A Polyvagal View on Desensitising with Warwick Schiller

This article is from the September 2020 Horse Deals magazine.

I’ve always come to the science of horse training from the empiric perspective, meaning I learn it from a practical standpoint first, usually only discovering its scientific significance later on. Over the years I have had many behaviouralists and mental health care professionals attend my clinics, where they describe some horse training method I used as “titration” or “successive approximation.” They would then explain the science of what I had been doing. These days even the clicker trainers are saying that using the LIMA protocol, which stands for Least Intrusive, Minimally Aversive, is acceptable. It seems they have discovered scientific terms for what “offering a soft feel” and “rewarding the slightest try” actually means.

In the past few years, I have vastly changed the way in which I train horses. I now choose to focus on building a relationship before attempting any sort of training, in what I have heard referred to as “connection before concepts.” In the past, I managed to build trust and relationships because of the consistency of the training I was implementing, whereas these days I focus on the connection first. The results have been nothing short of amazing. I wrote an article that featured in the July 2020 edition of Horse Deals called “Listening To Your Horse,” that described some of the extraordinary changes I have witnessed doing this.

POLYVAGAL THEORY

While trying to understand why this new way of training was working so well for me, I came across something called Polyvagal Theory. Poly means more than one, and Vagal refers to the Vagus Nerve, which is the information superhighway between your abdomen, heart and brain. Polyvagal Theory (PVT) gives us a much better understanding of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) of mammals than my previous understanding. The ANS consists of the Parasympathetic Nervous System and the Sympathetic Nervous System. The Parasympathetic is the system that slows down the heart rate and keeps the horse in the rest and digest state. This system is comparable to the brakes in your car, bringing you safely to a stop from an otherwise dangerous higher speed. The Sympathetic Nervous System is all about activation, and is comparable to the accelerator in your car. I used to think that one was on and the other one was off, but PVT has made me realise there’s so much more to it. Don’t be daunted by the scientific names, the concepts are simple, yet illuminating.

Polyvagal Theory states there are two branches of the Parasympathetic Nervous System. Both are brakes that slow things down, but they serve two entirely different functions. The Dorsal Vagal Complex concerns itself with immobility, and could be compared to the hand brake in your car. It should really only be applied when your car is already stopped, but can also be applied forcefully in an emergency situation. Your horse uses this brake when he’s standing around dozing, grazing or hanging out with his mates. In those cases, the brake is applied gently. Your horse can also use this brake to go into freeze mode. When your horse becomes highly worried and their other survival options such as fight or flight are not available, or they have tried them and they haven’t worked, they will initiate a freeze response.

The other brake is the Ventral Vagal Complex, which pertains to relaxation brought on by social engagement. It’s about something called attunement which trauma therapist Sarah Schlotte describes as “being seen, being heard, feeling felt, and getting gotten.” Horses naturally share this attunement when in a herd. When this brake is engaged, a horse can be active and have energy, but also not be in a worried state, such as when he is play fighting with his friends. This is the state we’d like to have our horses in when we are riding. Whether you are headed out on the cross country course, chasing a beast in the campdraft arena, or in my case, running wide open towards a sliding stop in the reining arena, your horse should be able to stay physically active while remaining mentally calm and connected to the rider. If we can use the Ventral Vagal brake in our training program, we end up creating a horse who responds to us willingly.

Of course, all this training starts way before you get to riding your horse. We first have to make the horse safe on the ground, and desensitise them to sight, sound and sensation. Horses that don’t receive much desensitising, and have an anxious type of personality, tend to be the ones labelled hot, fractious, or downright dangerous. All dangerous behaviours occur when a horse is in a high state of arousal, their Sympathetic Nervous System running unchecked with no Parasympathetic brake to help bring the horse back down. Many horses like this end up with bigger bits, draw reins, an endless stream of calming supplements, and sometimes even sedation to slow down this activation. These tools are replacements for a faulty Parasympathetic Nervous System. If we can strengthen and train the PNS to easily relax our horse the moment our horses get too uptight or tense, we can bring them back down to the rest and digest state where no dangerous behaviours occur.

Desensitisation Techniques

Whenever we work with our horses we are constantly using some form of brake. I’m going to go through some common, and some not so common, desensitisation techniques and describe which of these brakes is being used. I’m going to talk about different ways of desensitising a horse to a flag (a piece of cloth or plastic bag on a stick), and in this case, we are going to assume the horse is sensitive and a little flighty. I have to add that how the horse has been handled up to this point makes a huge difference. In order to even catch the horse and get the halter on there would have been some form of brake applied, but we will just focus on the desensitisation part.

1. Old School Technique

I’m going to start out old school, really old school, with the old “tie them to a post, spider hobble them, and bag them down” trick. Not used much these days (or at least I certainly hope not), the technique involves tying a horse up with an unbreakable halter, with an unbreakable lead rope, to an unbreakable post, and putting a set of four-way hobbles on them so they can’t move. The technique would then begin by flapping that flag all over them, not stopping no matter what they did. Even when they do stop you keep flapping the flag all over them “for good measure.” The end result is a horse that will stand still while you flap the flag all over them.
When a horse feels rising concern they will search for a friend, they will try to engage that social engagement brake. If that is not available they will go to flight, fight, or freeze mode. As there are no friends in this situation, and the horse is unable to run away from or fight what is happening, they slam on the Dorsal Vagal brake and freeze. The horse is no longer present, they go internal and their body is flooded with chemicals that would allow them to be eaten alive with no sensation of it actually happening. This is also known as Learned Helplessness or Tonic Immobility. While the horse appears calm, they are not. They are beyond fear, beyond reactivity, and are at the ultimate level of shut down. Many times these horses later come out of that state with disastrous consequences.

2. Halter, Lead and Flag

The next type of desensitising I want to discuss is one that I am quite familiar with, as I used this technique for years with great success. This technique works best for horses that may have multiple riders or handlers and just have to do their job. It involves having the horse in a halter and lead, holding the lead with the left hand about half a metre from the halter, with the flag in the right hand. You would bring the flag around towards the near side of the horse and would allow him to move if he was concerned. If he moved I would keep the flag the same distance from him as it was when he first started to move, following him around until he stopped. I would then immediately take the flag away. The flag may have been two metres from the horse before he started to move, maybe one metre, maybe 50cm.

In this method, the horse tries to run away from the flag, but that doesn’t work, so the horse stops into a bit of a freeze. So the hand brake is applied, but not very forcefully because the social engagement brake is also engaged. This application of the social engagement brake happens because as the horse gets concerned about the approaching flag and moves, you don’t bring it any closer but instead just follow him around with it. This gives him a sense of being seen.

The same thing happens when he stops, and you take the flag away. That also communicates that you are aware of what’s going on, as opposed to the previous method of flapping the flag no matter what happens. Taking away the pressure of the flag as the horse stops is also rewarding them for finding the right answer. As with the first method, eventually, the horse will not be concerned about the flag, but in this case, you have built a little bit of trust. However, you can continue to break down this process to become more refined, and more empathetic towards how the horse is feeling.

3. Engagement with the Flag

The next method takes a slightly different approach. It starts off the same, bringing the flag in towards them. If they felt the need to move away I would allow it, but at the same time, I would remove the flag as soon as they began to move. This process communicates to the horse that whenever they begin to be uptight about something, you will be there to help dissipate that tension. You communicated to them that you were aware of their sense of security, and were willing to take the steps needed to make them feel more safe. This engages the social engagement brake and as time goes on they allow the flag to get closer and closer. Usually, this technique replaces fear with curiosity, and they begin to actively seek to engage with the flag.

4. Observe Behaviour

The final technique is even more refined, and from experience, it works the best. In this method, you will closely observe the horse’s eyes, ears and head posture before you do anything with the flag. Once you have that baseline established, you approach with the flag, and watch to see if their eyes stop blinking (as tension rises in horses, their rate of blinking slows or stops), the ears fixate backwards, or the head rises. All these are signs that your horse is heading into freeze or flight mode. Whenever I notice one of these changes I will pause and keep the flag in the same place in relation to their body. I will then wait for some sign of relaxation, such as the return to blinking, their ears changing focus, or their head lowering slightly. As soon as there is some form of relaxation, I will take the flag away. These signs of relaxation are all very subtle. Many times an observer will not notice those little things, and are amazed at how relaxed the horses get just by me “doing nothing.”

What has really happened is you have communicated how aware you are of the small things. This really engages the social engagement brake giving them that sense of “being seen, being heard, feeling felt, and getting gotten” and you have also developed a lot of trust from the horse. That trust will get you through more scary situations than any amount of desensitising ever could.

Being aware how the Parasympathetic Nervous System works allows you to choose which brake you choose to engage. It always helps to remember the saying “obedience is quicker, but connection is better.”

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