Friday, 30 July 2010
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July 2008 • VOLUME 35 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
HARMONIZED HORSE TRAINING - Or – how many ways can we train a horse?
Can you imagine your life or being in school or even learning how to ride, if all you ever heard was NO, NO, NO? Personally I would be afraid to move. When you hear constant NOs in your life, you feel diminished, like you’re not worth anything. You feel stupid. Scared to try anything, because you’re afraid of failing one more time. Saying NO also doesn’t teach you how to do things, it only teaches you what not to do. Imagine you are in a riding lesson and the instructor is trying to teach you how to keep your heels down, but she never tells you what she wants you to do. Instead, all she does is say NO, I don’t want you to point your toes down. NO, I don’t want you to put your toes out to the side. NO, I don’t want you bounce in the saddle. NO, I don’t like the way you are holding the reins. Are you ever going to figure out what she does want you to learn? You might, or you might not. I wonder if I have ever done this to a horse. I probably have. <SIGH> Have you?
I probably would never go back and have another riding lesson again! I would feel like a total failure.
When you break everything down, anything you want to train a horse to do or not do, there are only a few ways that we can actually influence the training of the horse.
Negative Reinforcement - NO
Positive Reinforcement - YES
Negative Punishment - TIME OUT
Everything and anything you do with a horse will be done under the heading of one of those three concepts. It is up to you to know which one you are using. And it is up to you to decide which one is right for you and for your horse.
Basically what we are doing is either telling the horse NO I don’t want you to do that, or YES that is what I want you to do.
It can be NO, I don’t want you to bite me! OUCH! Or NO, I don’t want you to trot right now.
So how can we tell the horse NO? We can do it by pulling on a rein or a lead rope. In the case of biting I have heard thoughts as varied as punching the horse in the nose to biting the horse’s ear. YUCK. Sorry I just can’t imagine how that would taste. This way of saying NO, is called negative reinforcement. When the horse does something you don’t like, you negatively tell him that you don’t want him to do that.
There is also one problem with negative reinforcement that people rarely mention, which is that if the stimulus, i.e. your hitting the horse, is not strong enough to extinguish the negative behavior the first time, negative behavior can escalate and actually has been reinforced. In other words, if you have to hit the horse more than once, you are reinforcing the behavior of biting. And what can happen is that what started as a nip ends up being a serious biting problem. And as he starts biting harder, you will have to hit even harder to get your message of NO across to the horse.
The negative reinforcement, to be effective, has to be strong enough to extinguish the behavior for all time.
But we also have the option to say YES. YES, I would like to walk now. Or YES, I would rather you be doing anything else right now other than biting me. The idea is to reinforce the behavior you want. Reward or positive reinforcement. The reward can be anything. Food, treats, a scratch or even attention.
Positive Reinforcement also involves the horse in the learning process. It encourages the horse to try or to help to figure out what you are trying to communicate. One more way a true partnership can begin.
We also have the option to use negative punishment which is the removal of something the horse wants when we are trying to tell the horse we do not appreciate their behavior. Oftentimes, all you have to do is remove yourself. No attention, when you want to bite me: negative punishment, but I will love you to death, if you behave: positive reinforcement.
The problem is that it is a lot easier to say NO sometimes than to say YES. I have to admit that I am guilty of that. If a horse bites me, it is a lot easier to give him a bop on the nose and take a hissy fit, than to work at setting up only positive reinforcement, which means preventing the behavior before it even happens. Think of it this way, if the horse is busy doing something that you want, he will be too busy to bite you in the first place. Another way to think of this, is rather than just telling a horse you don’t want to do something, tell him what you do want him to do. But what about teaching the horse what you do want him to do?
YES, negative reinforcement does and can work. But the question to ask is, at what price? What cost to the relationship you have with your horse? You can end up teaching him to fight, or turn into a turtle. Yes, the horse will respect you, or will he only be afraid of you? And if he is afraid, how hard will he be trying to learn anything at all?
You know the line – My Horse, My Teachers, it is so true. It took one horse to show me that what I had been taught maybe, just maybe, was not the right answer, especially not with him. Any negative reinforcement and I had a terrified and scared horse for the next three days. That got me to thinking - if it wasn’t right for him, have there been other horses that tried to tell me the same thing? Not that I was necessarily mean to my horses, but I think I did buy a little into that dominance thing. You know, about being the dominant horse in the herd. Then I got to thinking, one I am not a horse (no rude comments please, <grin>), and two, I am pretty sure the horses have that figured out.<grin> Three, they know I am dominant every time I ask that they accept me putting on a halter, or a bridle or a saddle. I was lucky that at the same time, I was questioning my training and approach to the horses.
Horses do respond to a quick negative reinforcement.
To YOUR Equestrian Journey!!!
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An Equestrian Legacy