Emotional Resilience

How do we build emotional resilience and confidence with a horse with R+ and food reinforcement? Many people struggle with horses who are insecure around food reinforcers, resulting in frustration, overarousal, and even sometimes dangerous behaviors around food.

Let's talk specifically about how we build our horse up to not just be able to use food in training, but to build their emotional comfort around valuable resources. All of our horses are rescues, some come from situations with great resource insecurity, but even horses who have not had an issue can be naturally insecure in their resources and overly defensive or anxious around food.

First we need to ensure the horse has access to forage 24/7. Horses are designed to trickle feed, meaning a little goes in continuously all the time. They aren't designed for meals. If they spend more than 3 hours without forage moving through their gut they begin to feel like they are "starving" even if they are obese. So a horse with resource insecurities needs to never be without forage. Slow feed low NSC forage if your horse is overweight, but never let them be without. A good gut supplement or checking for ulcers can also help, often horses with resource anxiety have gut troubles.

Next always train while they are full. I like to give my horses a bucket or low NSC chopped hay with some of the carbsafe pellets i use in training mixed in. I'll groom them and spend some snuggle time while they eat. Then train when they are full. It also helps to have hay or even this bucket of chopped hay available while you are training. If your training becomes less than stellar the horse has an option to communicate this other than frustration.

When training feed large handfuls of low calories, safe feed. This can be more chopped hay, hay pellets, or carb safe pellets. Good chew times will satiate the horse while training and ease the building arousal. As the horse becomes comfortable we can ease to a more convenient reinforcement. We also need to make sure our rate of reinforcement matches the horse's current speed. Make sure to give the horse effective ways to maintain a high rate of reinforcement and don't push for duration early in training.

Finally, use enrichment to build the horse's resilience and comfort with problem solving and working for food. Erichment puzzle feeders build a horse's confidence with new toys in their surroundings and their ability to sort out difficult challenges to get food. Without the human pressure. This actually teaches them how to problem solve and how to emotionally regulate through the learning process.

Why spend all this work to deal with a food issue instead of just not using food? Food is a valuable training tool we want to be able to use, but safely and kindly, if the horse is over aroused by it, it can quickly become coercive or overshadowing. We also have to face the fact that our horse has a very real emotional problem. Ignoring it by simply throwing away the food is not going to fix their emotional state or ability to regulate their emotions. This problem will creep into your training all the time and interfere with regular life until you fix it. Make your horse feel safe and confident around food.