Most members of my herd are rescued from a situation of abuse, abandonment or at least maltreatment. Those horses suffer from trauma in certain degrees and while living in a herd has brought all of them back to normal horse behavior, some do get triggered in training and especially when ridden.
Post-traumatic stress in horses and humans
As a horse person and as a professional in the mental health field who has treated many human victims of abuse, I have been disturbed in particular by the long-term, even permanent psychological damage suffered by horses which have been traumatized in the course of training, competing, and by general mismanagement.
