Learning and Choices: How To Charm The Snake

It’s evening and the horses are eating their dinners. The sky is gorgeous with clouds still rosy from sunset, their glow almost obscuring a thin crescent moon. The bay and chestnut and gray noses are buried in green alfalfa hay, the sounds of contented munching audible from where I stand. Suddenly all the horses’ heads rise in unison at a noise from the scraggly, stunted juniper tree nearby. Something is in there!

Foxy twirls and bolts away, snorting and wide-eyed. Koko takes a few steps towards the bush, his nostrils flared. The other horses, all well away from the action, stand like statues, watching the juniper intently.

Jess, in her pen closest to the monster, spins to run but she has nowhere to go. She heads away at full speed towards the steel fence panel and I hold my breath, but she slides to a stop and rolls back to her pile of hay, then back to the fence again. The colt, head held up high, nose in the air, runs mindlessly next to his foster mother – he’s going wherever she goes, just as fast, just as far. Jess finally slides to a stop and freezes in place, muscles quivering, her attention focused totally on the bush, to the spot where the monster will burst from.

My dog, Hobo, steps out of the bush, panting, a smile on his face. He’s missed catching the pesky ground squirrel, but I can see he thinks it was by just a whisker. I shake my head, glad I wasn’t sitting on Jess or Foxy when Hobo went hunting.

The Reptile Mind is a good thing for a horse, in that it automatically and instantly takes control of his thinking mind and his body when immediate response can literally make the difference between life and death – those times when pausing for thought can get a horse eaten. However, when working with your horse, sometimes the things his Reptile Mind reacts to may not really be a danger at all. The result can be a very bad thing, indeed.

The simplest incidents can trigger a horse’s Reptile Mind – it could be the flapping of a loose piece of plastic, putting on a raincoat, a log alongside the trail, a dog running out from under a bush. Obviously, not everything that sets off Reptile Mind is sudden – a horse can panic just from being pushed to get in a trailer, or, in the colt’s case the other week, needing to jump out of the one that he walked into himself.

The same incident can elicit different reactions in the horses. In the case of Hobo in the bush, Koko, by biology, cannot just turn and run away – it is his job as a stallion to defend the mares. Foxy, timid and reactive by nature, is the first to flee and to go the farthest. The other mares stand and wait because their lead mare, Su, is unconcerned. Jess is closest to the juniper tree where the monster is, and, new to the herd and separated from them at dinner time, can’t rely on the lead mare. She’s trapped and wants to escape, like Foxy. The colt has no choice – he is young enough that he must follow his foster mother when it comes to things like danger.

To flee or not to flee…

We all know our minds operate on the conscious as well as the unconscious level. Fear experienced on the conscious level is learned fear. For example, you fear putting your finger in a flame because you’ve learned by sorry experience that it will hurt a lot. Your conscious mind has accessed memories of the pain from being burned in the past, along with the negative emotions the pain elicited. The negative emotions elicit fear. Now your fear keeps you from putting your finger in the flame so you won’t be hurt again.

The unconscious mind is the province of the Reptile Mind (limbic system), which causes you to jerk your finger out of the flame when you feel pain - an involuntary physiological reaction. In addition to jerking your finger from the pain source, your limbic system also stores the negative emotion associated with the memory of experience you just had. Your thinking mind will use this in the future in the form of fear.

For horses, anything that is unknown or unidentifiable must be considered dangerous and therefore fearsome – this is a hard-wired survival strategy for prey animals that keeps them alive. And of course, situations that remind a horse of those that have been dangerous in the past are fearful, as well. Sufficient fear triggers the Reptile Mind, involuntarily throwing the body into immediate reaction so it will survive the danger – even when the danger is not identified (or identifiable).

Yet the same danger may not trigger a reflex survival response in different horses, or even the same horse at different times. This is because of differing fear thresholds in each horse - a kind of biological set-point beyond which a system cannot handle any further input. On one side of the set-point the conscious mind operates, on the other, the reflex or Reptile Mind. The threshold or sensitivity of the set-point is dependent upon experience/memory, hardwiring, hormones, excitatory or calming chemicals, and various other factors present in the body.

When your horse’s Reptile Mind reacts to a situation, certain physiological events occur, e.g. freezing in place, rapid heartbeat, increased respiration. Stress hormones and other chemicals flood the body and the horse is propelled, willy-nilly, to action. The set-point for initiation of flight-or-fight behavior has been triggered. It is important to remember that once the limbic system takes over, the reasoning, rational mind does not function. There is no choice when it comes to survival response.

The memory of a situation coupled with negative emotion (fear) will cause the same physical response in the body as actual danger – the same rapid heartbeat, increased respiration, etc. Reptile Mind, with no direct connection to the world (the sensory input of sight, sound, smell, taste, touch are not available to the limbic system) cannot differentiate between actual danger and the negative emotion associated with memory of danger (fear), but it will still trigger to the physical fear response, the raised heartbeat and respiration, the flood of chemicals in the body. Fear is no different to Reptile Mind than the real deal so that the end result is the same – the set-point of the fear threshold is tipped.

Charming the Reptile Mind

Ideally you want your horse to have more positive emotions (since they do not rouse the snake) and fewer unknowns to deal with in his daily experience. But in fact, you cannot guarantee that ideal environment for your horse. In real life, the snake is charmed – Reptile Mind is kept out of the picture - by raising the fear threshold, that is, changing the sensitivity of the set-point so that it takes a higher level of stress (physical or emotional input) to create the triggering fear.

The two systems – the unconscious mind (Reptile Mind) and the conscious (thinking) mind work as an efficient either-or system. The unconscious mind takes care of imminent danger, the conscious mind everything else involving voluntary actions. Although the Reptile mind cannot be contacted directly, the conscious mind can have an effect on it. If this wasn’t possible, we all would be at the mercy of the Reptile Mind at all times – we could never learn the difference between what is safe and what is truly dangerous because our Reptile Mind would be “on” most of the time, meaning we’d have no time for conscious mind to operate – to think!.

Learning is the key to keeping the Reptile Mind from taking over. A horse can learn to tolerate almost anything that would normally trigger Reptile Mind. Horses can be used reliably on the battlefield even with the smell of blood, the sounds of explosions and the pain of being wounded, and they can enthusiastically chase after a polo ball even with polo sticks swinging around their faces and occasionally smacking their bodies and legs. Buggy horses in cities ignore honking horns, squealing brakes, speeding vehicles, pedestrians that may dart in front of their faces. This is simply because familiarity, just as with positive emotion, does not cause the stress response in the body and the Reptile Mind response is not triggered.

A horse will learn from everything around it – from his mother, his immediate herd, other horses, his environment and from the humans he interacts with. He has no reason not to want to accept anything a human offers – as long as the Reptile Mind is not roused.

Early handling of foals works because a foal’s conscious mind is essentially a tabula rasa – a blank slate – that you can put anything you want in because nothing, other than instinct, is in there yet. Teach a foal early and work with him often and he is trained for life – for good or bad.

Older horses can be taught anything as well, but if they have low fear thresholds, their set-points must be raised, and this must be done while avoiding rousing the Reptile Mind. Older horses have established memories that will have been learned from all the same sources as a foal, but these memories, older and now established over time, will have more potency.

Charming the Reptile Mind involves both proactive measures and remedial ones in your horse’s life. Proactive measures keep your horse’s experiences positive and avoid the unexpected whenever possible. Remedial measures raise his set-point when the Reptile Mind has reacted, as it inevitably will. Charming the Reptile Mind is actually simple, but it isn’t necessarily easy to implement - particularly if some of the essential factors are not considered.

Next: Herd dynamics, for better or worse.

Learning and Choices: Avoiding the Reptile Mind

The “Reptile Mind” (limbic system) is a set of brain structures that support a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, long term memory, smell and automatic processes in the body. This system, which manages “fight or flight” chemicals, is considered a more primitive part of the brain, since common ancestors of both reptiles and mammals had well developed limbic systems.

The Reptile Mind makes choices for us. It provides a “no brainer” immediate response to danger – survival reflex – that automatically affects the endocrine and the autonomic nervous systems so that there is minimal lag time to the response. If you’ve ever snatched your hand back just in time to avoid being bitten by a bee, or grabbed hold of something without even realizing it was there in order to avoid falling, you have experienced the work of the Reptile Mind. It bypasses the logical part of the mind, the part that assesses and chooses.

A mother mouse will fight to defend its young from a predator that could eat the mouse in one bite. A tiny shrew will fight when backed into a corner by a giant human. Every hamster owner that has reached into a cage and been bitten by a normally friendly pet knows that the size or power of the danger source makes no difference to the Reptile Mind. This is because the Reptile Mind has no capacity for logical thought. A good thing, too, because under certain circumstances, thinking is slow compared to Reptile Mind response. A quick bite on a fox’s nose by a mouse, or on a human’s hand by a shrew (or a hamster) can provide just enough time to escape – no decision making process needed.

The Reptile Mind keeps horses alive in the wild. There is no time for cogitating on how to respond when a mountain lion leaps from a rock above or a snake hisses from the path – survival depends on lightning quick responses. The Reptile Mind – the limbic system – takes over the thinking processes.


A horse cannot make choices when Reptile Mind is in control!

Reptile Mind is the reactive mind. It takes over when stimulated to action, and it takes the place of choice. While the limbic system is engaged, the “Thinking Mind” (the mind that can analyze and make choices) is inoperable. A horse can and does make choices all the time: what it wants to eat, who it wants to stand next to in the herd, whether it wants to stand in the shade or the sun, whether it wants to come to you when you call or keep grazing. We will see in future articles that a horse’s choices include decisions about going along with the request of humans, no matter how the human presents the request. However, when the Reptile Brain is engaged, any potential for choice is lost – a horse’s body must respond to the imperatives of the limbic system hormones and chemicals that flood its body.

Even memories of emotions associated with an experience can bring about Reptile Mind behavior, since storage of emotional memories is part of the limbic system function. The memory of fear associated with an experience can cause behaviors such as freezing, rapid heartbeat, increased respiration, and stress-hormone release when a similar experience is encountered – even when the second experience would not normally be fearful. (Positive emotional memories are stored as well, however negative emotions are generally more powerful for horses as they involve survival itself).


Avoiding Reptile Mind

It is obvious that it is best to avoid causing a horse’s Reptile Mind to take over in reaction to an outside stimulus. Survival reflex can make your horse more liable to survive in a life-and-death situation, but what Reptile Mind reacts to in every day situations is not likely to be appropriate.

Horses will spook at the darndest things – but they don’t have to. Fortunately, long-term memory for a given experience is not instantaneously formed, but is instead assimilated slowly into long-term storage over a period of time – and during this time the memory can be modified. This is why – for horse and rider’s sake – it is advised to get back on the saddle right away after a fall!

Additionally, emotional input after an experience can influence the strength of the subsequent memory of that experience. Rewards for a job well done can truly cement the long-term memory of an experience. Similarly, a negative emotion, such as brought about by punishment or even by a negative reaction of another person (or horse) , can equally cement the memory of that experience – but also help trigger Reptile Mind in the future.

When the colt panicked in the trailer, his Reptile Mind took over. It flooded his body with hormones and chemicals and overrode his lack of experience with jumping down from a height. It caused him to leap out of the trailer without consideration for how far down the ground might be – thank goodness it wasn’t a cliff with a hundred foot drop, because Reptile Mind doesn’t think, it just forces action.

If the colt’s foster mother had been upset or if the colt had hurt himself landing, the emotion associated with the memory of leaping out of the trailer would be negative. This emotional memory would be stored with the trailer experience and would help trigger the Reptile Mind reaction in the future. The colt might start associating trailers with fear, and eventually could even develop a problem with loading.

But instead what happened is that Jess was unconcerned, so much so that the colt was able to just go to her and nurse. The nursing was pleasurable, thus associating that positive emotional memory with the memory of the trailer experience. Since Jess goes in and out of the trailer often, the colt does, too. His long term memory for the trailer experience is modified – positively – each time that Reptile Mind is not evoked. And in turn, this means that in the future memories of experiences with the trailer will be such that the trailer becomes an ordinary thing – no reason for Reptile Mind to be alerted.

Next: How to charm the snake

Learning and Choices

Our colt follows his foster mother, Jess, into the horse trailer (which is parked with its door tied open for access from her and the colt’s pen) because Mom does so in a matter of fact way - nothing to be alarmed about. Jess stands nonchalantly in the shade inside and snoozes. The colt takes the opportunity to sniff around and explore. Eventually he, too, begins to become tired, and he lays down at Mom’s feet.

Jess later decides to leave the trailer. Since there is nothing alarming about being in the trailer and no urgency to her leaving - maybe she’s thirsty, maybe there’s a bit of hay that she has somehow overlooked - she ambles out without waking her adopted foal. When he wakes up, however, the story is altogether different.

The colt leaps up, whinnying for Jess. He scrambles to the open door, but he stops - he cannot jump down. He has been in the flat pen for the few days of his whole life, and has no experience of such a thing. The colt has never seen his mother do it, he has nothing to compare it to, and at this tender age with so little knowledge in his repertoire, he does not know how to learn to deal with this new experience on his own.

Jess, who has wandered back to see what is wrong, is an experienced mother and doesn’t get upset when she sees there is no danger to the colt. She whickers once to him, then turns away. She cannot teach this foal how to step out of the trailer because she has never taught any of her foals anything before and has no idea how to start now, even if she wanted to. Jess, like any other mare, has only offered her foals the example of her own behavior to learn from. In this case, the example of leaving the trailer is a lesson the colt missed.

The colt is frantic. He runs around inside the trailer whinnying shrilly. His fear escalates to panic - and finally adrenaline propels him out the door to make the bold leap to the ground, 8” below. He runs to Jess and begins to nurse. All is well.

Like humans, horses learn and make choices all the time. They’re born with instinctive behaviors that guide their initial actions as human babies are, but foals are born with more physical facility than human babies. Foals have to learn how to stand, to walk, to recognize their mother, to find the teat, to get milk from nursing and then to be able to follow their mothers wherever necessary. They have to do this within minutes of birth - otherwise, rather than enjoying their first milk from Mom, they may become some predator’s meal.

While horses may have strong instincts that drive behaviors, they still are able to learn and make choices like humans do - but for a horse, learning and choosing occurs within the framework of the herd and of being a prey animal. Still, the actual process of learning is not that different.

As I said in my previous article, learning is about acquiring (accumulating, not being born with) the skills or knowledge to do something. Learning is about pushing the envelope – going past an existing state of knowledge into the unknown. Humans and horses alike do not learn what they already know, they learn something new, but this means going beyond what is known. And that can be a scary thing.

For a foal that may become a predator’s dinner if it screws up, learning quickly what is necessary is an issue of survival, not a luxury. Foals learn by the examples provided by their mothers and, when they are days and weeks old, they start learning from other herd members. In the wild, things are divided into two categories: Known/safe and all else/unsafe. When it comes to survival, the unknown may be just as risky as known dangers.

Thus, when the lead mare goes to water on a certain path, and walks around instead of over a certain clump of grass, it makes survival sense to follow in her footsteps. The lead mare is in that position because she is a survivor and, more, she uses her knowledge to thrive. Any mistakes she has made were lessons she learned from, and with the excellent memory horses are blessed with, she wouldn’t be repeating. Herd animals have evolved to follow the leader because it is a short-cut to learning crucial lessons of survival. No need for the foal to get bitten by a rattlesnake in order to learn to not step in certain grass clumps – just do what the lead mare does and rattlers aren’t an issue. (I’ll be discussing what it is that makes a mare the leader in another article). Foals are not really choosing anything in this process, but rather acquiring knowledge that contributes to the building of an internal map of its world.

Learning within the herd is a fairly risk-free thing. If they follow the leader - whether it is Mom or other horses in the herd – they likely will not get hurt. Although foals are learning (taking in new information where no information was before) they are not pushing much of an envelope. They rarely trigger the unpleasant cascade of chain reactions in brain and body brought about by stress - this in itself is a reward for following the leader. There is little in the normal process of learning for a foal to become alarmed about or to develop negative emotions about. Even when a fearful incident occurs, such as with our colt and the trailer, the calmness of the mother throughout and afterwards, allows the fear to fade into the background.

Next: Avoiding the reptile mind