How does Warwick Schiller address a horse that spooks repeatedly on the trail?

Warwick Schiller's approach to a horse that spooks repeatedly on the trail is grounded in his understanding of why the horse is spooking in the first place — and his answer increasingly centers on the horse's baseline nervous system state rather than on the specific stimuli that trigger the spooks. Schiller's observation is that horses that spook frequently on trail are rarely afraid of the specific objects they spook at. The plastic bag that triggers a spook is not actually terrifying — it is the straw that broke the camel's back for a nervous system that was already activated and looking for a reason to respond. These horses come out of the barn already elevated, they stay elevated throughout the ride, and any novel stimulus provides the discharge for the tension that has been building. The plastic bag is the trigger; the horse's baseline anxiety is the cause. For these horses, Schiller recommends addressing the baseline anxiety first through the relationship work he describes — building a genuine secure attachment between horse and rider so that the rider becomes a reliable regulator of the horse's nervous system rather than a neutral passenger. A horse that genuinely trusts its rider as a safe base will look to the rider when uncertain rather than defaulting to flight. In practical terms on the trail, Schiller teaches riders to ride with enough contact and connection that they can feel the horse's nervous system state building before the spook happens — the tightening of the back, the slight elevation of the head, the shortened stride. When these signs appear, the intervention is a soft, slow lateral bend, not a correction or increased leg pressure. Asking the horse to bend softly redirects its attention back to the rider and breaks the escalating tension before it reaches spook threshold. For desensitizing to specific trail objects, Schiller recommends exposing the horse to those objects on the ground first, in a controlled environment, until the horse is genuinely unafraid before encountering them on trail. A horse desensitized to plastic bags, tarps, and bicycles in a controlled session is far more likely to handle the encounter calmly on trail than one that has only learned about these things during a spook.