Why Good Horses Go "Bad" And How to Fix It!

 

Why Good Horses Go "Bad" And How to Fix It!

If you are a horse lover or have ever been around horses then you may know, sometimes a “perfectly trained” horse is seen suddenly panicking, or bolting at something most would perceive as harmless. Such silliness as a plastic bag blowing across a field, or a shadow on a wall completely freaks them out! To most observers, their reaction seems completely irrational. The horse's owner might tell you, it's a behavior the horse has displayed since being a yearling, while claiming nothing bad has ever been done to the horse. This behavior represents a “glitch” behind the psychology of learning. An animal doesn't need to consciously remember when or where an initial trauma happened for the conditioned fear response to remain perfectly intact (Powell et al., 2016). From a behaviorist perspective, this is textbook classical conditioning. At some point early in the horse’s life, a completely neutral stimulus (NS) such as a rustling plastic bag was paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) like a terrifying sudden noise or physical pain. Through the process of acquisition, the bag became a conditioned stimulus (CS) capable of eliciting an intense conditioned response (CR) of panic. Horses are prey animals, meaning that they are evolutionarily prepared to develop aversive associations to sudden environmental shifts incredibly fast. They don't need a narrative memory of the event,

their autonomic nervous system simply keeps this on file. (Powell et al., 2016). 

But good news, we can treat these equine phobias using the exact same exposure based therapies used in human clinics! Utilizing counterconditioning, pairing the scary plastic bag with an appetitive stimulus such as a highly valued treat or soothing scratches in their favorite spot. Through gradual approximations (in vivo desensitization) the horse learns a new, positive emotional response that actively blocks the fear through reciprocal inhibition. As expressed by Starling, McLean, and McGreevy (2016), flight responses in horses are dangerous on several levels. They note that when these events occur, horses associate their threatened safety with stimuli present at the time, and "dissociating those signals from flight responses may be difficult and time consuming, with many trials needed, but it must be achieved, and with minimal further threats to the horse’s perceived safety" (p. 15). However, some equestrians often run into a frustrating roadblock: a horse can seem completely cured for weeks, only for the fear to suddenly appear out of nowhere. This isn't a failure of training but instead a behavioral principle known as spontaneous recovery. As Robin Foster (2016) explains, “Exposure-based behavior modification techniques like desensitization are effective at reducing fear and anxiety, but unfortunately relapse is common. One reason is that extinction does not erase fear memories, even when a conditioned fear response seems to have disappeared it can abruptly reappear. This is because extinction does not mean to unlearn or erase a memory, instead it simply means the environmental presentation of the CS without the US builds a new, inhibitory safety association which suppresses the old fear rule. If the horse experiences that conditioned stimulus after a long rest period (this is known as spontaneous recovery), or even in a slightly new environment (which is known as the renewal effect), the temporary “safety blanket” slips away, allowing the original fear response to creep back in. Recognizing that these forms of fear recovery are a natural part of the conditioning loop changes how we handle animal rehabilitation, moving us away from frustration and toward patience, knowing that consistency is the only way to make the new safety association stick for good. 

My critique: While behaviorist principles give us a framework, a major critique I have of this model is its lack of practicality in the real world. While extinction works on paper, maintaining that level of strict environmental control and constant repetition is almost impossible in everyday life. Real world settings deal in fast paced and limited resources meaning a single setback can produce spontaneous recovery or a renewal effect, allowing fear responses that appeared extinguished to return despite previous progress. Instead of spending months trying to extinguish reactions to individual environmental triggers, research should focus on discovering more generalized resilience and trust baselines which can support real world unpredictability. 

Foster, R. (2016). Relapse of conditioned fear in horses: The four R's. IAABC Foundation Journal, (1). https://journal.iaabcfoundation.org/relapse-of-conditioned-fear-in-horses-the-four-rs/ 

Powell, R. A., Symbaluk, D. G., & Honey, P. L. (2016). Introduction to Learning and Behavior. Cengage Learning. 

Starling, M., McLean, A., & McGreevy, P. (2016). The contribution of equitation science to minimising horse-related risks to humans. Animals, 6(3), 15. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4810043/