How do I desensitise my horse?
Do you want to know the secret to training?
A horse that can't control it’s emotions, can’t control it’s behaviours!
If your horse doesn’t know how to emotionally self regulate, you have to model that emotional self regulation for them.
If you become emotionally engaged and spiral with them, you WILL feed of each other.
Cue training is easy. It’s managing and training their emotional self regulation that is hard.
And this is where we make the mistake with desensitisation.
Throwing a tarp over your horse doesn’t teach your horse to not be afraid of the tarp. It teaches the horse that the tarp goes away when they don’t react.
Waving a flag doesn’t teach a horse that it’s not dangerous, only that it goes away when the horse looks at it (or you).
What we DO need to do is to develop our horses confidence in us, themselves, and their surroundings, so they can face any scary situation. This means both you and your horse need to learn how to emotionally regulate.
There are ways you can develop these skills. But they can’t be learnt when you horse is losing the plot. The most successful method when using these skills is to regularly and consistently creating positve scenarios where the horse can build confidence - in you AND themselves.
So what resources are available to you to support you through this?
The Trainability Coaching Program
takes you through developing mental relaxation, true willingness and consent with your horse, and teaches you some of the emotional regulation skills as well. This program also gives you access to Katie as your coach and personal cheer squad (and as some have mentioned, “horse marriage councillor)
Curiosity + Communication Bundle Offer
For the owner of the shut down or spooking horse in particular, ways to work to create confidence in you and themselves, and to understand their cues faster.
Building Connection Course
This free course and workshop recording gives you insight in the steps to build a deeper connection with your horse so you can start creating trust and confidence in each other.