Reversing Fear-Based Behavior

Q: I have a 9-year-old Connemara mare who developed laminitis this year. She also recently developed an abscess in her left front foot. The stable where I board is a converted dairy barn, so there is a gutter and a 1½-inch drop coming out of the stall. When my farrier took my mare out of the stall to look at the abscess, she took a great leap into the alleyway, felt pain, but walked back into her stall calmly. The following day she refused to come out of the stall, and this has gone on for a month. The stable owner and I both know it is due to her fear and have tried things like backing her out, but still have yet to come up with a solution to convince her that it is safe to come out of the stall. What would you suggest?

 

A: Lucky for your horse, you and the stable owner recognize and agree that this specific aversion to leaving the stall is fear-based rather than misbehavior or “stubbornness.” And, thankfully, you are avoiding a negative approach that might only add to her fear of that area. 

 

Assuming your mare is no longer painful and that her fear is solely due to that one negative event, I would try changing the footing coming out of the stall and practicing maximum enticement and positive distraction (e.g., offering a bucket of feed) and minimum negative enticement (e.g., nudging, tugging, clucking, etc.). 

 

You might also fill in the drop and cover it with a stall mat or two that extend into the stall and across the drop. That change in substrate along with positive enticement and distraction may be sufficient to alleviate some of her hesitation and worry. Of course, it is difficult to know what other features of the situation associated with that painful leap have become conditioned stimuli for the discomfort.