Logan’s Story: From Survival to Self-Regulation

When Logan first arrived at our barn, he was holding it together by the thinnest thread. His anxiety was obvious even before he stepped off the trailer. This wasn’t just a horse who worried. This was a horse whose nervous system had no map for managing stress.

In his past, separation had always meant panic. He had climbed through the jockey door of a trailer, reared over backwards, and couldn’t cope with even the idea of another horse leaving his sight. Every shift in environment, every change in the social dynamic, felt like an emergency.

He wasn’t difficult. He was dysregulated. And he had never been given a strategy to come back to himself.

So we didn’t start with training. We started with his body.

In our programme, Stage 1 is the base of the foundation. It focuses on helping horses develop a felt sense of safety — before they are asked to cope, respond, or even pay attention. For Logan, this meant learning to feel his body and realise it was a safe place to be.

We used somatic techniques: to loosen the body; rib releases to soften the thoracic sling, poll flexion to release the base of the skull, rocking movements to free the spine. These aren’t big flashy exercises. They’re quiet, repetitive invitations to shift out of a survival state.

Often, horses in this place live in freeze or flight. Logan alternated between the two. He might seem still on the surface, but under the skin, everything was coiled. In those early sessions, we weren’t asking for behaviour. We were offering an alternative to living in panic & tension. And when he took it, even momentarily, the whole shape of him changed: his skin loosened, his eyes softened, his neck lengthen. He exhaled deeply one of those exhales that say, “Maybe I don’t need to hold it all together.”

But feeling better isn’t the end goal. It’s the starting point. Because once the nervous system has some space, we can begin to teach the horse what to do with change.

If Stage 1 is about developing connection, Stage 2 is about holding it when the world gets harder. This is where we ask the horse to stay loose in their body, connected in their mind, and regulated in their emotions through complication.

That doesn’t mean throwing them into the deep end. It means rehearsing the types of challenges they’re likely to face, with enough support to succeed and enough stretch to grow.

For Logan, that began with carefully structured exposure to the real world. Our barn hosts clinics and camps with up to eight horses coming and going every day. It’s dynamic, sometimes noisy, full of movement, and unpredictable energy. It was the perfect environment to teach Logan what life might look like outside of his bubble.

We turned him out in a field close to the barn. Strategically, we placed calm, confident horses around him to buffer the initial stress. But we didn’t stop the world from moving. Horses came and went. Flags flapped. People worked. And every time Logan showed signs of rising tension — a lifted head, a held breath, twitchy skin, a fixed gaze — we stepped in. Not to rescue, but to remind. To help him remember the strategies from Stage 1. To say, “This is familiar. You know what to do.”

Over one clinic day, we went to him 18 times. Eighteen separate moments where he lost his ability to stay present and we helped bring him back. But with every repetition, the message stuck a little more. And as we added distance, something changed. He started to rehearse the strategies himself. He’d begin to unravel—but then pause, breathe, shift his body, and come back without our help.

This is one of the key distinctions of Stage 2: we’re no longer teaching regulation with us, we’re teaching it away from us.

Distance matters. Because it forces the horse to take ownership of their own state.

The same goes for other complications:

 • Squeezes: Tight spaces present multifaceted questions. Can you go through, under, around? Can you stay soft when things feel tight? These trigger instinctive survival responses, but when taught gently, they become opportunities to rehearse softness and curiosity.

 • Speed: Many anxious horses associate movement with fear. If their history includes flight, simply trotting can set off an internal alarm: “We’re moving—what are we running from?” For Logan, this meant re-patterning speed as safe. Quick transitions in a playful context helped him learn that energy doesn’t have to equal escape.

• Environmental Change: Flags, tarps, tractors, the world moving around them—Logan practised being the calm centre in a moving picture. We weren’t desensitising him; we were helping him build context, so not every shift felt like it belonged to him.

Over time, he got better at choosing not to react. He stayed present. Curious. Willing. And when he did spiral, the recovery came faster. That’s what we’re looking for in Stage 2: not just calmness, but resilience.

And with that resilience comes confidence.

There’s a practical technique we use with horses like Logan that owners can implement anywhere: redirected focus.

Let’s say your horse is fixated — on a buddy leaving, or a strange noise, or a flapping object. Their eyes lock on, their muscles tense, and they freeze or fidget.

Instead of forcing them to ignore it, we give them something else to think about.

Ask for a simple movement: a weight shift, a small yield of the hindquarters, a gentle back-up. Not to control them — but to engage their mind. It interrupts the spiral. And what they learn, over time, is powerful:

“I took my focus off the scary thing… and I survived. I actually felt better.”

That realisation builds capacity. It teaches the horse that their attention is a tool. And when they learn to bring it back to you, or to the task at hand, they find safety not in avoiding the world, but in engaging with it on their own terms.

By the end of his first camp experience, Logan had moved from the the field closest to the barn to the far back field — still in sight but now without needing other horses as a buffer to the road and hedges. He wasn’t pacing or watching the gate and the clinic horses in the arena…

He was grazing.

And then, in the sun, he lay down. Flat. Eyes closed. Deep sleep for nearly a hour!

That wasn’t just calm. That was self-confidence. The kind of settled, embodied trust that says “I don’t need to control the world to feel safe in it.”

This is where Stage 3 begins. The horse has a strong foundation. They’ve practised coping with change. Now, they start to own it. They become a puzzle solver.

They don’t panic when things shift. They don’t need you to hold it all together. And when something difficult comes — a trailer ramp, a squeeze, a strange environment — they don’t just tolerate it. They engage. They try. They work it out.

That’s the kind of horse we’re trying to build.

As Logan’s nervous system started to downshift, we were able to see more clearly what was his mind and what was his body.

In those early weeks, he had lived in such a constant state of tension that any feedback from his body was muffled by stress. It’s not uncommon — freeze and flight both have analgesic effects. But once he began to soften and feel safe in his skin, something else became clear: he was sore.

We carried out further investigation — nerve blocks, flexion tests, detailed assessment — and found discomfort in his hocks that had gone undiagnosed. Once treated, the difference was significant. The overreactions to certain movements eased. The small triggers that previously overwhelmed him became manageable. He could bend and reach without bracing. He could think more easily because his body was no longer shouting over his mind.

We see this again and again.

Horses that can’t hold onto progress — that spike at every stimulus, even when you’ve done everything “right” — are often in pain.

It doesn’t mean they need more training. It means their body needs help catching up to the mind.

Logan didn’t need to be pushed through. He needed to be listened to. And once his body felt better, all the emotional and behavioural gains from Stage 1 and 2 began to stick.

One of the greatest gifts you can give a horse is the ability to tell the difference between change and a question.

Many sensitive horses interpret everything as pressure. A flag flaps: pressure. A person walks by: pressure. A horse shifts their weight: pressure.

But if they can learn that change in the world doesn’t always mean something is being asked of them, they relax. They wait for clarity. They stop trying to control things that aren’t theirs to manage.

And when a real question comes — a direct request, a cue with intention — they’re ready to answer.

Because they haven’t spent all day reacting to the background noise.

This is what Logan is learning. What every horse in our programme is learning. To move from fear to focus. From reaction to regulation. And eventually, from needing support to being the kind of horse who can offer it to others.

It doesn’t happen in a week. But it starts, always, with the choice to go slow. To listen. To layer challenge with safety. And to trust that confidence is built — not by removing stress, but by giving the horse a better way to meet it.