haunted house with a bit less drama, then we left Halloween behind. She dialed right down almost immediately, and the rest of our ride was relaxing and pleasant. How do you train that? (wait, who trained that horse....?) Is it just the way they're wired?

This is typical behaviour for both horses. Hermosa usually gets over stuff. Fin often does not. The thing that does my head in is that when Fin gets a big fright at something, he hangs onto the fear, and the rest of your ride requires managing a very wound up pony as best you can so you get home in once piece. He's a little better than he used to be, or maybe just less reactive to things he sees every day, but today proves that he is still terrible at calming himself -- or at accepting my attempts to calm him -- after something scary has happened. In fairness, I think most horses would have reacted to the woman waving huge plastic sheets around in the wind, but many of them would have settled once you got away from it.

Is there anything you can do to help an older horse (he's about 13) learn to emotionally regulate itself a little better?

Are some horses just like that to some extent, and you have to deal and accept them for who they are?

 

[Cortez]

Meh, she's Spanish: they are bred to be brave.

 

[MidChristmasCrisis]

You ve had more input into Hermosa than Fin..you are Hermosa s safe space..Fin hasn’t fully absorbed that…I think.

 

[Britestar]

I have a big homebred horse.

As avyoungester I often described riding him as a boiling pan of milk. More often than not, the milk was boiling over, and you couldn't switch the heat off.

Eventually I put him on a calmer.
After a week or so, I felt I could turn the heat down, and stop the milk boiling over.

After a longer period of time you could prevent the over boil and turn the heat off completely.

He can still he an idiot, but He comes back down and then leaves it behind ( until the next thing ).

Hope that makes sense.

 

[Hackback]

I have observed this in a few horses ... all of them Welsh One memorable occasion was when I went to the beach, me on my Arab and her on her Section D. The beach near the car park was so busy with windsurfers, sand buggies, and of spectacular threat, some surf boards things being pulled along by a big kite in the sky type arrangement. Both horses were spooked to heck but as we made our way down the beach away from the noisy end my Arab cooled down. Friend's Welshie on the other hand just couldn't let it go and continued getting more and more wound up. We ended up coming home because the ride was just not enjoyable.

 

[Caol Ila]

He may have Welsh in him. Other breeds were introduced into the Dallas herd before they became feral and then got mixed and mashed, so he's unlikley to be pure Highland. Welsh was definitely one.

I'm definitely out of there at the kitesurfers.

 

[Upthecreek]

Some horses will just never be comfortable hacking alone, and at age 13 I think the chances of changing that are slim. With horses that are highly strung and easily upset, despite lots of exposure to different things and repetition, you have to question if it’s worth persevering when they find it so stressful.

 

[Boughtabay]

I have a welsh x Spanish … he’s very brave with most things and takes to new tasks like a duck to water… but when he find something worth getting worked up about he’s very “Welsh. He then goes right back to being cool as a cucumber just as quick as he got wound up. I’ve decided it’s his two warring temperaments

 

[daffy44]

I know what you mean, in my experience its something the horse is born with but it can be changed to a certain extent with training. I have warmbloods, mostly I buy them as foals, they are trained by me, and I've had a mix of fillies and colts, so I think I have a reasonable control group! My now six yr old gelding has always been a laid back chap, he does see things that spook/upset him, but once he has "survived" the scary thing he's back to normal very quickly. Both my GP horses, one mare, one gelding, were naturally quite anxious and were more inclined to hold onto their stress, the mare internalised it, the gelding externalised it, but they both struggled to let go. But over time they both learned to let go better, but it was always their nature to hold onto stress, whereas the six yr old, I dont think he could stay stressed no matter what happened.

 

[Caol Ila]

Some horses will just never be comfortable hacking alone, and at age 13 I think the chances of changing that are slim. With horses that are highly strung and easily upset, despite lots of exposure to different things and repetition, you have to question if it’s worth persevering when they find it so stressful.

I’ve given up on that delusion. But we weren’t alone today. He just got a fright, shot up to 11, then couldn’t turn it back down.

 

[irishdraft]

My mare is extremely over reactive especially when hacking on her own which I have to do as noone to ride with. I realised she is very noise sensitive so decided to try her with ear plugs, wow what a difference, it's like riding a different horse. She is so much calmer even with non noisy things eg people walking towards her etc would freak her previously but with the ear plugs not a problem. So maybe try them x

 

[SEL]

My Appy was (is) very like Finn. Once she'd got upset about something it was near impossible to bring her anxiety levels down again. She never seemed to have much sense of self preservation in that state either

When she injured herself and the vet said ok for light hacking I decided retirement would be less stressful all round.

 

[eggs]

I had a mare who was completely non-spooky right up to the time when she spooked at one of those robotic lawn mowers which completely freaked her out.

She absolutely was not going to go past it so we ended up having to turn round and retrace our steps. However as we were on a loop of road we had to go past it again but at least on the other side of the road. She still wasn’t having any of it but eventually my friend’s spooky horse who was our hacking companion decided she could go past it.

The rest of the hack thought she was completely wired and we had airs above the ground all the way home. It was the only thing she ever spooked at but it was pretty dramatic.

 

[DabDab]

Yes I think it's down to ingrained personality to a certain extent, I also think that as riders we as individuals will be better at dialling down the emotions and giving confidence to some horses than others. There are of course these super human horsemen/women who seem to be able to calm any horse, but most of us can be very good at getting one horse to regulate their emotions/flight response, while being at a loss with another.

What I am saying (probably badly) is that as well as the horse's underlying temperament I think there is also a horse-rider emotional energy compatibility element to it.

 

[Upthecreek]

I’ve given up on that delusion. But we weren’t alone today. He just got a fright, shot up to 11, then couldn’t turn it back down.

Ah okay. If he’s even like that in company I think you’re fighting a losing battle. Whatever his education and past experiences are (or lack of education and experience), temperament and personality traits mean that you cannot always undo what has been done or train them to be different.

 

[honetpot]

TBH I can not understand why anyone considors 'emotional', its the horses natural reflex, fear, flight, fight to stress, and if a horse does not have the support from usually another horse, or finds the human is not enough support, to over come that reflex, or the stressor is not removed, it will continue to want to get away from the stressor or express the resulting stress behavoir. You can habituate some situations but often once the stressor is encountered or made more severe, the horse has no option to default to its natural reflexes.

 

[BallyRoanBaubles]

My fell is like hermosa, but then I backed him to so maybe there’s something in that? He isn’t upset by much and usually a scratch on the wither brings him back down again

 

[poiuytrewq]

I’ve given up on that delusion. But we weren’t alone today. He just got a fright, shot up to 11, then couldn’t turn it back down.

Mines like this. I was talking to someone the other day about him and it’s hard to explain. I said a complete beginner could probably get on and ride him off the yard and up the road, round the village if they were lucky. He’d plod along not putting a foot out of line.
If, however something upsets him he turns into the horse from hell and it’s a nightmare from that second until we get back on the yard.
The thing that upsets him can very wildly.
It’s not nice when he’s in that mind frame but I can never put my finger on what caused it.
Some days it might be a lady walking past, the next we pass lorries and whatever else without flinching.

 

[Caol Ila]

To some extent, we train them to suppress the flight response (because it's dangerous at worst, incovenient at best) when we are with them. Probably easiest to train that when they are young, and I guess the temperament they were born with and experience they get later factor into it as well.

I think "emotional regulation" is a fair term for letting go of the stress if they get scared by something, especially after you've removed them from the scary situation. In this case, we did leave. I worked out that we were not going to get past the lady and her plastic sheets, turned around 180 degrees, and went home a completely different way (then encountered the farmer herding sheep on his quad bike....everything that could go wrong did).

What I normally do is accept that most of our hacks (in company, obviously) are good. I don't knowingly put him in situations where I'm pretty sure we will have a problem (i.e., he will be avoiding the Halloween shite in Mugdock like the plague), but then sometimes, stuff just happens. I take the most sensible way home when it does, but when you're out there, you're out there, and you have to get home somehow.

 

[Hormonal Filly]

you’ve described my mare and gelding.. mare totally unphased by anything and gelding would be terrified and then terrified if anything for the next several days. I backed both, both had the same experiences.

is it true mares tend to be braver? Most mares I know are very brave compared to the geldings I know, my young mare often leads both 12yo geldings past things on hacks.

 

[Boulty]

I did after a few years manage to dial down the Welsh idiot so that whilst yes he would still look for monsters and over-react to random things he would then come down again. He definitely didn’t have that ability when I first got him and would just get more & more stressed.

In all honesty it was a many factored thing. Going away for 3 months for his rehab & being out 24/7 with other calm horses that didn’t react to stuff and a lot of his rehab involving being led off another horse by a person who ignored his antics helped him a lot in terms of introducing the idea to him that he didn’t have to live on the edge quite so much and it was actually possible to not freak out multiple times a day at routine things. (Not suggesting this as an actual realistic option)

Anyhow I think the things that helped him going forward were trying to make his life as much to his liking as possible. Generally for him this meant as much turnout and as little stabling as possible. He was at his absolute happiest in a big herd on a large acreage coming in only for part of the day year round (he’d have liked to be out all the time but his health & weight suffered when he was) and was most unsettled in a small herd on a private yard coming in overnight. It took a few yard moves to find somewhere he liked rather than tolerated. Not suggesting this is an easy thing to achieve either! I did also do a lot of TREC & obstacle training stuff so that he did get exposed to a lot of weird stuff on a regular basis and his reaction to new weird stuff gradually became less ridiculous & he slowly became able to spook & move on (well most of the time anyway!). Mind you he did at least have the opinion that if he eventually went past something terrifying and nothing bad happened then the thing did then become ok (exception being cows as something went so badly wrong once that he never did overcome that particular demon)

Think he was about 11 or so when the penny started to drop.

He of course had a totally different history/ a lot less baggage than Finn and had never lived feral or been abused (although some of his reactions made people question this in the early days!)

 

[Lexi 123]

I think we shouldn’t put human emotion on horses . I think some horse are more spook or brave due to bloodline . I also think horse are reflection of their early training and your experience on the horse I think a nervous rider can make for a spooky horse as they can sense how your feeling horse aren’t stupid.

 

[LEC]

It’s about adrenaline management and like humans some are a lot better at it than others. One of the issues with sport horses is we are breeding less management in as it’s actually very useful in an athlete. The best horses I have sat on for jumping are actually very poor at it. A sharp horse is essentially one being flooded by adrenaline and then externally managing it.

Also we love the expression that the best horses are quirky but again essentially it’s how they manage adrenaline in some situations and their coping mechanism.

 

[SpeedyPony]

I think a lot also comes down to finding out (often trial and error!) what the horse needs to calm down- my old boy (welsh x QH) needs to be moving (we've had to have discussions about the speed ) but he will walk the adrenaline off, asking him to stand just winds him up more. The welsh sec d is at heart a much braver pony, but she needs the opposite- she needs to stand still and look/settle, trying to keep her moving results in her boiling over. If she's given a moment to assess she will then cheerfully march up to whatever it is and have a closer look. Once I realised she needed that moment and she realised I wasn't going to push at the wrong time I've had very few spooks- the odd startle (which I dont count as spooky- I jump when a pheasant rockets out of the hedge next to me, it's only natural) that almost immediately turns into curiosity or is dismissed as something she's seen before/isn't interesting.
I think the welsh get an unfair reputation for being spooky/wusses- if they're allowed to deal with things in the way that suits them they will acclimatise to whatever was spooking them, but also be less inclined to spook next time if they think they'll be listened to. It's very much a conversation though, if you ignore something they're suspicious of they'll take matters into their own hands, if you acknowledge it but stay relaxed they tend to worry less.
I think some of the excessive spooking people have is a result of horses not being listened to, so they feel they have to shout- after all, if you watch them in the field, they'll spook, the other horses will all look over and either move away themselves or recognise what it is and go back to what they were doing, showing the spooking horse that they've seen it but aren't worried. So many people are taught not to look at what their horse is spooking at though, which IMO is counter-intuitive as then the horse will often try harder to draw your attention to it. Obviously this does require that the horse trusts his handler enough to take their word for it- but that often just comes with time.
The other issue is that once they've reached a state of hyper-arousal, you won't get through to them and they won't learn- you need to find the best way of letting them come down to a point where they can be reasonable- which again will vary, so goes back to trial and error.
I don't know if the above makes much sense, trying to order my thoughts this late is proving difficult!

 

[scats]

Millie sounds like Finn. She’s a welsh part bred and I blame the welsh brain. She’s 13 now and I’ve just accepted that’s the way she is. She wasn’t faced with much on her own when she was younger (before I got her) and I think that’s the problem.

 

[DabDab]

I think a lot also comes down to finding out (often trial and error!) what the horse needs to calm down- my old boy (welsh x QH) needs to be moving (we've had to have discussions about the speed ) but he will walk the adrenaline off, asking him to stand just winds him up more. The welsh sec d is at heart a much braver pony, but she needs the opposite- she needs to stand still and look/settle, trying to keep her moving results in her boiling over. If she's given a moment to assess she will then cheerfully march up to whatever it is and have a closer look. Once I realised she needed that moment and she realised I wasn't going to push at the wrong time I've had very few spooks- the odd startle (which I dont count as spooky- I jump when a pheasant rockets out of the hedge next to me, it's only natural) that almost immediately turns into curiosity or is dismissed as something she's seen before/isn't interesting.
I think the welsh get an unfair reputation for being spooky/wusses- if they're allowed to deal with things in the way that suits them they will acclimatise to whatever was spooking them, but also be less inclined to spook next time if they think they'll be listened to. It's very much a conversation though, if you ignore something they're suspicious of they'll take matters into their own hands, if you acknowledge it but stay relaxed they tend to worry less.
I think some of the excessive spooking people have is a result of horses not being listened to, so they feel they have to shout- after all, if you watch them in the field, they'll spook, the other horses will all look over and either move away themselves or recognise what it is and go back to what they were doing, showing the spooking horse that they've seen it but aren't worried. So many people are taught not to look at what their horse is spooking at though, which IMO is counter-intuitive as then the horse will often try harder to draw your attention to it. Obviously this does require that the horse trusts his handler enough to take their word for it- but that often just comes with time.
The other issue is that once they've reached a state of hyper-arousal, you won't get through to them and they won't learn- you need to find the best way of letting them come down to a point where they can be reasonable- which again will vary, so goes back to trial and error.
I don't know if the above makes much sense, trying to order my thoughts this late is proving difficult!

Your description here made me think of the analogy that my brain came up with at some point about different types of spooky. Probably will relate almost zero to anyone else but thought I'd share anyway ...

I often think that different horses' reactions to things and the management of their reactions is a bit like different types of clutch in a car (stay with me, I said it was an odd one!). A lot of native ponies that I've encountered are like the clutch on a vintage car - there feels like there is a lot of travel on the pedal, but the actual operating window is really small and it's more like a switch. Don't try to ride the clutch by asking them to do shoulder in or come round or whatnot while they are processing something spooky because you will probably just stall it. Whereas a lot of the sports horse types have a really gradiated 90s 4x4 type clutch - when you encounter an issue you need to ride the bite point and be constantly progressive to keep things ticking along. And then there are the horses that are more like an automatic - as long as you keep the throttle pressure in the right range then they will manage it themselves just fine, but get it wrong and they will either Bog down or you will get a load of lary excess revs

 

[Caol Ila]

Millie sounds like Finn. She’s a welsh part bred and I blame the welsh brain. She’s 13 now and I’ve just accepted that’s the way she is. She wasn’t faced with much on her own when she was younger (before I got her) and I think that’s the problem.

Yes, he obviously got zero training (with humans) as a youngster. He learned how to survive in the wild but not all of those skills/adaptations are helpful for being a ridden horse.

Your description here made me think of the analogy that my brain came up with at some point about different types of spooky. Probably will relate almost zero to anyone else but thought I'd share anyway ...

I often think that different horses' reactions to things and the management of their reactions is a bit like different types of clutch in a car (stay with me, I said it was an odd one!). A lot of native ponies that I've encountered are like the clutch on a vintage car - there feels like there is a lot of travel on the pedal, but the actual operating window is really small and it's more like a switch. Don't try to ride the clutch by asking them to do shoulder in or come round or whatnot while they are processing something spooky because you will probably just stall it. Whereas a lot of the sports horse types have a really gradiated 90s 4x4 type clutch - when you encounter an issue you need to ride the bite point and be constantly progressive to keep things ticking along. And then there are the horses that are more like an automatic - as long as you keep the throttle pressure in the right range then they will manage it themselves just fine, but get it wrong and they will either Bog down or you will get a load of lary excess revs

Interesting point. When he gets wound up, I try to ride bend/shoulder-in to settle him down. It worked on my old sport horse type. It's less effective for him.

His switch between fine and not fine gets thrown very, very fast. With Gypsum and Hermosa, I can usually feel the tension rising before they do something dramatic, so there are points where you can intervene by moving their feet, asking for bend, getting out of a situation, whatever makes the most sense. Before it all escalates.

Fin can go from calmly dawdling down the trail, head down, to freeze/flight in the blink of an eye.

As a digression, I watched a video Warwick Schiller posted about 'interrupting the freeze/stare response." He says you wait for the horse to process the scary thing, then when they show any calming signals, ask them to walk on. If they are in complete freeze mode, you won't get through to them. I made a comment on the post, asking what you would do if the horse's next thought was, "nope," and it spun around. He responded that he would not feel the need to make the horse go past it and let them do a u-turn. He would not ride them close enough to the bogey to make them feel like they needed to spin (try that with Fin!). He's said elsewhere that a 'trail ride' can be 15 meters, and it's us humans who have plans and destinations but that doesn't matter to the horse. Fair enough. However, I then wrote, "But what if you don't have a choice (I did yesterday...it only added 10 minutes to my ride to not go past), like if you're in the latter stages of a long circular route, or the scary thing is a truck carrying fallen stock barreling down the road that's going to pass you no matter what (that's happened)?" No answer, so we will never know, lol.

When I watch videos of Warwick and others, they are usually working with QH or TB types who give plenty of "interruptible moments" when they're worried. Fin, not so much.

 

[SEL]

The one time I had a very nasty ejection from the Appy was when I stopped a spook, run moment - she launched into two unseating bucks. A fellow livery was on Jason Webb's programme at the time and asked what to do in that situation and he said putting the brakes on a flight animal caused the "get off me now" behaviour. I think I agree but I'm not sure that I could safely let the "run" play out. Rock & hard place

Her freeze response needed to be waited out. Trying to move her feet while her brain was processing just resulted in her rearing or her running backwards at whatever was behind.

She suffered massively from anxiety when she came to me and had no love for humans so I don't think she ever had that trust those that are started nicely get. Orphan foal then stuck on her own in a field as a 4yo plus no life experience was always going to be tougher in hindsight. Taught me a lot though!

 

[SpeedyPony]

Yes, he obviously got zero training (with humans) as a youngster. He learned how to survive in the wild but not all of those skills/adaptations are helpful for being a ridden horse.



Interesting point. When he gets wound up, I try to ride bend/shoulder-in to settle him down. It worked on my old sport horse type. It's less effective for him.

His switch between fine and not fine gets thrown very, very fast. With Gypsum and Hermosa, I can usually feel the tension rising before they do something dramatic, so there are points where you can intervene by moving their feet, asking for bend, getting out of a situation, whatever makes the most sense. Before it all escalates.

Fin can go from calmly dawdling down the trail, head down, to freeze/flight in the blink of an eye.

As a digression, I watched a video Warwick Schiller posted about 'interrupting the freeze/stare response." He says you wait for the horse to process the scary thing, then when they show any calming signals, ask them to walk on. If they are in complete freeze mode, you won't get through to them. I made a comment on the post, asking what you would do if the horse's next thought was, "nope," and it spun around. He responded that he would not feel the need to make the horse go past it and let them do a u-turn. He would not ride them close enough to the bogey to make them feel like they needed to spin (try that with Fin!). He's said elsewhere that a 'trail ride' can be 15 meters, and it's us humans who have plans and destinations but that doesn't matter to the horse. Fair enough. However, I then wrote, "But what if you don't have a choice (I did yesterday...it only added 10 minutes to my ride to not go past), like if you're in the latter stages of a long circular route, or the scary thing is a truck carrying fallen stock barreling down the road that's going to pass you no matter what (that's happened)?" No answer, so we will never know, lol.

When I watch videos of Warwick and others, they are usually working with QH or TB types who give plenty of "interruptible moments" when they're worried. Fin, not so much.

With the old boy, when I first started hacking him on his own I thought that I wasn't getting any warning- he would also spin round apparently at the moment he saw something. A lot of this was because he didn't really trust my judgement on whatever it was, so he wasn't waiting to hear my verdict before reacting!
I had to learn to read the signals- keeping a constant watch on what he was looking at and hopping off to lead past/cross the road to give him more space around it before he got tense. It's almost impossible to time that right at first, so if he'd already spun round I used to pull up when I could, hop off and lead back to almost where we were before, then circle at a safe distance until he'd had a chance to get comfortable, then ask for a bit closer, circle again, then a bit closer and so on until we could approach it. Once he'd approached, I'd praise him up and give a treat, then go on with our ride. I don't really agree with the avoid it/go back option- as you've found it's not always practical, although until they've learned to trust your judgement I also wouldn't seek out things you know will spook them.
After he learned that we'd gone past lots of spooky things before and they'd never contained tigers, he started checking in before reacting- still had to be very quick about it, I'd get an ear flick back for my opinion and if I didn't reassure within a second he'd spin round and bog off, but that second got longer and longer until now he is happy to wait for a response, if I'm not concentrating, he'll just stop and look at it.

 

[Caol Ila]

he said putting the brakes on a flight animal caused the "get off me now" behaviour. I think I agree but I'm not sure that I could safely let the "run" play out. Rock & hard place

I agree too, but it's not often practical or safe, like if you're on a road.

When OH turned Fin out yesterday, he said that after he removed the headcollar, the pony took off across the field like he was in the Grand National. After a normal, pleasant ride, he usually hangs around the gate with you for a few seconds, then ambles off towards the grass. He clearly needed to run to blast off the adrenaline, but that's not an option in the middle of a busy road.

I definitely don't seek out things I know will spook him. Yesterday's bogeyman was at a house we've hacked past thousands of times -- it's right before the yard -- and it was just unfortunate that the house owner was doing something weird in the garden, which we didn't realise until we came around a fairly blind corner.

I used to pull up when I could, hop off and lead back to almost where we were before, then circle at a safe distance until he'd had a chance to get comfortable, then ask for a bit closer, circle again, then a bit closer and so on until we could approach it. Once he'd approached, I'd praise him up and give a treat, then go on with our ride.

That's not a bad strategy to try when it's safe to do it.