When I am off to a new Trust Technique consultation, I never know what to expect. The caller, a nice, woman named Rebecca explained that she would be interested in my help with her new, six year old horse, Ali. She was hoping I could help her settle him a bit more and help them improve their connection. She wanted him to be her next dressage partner. She described him as flighty, unsettled, sometimes running from something as benign as a leaf. She explained that she had started all her horses and wished to do one more. She had bought Ali unbacked from the farm he was born and raised on. He is a Frisian Arab cross. He was shown in halter classes and had done well. Rebecca explained that he had been almost exclusively kept indoors in a stall and turned out in an enclosed arena. She suspected his flighty behavior was due to his breeding with the Arab blood and also the fact that he had not yet in his life seen very much. Ali was offered to Rebecca at a price she could not refuse. She liked his underlying personality, which seemed playful and friendly, so she bought him as an unbacked six year old in November of 2023. She arranged for him to go straight from the farm she purchased him from to a trainer she admires and his assistant. She left him there for three months, and they did some groundwork with him. Rebecca flew out a couple of times to work with the trainer and Ali. On the last visit she backed him, and she was able to put on the first couple of rides. He seemed to take the riding in stride and never offered a buck. He still hasn’t. In March, he was shipped to her farm. She has been riding him since and was just beginning to canter him. She told me sometimes he was starting to get stubborn and was being cheeky and kicking out when she was asking for the canter. She also told me he was a bit underweight, did not eat great, had trouble getting fit, had loose stools, and was having a difficult time building muscle and getting a nice top line. Her biggest complaint, however, was his spookiness and their connection. She felt that when he got nervous about something, he disconnected from her. Being a large horse, this was a scary feeling. He could run her over on the ground or perhaps take off with her under saddle, although he never had. It was early June when I first went to see Ali and Rebecca. I met Rebecca first outside the stable. She seemed calm and friendly, and she had a bunch of large, sweet-natured dogs around her. She immediately did not strike me as the kind of high thinker who would make her animals on edge and nervous. The dogs were friendly and comfortable with people. I walked into the very clean, well ventilated stable, with a bunch of ceiling fans whirring. I saw two calm horses at rest in their stalls on the right side of the aisle, back hooves cocked, lower lips dipping with relaxation. At the end of the aisle on the left side, I saw Ali. His head was held high towards the ceiling like a giraffe. His ears were flipped around backward. He had a frozen wide open eye with a heavy V-shaped crease above it. His fascia was pulled so tight he looked shrink-wrapped, and there were dents in his neck, muzzle, and flanks where everything on his body had been pulled in so tight from stress. Here was a horse whose nervous system response seemed to be stuck in a perpetual fear response. When I walked into his stall and stood next to him for the first time, my body felt like it had been given a massive shot of caffeine. I was picking up on his nervous energy. He circled. He raised his head to its maximum limit. He stared with flipped back ears and tense body into space. Sometimes, he circled and looked out the window with pricked ears and a nervous expression as if something out beyond the window was of concern. Sometimes, he would come back to himself and lower his head with a friendly sniff of acknowledgment. His eyes would blink a little, but then he would return quickly to his wide-opened eyed stare and high neck. He was disassociating from us, his environment, and himself. His nervous system was locked in a sympathetic freeze response, not unlike a human suffering from PTSD. Because he had been operating from this sympathetically dominated, autonomic response for some time, his fascia and muscles were contracted. No doubt his heart rate was higher than it should be. I could feel this in my own body when I stood beside him. I knew the Trust Technique could help Ali. It is a wonderful mindfulness method that helps an animal reset its nervous system. It works on the relationship between the owner and their animal, recognizing the feeling relationship. It understands that people and animals share feelings, and it provides a tool for the owner to take responsibility for the shared feeling and bring their own mind down to a peaceful state where their nervous system switches into a parasympathetic response (also known as the rest and digest state), with lowered heart rate and blood pressure. They can then share this feeling with their animal at the animal’s own pace. To share a peaceful space with an animal at their own pace means that the human must listen with eyes and ears and feel why the animal can not be peaceful. By doing this type of “listening,” which we call mindful regard in the Trust Technique, we can make an animal feel seen, felt, and understood. This feeling makes them feel secure, and through this work of alternating between the peaceful state and listening at precise times, they gain confidence in their surroundings, in their owners, and most importantly, in themselves. As a daily practice between an owner and their animal, it really promotes trust and confidence and leads to a much deeper connection. It also restores the nervous system to a better state where there is more heart rate variability, which means the horse can increase heart rate when under a true threat but also slow it back down into a rest and digest state as soon as the threat has passed. When the nervous system is working properly, the horse can dump his stress and relax, which means the fascia, muscles, nerves, and organs can also relax. When a horse is in a panic or stuck in the past from a traumatic experience, they have real trouble evaluating what is authentic and, therefore, can not learn new things or reevaluate their situation. They can become stuck in an automatic fear response (sympathetic, freeze, autonomic nervous system response) when nothing that is fearful is happening to them in the moment. To help horses like this, we need to bring their minds down enough so that they can understand that, in the moment, they are fine, and then they can start to rewire their brain and nervous system to respond differently. It’s like rebooting them. Over time, the nervous system heals as they gain back their confidence in themselves, their surroundings, and in the person who has helped them to be less afraid. Since peace and unpeace can not be in the same place, most horses who have not suffered any traumatic experiences will go through a fairly typical process when unloading their unpeace with the Trust Technique. They will first lick and sometimes chew a little. That’s a sign they are picking up on the feeling of peace being offered. Then, as the unpeace comes to the surface, they may scratch (they often get itchy), move around, paw, try to mouth things, nip, and pin their ears. Eventually, when they are ready, their heads will lower, their eyes will start to close, male horses will dangle their penis from the sheath, and all of them yawn as the feeling of peace starts to influence their nervous system, and they release the tension they are holding on to (parasympathetic, rest and digest, autonomic nervous system response). Not Ali. When I offered Ali the feeling of peace, he circled his stall once or twice, sniffed me, and the camera Bernie was filming him through the stall with. He then stared at something in the distance out his stall window that worried him. He moved as far away from the window as possible, licked and chewed a little, and fell sound asleep with his head still high in the air and his eyes frozen wide open. He kept ahold of all his tension except his lower lip, which drooped. You could tell by his breathing and the expressions that came across his face that he was in a dream state. He stayed just like this for close to 10 minutes but came out of it when I whispered to Rebecca to watch Ali’s face. I wanted her to see his expression, which was reacting to something unpleasant he was reliving from his past. He woke and did an enormous whole-body stretch and went right back to dreaming, with open eyes, a high head position, and still a ton of tension throughout his body and face. At that moment, I realized that he was totally sleep-deprived, that the sympathetic branch of his nervous system was stuck on like a seized-up emergency brake, that he had also activated his parasympathetic branch, and that he was responding to the feeling I was offering by falling asleep and relaxing his lower lip. His upper lip was still pulled in very tight against his upper teeth. In the Trust Technique, we judge thinking levels (relaxation) on a scale from zero to ten. A zero is a complete dreamlike state; a one is a head-lowering, eyes-going sleepy state; a five is alert but neutral, a good learning state and a 10 is a full-on panic. Ali was on two levels at the same time, both a 0 and an 8. His mind was in a dream state (rest and digest), but his body was still stuck in a state of high vigilance. With a horse caught like this between states, one must be very careful not to startle them. The body is already in a high fight-or-flight state, so if they were to wake up suddenly, they could become very reactive. I watched Ali sleep for quite a while longer, alternating between offering more of the peaceful feeling and observing the tension in his body and the expressions crossing his face. Eventually, he shifted a little, his head got a little lower, and he did some more licking, all good signs that he was coming a little more out of his freeze response. I taught Rebecca how to deliver the feeling of peace to Ali and how to mindfully regard him so that she could keep working with him for the next couple of weeks to lower his thinking levels and start the work to restore his nervous system. I advised her to work with him during a quiet time of his day when the horses were usually resting. I suggested she start in a place where there was not a lot of extra stimulus, like his stall. I explained that Ali needs daily work of the Trust Technique like a person under severe stress can be helped by a daily meditation practice. Ali needs to decompress, and the Trust Technique can help him do that. I explained that Ali reacts like he is living in a haunted house; he is so tightly wound that the littlest things can make him jump and overreact. I explained that his nervous system was so stuck in a sympathetic state that he couldn’t sleep because he had too much adrenaline running through his system. I explained that he does not eat well because, in this state, he does not even feel hungry and that he can’t get fit because there is no room for his lungs to breathe. Most of all, Ali needed to feel relaxed enough to be able to sleep. Since his arrival at her farm, Rebecca had never seen him lying down or any signs that he had, and this is what I suspected. We made a plan for Rebecca to work with Ali, practicing the Trust Technique every day, and I would return in two weeks to see where things were. I checked in with Rebecca after the first week had passed. Ali was eating better. He had normal poops in his stall, which he had not before, and she had a feeling that he was a little calmer overall. There was still no sign that he was lying down to sleep. At the end of two weeks, I returned to see Ali. I walked into Rebecca’s barn and could tell the moment I saw Ali that things were going well with their practice. His eyes were moving around a lot more in his head, and his face no longer looked frozen. His neck was being carried a little lower, and some of the dents in his neck and muzzle had gotten shallower. Rebecca told me that, indeed, things were going better. He had been yawning a lot when they were doing the Trust Technique. He was, however, still going into the wide-eyed trance when they were doing the Trust Technique. He was also eating better and seemed calmer in his stall overall. Still, there was no sign that he was lying down. I watched Ali and Rebecca practicing the Trust Technique in Ali’s stall, then suggested I work with him in the aisle of the barn for a while. There would be slightly more stimulus, and we could start to carry the feeling of peace and regard out into a new area to help Ali get more comfortable in his surroundings. Upon working in the aisle of the barn with Ali, I became aware of the fact that Ali wished to be moved into the stall next to the alpha horse instead of his own, which was alone and separated by the aisle. He kept staring into the stall while I worked with him. I remembered that James French, the founder of the Trust Technique, had told us that when in regard the information from the horse’s behavior always means something. I knew right away that the message Ali was sending me was that he would be able to be a whole lot more peaceful if he could live in this stall next to the alpha horse. Perhaps he would finally lay down and sleep. I asked Rebecca if she would consider switching Ali and the horse that occupied that stall. She said that would be fine with her if I thought it would help Ali. Upon the exchange of this request, Ali started giving off the biggest yawn releases I’d seen him do. Two days later, I received an excited text that Ali had hay in his tail, and Rebecca suspected he’d lay down to sleep. The news after a week was that he was definitely making progress. After two weeks, the news from Rebecca was that he was getting frisky when she was trying to lead him out to the pasture. I told her that was wonderful news even if it seemed worse to her, as this was his system starting to unfreeze and feel. He was getting sleep. He was eating better. He was likely going to be more of a handful for a while as his nervous system was waking back up and unfreezing. He was going to probably get more energetic and expressive before he could become peaceful and calm.
Each time I have seen Ali, he has been doing better and better. It is such a joy to see him mending. Over time, I have learned more of his story. I learned that he had really not been exposed to anything as a youngster, and when the old owners needed to show him or control him, they had done it with drugs, which probably scared and confused him and did not allow his nervous system to develop properly. I pictured how it must have been for him to leave his original farm alone and off the drugs that had sedated him before when things were new. He had not learned any coping skills. Taken away from the horses and everything he knew. He spent a few months at one farm without really settling in, then off to another, with no other familiar horse friends to help him control his fears. I can now totally understand why he had become so spooky, sleep deprived, and insecure, with a body and brain so full of tension. It is a testament to his kind spirit that he held all this tension inside him instead of really exploding and hurting people. I am so glad that Rebecca found me and that Ali and Rebecca have been able to practice the Trust Technique. Ali will heal, and a beautiful bond of trust, confidence, and connection will be built between them. With each visit, I see more healing.
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