Titration And Pendulation Working With Horses

Working with Finn and haltering.

Two important concepts to think about when introducing something new and potentially frightening to a horse are titration and pendulation. Both terms were coined by Peter Levine who developed Somatic Sensing, which has become a popular therapy for helping people overcome trauma. Titration, when applied to horses, is a way of introducing something scary or novel to a horse in a piece-by-piece way that will not overwhelm him. Pendulation is the concept of moving between a feeling of activation and one of safety to broaden the horse’s comfort zone.
The following video gives a nice little example of both titration and pendulation as it applies to horse training. In this video, I am working with a previously wild Mustang named REIN’s Infinite Hope. Fin for short. I am helping him to get more comfortable with haltering.
You can see in this video that I have broken the haltering process into small pieces so as not to overwhelm him. Fin is not comfortable with having someone stand at his side and stroke him, so I do that for just a moment, keeping him within his tolerance. I step forward to engage him. I am only asking him to stick his nose in the noseband of the halter and allow me to rub the sides of his nose with it. This is enough for now. When I started with Fin, I only rubbed him with the halter. Then, when he was fine with that, I asked him to put just the tip of his nose in it. Now he puts his whole nose in the nose band and lets me rub the sides of his face. He is not yet entirely comfortable with this step, so for now, we will just do this step until he gains more confidence, and then we will continue slowly. This is the titration.
Notice how Fin puts his nose in the halter for a while and then withdraws it. I allow him to pull his nose out of the halter and go back to where he feels safe. He then tries again, putting his nose in the halter, by allowing him to remove his nose whenever he wants. I am helping him to build his trust and confidence in the haltering process. This is an example of pendulation. Going slowly and using these concepts in your training can make all the difference.