Working with a Horse with a Difficult Past

In this post we are going to take a look at how we can best help a horse that has had a difficult or traumatic past. These horses often carry quite a bit of baggage with them and it can be challenging to get through to them and get them to work with us. They may be extremely reactive or even aggressive, spooking, bolting, or kicking. Or maybe instead they just simply shut down and are unable to connect with you.

To help these horses we must first understand them. To understand them better we are going to take a look at the Disney/Pixar movie Inside Out, which will give us some insight into our horse’s thought process.

In the movie, Inside Out, the viewers take a journey into the mind of a girl named Riley. Inside Riley’s mind we meet several different characters each representing a different emotion such as joy, sadness, anger, or fear. Each character is represented by a different color (Joy is yellow, Sadness is blue, Fear is purple, etc.) These characters direct Riley’s reactions and behaviors throughout the movie.

Every time something happens to Riley a memory orb is created and stored. These memories influence how the Emotions would direct Riley to behave. The orbs that were created by the events would be different colors depending on the Emotion that was present during the event. Events that caused joy created yellow memory orbs, sadness created blue orbs and so on. For awhile Riley primarily experiences joyful events and the majority of her memory orbs are yellow. She’s a happy, easy going person. However later on some bad events happen to her and blue (sadness), purple (fear), and red (anger) orbs are created. This change affects the way Riley reacts and behaves as those Emotions become more prominent in her life.

So what does this have to do with our horses? You can think of horses who have had a difficult past as horses who have primarily purple (fear) memory orbs. Having mostly purple orbs causes fear to be the primary influence on the way that your horse reacts and behaves. The specific reaction is going to be different for each horse. Some become nervous or spooky, some become aggressive, and some just shut down and become unresponsive.

In order to help our horses we need to change his memory orbs from being primarily purple to being primarily yellow (joy). Having more yellow orbs will cause him to be calmer, less reactive, happier, and allow him to trust and connect with us. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. We can’t just get rid of the purple orbs. Those memories are already there and we can’t change that. So what we need to do is make sure that we are creating as many yellow orbs as we can.

Every time we interact with our horse we want to create another yellow orb. While the purple orbs will still be there we can eventually create so many yellow orbs that they outnumber the green orbs.

This means that we need to create positive experiences for our horses each time we work with them. It is vitally important to move at the pace that the horse needs, not our own per-determined timeline. Trying to push a horse past his fears will only create more fears, more purple orbs. Through small, incremental steps we can slowly build our horse’s trust up through each new positive experience.

This process can take quite a bit of time, depending on how many purple orbs your horse has. You can only create one memory at a time. There’s no way to manufacture them more quickly. So it is up to you to make sure that each new memory is a positive one. You’ll start out with more purple orbs than yellow. But slowly the number of yellow orbs will increase and you’ll start to see a change in your horse. He won’t make a complete turn around instantly just like you can’t instantly go from all purple to all yellow orbs. But you will start to notice him starting to change. He’ll go from being reactive all the time, to being reactive most of the time, to being reactive half of the time, to being reactive only some of the time as you create more and more yellow orbs and the number of yellow orbs begins to increase and eventually outnumber the purple orbs.

It takes time. It can be frustratingly slow. And set backs will occur and sometimes more purple (and red, and blue) orbs will be created because after all nothing in life is perfect. But have patience and focus on creating those yellow orbs, those positive experiences. Each new orb gets you closer to the point where your horse is able to relax and let go of his fear. One day there will be so many yellow orbs that the purple ones become insignificant in comparison. Joy will then be the primary influence on your horse’s reactions and behaviors, and you will have a happy, trusting horse.

Your Thoughts

Have you worked with a horse with a difficult or traumatic past before? How were you able to help them work through their fears? What challenges did you face? What successes did you experience?

Learn More

Interested in learning more about classical horse training? We offer lessons and training at Dover Stables in Waterford, WI and travel throughout the Midwest to do clinics in dressage and liberty training. We also offer a variety of online programs to help you and your horse. Contact us to start your journey towards a better connection with your horse!