01/19/2026
THE LOST ART OF FLAGGING…
COWBOYS, CONTROL, & BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE
The natural horsemanship I learned from 25 years ago often flooded horses with flags.
As I evolved away from that, I began experimenting with positive reinforcement and counter-conditioning, and operant counter-conditioning and constructional approaches like CAT.
What I learned after more than a decade of using these tools side by side is this…
When traditional pressure and release training, negative reinforcement, is applied with the right titration and timing and intention, the horse experiences it as a constructional approach.
In hindsight, this is exactly what the ‘Flagging Forefathers’ like the Dorrance brothers were doing, before ‘Pop Natural Horsemanship’ appropriated and bastardized their work.
Unfortunately, as their methods became popularized, the nuance was lost. Flood-to-Freeze became the norm.
And with the rise of behavioral science in horse training, much of their work has been dismissed outright, as if a cowboy couldn’t possibly apply learning theory through instinct and experience.
This is a very elitist mindset, but a different post for a different time.
WHO’S IN CONTROL?
It’s all about giving control back to the horse, and cowboys get a front row seat to one of the most obvious examples of this.
Never is it more viscerally apparent than when an insecure c**t realizes they are in control of a scary cow for the first time…
In a moment of instantaneous emotional alchemy, they morph into this empowered, cow-eating dragon- and they never look back.
The cowboys who respect their horses know the goal isn’t coercion and compliance.
The goal is helping a horse feel capable and confident so they can be an equal partner.
When the horse realizes THEY are in control of the stimulus, THEY are in control of the pressure and release, they reorganize their emotional response, instead of suppressing it.
This produces a very different result than flooding, which can result in learned helplessness, or traditional desensitization, which can create internalization and shut-down.
I prefer it over food-based counter-conditioning, because I’ve seen too many cases where food merely overshadows, leading to spontaneous recurrence.
If we always need food present to fly spray a horse, for instance, the emotional association hasn’t actually changed.
I still use positive reinforcement and counter-conditioning in certain scenarios, but I don’t see them developing the same problem-solving skills that help a horse thrive in the domestic world.
TRADITIONAL vs MODERN FLAGGING
The biggest difference I see between traditional flagging and modern takes on constructional approaches is where and why we release, and that difference can have a profound emotional and behavioral impact on the horse.
If we release when the horse stops moving or focuses on us, we might be shaping a completely different emotional outcome than if we allow movement, redirect it, and teach the horse it’s ok to ‘go about their day.’
WHERE I’M AT…
My protocol nowadays is deliberately low-stress.
I don’t run formal desensitization sessions. We move together. The horse is allowed to control the interaction with the novel stimulus until curiosity replaces concern and the association changes organically.
Sometimes this takes several sessions, which means I have to be willing to hold space for the horse to feel the way they feel, which means I’m going to see stress signals and tension.
It’s ok. Horses are allowed to have feelings.
With horses like this one, a formal desensitization session likely would have escalated into rearing, striking, or pulling away.
Because giving the horse control prevents that escalation, it can appear as though the horse ‘wasn’t afraid to begin with.’
But fear doesn’t need to be provoked to be resolved.
