TRAINING INSIGHT: SPECTRUM OF HORSE SENSITIVITY

TRAINING INSIGHT: SPECTRUM OF HORSE SENSITIVITY

Neuroticism is a personality trait and people or animals that score highly on personality test for neuroticism tend to respond to stress worse than those that score lower on the spectrum. People tend to label horses sensitive or dull, or breeds hot or cold and really what these labels can represent is the degree of this personality trait that makes up the individual. Horses who score highly on the neuroticism spectrum tend to be particularly sensitive to environmental stress and respond poorly to it. They may perceive every day, run-of-the-mill situations as menacing and major...whilst those that score low will hardly bat an eyelid!

This graphic represents the spectrum of neuroticism from sensitive to not sensitive. As you can see those that score high feel uncomfortable quickly, they have small comfort zones and only have a narrow threshold before they start displaying full on fear responses such as flight or fight. While the horses that are less sensitive take more to make them feel uncomfortable and are triggered into flight or fight.

Sensitive horses have their pros and cons. The benefits of the sensitive horse is that they learn FAST as they are highly motivated to feel comfortable, they therefore tend to be easy to get their attention and to engage in work if you hand them that sense of control that good training provides. The beauty of the sensitive horse is that good training EXPANDS the horses comfort zone.

However, the cons of the sensitive horse is also that they learn FAST, so they can learn negative behaviours just as quick as good behaviours. Because of this they are not ideal horses for novice riders or trainers. The main problem is that they feel uncomfortable fast so if training is not performed well or with no thought towards how the horse feels and they are forced or feel mentally or physically uncomfortable on multiple occasions they will develop negative associations with training and also risk developing learned helplessness where the horse can feel so out of control that it gives up and will struggle to learn and instead will remain distracted, anxious and difficult to deal with. To get these horses back takes some serious careful, patient and creative training.

The sensitive horse is a mighty competition horse and typically the greatest horses in most disciplines tend to be very sensitive horses because they are so trainable but also because they are able to compete in extreme competition environments because you can train high levels of focus. So in effect, good training creates a horse that represents more of the less sensitive horse's profile and this should be the aim of all training.