11/09/2025
The "difficult" to load horse!
It's been some time since I've made a post on loading, so if you're enjoying your morning coffee and have some reading time, this one could be for you!
As horse owners, there is so much conflicting information on different training methods and trainers using different techniques that it can often feel overwhelming, and you may feel confused looking at these methods when it comes to training you own horse. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of misinformation about positive reinforcement and the science behind Equine Behaviour. So to help you all I have explained what I feel are some of the most important points to look at and understand when retraining a fearful horse, from a Behavioural science perspective.
Trigger Stacking:
It’s important to understand that horses cannot learn effectively when they are stressed. And many training methods go against the ethology and learning theory of the horse.
Trigger stacking Is the exposure to numerous negative stimuli which increases reactivity and lowers the horses threshold of what they can cope with.
Understanding trigger stacking and understanding that a horse who is giving you really reactive behaviours is a horse that has come to the end of what it can cope with and has reached the end of its threshold. So, anything you try to teach the horse at that point, is not going to help them learn something positive about changing its emotional state or able to fix any issues that’s causing them to be stressed or frightened in the long term.
It is important when training your horse with a fear to recognise early calming signals and avoid your horse feeling like they need to shout louder to get you to listen. This will really help you and your relationship with your horse when training.
Flight responses in horses can often be seen as a “naughty behaviour” which is where we often see positive punishment. Where the horse is punished for giving a fear or flight response such as the addition of a flag, whip or pressure halter. Unfortunately this is seen in a lot of trainers that don’t understand behavioural science or learning theory of the horse. By making the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy, The horse becomes more stressed and only receives a release when he goes towards something like the lorry for example. The result of this is that the trainer then becomes more frightening to the horse than the lorry and in some cases this can then go on to the horse falling into learned helplessness. (Explained below)
The outcome of this is the owner or trainer gets the results they want but not for the right reason as you have not found the root cause of the horse’s behaviour.
What calming signals should I be looking for to avoid unnecessary stress?
A calming signal is something a horse will show when experiencing low levels of stress, I am always watching out for these when training horses to keep them below threshold as best as I can. Horses show these behaviours to avoid a possible threat or confrontation.
It’s also possible for horses to learn that these calming signals don’t get listened to. So if your horse is giving you a calming signal and it is ignored, they will try and make these signals a little more obvious.
Some of These early signals are;
• Turning head away
• Triangle eye
• Headshake
• Body shake
• Averting gaze
• Avoiding touch
• Licking and chewing
• Consistent yawning
A horse that is ignored when giving these behaviours, reaches above their threshold and is still having pressure applied to perform the desired behaviour can quickly escalate to :
• Rearing
• Biting
• Approaching with ears pinned back
• Extreme tail swishing
• Bolting
• Turning of the hindquarters.
Threshold - what does it mean? Why is it important?
There are three different levels of threshold. Under, At and Over. These three stages are important to understand when working with a horse who has a fear and will help you be more effective with your training when it comes to understanding your horses mental and emotional state.
Below or under Threshold - showing no signs of fear or anxiety towards stimulus.
At threshold - reaching the point where they begin to show signs of fear or anxiety, they are aware of the stimulus presented.
Over threshold - showing obvious signs of Distress, anxiety, or fear towards the stimulus if ignored, this is where extreme behaviours can start to show such as rearing, bucking, bolting.
The Body Language of a stressed horse, above threshold can be:
• Triangle wide eyes
• Constricted nostrils
• Clamped mouth
• Tense facial muscles
• Ears back and lowered
• High head carriage
• Increased blink rate
• Body tension
During a training appointment, I will always look to keep a horse below threshold, keeping the horse settled, remaining calm, relaxed and avoiding unnecessary stress. This is not to be confused with learned helplessness which is when the horse quite literally ‘shuts down’ as a result of not being able to influence their environment or circumstances. The horse tries to show they are uncomfortable or fearful but they fail each time, they end up in a state where what they are trying to do is simply not possible and they give up. They have learned through repeated failure to change the situation, they are helpless.
As humans we can seem to forget that a horse can never lie to you, they can never give you an aggressive facial expression if they do not feel unsettled in some way. They are unable to be relaxed, happy and soft if they do not feel that way. And this is something a lot of owners can get muddled up with as they treat the horse like it has the same cognitive abilities as a human.
I am frequently asked what my loading lessons look like. So here is a video of the lovely Wally, who's owner has allowed me to record each step of our loading process to show you all what that looks like. You'll notice that in some parts of the video, bars are added and doors are shut but they are also taken away at various points. This is to help Wally process each step, although Wally is comfortable with every step now, I felt it was important to show you all how to keep that threshold low.
Wally would previously refuse to load and had some anxiety on the trailer. By breaking it down into bite sized steps, looking for any of those signals mentioned before and using positive reinforcement every step of the way, Wally now loads without hesitation. We even managed to get out for our first drive together since starting our sessions to test if Wally would load again after a short journey. Which you'll be pleased to know... he did happily!
Please note: the front window of the trailer will not be open for journeys, this was a very slow (10mph) drive up the private farm track and allowed us to watch Wally closely for his first drive.
