4th June 2025
Belle has fallen into a depression. It is not the first time, but it is deep this time.
It feels like a black hole of stuff floating around her spirit with no way out. She is stuck within it, and the longer she stays there, the more depressed she gets.
The herd feel it too.
When depression sets in to any animal, ourselves included, it can be difficult to find a way out. The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off, and all you do is go round in circles in the blackness. You don’t want to move. You don’t want to eat. Your self -preservation button switches off and you just want to surrender to the blackness.
The first important thing to remember is “it is not important what caused it”. As humans taught to consider logic and reasoning as important, we always want to know “why?”. Why are you depressed? Why are you feeling down?
The second important thing to remember is that telling another being that “all is well”, “there is nothing to be depressed about”, “look at the bright side”, does not register in the depressed beings brain while they remain within that black dark place.
For humans there are certain coping strategies developed to help people deal with depressive states. Some of these include: Staying in touch; Don’t withdraw from life; Be more active (move and exercise); Face your fears ( don’t avoid things you find difficult).
Do the same principles apply to horses and other domesticated animals? Yes of course. Domestication can cause depression in animals. One way of explaining it in horses is that the freeze mechanism has gone into overdrive and the horse can’t break out of it, so stays frozen. This could be due to a major traumatising event happening where the horse could not flee, and then after that smaller and smaller triggers that bring up the same freeze response, cause a loop of depression, and eventually a sense that it would be easier just to give up and stay in the darkness forever.
What not to do :
- Don’t worry
- Don’t panic
- Don’t try and figure out what caused it
- Don’t try and place blame
- Don’t feel guilty
What to do :
- Gently try and get the horse to move
- Gently try and get the horse to move
- Gently try and get the horse to move.
If the horse ignores you, don’t raise the pressure in anyway. Find another calm confident horse / herd mate, and walk with that horse up to the depressed horse, forcing it to move out of the way. Once moving depression will start to lift and you will see the horse becoming more aware of its surroundings. Continue moving until something changes, such as grooming, eating, drinking, curiosity about an object or you comes up. Then offer presence and peace as a feeling, Again don;t start asking questions like “where were you? or why wouldn’t you move?”. The questions are not in the here and now, and just revert back to the past, which brings a feeling into your body which you will share, and may cause the depression to reset.
Working and releasing the emotional trauma will happen through sharing peace, not through reasoning, logic, concern, or any other feeling with an emotion attached.
The video starts by showing Belle and Apollo grooming, after I spent about 20 minutes just moving Belle around the field gently. It is about asking her to walk and then being with her as she walks, not pressuring her into walking. Watch positioning as you don’t want to be ahead, but as close to being by her side as possible. When I entered the field she was in a dark place. Movement got her adrenaline up and her limbs moving, and blood flowing, which then got her regarding her environment again and taking an interest in the other herd members. She then found she could ask Apollo for a little friendship and relaxation.
The rest of the video is clips of Lisa moving her and discussions we had about how to feel, walk, and be present with Belle.
This is a huge subject, but keeping things simple and following intuition and feelings is all that is needed. Don’t over think. Trust.
