Does your horse have and experience emotions? This has been an ongoing debate in both the equestrian world and in the science world for decades. Those of you who have developed a deep bond with your horse know the answer. A resounding YES! In fact, science if finally catching up with what us horse owners have always known. Yes, our horses experience emotions. Those who still won’t accept this information are stuck in time. Unwilling to see what is right before them.
So you ask, What emotions do our horses have? How do they experience them? Let’s look at some research on the fore front of animal emotions and see what they have to tell us. Let’s look at the emotional life of your horse.
Jaak Panskepp dedicated his life to the research of the brain and emotions in a field known as affective neuroscience. “People don’t have a monopoly on emotion,” he once said. “Rather, despair, joy and love are ancient, elemental responses that have helped all sorts of creatures survive and thrive in the natural world.” He is most known for discovering that rats actually laugh when tickled. His life work supported the concept that emotions did not originate in the cerebral cortex as originally thought but instead in the amygdala and hypothalamus. Why is this important? Because for many years scientist perceived that only humans experienced emotions because of their highly developed cerebral cortex. Instead, Dr. Panskepp showed us how animals experience the emotions of seeking, rage, fear, lust, care, panic/grief and of course play. Dr. Panskepp passed away in 2017 but left a legacy of important research into the emotional lives of animals.
He’s not the only scientific researcher though. Marc Bekoff a profession emeritus in Animal Behavior at Colorado State University has published such books as “The Smile of a Dolphin: Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotions”, “Minding Animals: Awareness, Emotions, and Heart”, “The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy and Why They Matter” and “Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect”. And let’s not forget the multitudes of journal articles, magazine articles and papers all related to the emotions of animals. Dr. Bekoff is highly recognized by his long-term contributions to the field of animal behavior.
Temple Grandin famous for her renowned accomplishments in animal behavior, especially in the treatment of livestock. Dr. Grandin is also well known for her candor about being autistic. While Dr. Grandin did not concentrate on animal emotions, much of her research focused on temperaments of feedlot animals, vocalization of stressed animals and panic in animals led to slaughter. All important research in understanding how animals interact in their environment and emotions they experience when under stress.
Jonathan Balcombe an ethologist wrote books such as “Second Nature: The Inner Lives of Animals” and “What A Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins”. “Balcombe upends our assumptions about fishes, portraying them not as unfeeling, dead-eyed feeding machines but as sentient, aware, social, and even Machiavellian—in other words, much like us.” He also upends our assumptions about animals by making the case” that animals, once viewed only as mindless automatons, actually have rich sensory experiences and emotional complexity.”
And many more…
Ok, so we agree animals have emotions. So how do we apply this to our training? For one, with an obvious perception shift of treating them with respect and with the compassion that comes from the knowledge that they too can experience pain, suffering, fear and joy. Susan Garrett recently reviewed 8 emotional states that she sees in her dogs and realized when they were in certain emotional states they were easier to train. The key is to keep them in this emotional state. Let’s look at those emotions and apply it to another species. The horse.
- Afraid. In horses, fear is an important evolutionary adaptation since they are prey animals. Those who questioned the safety of their surroundings lived longer. While our horses are wired to easily be frightened to survive, they cannot learn in this type of emotion. Fear can come from an external environmental cue such as a waving flag, an unknown sound but also from repetitive adverse training methods. So what do you do to train a horse that is fearful? For starters, it’s important in the very beginning to have the horse feel safe in the environment that you are training in. Slow and systematic exposure to fearful situations while teaching calming behaviors can help a horse over come fear. You want to teach the horse how to react when it is fearful. Not suppress their fear, over face them and force them to blow up. This is why sacking out has more negative results than positive.
- Anxious. This is one step less intense than all out fear. It should be handled the same way. You can’t force a horse to not be anxious. If a horse is anxious in it’s work either different work has to be done to give them confidence in their environment or you need to re-evaluate your approach to training. Just like being afraid, horses don’t learn well when they are anxious.
- No Fun. Susan Garrett describes this when the dog is tolerating what you are asking but there is nothing rewarding either inherently or otherwise. Therefore the dog is not having fun. In the dog world you will see them disengaged, acting disinterested or even ignoring their owner. In the horse world, we start to see sour looks, tail swishing, barn and ring sour behavior, checked out or even apathy. If we ignore these signs, the horse may escalate their behavior depending on their personality. In the best case scenario, they still do what they want but without the shine and pizazz of a horse that is enjoying it’s job. Is this really how you want to train your horse?
- Comfortable. The next step up is when the horse is generally ok with doing what is required. They are relaxed and willing participants. They are free of stress, pain and worry. This is one of the ideal places for horses to be in to learn. Don’t let the complacency of a horse be the only sign. You have to look at the eyes. What are they expressing? Are they tolerating you or are they comfortable? Big difference.
- Interested. I believe this is the ideal emotional state for a horse to be in when learning. Due to their flight instincts by nature due to being a prey animal, having a horse interested in what they are learning is the best and fastest way for them to learn. While a dog may learn faster in the next emotional state, horses learn best here. The question is how to foster interest in your horse while training? How do you keep their interest? I will just throw out some ideas as an answer for this. Variety and Rewards.
- Excited. A horse being excited about learning sounds good right? Maybe. It all depends on the horse. For a laid back, lazier type horse it may help you to have the horse more excitable. Just keep in mind that this phase may be too much for the hot, sensitive horse. You are better off keeping those horses either comfortable or interested. Of course, when training your dog, this stage is great. When they are excited they learn super quick.
- Wired. Ok now we have gone too far and we are starting to circle around to some negative emotions. Dogs, horses and even people have a hard time concentrating and enjoying learning when they are wired. Think about when you’ve been having so much fun you feel wired. Not the time to concentrate on learning something new. In this case, just back up and slow down a bit to bring the horse back into either a excited or interested emotional state.
- Red Lining. No body wants a red lining horse. This is dangerous. Equally dangerous as a extremely fearful horse. You see this though. A horse is telling the trainer in subtle ways that it’s overfaced, not understanding, being pushed too fast or too hard. What do they do? Blow Up. That’s them red lining. While you may think that all of the sudden they red lined out of nowhere, in reality they have been giving you signals, you just haven’t been listening. I once rode a horse for a few weeks that had a tendency to over-react to the slightest thing. At first, I wondered whether it was a fear thing or a confidence thing. It turned out to be that whenever the horse showed emotional signs, the previous trainer would ignore them and push the horse into doing what they wanted. What did the horse learn? To red line faster. Once I worked on showing the horse that it didn’t need to react so violently, that I would listen and we could quietly work on the situation, he stopped reacting so quickly and became much more predictable to ride. Red lining is a close resemblance to being afraid. Either way, not an emotional state that you want to be training in.
Well, I hope I was able to clarify and give some insight into emotions in our horses and what emotional state we would like them to be in to learn. Of course, I have seen my horses show a multitude of emotions not even covered here. Like joy/pleasure, compassion and caring, anger and annoyance and even apathy. My goal is to give them an education that allows them to spend their life in comfort and interest so that when these other emotion arise because of the unpredictable nature of life, they are able to cope and thrive.
On a side note. remember when Dr. Panskeep discovered emotions originate in the amygdala? Well, reward based training directly affects this part of the brain. Hence why it is so effective. Reward based training puts the horse into the emotional state of being interested, a great state to learn in. Just another reason why reward based training is so wonderful.