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My First Barn Club! Fear in Horses...

Lani Gelera
Nov 1, 2015
3 min read

I am always looking for new and fun ways to learn more about horses hands on and get involved in our local horse community. So naturally, I was very excited to attend my first Barn Club today!

Barn Clubs are like Book Clubs but better. They are private educational groups that meet once a month (or on a regular basis) and are for anyone interested in horse training and behaviour.

Today's Barn Club was hosted by Lauren Fraser at Good Horsemandship in the Upper Squamish Valley. Lauren's facility at Rojo Pez Ranch was the perfect place to hold an informational session under cover and use her horses as live examples. The cost to join the club is a drop-in fee of $25.00

Lauren Fraser is a Certified Horse Behaviour Consultant who offers relationship-based horse training that blends the art of horsemanship with behavioral science and the practical application of learning theory.

There was a great turn out, (13 people) to this first club meeting on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Lauren warmly welcomed the local horse folk with apple cider and candy treats. Afterall, It was the afternoon before All Hallow's Eve.

The topic of this club meeting was Fear in Horses. Having ridden, and fallen off many horses myself that often spook at puddles, plastic bags and chipmunks, I wanted to understand the warning signs and what I can do to reduce the fear factor in horses.

My Barn Club Notes:

First step in dealing with Fear in Horses is to recognize the signs thru a horses facial expressions and body language. Common sign of fear to look for are:

Tension in facial muscles
Bolting all the sudden
Snorting thru nose
Freezing in place
Eyes stop blinking
You see the sclera of their eye
Ears pricked in direction of scary thing
Horse seems to grow taller

The 4 F's of Fear are: Fight, Flight, Fidget and Freeze

Understand - Horses don't learn when they are frightened. They are too busy thinking about what ever is scaring them to comprehend or learn what you are trying to teach them.

The analogy Lauren used - If she were to bring her friend Dana in to a haunted house and Dana was frightened of everything in the house, it woud then be very difficult to teach Dana how to knit because she would be focused on all the frightening things in the house and unable to learn at that time.

There are certain training methods that can make fear worse in horses:

Punishment Based Training - Make the wrong thing hard, the right thing easy
Not recognizing that the horse is afraid while training.

What type of training methods can reduce fear?

Reinforcement Based Training
Recongnizing and Reducing the fear

How can we reduce fear in horses?

Habituation - Getting used to it.
Systematic Desensitization - exposing the horse to progressively more anxiety-provoking stimuli and teaching them to relax.
Counter Conditioning - Changing the emotional response the fearful thing by making them happy/relaxed around the thing that they are afraid of.

After reviewing all the notes, Lauren showed us an example signs of fear with 2 of her horses. And then she showed us examples of how we can help our horse overcome their fears in a trusting postive way using both systematic desensitization and counter conditioning.

I really enjoyed my first Barn Club with Lauren and I look forward to meeting with the local horse folk again next month when we'll be discussing the best way to train your horse to trailer with ease.

Horse Cents encourages ongoing and continuing education in understanding horses, their behaviour and how to best train them. By learning more together we build our collective knowledge and stregthen our horse loving community.

For more information on Barn Clubs, Lauren Fraser, Good Horsemanship and Fear in Horses, please follow the links and leave a comment below.