20/02/2026
Great post from Animal Behaviour and Trauma Recovery Service UK
I just want to add, if you are even reading material like what is on my page, or trying to make a connection or difference to the life of your horse, give yourself a break.
There is no perfect, no nirvana… but showing up for them, and the fact you are trying to keep learning about your relationship together means a lot for you and your horse.
Not everyone has a herd with tons of land to keep their horses in the ways they would like to… but keep on keeping the best way you can with what you have. Keep showing up with the tools and conditions you have… keep going ❤️
Myth Bust Flooding versus Systematic Desensitisation
My hope is that flooding and heavy escalating negative reinforcement wouldn’t persist and yes before someone jumps on me I know there is nuance but mostly is carried out very badly and with huge consequences for the horse and their human. I wish it would go the same way as dominance methods ,e-collars and prong collars but there is this ambivalence in the horse world
Then you have those who tweaked Parelli or other proponents of Natural Horsemanship to do their own thing but mostly it’s still the same aversive stuff and gross misinterpretations of equine social behaviour and ethology .
It annoys me not just for the horses but people who get taken in and all to frequently end up as collateral damage along with their much loved horse.
For the people at the back join up methods and others like it are based on agonistic interactions and NOT affiliative ones no matter what your NH trainer tells you .
Your horse is also Intelligent enough to know you are a) not a horse and b) that the flag you are waving is not a tail ! Horses form social bonds through :
🐴Proximity (roughly two horse lengths between them)
🐴Mutual movement
🐴Mutual touch including allogrooming or mutual grooming
🐴 Sometimes play
If a horse chases another it is typically very short lived and ends when the chasing horse has enough room. This is much more common in domesticated horses as space is limited , horses are often put in groups with unfamiliar horses or the group itself might be unstable as horses are often added or removed . They also cannot choose their friends.
Each horse has a personal space bubble with friends allowed closest and others kept further away .
Food is often restricted , not widely spread out enough or novel foods (usually concentrates ) might be added which causes excitement and raises arousal increasing any conflict and leading to bigger expressions of behaviour . This is more about who space is shared with than the food per se. This can be further complicated if they did not have the opportunity to develop social skills as a foal.
Back to systematic desensitisation it is defined as graded exposure to a feared stimulus . It is often paired with counter-conditioning.
Counter -conditioning is the process of changing an unpleasant emotion (or unwanted response ) to one that is more neutral or positive . The focus here is on the emotional response . This is not about the horse necessarily loving the situation but simply having a more neutral response to it. Loving particular activities especially inherently aversive ones like veterinary care is unrealistic.
The focus should also be on directly supporting them to manage for example having friends nearby for support , distraction with hay for example or for veterinary procedures using numbing cream.
Flooding is exposing a horse to a feared object or situation at its highest intensity while preventing escape .
For example waving a tarp or flag at a horse and not allowing them to move away. Eventually the horse stops responding and they may seem “calm” when instead they are in a state of shutdown. In extreme cases learned helplessness may result. This is often confused with the horse being “desensitised. “ A third outcome is that the horse becomes “sensitised”This is where the response is amplified having the opposite effect to the desired desensitisation.
I do also acknowledge many horses do not get their needs met for company, forage and free movement as it is hard to find yards that accommodate this which is equally as problematic .
It is possible to support horses in a way that allows them to explore and make sense of their world at their own pace with our support and that if equine company.
In addition to a carefully structured systematic desensitisation and/or counter-conditioning and titration and pendulation support plan sometimes called a shaping plan or exposure hierarchy.
Titration and Pendulation
This way of working is more suitable if your horse is phobic or traumatised.
The goal with all horses to AVOID causing explosive BIG reactions as this worsens fear responses, erodes trust and can hinder progress. The aim is to settle the nervous system to optimise it's functioning (Levine, 1999,2010,Van der Kolk, 2014, Payne et al,2015) and allow for stress to be discharged safely.
Essentially pendulation and titration are about returning an individual to a more balanced state that allows them to calmly re-engage with the world (Levine, 2010). The process involves moving from a tiny droplet of stress or activation back to a sense of safety.
Dr Peter Levine describes pendulation as a primal restorative rhythm of contraction and expansion, that indicates to the individual experiencing the stress that does not last forever (Levine, 2010 p79) .
For example breaking stimuli down into it's sensory components drop by drop ie sound, sight, sight observing from a distance, tactile walking over different surfaces.
Working in tiny droplets makes flooding almost impossible. For example allowing your horse to observe a bike moving in the distance then move or graze or mutually groom with a friend to return to a sense of safety. This also allows for completion of the stress cycle (Schwartz, 202
I haven’t referenced throughout but references and resources are below . For an excellent overview of equine ethology I highly recommend Horses in Company by Lucy Rees for an excellent overview .
If you would like support to help your horse in these situations please reach out via WhatsApp
🐴🐶Supporting Horses and Dogs who are fearful, overwhelmed, traumatised or who struggle to cope in the human world. Helping you to help them. Full APBC member & ABTC registered Clinical Animal Behaviourist l and Family Dog Mediator 📍South East WhatsApp 07763317464
References
Bartlett, E., Cameron, L. J., & Freeman, M. S. (2022). A preliminary comparison between proximity and interaction-based methods to construct equine (Equus caballus) social networks. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 50, 36-45.
Costa, H., Fragoso, S., & Heitor, F. (2019). The relevance of affiliative relationships in horses: review and future directions. Pet Behaviour Science, (8), 11-26.
Cozzi, A., Sighieri, C., Gazzano, A., Nicol, C. J., & Baragli, P. (2010). Post-conflict friendly reunion in a permanent group of horses (Equus caballus). Behavioural processes, 85(2), 185-190.
Farmer, K., Krüger, K., Byrne, R. W., & Marr, I. (2018). Sensory laterality in affiliative interactions in domestic horses and ponies (Equus caballus). Animal cognition, 21(5), 631-637.
Kieson, E., Lundgren, K., & Abramson, C. I. Preliminary Findings of Observations of Affiliative and Stress Behaviors in Large Horse Herds with Variations in Resources. In 15th Annual Conference for the International Society for Equitation Science, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Krueger, K., Flauger, B., Farmer, K., & Hemelrijk, C. (2014). Movement initiation in groups of feral horses. Behavioural Processes, 103, 91-101.
Mendonça, R. S., Pinto, P., Inoue, S., Ringhofer, M., Godinho, R., & Hirata, S. (2021). Social determinants of affiliation and cohesion in a population of feral horses. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 245, 105496.
Pierard, M., McGreevy, P., & Geers, R. (2019). Effect of density and relative aggressiveness on agonistic and affiliative interactions in a newly formed group of horses. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 29, 61-69.
Rees, L. (2017). Horses in company. The Crowood Press.
Wolter, R., Stefanski, V., & Krueger, K. (2018). Parameters for the analysis of social bonds in horses. Animals, 8(11), 191.
VanDierendonck, M. C., & Spruijt, B. M. (2012). Coping in groups of domestic horses–Review from a social and neurobiological perspective. Applied animal behaviour science, 138(3-4), 194-202.
