The Plastic Bag Incident
One windy day, I walked out to the mustang pens and when I looked into Remi’s corral, it was empty, I did a double take, she was gone. Instant feeling of stomach hitting rock bottom then leaping back into your throat. Still half wild, I did not know if I could catch her if she was out in the open fields. Getting closer to her pen, I could see where she broke through, a 2 foot gap in the wooden fence, searching for a reason why she would suddenly make a break for freedom after 2 months, I spotted a plastic shopping bag. As I was standing there a gust of wind knocked it around, it made circles in the small pen. Well that explains it, the monster bag was trying to kill her. Now I had to go find her somewhere on the farm. As I walk past the second larger corral (there are 2) where the babies, Ruger and Rose had been living for about a month, I looked in and Ruger was missing. I stopped in my tracks, backtracked 3 steps and really looked. Nope, he really was gone, I started searching the fence line, no breaks but I noticed that the gate was slightly bent out. I thought that could not have been how he had escaped, it was over 5 feet tall, but it was all I had to go on. I continued on with my search, I headed down towards my domestic horses and found the two runaways. Standing next to Seabody eating some weeds, they both looked up at me when I came near them. Ruger let me catch him and I lead him back to his corral, Remi followed behind and I put them both back in with Rose.
I judged that now was a good time to start working on desensitizing her to flappy, flying and noisy things. She was still very reactive towards these objects (eyeroll, the broken fence). So, to start I just used a towel, I figured we would start with the simplest thing before adding a noisy bag into the mix. I started by standing about 5ft in front of her and would wave the towel to the side of my body. Depending on how reactive the horse is, this might not affect them at all, others will spook or start backing up, once they start backing up keep at it until their feet stop moving then immediately stop waving the towel etc. Give them a minute to think over what just happen and let them learn to be ok by this, you can tell when they are accepting an “thing/situation” from the visual cue of licking and chewing. This is really important here, so let me say again, after every high stress incident, when your horse is tense, head high and with the white in their eyes visual, you need to give your horse the time THEY need to accept the situation. This could take 30 second or 20 minutes but its vitally important that they can learn to bring down their stress levels and get there brains turned back on.
Let me explain some science behind the licking and chewing. When a horse goes into a fear state, adrenaline and cortisol surges through their systems. The gut stops working, because lets face it, if you are running for your life you don’t need to be digesting your breakfast. The horse moves in jerky motions, has poor balance and shaky muscles, losing all their grace and balance. Scientist call this the sympathetic nervous system, its one of the two divisions of the autonomic nervous system. The ANS is a specialized set of neurons that control and regulates basic, unconscious bodily functions supporting life, such as breathing, the pumping of the heart and digestion. It sends axons from the brain stem and spinal cord to various areas of the body such as the heart muscle, the digestive system, and the pupils of the eyes. The head goes up and the flight or fight system is on high alert, tunnel vision and a single focus on one specific goal, ESCAPE.
being curious towards the tarp.
What you want is to get the horse into the parasympathetic nervous system; referred to as the rest and digest system, the parasympathetic system conserves energy as it slows the heart rate and increases intestinal and gland activity. When the horse is in this system, they drop their head, their stomach turns back on and saliva floods the horses mouth, causing the licking and chewing. During this the brain is flooded with dopamine, or the feel good drug. The horse will get a “hit” of dopamine and feel good, they will begin to associate new things with the release that they get from interacting with new items and objects and encourages curiosity.
This is where you learn how fast your horses can actually backup, Remi can move backwards about the speed of a fast trot. You slowly work your way closer, once I could stand next to Remi, I would stop waving and just rub the towel all over her body. After she was comfortable doing that, I would start waving it slowly by the ground and higher up her body. Again, if they start backing up keep following them and continue waving until they stop moving their feet. Sometimes, (and you have to be the judge) no matter how much they are ok with it at 2 ft away, they just are not ready for 1ft away. You do not want to end a training session in a negative manner so when you find the stop they are not ready to push through, maybe take a step back to the point they were good, so they can have a win at the end of the training session. Remi was ok with the towel after a few days but it has taken months of work with the plastic bag, sheets, tarps and “things” before she would stop backing up. Almost a year into her adoption and training she still gets the wrinkles around her eyes that signal she is scared when I bring a plastic bag out to work with, she has definitely tuned down her Reticular Activating System; how horses receive input from their surroundings: sound, sight, touch and emotional feel. The lower you can get it turned down the less her reaction level will be. Remis is starting to get dialed down but its still a long way from as low as as it can go. I think she has taken this much time because of her negative experience with the bag. She puts up with it during our training sessions because she trusts me, gets her dopamine hit and knows I have never done anything to hurt her.
