Horses learn in various ways and today I want to talk about the most common ways we experience and see them learn during our interactions with them.
Socialization
One of the most important ways that baby and young horses learn is through Socialization. This can be from their mother and/or their “herd”. This is why it’s so important for young horses to be able to “be horses” and interact with others of their species. A mixed stable herd is the best environment. Horses instinctually are hard wired to act a certain way but this can be influenced by their upbringing. Mothers can teach horses what to fear, what to be calm about and what to accept. Herd mates can teach these young horses how to get along in the herd, how and where to forage and to learn their place in the herd dynamics. The old ideas of hierarchy, dominance, lead mare, lead stallion are just that antiquated. Instead we are realizing that horse herds have a very dynamic social structure. Most importantly we must accept that the most “dominant” horses are not the lead horses and are in fact not accepted well in the herd. Just as we realize within our own species social structure, the true leaders are the ones that act in a way that attracts followers. It is true in the horse world also. The true leaders in the social structure of horses are the ones that are keenly aware of danger and their surrounding, lead to the best grazing spots or watering holes and that keep the herd safe. So, as we interact with our horses I want us to let go of the idea that we are going to be the dominant lead horse that our horse must follow. Instead, I want you to concentrate on developing a relationship with your horse where they trust you enough to follow and I want you to realize that when they choose not to, it’s because we have failed in our training. We have failed in our training. I say that twice because the onus is on us, not the horse. The idea of reprimands and punishment should be forgotten and we will discuss that later on as to why. When it comes to the equine behavior, We, as humans are just beginning to understand this complex equine social structure. However, we know though that the best well rounded horses are ones that have had the experience of being raised by their moms in a herd environment.
Desensitization
Let’s go on to the second way that horses learn and that is through desensitization. Desensitization is the process of reducing sensitivity, fear or reactiveness to an object, place or situation. This is a human guided process that systematically works to lessen the response of the horse to a stimulus by repeatedly exposing the horse in a CALM way to the stimulus. Note that never should we induce fear or overwhelm the horse in this process. The stimulus should never be what we call “over threshold”. Additionally, combining desensitization with classical or operant conditioning is a quick and sure way to calmly introduce novel objects and situation to a horse. An example would be introducing the horse to clippers for the first time. Start slowly with the clippers off and away from the horse. Then combined this with reward based training for standing calmly. The clippers can gradually be turned on and brought closer to the horse eventually clipping the horse. Use reward based training to classically condition the horse to actually like the clippers. Slowly repeat this process until the horse is desensitized to both the sound and feel of the clippers. This is how you train a horse to accept clippers calmly on all parts of the body.
Habituation
Habituation we distinguish from desensitization in that it’s a general accommodation to unchanging environmental conditions In habituation, there is no directed human training that strives to lower the sensitivity to a stimulus. Instead, the horse learns on their own from repeated exposure. The horse learns that something isn’t to be feared by repeated exposure without feeling pain or negative emotions. A great example is a banging door at the barn. When the horse first moves to this barn, they may be startled every time the door is closed and bangs. However, after some time the horse will habituate to the sound and will no longer react. Notice how this is just about the horse learning from the environment, not from training. It is often said that horses that live in an active environment become less sensitive to noises and activity in general. Habituation would be the reason why. However, horses can learn to be fearful from an environment if they are continually under stress and develop a fearful reaction to their environment. They can learn both ways. The individual personalities will play a role into whether the horse is able to handle the chaos of a barn and it habituates them to it or if they comes anxious and nervous because of it. Something to keep in mind.
Flooding
Erroneously, trainers have taken the idea of desensitization and come up with the idea of flooding. Flooding by its very definition implies taking the horse above threshold. Something we want to avoid at all costs. The flooding definition reads: arriving in overwhelming amounts or quantities. Never should our training be in overwhelming amounts, otherwise we are not doing our jobs correctly. An example of flooding is trying the horse to the fence and sacking them out by repeatedly exposing them to a saddle pad, blanket, towel etc. This type of training causes extreme fear and anxiety. One of three things then happen. Either the horse reacts and hurts himself, the horse learns to be fearful of new stimuli or objects or the horse shuts down, withdraws, accepts the object but have acquired learned helplessness. Learned helplessness occurs when an animal is repeatedly subjected to an aversive stimulus that it cannot escape. Eventually, the animal will stop trying to avoid the stimulus and behave as if it is utterly helpless to change the situation. I don’t know about you, but this is not what I call training. This is abuse. We must strive to give our horses a choice and reward when they make the choice that exhibits the behavior we would like to see more of. But I digress. We will talk about that more in a few moments.
Punishment
This leads me into the next way horses learn and that is through punishment. Yes, horses learn through punishment otherwise people wouldn’t do it. However, we will learn that with punishment comes a bunch of side effects we can avoid, we want to avoid and we should avoid. Punishment can either be the taking away of something valuable to the horse in response to a behavior (called negative punishment) or the addition of something aversive to the horse in response to a behavior (positive punishment). When we think of punishment, we usually think of the later. Examples would be hitting, scolding, yelling, whipping, ear twitching, chasing the horse, general aggression or even a raised tone to our voice. Yes, we have all punished our horses in some manner but from now on when you feel the urge to resort to punishment make a mental note to stop and find another way to train. Science has taught us that punishment and coercive behavior causes avoidance, aggression, stubbornness, unwillingness and a general poor work ethic. It has also shown that horses are less willing to try a new behavior if they have been punished for being wrong in the past. This makes sense. Why would you try something new if you have been scolded for new in the past. Why would we expect anything less from our horses. I have personally seen horses that are regularly punished don’t participate in training actively and enthusiastically but instead just “do that they are told” and nothing else. They usually have a shut down appearance to them or worse they are trying to outsmart you to work against you, not with you.
So now I want to move to where we will spend the most time when we train.
Overshadowing
Although I don’t regularly think about overshadowing, it has a place here because it’s an important idea to keep in mind. Overshadowing is the idea that a horse cannot be doing two conflicting behaviors at the same time. For instance, the horse cannot be standing still and dancing at the same time or the horse cannot be spooking and responding to your aid to raise and lower his head at the same time. What we find instead is that one behavior outweighs the other. As a trainer, the idea is to teach a behavior the horse knows well, is easy and is rewarding and use it to overshadow a behavior that is less desirable. My best example was of teaching Dancer to halt and lower his head upon hearing or seeing a running horse. He could not run away and halt at the same time. Obviously this behavior started simple, became more complex and was STRONGLY rewarded. It started with me cueing for the wanted behavior and overshadowing the behavior he wanted to exhibit. I just want you to keep this idea in your mind as you progress in your training. I also call it teaching an alternate behavior and is EXTREMELY effective.
Counter-conditioning
This idea is not that far off from the next way that horses learn and that is through counter conditioning. Counter conditioning is replacing an association with something negative with something good so that the horse learns that the thing actually predicts good happening for the horse. Over many repetitions, the horse learns that whenever that thing appears, good things happen! Eventually, the process produces a neutral or positive reaction to the sight of the previously feared or disliked person, animal, event, place or object. Word of caution here. When counter conditioning, the process has to be very slow. You cannot expect to overcome an emotional response from the horse just by offering a reward. As you would not expect a horse that was super fearful of a horse trailer to hop on just because there was dinner in there. Instead, there is a slow systematic way to counter condition with high value rewards that really works. In counter conditioning the trainer should consider using the Premack Principle where high probability behaviors are used to reinforce low probability behaviors and look at transferring value from one object, place, person, behavior or activity to another with positive reinforcement (below). Counter conditioning stems from a continuation of the scientific studies of Pavlov and classical conditioning which is next.
Classical Conditioning
We are all familiar with Pavlovs dogs that started salivating from the sound of bell because it was always presented before being fed. Classical conditioning is the pairing of a new stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus. In this case the bell was the new stimulus, the food was the unconditioned stimulus because dogs naturally salivate to the presence of food. How we use this in horse training is to take something not inherently rewarding to a horse and by pairing it with food, we make it rewarding. There are lots of ways to apply conditioning. For starters, this is why it’s suggested to feed your horse on the trailer to help him become a better loader. By always pairing food with the horse trailer, the horse begins to associated the trailer with being fed and the trailer becomes a good thing. This is also how trainers “load the clicker” to mean something. If every time to click you feed the horse a treat, the horse will in a very short time learn that the click means food. By always pairing these two together, you will classically condition your horse experience the click as rewarding.
Negative Reinforcement
The most common form of horse training used is pressure and release or otherwise known as negative reinforcement. In this concept, negative means the absence of. We are taking away a stimulus. We are all very familiar with this type of training because it’s what we use every day in traditional training. We put pressure on the horses side with our legs and we teach the horse to move forward to get a release of the pressure. In this way, the release of pressure becomes a type of reward for the horse. At least, it’s a reward from something. Problems arise when trainers don’t understand how to train horses to light pressure or if their timing is off. Let me explain. You ask the horse to lower it’s head from downward pressure on the halter. If the horse doesn’t lower it’s head you increase the pressure. AS SOON AS the horse attempts to lower it’s head, you immediately release all pressure. You repeat this. Always start with light pressure and never ending a lesson when you had to use a large amount of pressure. Your horse will learn to lower its head on a very light pressure on the halter. This same idea can be used to teach the horse forward, back, transitions, half halts etc. Trainers run into problems when they don’t release the pressure immediately, when they keep repeating the pressure without a response and deaden the horse to the cue or if they too harshly ask for something that should take light pressure. Remember the use of the whip should be taught this way as an aid, not as a punishment. Only in this way can we ethically agree to use a whip.
Positive Reinforcement / Reward Based Training
Finally, we get to training technique that can really change your relationship with your horse. Up until now with the exception of classical conditioning I would expect all of you to have been at least familiar with the ways a horse learns. Somehow in traditional horse training this very last type of learning has been glossed over and misunderstood. Maybe because it wasn’t classically taught or passed down through the generations. Maybe we have finally had a shift in our consciousness about the inherent value of life, the intelligence of animals and their ability to experience emotions similar to our own. For whatever the reason, I believe that the use of rewards in training with not only make learning more fun for all parties involved but will also teach people how smart their horses are and how training can be done with enjoyment. Success is in the ability of the trainers mind in thinking up rewarding ways to teach. So with that let’s talk about reward based training. Reward based training, otherwise known as positive reinforcement, is the addition of a reward immediately following a behavior that the trainer wants to see more of. Basically something good is presented to increase the frequency of a behavior. When rewarded, horses will repeat the behavior usually with more enthusiasm and learning happens very quickly. It works like this. Your horse does a behavior, you immediately mark the behavior and then give a reward. Remember the reward has to be something inherently rewarding like food, water, companionship, access to the herd, mutual grooming etc. Food is most often used but there are very clever ways to introduce other rewards that can be super effective. We mostly use food and when you are learning how to use reward based training, food is the reward I recommend to start. Once you get good at the basics it’s much easier to branch out. Reward based training also teaches you to get really good at breaking movements or behavior down into their simplest components and teach them from the ground up, even if you are retraining something. Start small and build. It can also can be combined and added to other ways that horses learn to speed up the learning process and to make your horses training sessions more rewarding. We know that when your horse loves learning because you have taken the time to make it rewarding, your horse will become enthusiastic and involved in his training and will also start to regard you and your training sessions with a positive outlook. Remember you can train anything with this… ear posture, ground manners, complex dressage movements, calmness and happy attitude, jumping and even speed all depending on what you reward.
Here at RFS, learn how to make yourself valuable and rewarding to your horse.
