Lisa Luongo Equine

14/12/2025

Great article and techniques to help a horse whose nervous system goes into fight mode.

There is a state in the horse’s nervous system that can be so fast, so charged, so expressive on the outside that it easily passes as defiance. A state where the horse pushes, strikes, braces, rears, bites, kicks, or moves with explosive intensity.

Fight.

Fight is one of the most frequently misinterpreted states in the horse world, not because people lack compassion or experience, but because it so closely resembles the behaviours many of us were taught to fear: resistance, dominance, aggression, unpredictability.
And because this state is dramatic and immediate, even dedicated riders, trainers, and equine professionals can miss what is happening inside.

Awareness is growing across disciplines, welfare science, and trauma-informed horsemanship, but fight still hides in plain sight.

This is not a criticism of any method. It is a reflection of how we were all conditioned to read horses.

Fight feels personal. Fight looks like a battle. Fight looks like a horse trying to win.

But behaviour is the final chapter, not the first.

So what is fight really?

Fight is associated with what current nervous-system models describe as sympathetic mobilisation. A biological activation that prepares the body to create space, protect itself, or push away something perceived as threatening. It can emerge when:

• flight is blocked
• the horse is overwhelmed or confused
• pressure is too much or too unclear
• pain is present
• the horse feels trapped or cornered
• past experiences prime the system for fast defensive responses

It is important to note that fight is not simply chosen. It is not disrespect. It is not moral failure. But horses do retain agency, and their responses are shaped by both past learning and present context. It is never just one thing.

Of course, not all big behaviour is fight. Horses can show:

• playfulness
• high excitement
• healthy boundary-setting
• frustration when requests exceed their capacity
• confusion from unclear cues
• conditioned responses learned through reinforcement
• pain reactions that resemble aggression

The challenge is that all of these can look similar from the outside, which is why understanding the difference matters.

Fight exists on a spectrum and often blends with other states.
Nervous-system states are not separate boxes. They overlap. They interact. They blend.

A horse can show fight on the outside while freezing inside.
A horse can escalate into fight as shutdown begins to crack open.
A horse can be regulated in the herd yet defensive with people.
A horse can show fight because pain or tack discomfort is present.
A horse can show fight because their learning history taught them this is the only strategy that works.

Some horses escalate quickly. Some escalate slowly but intensely. Some escalate only when the human’s body changes. None of these patterns mean the horse is bad. They mean the horse is communicating.

This complexity is why behaviour alone never tells the full story, but behaviour plus nervous-system context does.

Why is fight so often misread?

Because fight presents as the presence of the behaviours humans find most difficult:

• striking
• biting
• kicking
• bolting through pressure
• rearing
• crowding
• bracing
• refusing to yield

And because so many of us were taught to interpret these behaviours through dominance, hierarchy, or moral interpretation.

Fight often looks like:

“I am challenging you.”
“I am trying to win.”
“I am being naughty.”

But expression is information. Sometimes expression is protection.

What Fight Gets Mistaken For:

Aggression
Many horses are defending themselves, not attacking.

Dominance
Horses have social hierarchies, but most fight responses toward humans are not status seeking.

Disrespect
Horses do not understand human moral frameworks. They understand pressure, clarity, confusion, safety, discomfort, and relief.

Training failure
Sometimes the horse simply does not understand. Confusion can look explosive.

Pain
Pain is one of the primary drivers of defensive behaviour. Many fight responses soften or disappear once pain is addressed.

These are the signs most people overlook.

Fight rarely begins with the large behaviour. It begins with micro shifts:

• tightening of the muzzle
• fixation of the eyes
• rapid blinking or no blinking at all
• breath-holding
• ears rotating inward
• brace through the poll and neck
• tail thickening
• skin twitching
• subtle pushing or crowding
• sudden stillness before movement

No single sign confirms fight. But patterns, context, and feel tell the story.

Where can fight lead to?

Fight itself is not the enemy. It is a survival strategy. But chronic or repeated fight can contribute to:

• chronic tension
• pain cycles
• fascia restriction
• erosion of trust
• difficulty learning
• increased injury risk
• collapse into shutdown as the system exhausts itself

Some horses cycle between fight and shutdown. Some escalate. Some internalise pressure for years until fight is their last remaining strategy. All patterns matter.

But there is a major piece most people overlook. Humans can trigger or amplify fight without meaning to.

Horses read humans with astonishing sensitivity. Research on equine stress physiology and human–horse emotional contagion shows that horses respond to:

• human heart rate
• human muscle tension
• human respiration
• human bracing patterns
• human facial expression and micro-movements
• human frustration
• human energy intensity and focus

This is not woo. It is biology.

A horse’s survival depends on the ability to read the internal states of herd members. Humans become part of that herd system whether they realise it or not.

When a human approaches a horse in:

• sympathetic activation
• frustration
• fear
• anger
• urgency
• tightness
• bracing
• over-focus
• emotional pressure

the horse does not evaluate the human’s intention. They respond to the nervous system message. A dysregulated human body can activate a horse’s fight response before a single cue is given.

Some horses respond to human intensity with flight.
Some respond with freeze.
Some respond with shutdown.
Some respond with fight.

A horse’s fight is often the mirror of the human’s internal state.

This is why handler regulation is not a luxury. For many horses, it is the thing that changes everything. Soften your eyes. Soften your breath. Soften your spine. If you cannot soften inside, the horse cannot soften outside.

Two nervous systems are always in the arena. One influences the other. One tips the system into safety or threat.

Foundational HOW TO support a horse in fight, without escalating the response

Prioritise safety first
Create space. Step aside. Stay out of the kick, bite, or strike zone. Do not trap the horse between pressure and a wall. Stopping the interaction is sometimes the safest and wisest option.

Reduce pressure immediately
This prevents escalation. It does not “reward bad behaviour.” It stabilises the nervous system long enough to interrupt a spiral.

Check pain early
Even when behaviour looks emotional or training-related, physical discomfort is often a major contributor. Back, saddle fit, hooves, feet, ulcers, teeth, TMJ, SI, diet, hoof balance, herd stress. Rule out or address pain with your vet and bodywork team as early as possible.

Regulate your own nervous system
Horses feel your physiology before anything else. Breathe out fully. Unclench your jaw. Release your shoulders. Soften your hand on the lead rope. If your own fear, anger, or frustration is rising, pause rather than push through.

Slow everything down
Movement, corrections, transitions, requests. For a dysregulated horse, faster often equals threat. Slower equals clarity.

Simplify the task
Confusion is one of the biggest triggers for defensive behaviour. Ask for one clear thing at a time. Make the right answer easy.

Work at threshold, not past it
Find the point where the horse becomes unsure, not the point where they explode. This is where learning occurs.

Build capacity gradually
Resilience grows in small, safe exposures where activation rises slightly and then returns to safety. Overshooting this repeatedly creates more defensive behaviour.

Know when to stop in the moment
Pause or end the session if:

• explosive behaviour repeats even after pressure is reduced
• your own system feels shaky, flooded, or afraid
• behaviour escalates across repetitions
• you suspect pain and the behaviour is sharpening

Stopping is not failure. Stopping is information.

Know when to seek skilled help
Some horses and situations require professional behavioural support, veterinary intervention, or both. Bringing in help is an act of care, not an admission of defeat.

Timelines matter

Change does not happen overnight.
Some horses soften within a few sessions once pain, clarity, and human regulation are addressed. Others need weeks or months of consistent, safe experiences before their nervous system truly believes that fight is no longer necessary.
Each horse has their own timeline.

Examples from the broader equine community
There are countless documented cases where:

• “dangerous” rearing disappeared once gastric ulcers were treated
• defensive biting softened when saddle fit was corrected
• explosive behaviour reduced when handlers approached without braced shoulders and held breath
• fight diminished after diet changes resolved chronic pain or agitation

Each story is different, but a pattern appears again and again:
When the root is addressed, the behaviour changes.

Fight is not the end of the story.
It is the beginning of a new one.

A story where expression is not punished.
A story where boundaries are not feared.
A story where humans learn to meet horses with steadiness rather than tension.
A story where horses feel safe enough to stop defending themselves.

If you want to explore the research behind these ideas, search for:

• equine emotional contagion
• horse–human heart rate synchronisation
• equine stress physiology
• pain-related behaviour in horses
• equine autonomic nervous system responses
• equine learning theory and stress

These fields offer a strong scientific foundation for what many horsepeople observe intuitively every day.

And if you ever want deeper support, or step-by-step guidance tailored to your horse, Nicola and I offer online sessions where we explore the nervous-system story, the behavioural patterns, and the human–horse dynamic with you.

Just reach out when you are ready.

08/12/2025

Try it! You’ll like it! And your horse will love it, I promise.

13/11/2025

Great article on what Natural Horsemanship does (teaches pressure and release) and what it doesn’t do (take into account horse welfare, agency, care and environment.)

Maybe it’s time for a new conversation!

The horse industry is overdue for change.
Not a new trend, but a shift in culture that reshapes how we think, talk, and connect with horses.

The last time we saw a movement that did that was in the 1980s and 1990s, when Natural Horsemanship began to rise. It did not solve everything, but it did something remarkable. It made people pause, pay attention, and see their horses differently.

Natural Horsemanship helped trigger one of the most significant cultural shifts in horsemanship, reminding us that change is possible.

It encouraged people to use timing instead of force, to listen to feedback, and to see partnership instead of dominance.

That shift was revolutionary.

At its core, Natural Horsemanship is a system built around pressure and release, where the horse learns by responding in ways that make pressure stop. In learning theory, that is called negative reinforcement, not because it is “bad”, but because something is removed when the horse offers the correct response.

There is not just one way to apply this, and that is what makes it so complex. It can be used with precision and feel, creating clearer communication and lower stress, or with too much pressure and poor timing, leading to tension and confusion. Those differences lead to vastly different welfare outcomes.

That is also what made Natural Horsemanship so influential. It was not just a set of techniques. It was a mindset shift toward communication, timing, and awareness. For many, the idea of release became the first clear, tangible way to understand how horses learn. It was influential in changing how people thought about training and communication, though welfare outcomes often depended on how it was applied.

Beyond the mechanics, and why I think it resonated so deeply, is because it changed mindset. It replaced the language of dominance with one of feel, timing, and partnership. It gave everyday riders a sense of agency and hope, the belief that they could understand their horses, not just manage them.

It arrived at the right time too.

Conversations about animal sentience and welfare were growing worldwide, and people were ready for a kinder, more connected approach to training.

We are standing in another moment like that now.

Welfare is finally at the centre of more horse conversations, and more people than ever are asking about emotional wellbeing, agency, pain faces, social needs, and evidence-based care.

At this point, it is going to be hard for everyone to agree on methods of training, and that is not what this conversation is about.

But I think, given what started the Natural Horsemanship movement and what welfare science is showing us today, we can all agree that welfare NEEDS to be the focus right now.

If Natural Horsemanship showed that culture could change once, this moment shows us that it can change again.

Through open discussion, shared learning, and a genuine commitment to welfare, we can write the next chapter together.

Natural Horsemanship changed how many people thought about control, communication, and connection. It showed that our culture can evolve, that awareness and empathy can reshape how we work with horses.

We have done it before.
We can do it again.

There is a growing movement calling for welfare to be at the centre of the sport.

Cultural shifts are never easy, but this time, for better and for worse, we’re more digitally connected than ever. Conversations that used to happen in small barns or clinics are now happening online for the whole world to see. If we use that reach with empathy and intention, with welfare science at its heart, it might just be what makes lasting change possible.

21/10/2025

Training a calm confident horse requires understanding your horse’s threshold so they can stay in a learning state and not an overwhelm state. Both states can appear calm on the outside, but they are worlds apart on the inside.
Stay tuned for more information on how to correctly read your horse’s energy so you can have a horse who trusts you.

Let’s Talk About Desensitizing

For us horse people, desensitizing is often talked about as a form of training, but in behavioural science, it’s actually a learning process.
Desensitization describes what happens when a horse’s emotional or physiological response to something decreases after repeated exposure.

That exposure can take many forms.
When it’s carefully managed under threshold, it helps the horse learn that something is safe.
When exposure happens through force or without control, behaviour may still stop, but for a very different reason. That’s flooding.

Both are desensitization procedures, but the emotional outcomes are worlds apart.

Let’s get into breaking these down.

⸻

🟢 Systematic Desensitization:

Gradual, controlled exposure to a fear-inducing stimulus while keeping the horse under threshold.
Starting from a safe distance or low intensity, you increase duration or proximity only as the horse stays relaxed.
The goal is emotional change, not suppression, resulting in a horse that remains calm and confident even at full exposure.

⸻

🟢 Counterconditioning:

Pairing the feared stimulus with something pleasant, like food, scratches, or comfort, to shift emotional response from fear to neutrality or even positivity.
Over many repetitions, the horse learns that when the scary thing appears, so does something good.

Often used alongside systematic desensitization for faster, welfare-friendly progress.

⸻

🟢 Operant Counterconditioning:

Asking for a familiar, previously reinforced behaviour (often taught with positive reinforcement) while exposed to the fear-inducing stimulus.

The horse earns reinforcement for performing that behaviour instead of reacting with fear.
This helps maintain focus, control, and agency during exposure.

⸻

🟢 Approach Conditioning:

Using a horse’s natural curiosity and choice to build confidence.
The horse is invited to approach and investigate the fear-inducing stimulus on their own terms.
By controlling distance and engagement, they learn that the stimulus is predictable and safe.

⸻

🔴 Flooding:

Flooding is a form of desensitization, but it is the most intense and least controlled version.
Instead of gradual exposure under threshold, flooding exposes the horse to a fear-inducing stimulus at full intensity with no option to retreat or escape.

It can result in the horse appearing calm, but this often comes from learned helplessness, when the horse stops responding because escape feels impossible.

Behaviourally, flooding can “work.”

Repeated exposure without escape can suppress or extinguish a reaction, which is why some horses seem “desensitized.” But this happens because they’ve stopped trying, not because they feel safe.

⸻

⚖️ The Critical Distinction

Both systematic desensitization and flooding fall under the same learning category: exposure-based reduction of a fear response.
But the mechanism and emotional outcome are completely different.

In systematic desensitization, fear decreases because the animal learns the stimulus is safe and predictable.
In flooding, behaviour stops because the animal learns their actions don’t matter.

Those outcomes may look similar on the outside, a quiet horse, but they are neurologically and emotionally opposite.

Systematic desensitization and counterconditioning create new, positive associations through prefrontal-cortex learning.
Flooding produces suppression through overarousal and loss of control, a limbic-system shutdown.

Flooding may produce compliance, but it does not create confidence.

All flooding is desensitization,
but not all desensitization is flooding.

⸻

🧩 In Summary

Desensitization itself isn’t inherently good or bad. It’s a learning process.

The welfare outcome depends entirely on how it’s applied.

When done under threshold, desensitization builds confidence and trust.

When done through forced exposure, it may silence fear, but it doesn’t resolve it.

Systematic desensitization and counterconditioning remain the gold standard, evidence-based approaches for reducing fear while protecting welfare.

21/07/2025

I am speaking this Wednesday at the Well Equestrians mixer from 6pm to 9pm at Unionville Vineyards in Ringoes NJ. Please come out and meet some fellow heart-centered horse people and learn more about animal communications.
I hope to see you there!

Looking to connect with fellow horse lovers and expand your equestrian network?

Join us for this month’s Equestrian Networking Night, a recurring gathering for riders, trainers, barn owners, and equine professionals from Bucks and Mercer Counties.

This month’s event will be held at the scenic Unionville Vineyards and features guest speaker Lisa Luongo, an experienced equine body worker and animal communicator.

Tickets are $7 and go toward supporting the event. Any extra proceeds will be donated to a local nonprofit.

https://www.wellequestrians.com/event-details/july-well-equestrians-meet-up

Hosted by Well Equestrians, a mother-daughter team committed to helping you ride well and feel part of a strong, supportive community.

Let us know you’re coming—we’d love to see you there.

16/06/2025

Interesting

When horses are denied regular contact with other horses, they can experience increased stress, which may manifest as restlessness, stereotypic behaviours (such as weaving or cribbing), and even health issues like digestive or musculoskeletal problems.

Social isolation has also been linked to heightened anxiety, learning difficulties, and a greater risk of injury, as horses deprived of companionship are more likely to become despondent or withdrawn.

Humans can offer comfort and support to horses during periods of social isolation, but cannot fully substitute for the social bonds horses form with other horses.

A recent (2025) study by Janczarek and colleagues examined this issue by measuring heart rate, heart rate variability, and behavioural responses in 12 horses during brief isolation periods.

The researchers found that even with attentive human support, horses still show physiological and behavioural signs of stress when isolated from other horses. Mares, in particular, remained stressed regardless of the type of human interaction.

Janczarek, I., Gazda, I., Barłowska, J., Kurnik, J., & Łuszczyński, J. (2025). Social Isolation of Horses vs. Support Provided by a Human. Animals

25/04/2025

18/12/2024

Goals!

12/12/2024

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” — Neale Donald Walsch

Thank you Mia and When Horses Choose for getting me out of my comfort zone!
I’ll be posting much more on this later, but we will be getting the amazing and inspiring Mia Lykke Nielsen back Spring 2025. Something to look forward to!