Separation anxiety is probably the most common issue people deal with when it comes to working with horses. Sometimes it shows up as a horse being stuck by the arena gate. Sometimes it rears its head when we remove a friend from the paddock. Other times it’s when a horse leaves a friend in the paddock.
It can be seen in horses grieving for the loss of a friend and it can be seen when moving to a new herd. It can lead to a lack of forward or bucking or rearing or trailer loading problems or mental distraction or crookedness or bit chomping or whatever.
It has various triggers with different forms of expression on a scale from hardly noticeable to seriously dangerous. But what is separation anxiety?
Separation anxiety is a loss of feeling secure and safe. We often think of it as anxiety from separating a horse from the herd or another horse. But it can be just separating a horse from whatever is helping it feel safe and secure. This can be its environment like a home paddock or a familiar arena or a new rider or the horse trailer it has become accustomed to.
What does it mean when we ride a horse down the road and it wants to go back to its friends? What does it mean when every time we ride past the arena gate, our horse slows down and drifts towards the gate? What does it mean when we take a horse away and the horse left behind has a meltdown?
It means we have not yet become a reliable and trusting friend to our horse. We either do not have their trust and confidence or we have failed to instill self-confidence. It means that our horse does not see us as the solution to their trouble, but more likely the cause of their anxiety.
Separation anxiety is a barometer of the strength and quality of our relationship. The greater the anxiety the more work we have to do.
Most people see separation anxiety as a problem in itself rather than a symptom of much bigger issues.
A lot of training is focused on addressing separation anxiety by making the horse’s idea more troubling to a horse than our idea. For example, when a horse wants to drift to the arena gate and avoid the opposite end of the arena, trainers will often make the horse work harder near the gate and give them more rest at the furthest end of the arena. This will achieve the desired result of stopping the horse from being resistant to going to the opposite end of the arena. However, it does nothing to address the underlying issue of our relationship. It only focuses on making being by the gate harder. Obedience is the winner and the relationship is the loser.
Separation anxiety is not a problem that needs fixing. It’s the relationship that needs fixing. It’s the trust and confidence in being with us that needs fixing. Any approach that does not include building trust and confidence in us and eventually in the horse itself is a bandaid, not a solution. Separation anxiety is an important metric we can use to gauge our relationship.
What is separation anxiety?