It’s the day after Independence Day in the US, and a lot of us were sitting with our anxious animals while fireworks went off around our homes and barns. I used to enjoy fireworks a lot more when I didn’t have any worries about a horse running through a fence or stall guard in panic at the loud noises and bright flashes. Thankfully a lot of the horses at the barns I go to are decently ok around loud noises, or at least ok enough not to run through solid objects.
As with most stressful activities, the day of the event is not the day to start planning. Whether it’s fireworks, trailer loading, or vet visits, there are some activities which we know will occur at some point in the horse’s time with us. These are the things we can help the horse to understand well before the actual event. Even if we can’t mimic it exactly, there will be small details that we can get the horse more comfortable with. The more details we can include, the less is brand new on the day of.
For example, if your horse needs a vet visit to treat a wound, does your horse know the steps to a sedative or local anesthetic injection? Have they seen a human with medical gloves on before? Have they ever smelled isopropyl, iodine, or other wound wash? Have they heard the crinkle of sterile wrappers being opened next to them? How are they with someone feeling around for a vein on their neck, or putting a bandage on them? All of these things are fairly easy to replicate with little cost. Even an injection can be mimicked with a ballpoint pen with a cap on it. Short of inserting the needle into their neck, every step in the process of sedating can be replicated for the horse, introduced slowly and one at a time with lots of positive experiences built in. These same individual pieces of an experience exist for things like trailer loading, loud noises, shoeing, or any other activity which would be stressful if introduced all at once.
Try this activity: get a piece of paper and at the top write a stressful event that you know your horse will have to go through at some point. Then, below it, write down as many things as you can think of that your horse would see while that activity is happening. Then list everything they would hear. Then smell, touch, and taste. Once you have written down all five senses worth of input, next to each write down something you could do to introduce just that one item to your horse. Then, pick one or two to introduce to your horse this week to see what they think about it. If they get nervous, that is something to work on with them prior to the next time you need to do that stressful activity. Maybe next year the fireworks won’t be so bad, if they’ve started from hearing it played on your phone at one tenth the volume and gradually worked up to it. There’s a whole year to prepare! Best wishes for less stressful events in the future.
Maeve Birch Home 