Have you ever noticed how many horses have separation anxiety to some degree? It ranges from mild, where it pops up under pressure, to severe and dangerous if we try to force them through it. It ranges from tension in their body that doesn’t just suddenly disappear when you get on to ride – it’s there affecting EVERYTHING that you do with them – to where the tension has gotten so big that it causes full on health issues like arthritis and laminitis.
No, I am not saying that separation anxiety is the cause of arthritis. I am saying that the stress of separation anxiety contributes just like all other stresses – and it CAN be the cause of all kinds of stress related illnesses which include arthritis and laminitis.
Horses display their anxiety in different ways – from the obvious distress expressed by rearing and plunging, spinning and doing anything they can to get back to their herd or mate – all the way to the shut down horse who internalizes their distress and eventually explodes. In between, there’s the fidget horses who nip (these often end up biting in their distress), they mouth their ropes and can’t keep still, there’s the fight horses who seriously use their teeth and feet when they’re overwhelmed, there’s even the fainting kind of horses that literally just drop to the ground when they’re that overwhelmed.
When we keep herd bound horses by themselves so we can take them away without such drama – so they don’t have a chance to get attached to another horse – the trouble is, that the trauma is still there ALL the time, causing behavior and health problems that we may not have realized were related to the separation from their family. The isolation traumatises them more than they were traumatised in the first place. So eventually you’ve got a bigger problem popping out somewhere else.
Causes of separation anxiety and herd bounded’ness in horses
There’s four main categories of causes that I’ve noticed:
1. Weaned too young and too suddenly, without consideration for their fear. A huge number of horses come under this category. My Bobby came under this category and he was weaned by someone who loved him very much, who was also a competent horse person, using what was considered good practice at the time.
We won’t talk today about how they can be weaned happily – right now we’ve got whatever behavior and problem it is that we’ve got to work with.
2. Another cause of separation anxiety is that some horses who are herd leaders or working towards it, have a huge sense of responsibility for their herd. When someone in their herd is upset by their leaving, then they too are anxious. Sue’s horse Mimi came under this category. She was antsy coming away from her herd, but once she was locked in the yard up at the arena – that’s when she went really beserk – rearing and bucking and kicking the wall and the yards in a monumental temper to start off with, that ended up with nobody at home mentally.
Her whole personality changed when Sue used approach and retreat with her Feel to listen to the OTHER horse they were leaving behind, who was anxious.
3. Some horses don’t want to leave their herd or go away from home because of what happens when they DO go away from home. If the people are rough or careless, or have been rough and careless.
4. The separation anxiety can be the “straw that broke the camel’s back” – at the end of a long line of things that have been steadily building up anxiety and there’s something bigger lying underneath it, like a fear of haltering just as one example. There’s a lot of horses who have learned to put up with things that that they’re actually anxious about. Oliver was one of those.
5. They can act up for FOR US. There can be a bigger picture than our horse simply not wanting to leave a friend and our learning a deeper connection in order to solve the problem can be of benefit in some other aspect of our lives.
The big question is “how can we help them?”
The easiest fix of separation anxiety is when they WANT to fix it.
So what has to happen to get them to want to fix it?
It starts with developing their confidence by listening to them with our Feel in everything that we do. It takes the confidence that comes from being in their Comfort Zone – TO BE ABLE to work on a trauma. Does that make sense? We can’t MAKE someone want to heal.
Everyone wants to be heard – and at the deepest level. “Hearing” involves our willingness to listen and to take action on what we hear/feel. The vast majority of separation anxieties are trauma based, which means It’s impossible to solve this kind of a problem with force or push or make, or even “cause them to want to”.
Like so many other problems that are easily solved, it’s Feel for our horse that makes this problem so much easier to solve. To be truly successful with helping a horse to release a previous trauma, we have to have identified how we FEEL our communication / connection with our horse and use that Feel to know when to move away, when to stop, when to turn back, when to wait. Waiting for the physical signals that we can see with our eyes when they’re out of their Comfort Zone is better than nothing, but knowing BEFORE you can see with your eyes – that’s where the magic of deep confidence in the human really happens.
Here’s a beautiful video of Holly working with Gunny’s herdboundness working on approach and retreat . It looks like he’s not upset at all. This lovely quiet way of listening and acting on what she’s feeling is what it takes to help a horse release their separation anxiety.
Read that again. Her Feel is telling her that she needs to change something BEFORE she can see it with her eyes. It’s the LISTENING that’s making Gunny’s Comfort Zone possible. The trauma can ONLY be released in their Comfort Zone. You can try to force a horse to obey – people do it all the time – but because it’s fear based the problem is still in there and sooner or later it will bite you on the butt and explosions are often the result.
Let’s explore some examples starting with Fast Track students.
p.s. Talk to people about what it felt like when they uncovered their Feel for their horse.
You can go on from today with life as normal or you can take a leap into you and your horses future today.
I watch people taking years and years learning to get what they’re looking for, sometimes searching forever, without realizing that we’ve discovered incredible short cuts that are joyful and rewarding and put a solid foundation underneath you. The first thing here is a link to a beautiful clinic that’s starting next week. There’s still horse places available. It’s 8 glorious weeks of a profound reciprocal experience where people help horses and horses help people to achieve beautiful outcomes.
You get to choose a horse thing that you want to achieve or a specific horse problem to solve or heal AND you get to experience the transformation directly in the rest of your life too. Or you can do the reverse. You can choose a life problem to work on – something to solve or heal or change – and experience that transformation with your horse too.
There’s still rider / horse places and fence-sitter places available. I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I priced this clinic, I must have been crazy. 🙂
https://www.jennypearce.com.au/clinics/through-the-grace-of-your-horse/