Horses are designed to cope with a certain amount of stress related to their natural lifestyle. What they are not designed to do is cope with large amounts of stress that they are ill-equipped to deal with such as confinement with inappropriate food and lack of social interaction with other horses, or frightening situations which are inescapable.

Such horses tend to respond to these types of stressors in one of two ways:

They either become agitated and perform active defensive behaviour such as shying, bucking, napping, rearing and bolting. These horses appear to be very anxious because they are so active.

Or they are far more passive in their coping strategy and instead become very quiet and withdrawn, putting up with a restricted environment and demoralising training regime.

Both types of horse are a welfare concern, and can have their problems alleviated by providing them with a more natural lifestyle and consistent, effective training regime based on the principles of learning theory.