solving issues in people and horses

AN APPROACH TO SOLVE CONFIDENCE ISSUES IN PEOPLE & PROBLEM BEHAVIOUR IN HORSES

Today I received this lovey card from a client and it has inspired me to write this article. It is an article aimed at helping people understanding and appreciate what is happening inside them when they experience a loss of confidence with a horse and how I approach the situation.

I joke about being a bit of a nerd, but really I am just lucky when I comes to working with people and horses. I have always been fascinated by horses but I have also been intrigued by human learning and how people think. Horses have always been my hobby and human learning has been the focus of my academic career. A number of years ago now a twist of fate resulted in my life changing and I found myself having more time, more support and more horses to work with….then I discovered something else…..that my knowledge and insights into learning was able to enhance my horse training skills because behaviour, cognition, motivation and neuroscience….all the things I was interested in with people where easily transferred to understanding learning and behaviour in horses. So I went from someone with an irrepressible belief in the ability of any person to excel in anything with the right approach and support….to someone with an irrepressible belief in the ability of any person or HORSE to excel in anything with the right approach and support.

I coach a diverse range of people. Some people have come to me because of a specific training issue, sometimes it has been because they have a young horse, some are just interested in the way I train and sometimes it is because the person is at their wits ends with a horse and their confidence is in tatters. In this article I want to talk about this last scenario and how I work with these people and WHY I take the approach I do because it combines my understanding of both humans and horses.

This situation is also very unique and one I think it is incredibly meaningful to understand. The fascinating thing is that the root cause of what both the person and horse is suffering from boils down to be exactly the same thing – a perception of being out of control and being out of control is emotionally destructive and hampers one’s ability to think, learn and respond appropriately.

First, I would like to talk about what is happening to the person. Sometimes the person in the scenario has had an accident or been injured by the horse (or another horse) or they have experienced failure after failure of trying to solve the horse’s behavioural issues…and sometimes it is both of these things. The person has exhausted their own knowledge of what to do, their coach, their friends and even the internet but the problem remains. Repeated failure results in despair and a state where the only thing learnt by the person is that they are hopeless and helpless. But this is not all, this sense of helplessness along with either the experience of an accident, incident, injury or just feeling unsafe triggers a person’s subconscious fear centre in the brain to dominate during their interactions with the horse. The subconscious fear centre doesn’t use logic, it is evolutionary primitive part of the brain and is concerned with keeping you alive. Therefore, fuelled by fear memories and despairing conscious thoughts, this part of the brain dominates the neurological activity in the brain, slowing the conscious cognitive part of the brain and instead sets the person in a state ready to run or fight so their focus becomes skewed and their behaviour becomes reactive, jerky, jumpy and highly emotive. The complete opposite of a mental state required to work successfully with a horse.

Now the horse…it will be distractive, anxious, reactive, difficult, spooky or aggressive. It will have no consistency of responding to training, one minute it will seem to improve and next minute it will blow up. Just like the human this horse feels helpless. It has given up trying because it has perceived failure after failure to control what is happening to it. The repeated failure, discomfort or fear it has perceived has been destructive to its willingness to try and work out how to navigate its world with humans. Like the human, its fear cycle is triggered, it no longer can be proactive in its thinking and it instead is hypervigilant, unfocused, emotional and reactive.

Therefore, I am faced with two beautiful creatures – both feeling out of control, both not using the parts of their brains needed to learn and navigate life and both set to flip into flight, fight or freeze on a hair trigger.

How to do I respond?

First I separate them and I set each up to work with their respective super powers. The people I get to sit down and talk, I get them to observe, analyse and I get them to focus on certain aspects of the training session and answer my questions I ask. I am doing this deliberately. The subconscious fear centres of their brain is turning the human’s super power of thinking and rational thought down by dominating the activity in the brain…..so I get their thinking parts of their brain to fight back and to kick back into action by getting them to talk, observe, analyse and answer my questions. Then at the same time I am working the horse I am being a model for the person to model the own skill development and actions on. Just by watching me and thinking about what I am doing neuro-circuitry starts to get constructed in their brains which will help their training skills develop.

Now the horse……the horse I move, because the super power of the horse resides in its ability to move and coordinate its feet. I focus its thoughts and I get it to respond to simple requests to move. In doing so I set up two key things. Firstly, by getting the horse to physically move I am getting its body to use up the stress hormones that have been pumped into its system triggered by its brain’s fear centres. Secondly, I get it to breathe. Therefore, when I rest the horse it is breathing and has less stress hormones in its system. The reduction in stress hormones and the physical breathing allows its thinking centres to fight back and effectively allows me to tap into this part of its brain. By getting it to think, I set the horse up to identify its success in responding to my cues and navigating my pressure. As I repeat the simple cues in a consistent manner I become predictable, the repetition I set the horse up to identify it is successful in avoiding pressure and can therefore perceive a sense of control of what it is experiencing. When I have the horse responding well and confidently I then reunite horse and human and it is time to work on the person’s sense of control. I do this by focusing on a simple desired behavioural response from the horse and coaching the person one skill at a time. I then get the person to experience performing the request on multiple occasions and I coach them on their performance. Because they will start in a compromised thinking state I get them to focus on me as I talk them through it and I get them to focus on the elements of the simple request….for instance, the way they move, then the way they present their cues and pressure and as they repeat and repeat the request you will see them switch into a better thinking mode and they switch from my guidance to their own self-guided actions. This is a rich learning situation for them because they receive instant feedback from me and the horse which allows them to modify and adapt their approach…how they move, what they think, how they apply pressure plus more strategic responses to common deviations the horse may present.

The session will not finish with the problem completely solved but it will end with both the horse and human experiencing a moment of feeling in control – the human in control of the horse’s behaviour and the horse feeling in control of the human’s pressure. But it is not all about control….the bigger picture of my approach is about something even more powerful and profound….it is about planting a seed of hope inside people because it will be hope that will help keep people going, keep them striving, keep them working hard and gritting their teeth as training has its ups and downs….its progressions and regressions. Hope will show the way forward to not only solve the problem but to progress and build a relationship with endless potential.