You cannot train out emotions

I was having my daily scroll of the timeline when I paused on a suggested video of a US cowboy, the algorithm loves to give me these. He was grooming a nervous horse and I was pleasantly surprised to see him explaining that he backs off and gives the horse space when he gets snorty and worried. Then I made the mistake of reading the comments. “My trainer says you have to make their feet move to make them drop the thought and get their attention on you” and “You are teaching him that being snorty is a good thing by backing off, eventually he will take it to the next level and become dangerous”.

A horse that is “snorty” is stressed or perhaps even scared. Being scared is involuntary, it just happens, a horse doesn’t choose to be scared, he just feels it. The idea that you can train emotions out of horses by punishing them just shows a distinct lack of understanding of behaviour. I would consider harshly moving a horses feet or deliberately scaring them to be punishing.

There are so many common methods used in horse training that don’t do what they say on the tin. We will call it confidence-building, leadership, connection or making it the horse’s idea. But what is actually happening is the horse’s emotions are being ignored, and quite often punished, until they comply. When we train in this way, we’re not making the thing they’re fearful of more pleasant, we’re just making the other options even worse. The horse simply learns that his feelings don’t matter, the person will not listen and will actually make his life harder unless he complies. How do you think a horse is going to feel around that person?

We see this happen all the time, horse won’t load, make it horrible for him to do anything except face the ramp. Horse is afraid of clippers, refuse to turn clippers off until horse stands still. Horse is scared of fly spray, refuse to stop spraying until horse stands still. Horse won’t stand at the mounting block, make it unpleasant for him to do anything except stand at the mounting block.

To make it even worse many of these behaviours have a component of pain or discomfort, so we are punishing the horse for trying to express that they really aren’t okay. Just because the training “works” because we get compliance, it doesn’t mean the horse is okay now, it quite often means the horse has given up and shut down. They’ve learned that trying to communicate with you is futile and results in unpleasant things happening, so they stop, even if they’re really uncomfortable. The trainer then tells you how relaxed and confident they are now they have good leadership….

If we really want to help our horses feel better emotionally, we have to be patient and we have to have empathy. Maybe that means you don’t go to the show at the weekend because your horse isn’t comfortable with loading yet. Maybe that means you back off and investigate why your horse is so unhappy about being mounted instead of just trying to fix it as a stand-alone behaviour. We need to make choices that help them feel better around us, not worse.

Horses are so, so much more complex than many training philosophies make them out to be, they are all individuals with their own past, experiences, feelings and emotions. When we really start learning about our horses, while it may feel uncomfortable and inconvenient at first, the reward of a truly good relationship with your horse is worth it. 🐴