How does natural horsemanship address a barn sour or herd bound horse?

Barn sour and herd bound behavior in horses reflects the horse's strong motivation to return to the perceived safety of familiar surroundings and companions, and natural horsemanship addresses this motivation not by trying to suppress it but by developing a combination of specific training corrections that make staying away from the barn more comfortable than returning to it, and a relationship quality that makes the horse's attachment to the trainer comparable in some degree to its attachment to familiar location and companions. The training correction approach used by Clinton Anderson and others in the respect-focused tradition involves making the barn or herd the place of work — every time the horse tries to return, it is put to work through vigorous exercise — while making away from the barn the place of rest, reversing the horse's existing association and over time retraining its preference. This approach is effective but requires consistent application and sufficient assertiveness that the barn genuinely becomes associated with effort rather than relief. The relationship-quality approach developed more thoroughly in the Dorrance-Hunt tradition and extended by Warwick Schiller involves developing the horse's attachment to the trainer to the degree that the trainer's presence provides the safety and security that the barn and herd otherwise supply — a horse that genuinely seeks the trainer's company and finds the trainer's presence calming will be less urgently motivated to return to barn and herd than one whose relationship with the trainer provides no comparable security. Both approaches have merit and most effective programs combine elements of both: making unwanted behaviors more effortful than desirable ones while simultaneously building the relationship quality that makes the human an attractive alternative to the barn and herd.