Many people believe in the practice of desensitizing a horse through a process known as “sacking out,” which involves the repeated or continual application of a pressure, usually until the horse stops overtly reacting to the pressure and often even beyond that point. While the goal is to teach the horse to be less reactive, this form of desensitizing puts the horse in a state animal behaviourists call “learned helplessness.” What this means is that an animal forced to endure a stressor essentially gives up after a while, then doesn’t try to flee or fight a similar pressure in the future because they have learned that they have no control over what happens to them.
While you can certainly teach a horse to put up with many forms of pressure through such techniques, I find that horses trained this way will often either shut down mentally or maintain a degree of internalized worry that is likely to manifest in some other way. That worry can come out when least expected, and may be why some supposedly calm, well-trained horses appear to suddenly blow up “out of the blue.”
Because my goal is to achieve a partnership based on connection and meeting the horse’s needs, I take a different approach to helping a horse learn how to deal with pressures. I build the horse’s confidence by showing him that he can control virtually any stressful situation by staying mentally present with me and remaining soft in his responses. Once a horse believes that he can control pressure, he becomes calmer, less reactive and more able to listen to my requests, regardless of what is going on around us.