Desensitizing Horses or letting them Learn

If you asked a dozen people about desensitizing a horse, their description would be alot closer to each other than if you asked the same people how does a horse learn. I realized this as I had a fairly long phone conversation with a lady named Marti about desensitization. She contacted me on email then we had a phone conversation discussing desensitization as she said she was (in my words) casting about to get many opinions on desensitization as someone advised her that desensitization would make a dull and unresponsive horse. I told Marti I would followup our phone call with some written comments about what we talked about, so here it is.

Desensitization, certainly had a bad name in some circles, but it is much like riding with a leverage bit (or any bit for that matter) - it's all about how you use it. And when I use the term desensitization, I am meaning getting a horse not to be scared, to accept a situation or stimulus. Much like using pressure and release to get a horse to understand what we are asking with cues, be it using the reins, our seat or legs, or really any kind of pressure, and providing a release of that pressure when the horse responds even just a bit - then building on that. We also come to understand that the horse needs time to process his response to the pressure that gains a release in order to figure out what he did that gained that release. The time or pause after the release is kind of understood by the handler, but to be clear about it I tell riders in clinics that we use 'pressure, release and pause' so it is understood that the horse needs that time after the release to understand. People will sometimes ask "How much time? How long should the pause be?" Well, I don't know,......more than a couple seconds, usually less than a minute, but the horse's posture and body language, head and ears, and position should give you an idea when he is ready again.

So, in being redundant (I'm not to insult anyone's intelligence) but we use pressure, release and pause when exposing the horse to a stimuli such as a flag, tarp or an obstacle. So, the most common error is to take the stimulus away or to take the horse away from an obstacle when the horse gets scared. Then he learns that he was justified in being scared of that object. I suppose we can expose a horse to a stimuli, an example would again be a flag, where we overuse the flag - don't use it in a meaningful or accurate way - and the it becomes not much of a signal anymore. I just don't think that happens much, at least not what I've seen. What I think is more likely is confusing a horse with a lack of use of cues and a lack of accurate timing of the release.

What Craig Cameron said over 20 years ago was one of our major responsibilities was to create a brave horse. I think about this practically daily. I try to apply the concept of letting a horse figure out the situation when he shows anxiety or fear. The latest example is that I had a horse tied to a trailer and I pulled out a metal tape measure to measure the length of a rear cinch I need to replace. My horse did not like the noise the tape measure made being extended or the crinkling sound that the metal tape made when bending. He did not pull back, just stepped back a couple steps as was very alert on the tape measure. So I extended the tape measure and laid it on the trailer fender. He was not about to approach it anytime soon. So I just left the tape measure there on the trailer fender, brushed him, got the saddle and bridle ready and let the horse generally get used to the tape measure being there. A few minutes later, I asked him to take a step forward and he did. I let him settle for a bit then asked him again to step forward. I finished saddling, got his snaffle bit in place and rode off. Coming back, we did it all over again. I also sat on the step to my trailer, held the extended tape measure in my hand and asked my horse to step forward to me. Soon I was touching him with the tape measure then using it to measure the circumference of his nose when a bosal would go - I really didn't need to do that, just wanted him to accept what he was skeptical of earlier. This is simply giving the horse think to think without alot of pressure. I can't tell you how a horse reasons, but it is obvious that they can learn to accept things as a non threat given adequate time. This is desensitization and learning at it's root.

When we are riding or even leading a horse in hand we have all experienced a horse stopping and tensing up, alert to some item or obstacle be it a trash can, a bucket or whatever. We have also all experienced the same when we have rode or led a horse to or through an area time and time again only for the horse to stop because there is something new. There is actually a term for this - coherant change detection - it comes from the military comparing imagery of terrain and things over a period of time to detect, even minutely, what has changed which could indicate enemy preparations of capabiities. In fact, this is what the horse looks at too.....what is changed and what threat does it present. So if we give the horse some time on such an obstacle, are we desensitizing him or giving him time to think and learn to figure things out?

I think we have all been successful at some point, whether intentional or not, when the horse stops at some perceived threat, and we don't get all worked up about it and give him some time, he'll move forward again towards that object. If we force him to move forward too soon then we build on that anxiety.  Just keep him straight. Give him some time and we're usually talking about a minute or two, the horse will figure it out and we now have a braver horse.