Horse Problem - Stall Climber - Horse climbs stall in panic attack at night when owner leaves her alone

Horses kept alone, without other horses to live with, to socialize with 24/7, to "pair bond" with, can become quite neurotic and pretty quickly too. They will not usually exit that "panic attack" mode until things are remedied in the direction they need to be. Here's what you need to do, and here's where the straight shooting gets even straighter:

1. Do not stall this horse for now. Let her live outdoors 24/7, day and night. At least she won't feel as trapped and in need of panicking as much, though she'll still be remaining in the anxiety spot until things are remedied there in the department they actually need to be, which I'll go into in a second here. Horses are actually designed physically and mentally to live outdoors, open spaces, in all weather, year round. Horses are prey animals, far different from us, and nature designed them to live in wide open spaces and to be on the move pretty nonstop. In the wild, horses move, within a 24 hour period, up to 20 miles and is how their bodies are designed to function physiologically. We, on the other hand as predators, are more designed to live in "caves" and to draw into those caves at night to keep warm and protected. Horses are the opposite. They prefer wide open spaces so that they can flee when needed if a predator arrives. Horses don't see stalls as we do. They usually see them as entrapment and taking away their basic need to have "flight" available to them at all times, for their own survival instincts. Stalls are "manmade" and just not necessary for the majority of healthy horses. 99% of horses will grow the coats they need to live outdoors in whatever weather environment they are in, hot or cold, rain or shine, snow or sleet; is how nature designed them, if you do not interfere there by blanketing them (in winter). Blanketing 99% of horses only interferes with nature's "grand plan" for horses. If you blanket them, it tends to throw off their natural thermostat that grows the amount of fur they need for whatever weather condition their body is exposed to. Their fur growth adjusts immensely fast in winter if you let them have full access to food/hay and fresh water at all times throughout the cold months and if you don't put a blanket on them (which actually slows down/stops their coat growth, hence potentially making them colder, not warmer). There are exceptions to this rule as there are some breeds of horses that do not grow coats sufficiently in winter, some of which are ones where man interfered with the breeding process to try to produce such thin-coated horses (often for the racetrack). But the majority of all domestic horses will indeed grow as thick a coat as they need for winter/how they live/where they live, and will shed as much as they need to for summer. But in winter especially, they must have 24/7 access to food/hay/roughage to keep their coats growing properly and their bodies kept warm. The eating process alone raises their body temperature. This is how horses keep themselves warm and trigger their bodies to grow more needed fur fast -- they eat/graze. Nonstop. Even more so in winter. And their body thermostats keep them warm just fine. My own horses live outdoors 24/7, year round and do just fine even in our snowy Virginia winters. They downright look like wooly mammoths by the dead of winter. And they do just fine. Never show signs of feeling cold. So...let her go live outdoors for now, even at night & you're not doing her a disservice going this route, you're doing the right thing. Nothing wrong with keeping a run in shelter if she'd like that, though many horses choose, even in pouring rain or heavy snow, to not opt for the run-in shelter. So don't be surprised if she makes that choice! Horses are outdoor creatures. And they're perfectly comfortable with that. Make sure, though, that you keep full access to hay (if there's no grass) free and open to her at all times, and fresh/not iced-over water, and then tackle what the real problem there is, which is:
2. Think about getting another companion for her, preferably another horse, immediately, not putting that off, so she will have another herd-mate to live with 24/7, and she'll settle down fast, you'll see. If you don't do this, your horse is only going to grow increasingly neurotic, and unfortunately, may develop permanent neurotic habits to try to cope with this forced isolation and stalling. This is at the root of horses that "crib" (chew on wood) or that "weave" (shift back & forth repetitively, moving their heads in rhythm with that weaving), which are both behaviors that absolutely do not occur in the wild -- it's a "Man created" neurosis in horses. Both those habits release endorphins in their brains as the isolated/or cooped-up horse tries to cope with their anxiety in the only way they've figured out how: cribbing, weaving or some dig holes in a stall with incessant pawing, and the horse then gets addicted to those endorphin releases (in the case of cribbing or weaving), and, unfortunately, those habits then become pretty impossible to break. Even long after you've remedied the situation that caused them in the first place -- because now they are addicted to the endorphin release and cannot stop. It becomes a "drug of choice" they no longer have any control over. So, much better to prevent the cause up front in the first place, before they happen, because you won't have much options to fix them after they develop. So...you need to take this problem seriously, but from the equine's point of view so you can do the right thing there for her. If you can't afford another horse right now, you can check rescue centers around you to adopt one perhaps. Or, some folks go the "mini" horse route for the companion for their horse. Or a goat or sheep even, last resort, though not the most ideal for our domestic horses, but is better than nothing. Racehorse folks have long known the absolute imperative emotional need for a horse to have a "herd" companion with them 24/7 and that's why sometimes goats are used to stall right with a prize racehorse, inside their stall (race horses that they might not be able to afford risking pasturing/injury too close to an important race, because some racehorses come with hefty price tags in the hundred thousands, lots of money invested in them!). In fact....that's where the saying "got your goat!" comes from in our vocabulary. In the olden days of racing, opponents would sneak into a race horse's stall and steal the companion goat, knowing that would upset the horse and leave him so shaken up by race time that he would (hopefully, to the thief) lose the race! Because they knew: horses cannot handle living alone.

It's real important when moving in the direction of horse endeavors to work to not "anthropomorphize," which means to attribute human form or personality to things not human. Horses are herd prey animals. We humans are predators. These are two completely different, almost opposite creatures of nature. We overlap in some respects socially, but for the most part, we are quite different and think and function differently and our basic needs can be quite different. Horses, as herd animals, have to have companionship at all times, or they suffer with serious emotional problems. While a stall in the dark of night might feel like the "safest" place to you, the human predator, it's not necessarily to the horse. Horses feel safer in wide open spaces, especially in the dark, and near a companion. By the way: they can see perfectly well in the dark, far, far better than we can.

All that said...because this horse needed to have advocacy here first...now I'll address the stall behavior you're seeing there (though you understand the why's better now). If up the road (shortly, hopefully) after you get another horse and get this present horse past this anxiety period, and they seem well settled in, and you want to start introducing the stall to her again (because there are times when a horse needs to be stalled: during some illnesses, layup after an injury, etc., and she indeed needs to learn this, accept it), I would do this to get her past that stall climbing/kicking behavior:

1. Put her companion in the stall next to her so she can see him/her. If she starts up with the stall climbing, etc. do this next:
2. Get a radio and set it somewhere outside but near the horse's stall (where she can't reach it) and set the radio on "static"/between stations. When the horse starts banging/climbing, going nuts, instantly turn the radio-set-to-static up REAL LOUD. As loud as you can go. And also bang on the outside of the stall yourself at the same time, somewhere off to the side there, and do it real loud with something handy (piece 'a wood, shovel, etc.). We're not trying to be aggressive here, we're just being annoyingly loud. The horse is going to stop banging/climbing/being noisy herself suddenly when she hears this ruckus/static, to focus on it for a second (they hate the sound of static on radios usually). The SECOND she quits, goes silent as she suddenly stops to listen, release the pressure (noise) instantly. Stop banging, turn/off radio. Get your "release timing" as quick as you can get there so that when she stops, the noise also stops instantly so she'll "connect up the dots there." All horses learn from the RELEASE of pressure what it is you want, not the pressure itself. So get your release timing quick there. If the horse starts up kicking again, repeat. Quickly the horse realizes: when she's quiet there, the "icky noise" stops & when she's banging/climbing, the noise is suddenly there again, and slowly she'll be reconditioned to not do that. Will have to repeat this a number of times probably and if you can remain consistent with that as much as possible, she'll stop doing it altogether. Sometimes the static alone is all you need (no banging on your part; the less you have to do to get the behavior you want, the better, so...at first try just the static and build up to adding the banging only if needed). Keep that first lesson fairly short and when you see she's consistently quiet there, end the lesson on that positive and release her back into the pasture and do this lesson again another day. Each lesson, you're going to increase the time slowly that she remains in the stall, remaining consistent there with your pressure (your static/noise matching her noise/acting up) and release of pressure (your silence when she's silent) and you're always going to reward her at the end of each lesson with the release back into pasture each time, after she's been quiet for a bit in the stall. Soon you'll be building her up to longer and longer stretches where she can remain quiet there.
3. But please, only go this route after you have tackled all of the above as spelled out. Because...it's really not fair to "discipline" a horse who is screaming as loudly as she can (but not being heard) that she cannot handle being alone, and nature didn't intend her to be. Know that. With all your heart. And hear this not with negative judgment, but only with compassionate focus on education. I know you want the best for your horse, I can truly see that, and it is why you stopped to ask this question. So...fix the real problem there, get her a companion to live with her as soon as possible, and you'll see the problem go away, I'm sure.

Thanks again for writing and good luck to you there! :-)

 

 

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