CAN horses suffer from ptsd?

Can Horses Suffer PTSD?

I got asked this question today by a member of my Facebook group. She described her horse as being very reactive and sensitive to the environment, especially noise, and always seems to be on high alert. She were not sure about whether it could have been connected to a poor saddle fit in the past. He was slowly improving but still wanted to understand the idea of PTSD in horses better.

Firstly, what is “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)”? 

Simply, it is a mental health disorder described in people that can occur after a perceived traumatic event or multiple traumatic events.  It can be an event that directly impacts the person or indirect (i.e. it might be an event a person is not directly involved in but they see or hear about it).  These events are typically those that involve actual or threatened serious injury, death or other form of violence to the person or others.  Whilst, it is normal to respond to the aftermath of trauma or danger with strong feelings of fear, sadness, anger or grief; over time these feelings usually fade and we recover.

This tendency to recover occurs when our brains make sense of what’s happened. However, in PTSD, these feelings can continue, manifest as anxiety and depression and start to interfere with our lives.

Therefore, can horse’s suffer from PTSD?

Can they suffer an event or events they perceive as traumatic, not be able process and make sense of them and as a result become anxious, hypervigilant and reactive to their environment and be like this to a point it interferes with their life?? 

Hypothetically, YES.  Horses can experience trauma and events they perceive as aversive that make them experience physical or mental pain and/or made them feel like their lives were threatened. Horses can form negative associations with events, situations, environments etc. they have learnt to connect to what they experienced as traumatic or aversive.

However, for this blog I want to focus on sensitivity, hypervigilance and reactivity to the environment. In this case, I think people are too quick to want to label this behaviour to PTSD. I say this because it suggests something happened in the “past” when most horse’s I work with are anxious, hypervigilant and reactive because they are chronically stressed and insecure and set up to experience life through an emotionally negative lens! Therefore, it is not really “post traumatic stress”, its “continuous traumatic stress”! It is a chronic inability to feel safe in changing environments and it is not necessarily connected to a specific event.

It desperately needs to be understood because these horses can be helped and I see focusing on PTSD is more of a red herring when understanding how horses emotionally process their environments is way more helpful…in fact, it is usually the root cause of the issue and shows the path to help the horse!

Here we go…

Horse’s vary in their individual abilities to emotionally process their environments.  This is due to THREE main things:

1.       Their genetic predisposition – Simply put, some horses can be more inherently sensitive to feeling emotionally uncomfortable than others and this may be an inherited from their genes.

2.       How they grew up – This is vital to understand. Horse’s learn emotion responses from other horses.  When they are young and growing up in a herd, the herd acts as a filter to things the horse experiences in its environment.  The horse then learns from the older members of the herd if it should worry about things, how to handle new things and when to run!  The herd offers protection and imparts learning of how to navigate life and environmental changes. This is vital to the horse’s emotional development.  When they don’t grow up in a herd, they grow up with just a few other horses or are separated and live alone from a young age this can hamper the emotional growth and development of the horse. No different than if you socially isolated a child and locked it in a bedroom for years and it didnt get to experience a family or changing environment. Therefore, without a natural herd environment a gorse’s emotional growth can be hampered and have gaps which makes them prone to experiencing stress.  I think this is a major issue that is poorly recognised and understood and part of the reason so many horses could be labelled with PTSD when really, they have gaps in their emotional development and ability to cope with changes and things going on in their environments!

3.       How they live, are handled and trained – Even if a horse has grown up in a herd and has a developed emotionally to navigate situations and environments, a horse can unravel if they live in an environment that does not cater for the horses physical and emotional needs.  This can include how horses are housed, fed and managed.  It also includes how they are handled and trained.  Handling and training that make the horse feel mentally or physically (or both) uncomfortable can cause the horse to experience negative emotions and stress which can be damaging. It doesnt mean that the horse has to experience physically cruel training methods - inconsistent work, poor timing and communication that is not meaningful or clear can lead to frustration and confusion, which can also be perceived as aversive experiences to the horse.

When horses are in a herd, the environment is processed through the herd and through themselves.  The herd acts as a filter for them and when they are young this filter teaches them emotional processing skills to help navigate life.  When a horse has no herd, they then have to deal with the processing all by themselves.  Therefore, this ability will be more impacted by their genetics, how emotionally developed they are and by how stressed they are. 

The art of training a horse, is to work with each horse’s natural disposition, grow their ability to learn, emotionally process and adapt to process and perform in different environments.  However, ultimately, we need the horse to connect to us so that we take the place of the herd and become that filter to help them process and navigate their environments!

So, what has gone wrong with the anxious, hypervigilant horse that is worried about everything and super sensitive and reactive to its environment?

It means the horse is struggling to emotionally process its environment and what is happening to it. 

It means it is feels insecure.  

It means it is chronically stressed and stress changes brains to be more wired for reactivity and not learning. 

It means it has not learnt to feel comfortable doing what you are asking it to do. 

It means it is not yet learnt to use you as a filter to help it feel secure in its surrounding! 

It means it needs its health, living conditions and management needs to be addressed.

It means that it needs to engage in training where it can learn to that it can understand and navigate what is asked for it. 

It means a comfort zone it can successfully navigate needs to be established and then actively stretched to different environments and situations and then learnt it can navigate these too! 

It means you can DO SOMETHING and help the horse!

Finally, a note about you…

The horse needs to learn that you are its constant in the environment and you are the filter to help it feel secure…..this means YOU need to be emotionally secure!

Horses are emotional mirrors, therefore if you are stressed, emotionally negative, anxious, frustrated, hypervigilant, worried…this will be the filter you are putting up to your horse and it will act accordingly.  This is why horses are so damn good in therapy for people with PTSD….because they show what someone has repressed…they show what needs work within yourself.

So, you found this blog to hopefully read about PTSD and horses…but I have hijacked your attention to learn about emotional processing. This is because most horses I see that have been labelled with PTSD where set up to experience PTSD and are in fact experiencing traumatic experiences continuously! I am doing this because you cannot take away a negative experience the horse had. You cannot take away that bad saddle fit, the bad experience with that trainer, the dog that scared it on the trail….but you CAN dig deep down to the cause and help your horse LEARN that it can navigate what is expected of it. It can learn to feel secure and confident in different environments. It can learn to look to you for security.

You can help them overcome their genetic predisposition, their lack of herd environment when growing up and reduce the sources of stress in their life.

All by addressing their health, management and training along side patience, empathy and knowledge.

It is also a heads up….to look within ourselves, at our own emotions and anxiety because helping ourselves, will also help the horse.

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Reference:

Black Dog Institute 2021) PTSD. https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au)

Kerry Thomas (2019) Behavioral And Mental Profiling, Equine PTSD. https://pastthewire.com/behavioral-and-mental-profiling-equine-ptsd