05/10/2026
Resilience & emotional regulation in horses?
Sit down, this is a long one…
There’s currently a lot of discussion happening in the equestrian world about R+ and resilience. A recent post here has brought up a lot of feelings and discussion about positive reinforcement, tactile cues, and whether not exposing horses to R-, or aversive pressure is doing them a disservice or not.
Now, here’s some of my personal thoughts on this:
One point I do agree with is that a horse who’s been bubble wrapped, micromanaged, and never allowed to go over threshold, is going to have a complete meltdown when they are faced with unexpected aversive stimuli. Which could be anything from an environmental stimulus, to aversive pressure from a halter or bridle.
I also agree that it is our duty as horsemen & women to prepare our horses for those events. And, especially if we work for the public, to test our work, with every horse who’s coming to us to ensure they do in fact know how to handle those pressures.
The questions & points being posed are important ones, and I love the discussion happening right now.
but I find often times what ends up happening is once again a discussion of R+ vs R-, and whether of not R+ fails at something that R- can do, which In my opinion, ends with a lot of defensive arguments.
And honestly? I think isn’t actually what it comes down to in the grand picture of things.
Because the reality is, people from both ends of the spectrum of R- and R+ are experiencing horses who aren’t able to self regulate or emotionally manage situations of high aversive events.
Because I know I’ve talked about the lack of self regulation in the horse world before, having seen it in many horses, and all coming from the Traditional R- world.
But of course, it would be wrong to say that this is a R- problem, just because I see it in R- horses.
I can however say that this is a problem that I end up solving by using R+!
Does that mean R+ is better at building resilience? No. It doesn’t.
Because something I’ve observed in working with horses and people, is that people are almost always the cause of horses problems.
And this problem, in my opinion, is a human problem. Because from every corner of the horse industry we see people who struggle with either use of excessive force and violence, or an irrational fear of causing harm. Two entire opposite ends of that spectrum, but both very problematic. (We’ll leave the excessive force issue for another day)
Because yes, many people do micromanage and bubble wrap their horses. And not just R+ folks either! Every traditional barn knows of a horse that will jump into the air after a bird fluttered away and will now be a mess for the remainder of the week. (Heck, I just saw an interview of a prominent equestrian taking about her horse doing exactly that)
And just to be clear, there is a big distinction between micromanaging, and bubble wrapping vs. Slow, kind, ethical training approaches!
Now back to the topic of pressure and tactile cues. One unique thing about R+ though is that it avoids the use of aversives. Specifically, the intentional application of it, by humans, in order to teach a horse what we want them to do.
However, this doesn’t mean that by doing that we have to, or should, protect horses from aversives that are naturally occuring. There shouldn’t be any locking of horses in a barn because we’re afraid they may hurt themselves, no avoiding taking them out of the enclosed riding arena because we’re afraid there may be a deer standing out there, no avoiding loud noises, silly games, or having fun because we’re afraid we may spook them or overexcite them.
In my environment I am lucky enough that it is quite literally unavoidable to expose horses to those stimuli. You can work a horse in the riding arena and suddenly you both get surprised by a bear in the field beside you. You could take them for a walk on the trail and you’ll encounter dirt bikers.
Even just exposure will do a lot of my work for me. The horses will experience gun fire, cougars, bears, heavy machinery while they’re in their paddocks.
Now exposure of course is not enough on its own. Because often the over threshold experience happens around people, and it’s the human influence that often results in the panic that would follow.
So that’s why it’s important to experience those situations WITH the horse. And how humans react, will teach the horse self-regulation.
But the key point is to actually go do things with the horse. desensitization, counter conditioning, etc. those are incredibly important things to do, as a prep for real life situations, and I never recommend skipping those as them you’re setting your horse up for failure. However, once you’ve done the prep, now actually go put those to the test!
And this is true for both physical aversives, and emotional aversives!
So some of the questions all trainers, regardless of their approach should discuss and ask:
1. How can and do we teach emotional self-regulation, that can hold up in unexpected and/or aversive situation they have never experienced before.
2. What kind of process do we have to ensure that the above falls true and at the very least, keeps horse and human safe?
I wanted to write more about what this process looks like for me in real life but I think that will have to become a second post because this one has already become way too long😅
