Let's take for example a horse who is learning how to be brave around plastic bags. Cole, my lesson horse, has always had a phenomenal sense of self preservation. He is a steady instructor now, but when he was a youngster the sound of a plastic sandwich bag crinkling was enough to launch him to the far end of the arena in terror. In the context of this diagram, the sound of the plastic was in the purple zone. It would push him past his sensitivity threshold and into the fight/flight reaction. No good learning is accomplished past the sensitivity threshold. The body produces so much adrenaline, cortisol, and other stress induced brain chemicals that the horse only concludes is that the situation was very dangerous and scary.
There are several different ways to get a horse over something scary that is way out of his comfort zone. One method is called "flooding" in behavioral psychology terms. For a human this would be like putting a person afraid of snakes in a locked room with them and leaving him there until he feels like he's not afraid anymore.
In horse training vernacular, flooding is called "sacking out". It involves some variation of overwhelming the horse with the scary stimulus while not allowing him to escape until he is exhausted and gives up. In our plastic bag example this could look like tying the horse with a halter that won't break, to a solid hitch rail that is immoveable, then rubbing him all over with plastic bags until he no longer reacts. At that point the human usually concludes that the horse is bag-proof. Another setup might look like tying plastic bags to his tail and leaving him until he calms down. Some horses tolerate this reasonably well and actually are ok with the bag after a session or two in this manner.
Unfortunately, with this technique it is also quite common for a horse to injure himself in an effort to escape and survive what to him feels like a life threatening situation. Tying him solid actually does a disservice to a horse, because a horse's muscles are so strong that if the equipment doesn't break during his struggling, his muscles can actually contract so hard that they break off pieces of bone where they attach. At that point the horse may either stop struggling or go entirely into what I call self-destruct mode. I often have horses come in for training or rehab with injuries like this, who then also associate humans with fear and pain.
To return to our diagram, this flooding technique sends the horse past the sensitivity threshold in hopes that he will realize plastic bags are not scary. Because this can backfire, convincing the horse that plastic bags are not only scary but but do hurt, I like to desensitize a horse using a different technique.
Since Cole was never going to go near a plastic bag if I let him stay within his comfort zone, my goal was to get him to periodically go from his comfortable zone into his uncomfortable zone for a little while, then retreat back to his comfort zone before he gets tense enough to move past his sensitivity threshold. One way I did this was by only feeding him out of plastic bags. The bag was still scary, but less scary because it was delivering food.
At first Cole would get uncomfortable at the sound of the bag, even though it contained breakfast. He wasn't panicked and trying to jump out of his paddock (purple zone), but he was definitely uncomfortable (red zone). Once the food was delivered and the bag had retreated, he eventually went back to relaxed and eating (yellow zone).
It's worth noting that despite being incredibly food motivated, Cole was terrified of his food for the first few days and actually skipped meals at the beginning of the process. As we persisted, though, he gradually returned to the comfort zone more quickly. The learning occurs in the transition from the red zone to the yellow zone, when he goes from being uncomfortable to comfortable. Making positive associations with scary stimuli is one way to do this.
Another way to get the horse to be braver around plastic bags would be to use an "approach and retreat" method of desensitization. This technique could look like a loose horse in a round pen with a human holding a plastic bag on a stick (yellow comfort zone). The person would bring the bag closer to the horse, causing him to become nervous and perhaps lift his head and snort (red uncomfortable zone). The person then pulls the bag away from the horse, allowing him to relax (return to yellow comfort zone). As this is repeated, the horse begins to realize that the bag is not dangerous, and eventually overcomes the fear of plastic.
The timing of the approach and retreat is very important. The person must be able to read the horse's body language and recognize when she has pushed the horse just into the uncomfortable zone, and be able to retreat before the horse crosses the sensitivity threshold into fight or flight. This ability to read the horse's body language correctly and respond accordingly with the timing of her own movements is often referred to as "feel".
I use a combination of techniques to teach a horse to be brave. Which system I would recommend to owners varies depending on the horse, how sensitive he is, the human, and how accurately she can respond to the communication from the horse.
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