90 Days of Horse Training a 3 Year old filly

by Parker Dahl
(Orange County Ca.)

Hi there!

I have a 3 year old filly that I recently brought home from the trainer after she had been there for about 90 days. When she was there she was as gentle as can be.

Since bringing her home to my barn where she has a luxury home and is taking excellent care of (she is my baby) she has been antsy and sweating and hyper! I thought maybe the feed changed and supplements so I went and put her on exactly what the trainer gave her. Now when I put her in her stall and my other 2 horses are turned out she goes bananas! Kicking the stall door, yelling, if I try to open the door she tries to dart out. (That happened 3 times I have it handled now) she trusts me more as well since I spend a lot of time with her. But my trainer said to leave her in the stall and let her realize that she will be okay without the other horses. Do you agree? I feel bad for her. She is just scared and lonely I feel.

Please help. This is stressing me out to the point I want to just leave her in pasture. She is a expensive cutting horse and I love her and her talent. I just don't like the force of training her. Is there a nicer way to get her out of this? Thank You so much and I am eager for your reply,


Parker Dahl


Hi Parker,
I have answered the question regarding separation anxiety quite a lot lately, so have a look around on our site at the other submissions.

When it comes to your situation there are a few things that bother me before we can address the anxiety your horse is demonstrating.
First, you didn’t mention if your horse had any problems before going to the trainer. Then, I really don’t know what your trainer did in 90 days. But it appears your horse came back differently than she left. Time lines for training should depend upon the horse not the clock.


Just leaving a horse in a stall to explode like you describe will likely cause injury rather than learning so "No" that is not my first choice at all. Your intuition is correct that she feels scared and lonely (loneliness for a horse however feels like a death sentence).

I take it from your comments regarding a trainer and that she is an expensive cutting horse that you intend to compete which is something we do not advocate here at Horses by Nature. But your sentence, "I just don't like the force of training her." I fear the problem is someone has already stepped over this boundary.

When things have changed in a horse’s behavior and I don’t know where it has originated from, there is only one solution and that is to start over or from the beginning and reinforce a positive experience for the horse that way they can come to the conclusion for themselves that they can remain calm.

When a horse is removed and taken somewhere else we need to consider the emotional upset from their perspective. To a horse they need to find comfort, new friends/herd mates and discover all the changes in the environment. When they return they need to do this all over again too. We can’t take it for granite that they just recognize "home". That is one of the problems with separation anxiety to begin with. A horse who gets removed from the herd feels they will lose their place amongst them and will need to re-establish it. It’s a matter of survival from their perspective.

A three year old is very young and more consideration needs to be placed upon their learning ability but we especially need to be careful not to flood their minds (and physical demands) with information overload. In many training cases we are placing too many expectations on youngsters and going by age rather than maturity and physical developmental levels.

Back up and re-evaluate this horses experiences (and diet) then you will find what feels right for you both.

Elaine Polny
Horses by Nature