Is Your Horse or Dog Predicting Pain? Here’s How to Help Them Feel Safe Again

Did you know your horse or dog might be bracing before anything even happens—because their brain is predicting discomfort?

In this episode, we explore the fascinating science behind predictive brains and how both humans and animals can get caught in loops of fear, tension, and restricted movement. But here’s the good news: prediction errors are learning opportunities.

You’ll learn how gentle, supportive touch—through Debono Moves for your animals and the Feldenkrais Method® for yourself—can update your brain’s predictions, interrupt downward spirals of tension, and build a new sense of safety and ease.

Whether your horse resists saddling or your dog hesitates at stairs, this episode offers simple, powerful ways to help them feel—and move—better.

Resources:
💥Learn how the Feldenkrais MethodⓇ can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

Grab your FREE video training to help your dog. 🐕 https://www.marydebono.com/lovedog 💥

Get Mary’s bestselling, award-winning book, “Grow Young with Your Dog,” for a super low price at: https://tinyurl.com/growyoungwithyourdog. Demonstration videos are included at no extra cost. ⬅️⬅️⬅️

Want to sit in a more balanced, secure way? Click here for all the details on our new series.
Effortless, Balanced Sitting: A FeldenkraisⓇ Movement Series  ⬅️⬅️⬅️

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and doesn't constitute medical or veterinary advice or professional training advice. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider if you, your horse, or your dog are unwell or injured.  Always use extreme caution when interacting with horses and dogs.

About the Host:

Mary Debono is a pioneer in animal and human wellness, blending her expertise as an international clinician, best-selling author, and certified Feldenkrais Method® practitioner. With over three decades of experience, Mary developed Debono Moves, a groundbreaking approach that enhances the performance, well-being, and partnership of animals and their humans.

Mary's innovative approach draws from the Feldenkrais Method®, tailored specifically for horse and dog enthusiasts.  Her methods have helped animals and humans:

• Improve athletic ability and performance
• Enhance confidence and reduce anxiety
• Reduce physical limitations and discomfort
• Deepen the human-animal bond

Mary's flagship online programs, "Move with Your Horse" and "Easier Movement, Happier Dogs," provide animal enthusiasts with an innovative approach that combines the concepts of Feldenkrais® with her signature hands-on work for horses and dogs. Through this transformative method, both people and their animal companions discover greater harmony, ease, and connection.

As a sought-after speaker and educator, Mary has impacted animal enthusiasts worldwide, guiding them to enhance their relationships with their animals through mindful movement and deeper body awareness. Her work empowers individuals to unlock new levels of understanding and communication with their beloved companions.

Visit https://www.marydebono.com to learn more about Mary's unique work.

Transcript

Did you know that so much of what you feel, do and expect isn't a direct response to what's happening around you, but it's a prediction your brain is making. And the same is true for your horse, for your dog. All of us, our brains are constantly making predictions. And in today's episode of the Easier Movement, Happier Life podcast, we're going to talk about how your brain and your animal's brain works as a prediction machine.

And how gentle movement and awareness can help update those predictions, creating new patterns of ease, trust and well being. So let's start here. Your brain is constantly trying to figure out what's going to happen next, because after all, your nervous system is tasked with keeping you safe. Same is true with your dog's nervous system and your horse's nervous system. So to keep you safe, the brain is trying to figure out, well, what is going to happen next so I can prepare for it.

Again, this is true for you as well as your animals. So it doesn't. The brain, because the brain wants to be efficient, it's not going to just wait passively for sensory input. It's going to jump ahead, if you will, and make these predictions. It's going to make guesses. And those guesses are based on past experiences, in other words, your history. Right? And it creates a model of what is likely to happen.

And that's how it stays efficient. That's how your brain, you know, keeps you safe. And so your brain is filtering through your past experiences and generates a response. Right? And you don't, you're not even fully aware of this. Most of us are not even at all aware of it. It's just something that's happening like, you know, well below the level of consciousness. You know, it just, it just happens.

And your animals are doing it too. Your horses and your dogs, they're also making meaning of things. Their brains are always predicting how a situation is likely to feel based on past experiences. So here's the really good news. Here's the really good news. Learning happens when there's a prediction error. Okay, so let's, let's start with a horse example. Just say you have a horse that's very girthy or even slightly girthy or cinchy, right?

So in other words, they don't like to be saddled. Something about it is unpleasant to them and maybe it's a, like a minor display of discomfort. So maybe they just kind of tighten their abdominals so that you have to keep checking that girth to tighten it little by little. Right. Maybe it's something a lot more obvious like they're pinning their ears, swishing their tail, you know, burying their teeth at you or lifting a leg.

Maybe it's something like that, which I hope not, but think about this. Whatever it is, whatever level of discomfort your horse has learned that, ah, saddling equals discomfort. Okay, so now what if, what if, for example, you're in my program, move with your horse and you learned how to do very gentle hands on processes that I called de bono moves to help your horse not only tolerate being tacked up, but to actually enjoy it.

And get this, not only just enjoy the process, but what you're doing with them. These very gentle hands on movements actually improves their athletic ability. So in other words, you help improve their biomechanics so that they can carry you more easily, more comfortably in a healthier way. So it's a win, win, win kind of deal. So now all of a sudden you've, you've taken my course and you, you go to tack up your horse and your horse gets a prediction error.

Because your horse was expecting it not to feel good, just assuming it wasn't going to feel good. But you started doing some de bono moves as you were tacking up. Well, now your horse is like, well, that's different, that's unexpected, that your horse's brain starts to really pay attention. And it may not happen just from one time, but over time your horse's brain will update its model. In other words, it will now start to predict good things from being saddled.

It's, I've had so many students tell me this over the years about how their horses went from really not liking being tacked up to actually looking very happy when they saw the saddle coming. Because we've updated their prediction, right? We've changed it. So now something comfortable, safe, really pleasant is going to happen. So it's kind of cool. And same exact thing with the dogs. And just say, for example, your dog has maybe, maybe some stiffness in your dog's back.

And so going up or down stairs is just not comfortable. There's a, there's a, so there's a hesitancy there. Or maybe jumping in the car or something like that, the dog expects again, the dog's brain is predicting, predicting that that's going to be uncomfortable. So there's hesitation, there's, you know, just, maybe you just see a slight change around the eyes or the ears. So the dog is predicting something uncomfortable.

Now maybe you've learned because I have a dog program as well, so Maybe you've learned how to do De Bono moves, or you've got my book, grow young with your dog. And you did some things to help the dog have greater awareness and mobility through the body. And so suddenly now when the dog does go to jump on the sofa or jump in the car or go up or down stairs, now suddenly the spine is more flexible, so the hind legs and the front legs can function in a more comfortable, easier way.

Well, now, that dog also had a prediction error, right? So that dog learn that, wait, it doesn't have to hurt to jump or to go up or down the stairs. So, you know, and what happens, by the way, when an animal, whether it's a horse or dog, whatever, when they're. Or human, when they're expecting something to not feel good, they. One starts to restrict, right? There's all kinds of then unnecessary tension that's held in the body and that becomes habitual.

And what you get is you get a downward spiral. So things start to get worse and worse for the animal. Includes us human animals as well. But when you can interrupt that, when you can facilitate or introduce a prediction error by doing some very gentle movements, Dubono moves for your animals, the Feldenkrais method for yourself, right now, your brain learns, oh, I have a new normal. I have more options.

So, so you change that model in the brain. This is really, really important stuff. And let's take it one step further. Let's take it one step further about you, okay? You know, as humans, we have identities and we think of ourselves in particular ways. And I'll tell you about a friend of mine. I have a friend called. Her name is Vicki and I love that she always calls herself a lucky person.

She considers herself a very lucky person. She said, I always win raffles, I win this, I win that. Good things always happen to her, okay? And she truly believes that good things happen to her. Now, do they happen to her more than other people? I don't know. They seem like they do, I'll tell you that much. But guess what? It's one big reason is because she notices them.

Even when something small happens that's good. She notices it because her identity is as a lucky person. So that's what her brain is going to filter for her reticular activating system. If you've listened to my podcast, podcast before, you heard me talk about this, the RAs, the reticular activating system, you could think of it. It's a part of your brain that kind of filters your information, your sensory information.

So it's going to look for what you tell it to because it can't take in all the data. It's too much. There's too much data out there, like every bit of sensory input. So in Vicki's case, when good things happen, she notices them. It's like she gives them more weight if you will. Now think about the opposite type of person. A person whose identity is that, oh poor me, like nothing ever goes right for me like that type of person, which there's many people like that.

And you might think, well they have good reason, Mary, to think that way because it does always seem like there's like a dark cloud over their head that you know, they're unlucky. But again if that's their identity, if they think of themselves as an unlucky person, their reticular activating system, their ras is going to put more weight. It's going to look for those unfortunate things that happen to them and it might be something small like the cashier was a little bit rude or you know, they lost a dollar or something, they got overcharged 50 cents or something like that, right?

They're going to look for them and put a lot of weight on them. So you know, people like Vicki and people like, you know, Debbie Downer will say, and nothing against any Debbie's. I have many Debbies in my life who I love very much and they're very optimistic people. But you can choose, look at both of those types of identities and say wow, you know, it, it makes sense, doesn't it?

It makes sense that if that is your identity, that is what you're going to look for and put more weight on and when, when the person who is, let's say a bit pessimistic, right that bad things always happen to me type of person, right. If that's his or her identity, right. They are going to attract, it will seem like they will attract those bad things because their brain is searching for them as opposed to people like my friend Vicki who is looking for all those positives in life.

It's interesting. Now how does that so, so if you think you know, so think about that. So your self concept or your identity, it influences what you expect and therefore what you perceive. Now how do you, how does this apply to your animals? How does it apply to your dog? Well, it's somewhat similar because your dog, if they're used to feeling uncomfortable or if they're used to feeling it doesn't have to just be like physical discomfort like pain or stiffness, but maybe it's stress Maybe they get anxious in certain situations, right?

So they have learned to expect that. Again, going back to our prediction generating machine, which is our brains, right? But even in safe environments, they might predict that, they might expect that. And this is where again, the work that we do here is so important because then if you start doing gentle De Bono moves with your dog now, you're helping reshape what they expect so they can realize, oh, I feel calmer in my nervous system.

One of the things we do with De Bono moves with your horses and your dogs is we help generalize a feeling of ease and well being, safety. And this is true, by the way, for you as well, when you do the Feldenkrais method. It's, that's what we're generating. Ease, safety, well being. So this, this applies. So the dogs may not have the same self concept the way we do, but they have the same, a similar, I'll put it this way, they have a similar mechanism in the nervous system that is expecting or predicting things.

And we can help shape that a bit. We can, we can facilitate them feeling better in body and mind and then expecting to feel better in body and mind. Okay, so this is where instead of a downward spiral that I mentioned earlier, now you're getting kind of like an upward spiral, if you will. In other words, things are getting better and better. So how can, how can you use this?

Well, I would say start by noticing patterns. Notice patterns. You know, notice where you or your dog or your horse react automatically. If you look closely, if you notice yourself, you notice your animals closely, you'll start to see that there's automatic patterns happening. So again, I mentioned like maybe your dog hesitates going upstairs or downstairs or in the car or on the sofa or something like that. You know, start to notice.

Maybe there's a sense of anxiety that your dog has. It may be not very obvious, but there's something changes about the way your dog looks or moves in certain situations. So then get curious about that. And the same of course, applies to your horse. You know, maybe you, you, you didn't really notice, but like every time you go to put the halter on your horse, there's just a slight tension in the jaw, your horse's jaw, or maybe just a slight, you know, tension in the, the head and neck.

Just start to be very mindful of these things. And then, you know, I have a lot of free resources on how you can start working with your horses and your dogs and maybe try some very gentle movement explorations that I teach and see what new information you can offer your animal and yourself for that matter. You're not trying to force anything. You're not trying to quote, unquote fix your animal.

You're offering something new to their nervous system, an invitation to update its prediction. So here's your takeaway. Change doesn't have to be hard. In fact, it's most effective when it's soft, subtle and surprising in a good way. In other words, a pleasant surprise, pleasant change. And remember that you and your animals can learn to to move, feel and be differently. In other words, to just experience life differently.

Because when we offer new information to the nervous system we're creating space for new possibilities to emerge. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of Easier Movement happier life for you, your horses and dogs. I'm Mary debono and I'm so grateful you're here and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye for now.