What happens when we label behaviour as good or bad?
“Was she good?”
After working with a horse in a training or therapy session, this is the friendly question that people often ask.
However this kind of talk about horse behaviour as good and bad can hugely limit our ability to build relationships with horses and train them empathetically and effectively.
Behaviour is always a communication
The thing is, horses do not have the capacity to choose to behave “badly”. They can only behave like a horse. Any “bad” behaviour is the horse’s way of communicating something:
That they are over threshold and unable to cope with their anxiety, fear, frustration, or excitement
That they’re in pain
That we are asking too much
That they don’t understand us (i.e. we are not being clear in our requests)
That they are physically unable to do what we ask or find it too physically demanding
In order to build a solid partnership and move forward with training it is our job as trainer to understand what the horse is communicating, work out how we can solve the issue, and help the horse to manage their emotions. This is how the horse learns that you will listen to them, you will understand their limits, and you will keep them safe from threat or from being pushed over threshold. In other words, the horse learns they can trust you.
What happens when we label behaviour as good or bad?
Labelling the behaviour as “bad” can lead to a number of consequences:
It puts the blame on the horse and removes responsibility from the trainer.
It makes the trainer less likely to try to understand or empathise with the horse – it’s just being a “bad” horse.
It makes the trainer more likely to respond with their own fight/flight behaviours (aka “bad” behaviours!), because we are more likely to feel threatened by a ‘bad’ horse than a ‘scared’ or ‘confused’ horse.
It makes it easier to justify using punishment to “fix” the “bad” behaviour in order to get the response we want.
Understanding “bad” behaviours as an expression of distress
“Bad” behaviours are, more often than not, driven by a horse’s threat system – the system that kicks in to keep them safe in the face of uncertainty or threat. Horses’ threat systems, just like humans’, have 4 different ways of responding to threat:
Flight – run away from the threat
Fight – fight the threat
Fawn/appease – do something to pacify the threat
Freeze – play dead and dissociate from the experience of fear
Fight/flight responses involve an obvious outward expression of anger or fear to motivate action. What we think of as “bad” behaviours are generally fight/flight behaviours (think bolting, biting, kicking, rearing). Fawn/freeze behaviours involve suppressing anger and fear where action is not possible. Fawn/freeze responses are sometimes labelled as “good” behaviours (think quiet, still, compliant).
“Fixing” bad behaviours by removing the option to express distress
Using punishment to stop “bad” behaviour is the equivalent of getting an emotional child to behave in the way we want them to by threatening a consequence that is worse than what is upsetting them in the first place: “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”.
When we “fix” (stop) the behaviour using punishment, the stress underlying the behaviour continues, but the horse learns that fight/flight is not an option, that it must suppress its urge to run or fight, and that it must rely on its 'fawn or freeze responses to survive.
The fawn response is when the horse tries to pacify a more threatening animal to protect itself from further harm. The fawn response to threat can look like ‘good’ behaviour and cooperation from the outside. However, this is not a solid partnership – the horse is not working with you because he trusts you to keep him safe, he is doing what you say to stop you from hurting him – but only for as long as fight/flight isn’t an option. This means that if he finds himself in a situation where running away or fighting back are a better option, he will do that instead.
The freeze response turns on when fight/flight/fawn are not an option. The horse shuts down the experience of fear to stop its mind and body being overwhelmed. From the outside, this can look like progress, or “good” behaviour (the horse stops trying to run away or kick/bite/rear). On the inside, the horse’s nervous system is in the same state of fear as if it were being attacked by a predator, but realising there is no hope of survival by running or fighting.
Finding alternative solutions by allowing the horse to say “no”
Freeze/fawn responses are not something we want our horses to be doing in response to our training, but it is so easy to push horses to do just this. Many horse trainers and owners have no idea that this is what is happening. It doesn’t take obviously abusive handling to produce freeze/fawn responses. It can happen when we put horses in stressful situations, when we don’t listen to behaviours that tell us they are over threshold, or when we take a training approach that gives the horse no option to say no. It is a by-product of the “don’t let him win” approach to horse training.
It might seem a stretch to link the simple question “was he good” to training approaches that force horses into a fawn or freeze response, but language is really important in opening up or shutting down options for how we respond to a situation. We don’t know exactly what the alternative question is, but it has to take the responsibility for behaviour away from the horse and put it back on the human. Maybe “how was your communication with him / her today?” / “How was your partnership today?” even “How was he / she feeling today”. These are probably a bit too “fluffy” or relationship focused for where most horse riders are at in their thinking so maybe “how was your training session?” will do.
Leaving labels behind
When we encourage people at SLTH to find different ways of talking about horse behaviour than “good” and “bad”, we notice much more thoughtful, empathetic interpretations of the behaviour and the horse’s feelings. This is especially important while offering equine assisted therapy because the reason horses are so effective at helping people is that they reflect people’s emotions and energy in their behaviour.
When we dismiss any of the horse’s behaviour as bad in a therapy session:
We miss the opportunity to notice and understand what is happening for the clients and for us that may be fuelling the horse’s behaviour
We teach the young people that certain behaviours and emotions, in horses and in humans, are unwanted or “bad”. This goes against everything we stand for at SLTH.
SLTH is a normalising space for young people where they can leave negative labels behind and build new identities based on their strengths. A key part of this process is learning that difficult emotions and behaviours are normal responses to difficult circumstances. Difficult emotions and behaviours don’t make us bad.
Food for thought…
While we’re on the topic of labelling horse behaviour as good and bad, what happens when we label human behaviour in this way? How often have you heard questions like “is he a good baby?” “Was she a good girl at school today?” Or “I’m a bad parent for shouting at my child”. How about “that was just bad behaviour”?
What might be different if we talked about what behaviour communicates, instead of labelling our own and others’ behaviours as “good” and “bad”? For example, “she felt listened to by her teachers and proud of her achievements at school today”, or “I felt like my child was going to hurt themselves, so my fight response kicked in and I shouted at them when I didn’t want to”. As a start, being curious about why we all behave in the ways we do might help us to build trust in others (and in ourselves!) that we can be relied upon to listen, take notice, and take appropriate action in the face of challenges.
Written by Rosie Bensley & Dr Puffin O’Hanlon