21/06/2025
What does a stressed horse look like? š“
I think most people would be confident in identifying a horse who is so stressed they have gone into a fight/flight response. Bolting, spooking, broncing, rearing, snorting etc, very loud behaviours. But what about beyond that?
When a horse becomes stressed and fight/flight behaviour doesnāt work to get them out of the situation, where does that stress go? We need to be careful that when we think weāre achieving relaxation, weāre not actually pushing a horse into a shut down state. They can look outwardly calm but they are in fact still feeling stressed about the situation, theyāve just learned there is no way out.
A really common misconception I hear is horses who wonāt load, they just plant at the bottom of the ramp and will not be moved. People will say āheās clearly not scared, heās just stubborn, look heās going to sleepā. If a horse stands unmovable, closing his eyes while someone hauls on his face and someone else chases him from behind, believe me he is scared and he is desperately trying to cope with a situation he has learned is inescapable.
Sometimes horses who donāt outwardly express their stress through loud behaviours can be struggling more. I used to help my friend care for her extremely quiet, laid back cob on a livery yard. They ended up not being allowed out of their stables for 2 weeks straight one winter, and while many horses were exploding and box walking, he would just stand quietly at the back of his box and make no fuss. Around this time he started to be a little bit shifty at the mounting block, it turned out he had developed severe stomach ulcers from the stress of being in. I think of this often when I see quiet horses.
When we are training we really need to consider the horseās emotional wellbeing throughout the process, not just what the end result looks like to us. Only with context are we able to tell if our horse is truly okay with something or if they have perhaps shut down a little to cope when we wouldn't take no for an answer. There is a whole spectrum of stress and behaviour, it is not just a case of a shut down horse is shut down about everything, or that an anxious horse always has to feel anxious.
Many horses are living with a high level of chronic stress in their daily lives that affects them not just emotionally but can hugely impact on their physical wellbeing too. Sometimes a large part of the answer to our issues is not where weāre looking. If we can reduce the level of stress our horses may be experiencing overall, we can see improvements in areas we perhaps wouldnāt think are linked.
If we want to have a genuinely good relationship with our horses we need to look more closely and have higher standards for our training beyond whether it gets the horse to comply or not.
Pictured is me riding Dan "tackless" many years ago, logically you'd think tackless horses would simply leave if they didn't want to do it or felt stressed, but he had been conditioned that if he veered off course I would touch him with the stick to correct him, which he found unpleasant and threatening despite me never actually hitting him with it, "just" tapping and irritating him with it. You can see the tension above his eye, his ear locked onto the stick and his tight muzzle. I don't choose to train like this anymore as I don't want my cues to actually be threats of escalation, that doesn't feel like a partnership to me and created negative associations with training for Dan that I was unaware of.
It is uncomfortable to look deeper, but if you really value your horse and their wellbeing above all else we have to be better and really think about how are horse is experiencing things. š“
