THOUGHTS ON DESENSITIZING

Most horsemanship programs have a clear step set aside to desensitizing horses.

Desensitizing is, defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative, aversive or positive stimulus after repeated exposure to it.

A result of "Desensitizing" in the typical "flooding" fashion may not be as productive as you think it is. I like a sensitive and responsive horse that is brave because they are my partner.

Desensitization by "Flooding: is likely causing your training time to be less productive. I often see students who are misreading their "still horse" with being calm and collected.

If your horse is frozen in place or still overreacts to specific stimuli you may need to reconsider how you desensitize or when you desensitize.

Your horse may be suffering from a condition where a horse becomes shut down and disassociates from the negative stimuli because they feel like they have no other choice to save themselves.

To put this into perspective, you can read the study regarding "Learned Helplessness", or even find abbreviated descriptions that relate to a human's phycological trauma. This could help put the thought of over desensitizing into a better perspective if you still feel the "friendly game," is the first place you should start with your horse.

(The Seven Games are so People learn principles and purpose).

In an effort to create a quiet, seemingly calm horse, flooding is often common practice. This practice is particularly common, though misunderstood in the "not so Natural Horsemanship" world.

To place a priority on desensitizing as the first step, for any horse, no matter what may be causing you to do more work than you need too.

Trying to desensitize and overdo desensitization will create "Learned Helplessness."

Heavy and purposeful desensitization will cause a horse to appear "bomb proof." When I hear someone speak about a horse who is labeled as "Stubborn" or "Unresponsive." I strongly suspect that the horse has been through a situation that has created "Learned Helplessness."

Learned Helplessness is a situation meaning the horse feels no hope of escaping a frightening object, movement or place. This is the horse that is most often described to me as "shut down."

The horse has simply become unresponsive to frightening objects. Often, the horse is far from being "okay" with our creatively chosen stimulus. The horse often looks better behaved to their owners because they are not taking flight or choosing to fight. This makes me very concerned about the safety of the average, well-meaning horsemen.

People are elated when their horse's feet are not moving away from frightening objects and places.

Flooding and over-desensitizing are simply an outdated form of horse training.

Now that we know better than to flood horses as a cure for phobia, Heartfelt Horsemanship is trying to re-direct and create a better habit for horsemen to use in helping horses face everyday fears.

As we know, horses can and will become easily frightened by things, communication and places they do not know or understand. Prey animals are built to survive and have a natural distrust, but an interest of things and places they are not familiar with. They have to quickly decide if a situation is safe or not. Flooding to desensitize prolongs that process, giving the horse time to assume the situation as unsafe.

We all love a horse who is brave and stays calm through tense and potentially dangerous situations. Honestly, we all NEED this type of horse. However, we also need a horse that is light, sensitive and manageable, because this is the horse that is safe and fun to ride.

Many misunderstood methods would have you believe that in order to have this dream of a

partner, you will need to spend countless sessions, planning to frighten the daylights out of your horse through a progression of frightening objects. When the horse plants their feet and holds their breath, people are often satisfied with the desensitization process and think their job is done.

Truthfully, one can easily spend days and millions of dollars thinking of new ways to desensitize their horses. How many people do you know, who are just discovering Natural Horsemanship, who has a toy box full of noisy and largely frightening objects that accompany horse time?

This desensitizing concept can be a valuable way to teach humans how to communicate with the principle and the concept of “pressure motivates and release teaches.”

Unfortunately, horses need to experience more than flapping flags and perfectly timed gun blasts in order to become safe. If you are looking for a bombproof horse, think again. I need a horse who can quickly and SAFELY get me out of harm's way!

In fact, because of the craze, and perhaps misunderstood practice of ‘desensitizing,” some horses are becoming dull, lifeless and miserably uncommunicable animals because of it.

Dare I even take that a step further, and say the horses are made dangerous because of it?

Horses are being made dangerous and unresponsive by people not knowing how to balance desensitizing with SENSITIZING!

Let’s put this in terms a human may understand better. You are driving home from work on the highway, (let’s say the N3 entering Johannesburg traffic for example) in peak rush hour. Suddenly, your car (this would be your horse) has no gas and no brakes.

You are crawling along the highway, muddling your way through the hectic truck traffic, and there is a sudden firey wreck in front of you. Would you like to be driving a car with a solid gas pedal and sturdy braking system? Or would rather be driving the invisible Hugo who cannot stop, but only does 60k an hour? I don’t need to ask what you would choose.

While a part of our program does incorporate a very clear plan to actively desensitize horses, there is a reason why active desensitizing is not the first thing we begin with. There is a good time and place to help your horse accept new things.

Desensitizing cannot be our primary focus in training horses learn continuously. But, when horses learn something out of fear, or during fear, we really have no way of knowing what they learned. Did the horse make friends with a packet on the end of a stick or did my horse shut down, to a catatonic state and is waiting for one more frightening thing to tip over before he blows big?

Beginning with large amounts of desensitizing is not a great plan. If you have done a clinic with me personally over the last few years, you likely did an exercise I call “Leading with Leadership.” (If you are interested to come find me at one of my clinic stops or have a look at “Natural Horse Management Module 1.”)

What my purpose is for Leading with Leadership is to passively desensitize student horses to two things. 1. To a new arena environment i.e. new horses, people energy etc. and 2. To desensitize horses from being led on the offside. By using the concept of rhythm as pressure and rest as a release, I no longer have horses panic and leave my arena in clinics. This allows horses to feel safe (desensitized enough) and students to try something new with a bit of confidence.

I rarely have a ton of time with new horses. Often, I have about 10-15 minutes to get a horse relaxed and thinking with me in any given training session if I am to stay on schedule and see my bed before midnight.

If I begin each training session attempting to frighten the daylights out of a client’s horse, I don’t get enough time to teach them the language and skills necessary for advancement.

A better practice to help a horse become desensitized is to build some language and understanding through teaching them how to move around us within our world. When this takes place first, little time and effort is needed to help them become unafraid of things. They become brave by association.

Horses take care of their own fears out in the wild. It’s only when we bring them into our world of scary objects and tight places that they have issues. Most of these issues stem from not knowing how to move around us. If we teach them to move safely around us, they will adapt to become safe animals we can call partners.

Written by: Jamie Lynn Lead Instructor at Heartfelt Horsemanship Clinician Author 0723622620

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