We don't know what our horses have been through before we get them unless we are lucky and have bred them, but even then some home bred horses can become shut-down over time.
But the golden question is why?
And unfortunately I can't wave a magic wand and tell you that this is a 1 size fits all solution, because every hors, like every person is completely different.
They carry different genetic and generational emotions and have had different experiences in life.
The things that find shut-down horses have in common, however, is that they have suffered emotional or physical trauma and have been unable to let it go.
The advice of the internet is "to turn that frown upside down, ensure they have a healthy diet, plenty of exercise, and regular social interactions" - but if, for example they have a core emotional trauma around leaving their dam, another horse may very well trigger this trauma and the horse may become aggressive towards it's company.
Whether they are missing their dam, field mates, they have been mistreated or are missing a previous owner - or even a current owner if that owner is incapacitated, it all has the same effect.
They, unlike us humans, can't choose to numb using substances (although that is what I feel 'vices' are when they appear) but they can choose to check out be numb.
But numbness doesn't always look the same, it can appear as aggression towards other horses or people, laziness, withdrawn or just not interested in things that would previously excite.
One might even argue that a vast majority of 'very well behaved' horses are checked out, made to comply in their past and so continue complying.
They may seem distant and on-edge and struggle to relax and just 'not quite right'.
The knock on effect of this is that the emotions, being attached to an organ, start to up or down regulate the organ and the organ, being attached to muscles and joints means that we can visibly see in the body the pain the horse is carrying.
So now we maybe have a mare who is possibly extremely 'hormonal' and requires regumate every month at vast expense so she cane rideable and bearable. I get it! I had one in my past...
But now, I understand that the emotions related to the ovaries are:
Suppressed Feelings
Absence of Thinking & Feeling
Rejection
Emotionally Restrained
Lifeless
Dissipated
Lust
Loss by death
Repressed
Mental Inertia
Apathy
Rejection
To me, this is why alot of astute horsemen and women will see their horse is not quite right and consult a vet to be told the horse is sound.
But knowing their horse, they still can see that there is something amiss but do not know where to turn.
I know that in my past I had this issue and because the vet said my horse was fine, I continued to ride him, ignoring my inner voice, thinking "What do I know? I am sure it isn't quite right" then down the line the horse became properly lame to a point a vet could diagnose a ruptured tendon or x,y,z and I then knew what was wrong.
Was it what was really wrong? I know it was the end result, but if I had been able to intervene and help my horse with the symptoms I had seen all along - his emotional state and things like lines appearing in his muscles that were not always there - would the end results have been different?
To me, the toll of having an emotionally shut-down horse is so much more than I could ever imagine and of the utmost importance to look at, which is why I always include emotional release work with every horse I work with.
Pretty much every horse has been forcibly weaned, moved home and the vast majority of males have been castrated and these 3 things, aside from anything else that happens are so important to check in on and see if there is an e
motional trauma stored that the horse has been carrying throughout it's life.
This is one of the reasons I really love working with horses remotely around the world - I can be a vessel that they can utilise to release things that the
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