About twenty years ago, I attended a clinic given by a well-known American trainer. He was working with a solid-looking Quarter Horse (aren't they all) that was a little bit reactive and was jumping and spooking at almost everything. The horse had a posture like a llama, and the fellow was doing some groundwork, trying to get the horse to lower its head. He did get the head down, and the horse did settle a little. It was then that I heard him say something that immediately piqued my interest.
"If you lower their head, you will switch off the flow of adrenalin that causes all this fight or flight behaviour and you'll turn on the flow of endorphins that creates a calmness in the horse."
Although this statement caught my attention, I went home and soon forgot about it. Well, almost forgot about it. About a year or two later, I was reading an article by Robert Miller of "foal imprint training" fame. In the article, Miller expressed the same notion that lowering the head shifts the hormone environment in a horse from an adrenaline-induced state of excitement to an endorphin-stimulated state of quiet. Mmmm, this was the second time I had heard this idea.
Over the next two or three years, I began to hear the same theory expressed by more and more people. Dressage trainers, horse breakers, clinicians, and pleasure riders all seem to be saying the same thing. I wondered why nobody ever told me this before. Was it a new theory or an old fact? Considering the endorphin family of hormones was only first isolated back in the 1970s, it couldn't be a very old fact.
There was no doubt in my mind that if you lower a horse's head, it can settle him a little - even if for only a short period. But what I wondered about was how much of the behaviourial change was due to an interaction of adrenalin and beta-endorphin. And how did changing the position of the horse's head change the balance of these two hormones? I wondered about these things because I have a long history of researching the effects of hormones on the body, and I have a very strong dislike of people who use "so-called" scientific facts to support questionable theories. Experience has taught me that people often take a little bit of science and twist it in a way that was never meant to be to prove a point. So these theories about hormones, head position, and behaviour intrigued me greatly.
Things soon got even more complicated because I started hearing from the same people who espoused the head-up, head-down theory that the reason a twitch can cause a horse to calm down was that it stimulated the release of endorphins. Wow, it seemed our understanding of
horse hormones and behaviour was leaping ahead. Pretty soon after I was told about how a twitch works on the horse's hormones, I was told that rubbing the upper lip of a horse or pinching a skin fold on the neck or twisting an ear all had the same effect. It was beginning to seem that adrenalin and endorphin could be influenced by almost anything you did with a horse.
Somebody must have been doing a lot of research on hormones in horses for all these new facts to be entering the conversations of the normal, non-scientific community of horse owners and trainers. I decided to search through the literature and read up on the work that had been done. I searched all the most relevant and likely databases on veterinary, medical, and physiological research. I was a little surprised that there was no evidence to back up the claims that adrenalin or beta-endorphin were involved in behaviourial changes when a horse lowers or raises its head, when a twitch is applied, or when you rub the upper lip. In fact, hardly any data existed for the measurement of endorphins in horses at all, let alone that these hormones did anything!
I did this literature research about ten years ago, and perhaps there is more recent evidence that these hormones play a role in changing the behaviour of horses. But at the time that these theories were being spread to horse people, there was no evidence to support them. It would not surprise me that there is still no evidence, yet I still hear the same people selling the same ideas.
After I discovered that the theory was actually someone's fantasy, I began to wonder what would be a reasonable alternative theory for why lowering the head can calm a horse?
I began to think about this in earnest. One thing that I became aware of was that not every time a horse put his head up did he become excited. And not every time that he put his head down did he become quiet. It occurred to me that perhaps the behaviour change was not always associated with head position alone. Maybe there was some other factor coming into play, and the position of the horse's head was a secondary consequence. I noticed that if a horse was excited and I tried to get his head down by putting downward pressure on the halter lead, the horse only calmed down when he gave to that pressure and stopped pulling against my pressure. If he lowered his head but still pulled upward against the halter lead somewhat, he did not become quieter. Conversely, if I softly raised a horse's head above its wither height, it did not alter his mental state. But if I forced the horse's head up against his will, he would often become anxious.
So here is my theory - remember, it is only a theory. It is not the lowering of the horse's head that causes the calming effect that we often see. It is the yielding to an idea that allows the horse to calm down. If I try to lower the head and he fights it, the horse stays worried. But if I try to lower its head and he yields, he calms down. Perhaps it is the yielding that is important - not the position of the head.
I have tried out this theory using cues other than the lowering of the head. I have taught horses that when I put a rope around one hind foot and put a little pressure on that rope, they are to stop moving and relax that foot. I have experimented with horses in various states of relaxation and distress. When a horse fights the rope, he stays worried, but when he gives in to the rope, he calms down, even if he initially was excited. The question arises, is it the yielding to the rope that causes the calmness, or does the calmness allow the horse to give to the rope? It is a chicken-and-egg question. I don't know the answer. But what I do believe is that unless the horse yields in his mind to an idea, you don't get the calming effect you are looking for. As long as he is mentally fighting an idea, he will continue to be excitable.
The consequences of this theory for our everyday problems of training and handling horses are obvious. If you can always work with a horse in a way that the horse can go along with your ideas, you won't have to fight against an unmanageable temperament. When you present him with ideas that he feels are too difficult for him, you will always have an argument on your hands.
I don't know if my theory about why getting a horse to lower his head helps him be calmer is accurate. I don't know if the adrenalin/endorphin theory is true or not. But I think the notion of trying to help a horse give to your ideas in the easiest possible way is a far more useful approach to training than worrying about head positions and hormones.
Solly and I both display the relaxing effects of a lowered head position. 😃