Why we don't teach desensitisation
Teaching your horse to target is one step of teaching them how to investigate scary objects
This might sound a bit controversial but…
…at Equestrian Movement, we don’t use a lot of desensitisation.
There have been plenty of times in my riding and training career that I have questioned myself because I tend not to use it. I’ve often been told I haven’t done my job properly or a horse hasn’t been properly broken in if it hasn’t been “sacked out”.
And this idea that you haven’t done your job right if you haven’t desensitised your horse had me experimenting with it to see if there truly was something I was missing. If maybe I wasn’t doing the best possible job I was capable of for the horse. After some experimentation I still didn’t like the process and didn’t think it was necessary for a “good” horse.
There are 2 big reasons why we don’t “sack out” our horses to “break them in”.
Firstly, teaching your horse not to react to something there are scared of doesn’t make them less scared.
It just teaches them not to react.
It can work for some horses but they really have to have the right temperament. The kind of horse that is already fairly confident in itself, hasn’t had too much trauma in previous experiences, isn’t particularly spooky or easily startled.
Secondly, it can teach them to shut down.
This means that the fear the horse is feeling is too much to cope with. It doesn’t know what to do with it and switches into fight, flight or freeze mode.
The part of the brain responsible for processing, reasoning and learning is switched off. The part of the brain designed for survival is switched on. The 2 cannot work at the same time.
Maybe you’ve experienced this yourself when you’ve gotten a big fright? In the moment you are just reacting and when its over you’ve had to talk it through with a friend or counsellor to process the experience.
There are plenty of reasons a horse could be struggling with its emotional stress response.
Lets face it - most horses have a tough gig. It could have:
been weaned too young;
had to live in isolation;
not been able to integrate and live with a herd
not had enough time out;
lived in a box;
bad experiences with trainers, handlers, being broken in;
pain… the list goes on.
I’m not trying to make excuses for them, but I am saying that the number of ways a horse could learn how to process an environmental stimulus poorly is profound. Even if it is naturally a confident and secure horse let alone our more naturally spooky horses.
One of our core philosophies at Equestrian Movement is to first do no harm. Harm may not always be something you can see easily. Mental and emotional harm are just as important to address as physical. We want to build our horses up emotionally to be resilient, brave and confident within themselves.
Another one of our core philosophies is to set our horse up for success. I’ve always believed that we are supposed to be the “intelligent” species. We’re the ones who want to ride these horses and yet we expect them to be the ones to figure it out and even reprimand them for anticipating the right answer. So to set them up for success literally means to make the answer easy for them to find and understand.
So if we don’t use desensitisation, how do we deal with spooky horses?
We teach them to be curious.
We teach them how to breath through and process their emotions.
We teach them how to deal with stress, fear, anxiety, frustration and anger so that they aren’t taking it out on us.
We want them to build the confidence up in themselves first, and then their trust in us so that they can investigate for themselves something that has them spooked and learn from the experience that it wasn’t so bad.
This has lead to our core training principles in our course Training Trainability, where we teach our horses how to learn.
Leadership, communication and curiosity.
When we start implementing these training tools our spooky, sensitive, reactive horse starts to:
trust us to look after them and not put them in situations that are going to end badly for them, whether physically, mentally or emotionally.
be able to communicate they are having a problem, before the problem escalates out of control.
be curious and investigate potentially scary objects. The best part about teaching curiousity over desensitisation is that you can never desensitise a horse to every potential thing it may ever be scared of (for example the bubble machine in side show alley starting up and blowing across the show ring and bubbles popping on your horses nose). So instead you are teaching them to investigate things they are scared of rather than run away.
Desensitisation is one small piece of the training puzzle too often used incorrectly. While teaching a horse not to react to certain things and then to react to other things is an important part of their education, it is far more important that they know how to process their emotions.
Only then can the horse understand how to find the right answer and how to ask questions.
