24/01/2021
Another big milestone I’ve been patiently waiting for... 🥰
Medusa is now exercising and learning voice cues in the round pen. For any other horse, this in and of itself would not be such a huge milestone, but for this special girl it’s a VERY BIG DEAL!
Medusa has an interesting fear response... in a round pen she usually shuts down and “freezes” when humans attempt to urge her forward. In my experience, this usually happens when horses believe that fight and flight won’t work. So a third option appears: freeze and wait for the humans to give up. In her case, I believe she freezes in anticipation of being whipped.
This one awful experience Medusa had with one human before I even met her has colored her perception of every human she meets, and I don’t blame her. It makes absolute sense! Her memories tell her that if she gives a “wrong answer”, something scary and painful will happen. Her experiences are validating the fear in her heart. So her heart and mind have learned to stand still, dissociate, and wait for the scariness to be over. You can’t give a “wrong answer” if you don’t give any answer at all, right?
I knew I was meant to help this girl the day we met, when she showed me this freeze response. Why, because I have a tendency to do THE EXACT SAME THING! 😅 I’ve been working on this behavioral pattern in myself for years. Which means I have the ability to empathize with her situation, and see where she needs some help.
Empathy is always my starting point. Empathy is true north. It’s how we begin to understand the puzzle of animals and humans who perhaps don’t communicate the same way as ourselves (or it gives us a starting point when the behavior of others is a little too much like how we behave ourselves 😉). And empathy informed my training plan to help Medusa begin to unravel this freeze response.
So what did I do? I started by building trust. I knew her triggers already, so I first needed to establish a sense of safety and goodwill. You wouldn’t work on your deepest fears and PTSD triggers with a therapist you didn’t like, right? There needs to be a sense of safety and positive rapport. Otherwise I would risk a major panic response once we started working on the trigger. I’ve seen horses climb out of round pens in fear before when pushed too hard and too soon. Step one was reassuring her that I would never dishonor her boundaries by pushing her too far too fast, and I needed to establish both myself and the round pen as a safe place. Safety begets vulnerability, which begets the opportunity for healing.
Once Medusa began trusting me and the space, she had new experiences banked in her memory. Experiences that told her I would be patient, and wouldn’t punish her for a “wrong answer”. Experience that told her I don’t see “wrong answers”, instead I see “searching for an answer” and “Hooray, you got it! That was a great answer!”
I began asking her to take only a few steps away from me at a time, being consistent, calm, and rewarding her with peace and stillness each time she got the “right answer”. But she still didn’t want to complete even 1 lap in the round pen. She would step away and then shut down. No amount of urging would make her move to complete a lap. You could wave a flag as much as you wanted, make popping noises with a lunge whip, wave a rope around all day, but she wouldn’t budge.
How did I get her to move? Now that safety was established, I could safely introduce something unfamiliar to her and know she wouldn’t completely panic. Something noisy and strange enough that she would want to move away from it, but something safe and something that couldn’t harm her. Something...like a grocery bag 😉
I’d ask her to step away from me, she would comply, then freeze. I’d make clucking noises to her and give her the chance to respond to the clucking by moving forward. If she didn’t respond, I’d cluck and then crunch the plastic bag. She’d move forward, and I would immediately go back to being neutral and quiet, rewarding her for moving forward. I’d then ask her to halt, and stand peacefully, teaching her that the plastic bag wasn’t going to chase her, it just meant “please move forward until asked to stop”. It only took 1 session of this for her to understand that clucking meant “move forward”. I recorded this video the next day, and as you can see she now calmly moves forward with my body language and voice commands, no plastic bag necessary.
The first step forward after being frozen in fear for so long is always the hardest. Standing still seems safer, easier, more predictable. But standing still means missing out on all of the good things too, not just the scary stuff. Sometimes you just need something wonderful to run toward, instead of focusing on the scary things you’re running away from. My job is to give Medusa a partnership wonderful enough to run toward, so she can feel safe enough to lay her fears to rest. Just keep swimming, take another step forward,there is no finish line, just a journey we’re taking together 💗🦄
**tstartingnotbreaking