Horses biggest fears

Have you ever wondered what horses biggest fears are? There are so many potential candidates – and most horses have more than one fear, or thing that causes them anxiety. Do you know what your horse’s biggest fears are?

I canvassed my Facebook followers for suggestions of the most common issues, and drew up a list of ‘high level’ issues:

1. People (could include professionals eg vets)
2. Tack or equipment
3. Sounds or noise
4. Feeling unsafe
5. Separation
6. The rider (ie the rider feeling scared and passing it on)
7. Transport (truck / float / trailer)
8. Different animals (eg pigs)
9. Any new place or thing
10. Water / hose
11. High energy situations
12. Not being listened to
13. Not being understood
14. Change in routine
15. Approach from behind
16. Traffic
17. Something else.

Lots of the commenters had ideas on what they thought their horse’s biggest fear was, so I was curious to see what the pattern would actually be if we asked the horses themselves!

So, I did a pendulum survey on my FB page – people commented with the name and a pic of their horse, I made an energetic connection, then used my pendulum to determine which fear on the list was their biggest right now.

Here’s what came up as horses biggest fears, in descending order:

1. Separation – 19%
2. Feeling unsafe – 15%
3. High energy situations – 13%
4. Not feeling listened to – 12%
5. Water / hose – 11%
6. Sounds / noise, and Tack / equipment were both on 5%
7. Rider, Not feeling understood, and Approach from behind were each 4%

I’d say that the top 5 are the most significant indication of horses biggest fears, affecting from 10-19% of horses each and 70% in total.

The interesting thing to me was that what actually came up as horses biggest fears wasn’t what the owners had suggested, eg lots of people said something related to travel, but that only accounted for 1% of the results.

That’s not to say that lots of horses don’t have fears around travelling or transport, only that often the thing that we think is the biggest issue, isn’t what they’d consider their biggest issue.

That said, lots of people commented on their results with ‘oh definitely’, ‘makes sense’, ‘that resonates’ etc.

So, does it resonate with you? Do you know what your horse’s biggest fear is? If so, do you know what to do about it, or how to help them with it? Let me know in the comments! Perhaps even just looking at that top 5 list gives you some ideas of things you might be able to be aware of with your horse, to make things easier for them, I’d love to know.

Finding out your horse’s biggest fear is just one thing you can get from an Animal Communication session – if you’re keen to go deeper, keep following for more tips, or do get in touch.

Keep connecting with your horses,

Trisha x

About Trisha

Trisha Wren has been an equine professional for most of her adult life.  She rode, competed, and taught Western Riding for 15 years in Scotland, then horse and rider bio-mechanics in New Zealand and Australia for 10 years.  She’s been a full time horse and animal communicator since April 2016. Find out more about Trisha here and sign up for her self paced Animal Communication course here.