Pauline – Page 4 – Whispering Horse

Do they really like to be touched?

I read a great article a while back about dog owners requesting that people ignore their dog. This can equally apply to our equines.

The article went on to say that dogs are sentient beings and they have likes and dislikes and we shouldn’t expect them to be ok with being physically accosted by strangers. The same goes for equines.

People love to pat horses and donkeys. The first thing most people do is to reach out a hand and stroke their face. Imagine if a stranger walked up to you and stroked your face? Imagine even someone you know, doing it without asking?

Next time you want to pat a horse or donkey, even if it’s your own, stop and think for a moment.

Can you find out where they really like to be touched? Can you respect the fact that they may not like being touched, just now, or not at all?

Could you train them to like being touched somewhere less invasive, such as their neck, shoulder or wither?

Could you find their favourite itchy spots, so both of you get something enjoyable out of it?

Paddock Paradise, history and examples.

Not all of this will be useful or benefit your horse or be practical. Every horse and environment is unique. But the basic premise is to respect the horse as a species and try to improve their lifestyle and welfare. Some of the observations and science behind this concept, have been improved upon and superseded since this was released. I personally don’t necessarily endorse all of the information, but I take what I think is good and helpful and works for me and my horses and donkeys and I encourage you to do the same.

The photos in this post are my own, but there are also some interesting ideas in the link I’ve shared. A quote from the attached link:-

“Paddock Paradise is a ‘management or boarding concept’ based on the lifestyles of the naturally healthy U.S. Great Basin wild horses. It was conceived as a way for horse owners to provide domestic equines with an environment that more closely resembles their natural habitat. It was not until Jaime Jackson published the book, Paddock Paradise: A Guide to Natural Horse Boarding, that the concept of providing horses with a similar enrichment environment was even discussed.”

You can read more here:-

https://www.aanhcp.net/pages/welcome-to-paddock-paradise?fbclid=IwAR0IE8UPrEz8T1DppYNCyD7DvKtHHlump4KAuwMQuqWP8370TIWeNQpibf8

Paddock Paradise, horses need varied terrain.

I’m a big fan of Paddock Paradise (PP) approaches/philosophy, in that I understand that the modern domestic lifestyle doesn’t suit a lot of equines and a PP approach can be a good compromise. It’s not perfect either, but it comes a little closer to how equines evolved to live. It gets people thinking in the right direction. It’s often better than the improved pasture, boring handkerchief sized, private (individual) type paddocks we put them in currently.

Horses evolved to move, live in a herd, seek food and water, firmer ground when it was wet and moist ground when it was dry. They moved, often many kilometres, with the seasons and the demands of reproducing, surviving and thriving.

They didn’t stand in mud or in a small yard with strangers and bicker over hay nets. Domestication did that to them. WE did that to them.

But we are trying to make it better for them. We are learning and evolving, just as they did, from small furry multi-toed animals living in forests, to the beautiful majestic hard hooved animals we see today.

Therefore, when it’s suggested that horses are designed to live on soil and in winter, in mud, I’m skeptical. Did they really evolve to live on just soil and in mud for months at a time? I don’t think so. Is this a problem we all battle with, yes definitely and a PP system can help with this. But to suggest that this is a good idea, I’m kind of skeptical. Didn’t they evolve to live and walk on various terrain and we know they like to avoid mud, it slows them down, can be dangerous and can cause health issues. This isn’t what they evolved to live in for months at a time.

We have to ask ourselves, who is saying these things? Is it an ethologist well qualified to speak on these things? Or is it someone’s opinion? I’m not saying it’s bad or evil by any means. My horses had to live this way for a while because the alternative was much much worse, it would mean they had to live on grass that caused obesity, hoof problems and potentially laminitis. So I chose mud, until I could do better.

But I never celebrated it or suggested or promoted it to people as a good thing. That’s where we need to be careful. It’s also important to point out that one person’s mud is another person’s idea of a pretty good deal for their horses! It’s very subjective!

I recommend questioning what you read and what you hear. Think about and even google, how horses evolved, where they lived and thrived and what domestication has done to them. Not a lot of domesticated living is pretty or good for the horse, so beware.

We are all doing the best with what we currently know, and as we learn more, we do better.

Question your sources of information. Horses were designed to travel over a large variety of terrain.

(Pictured, the mud I used to battle and now, the variety of terrain on my partly surfaced PP system)

Is Negative Reinforcement “bad” and is Positive Reinforcement “good”?

There is always a lot of discussion that regularly does the rounds on social media surrounding the question, is Positive Reinforcement “good” and Negative Reinforcement “bad”? First of all, I would ask, for who? The trainer or the horse/animal?

You are then assured that positive simply means adding and negative simply means removing, that’s all, phew! But that’s not the full story, that’s only half the facts. If you see someone suggesting that Negative Reinforcement is ok or fine or benign, because it’s not bad, it’s just removing something, RED FLAG!

I’ve said this many times in the past, always question and verify information and not take things at face value on social media. We are all learning and at different points in our learning journey and that includes me, so this is not a criticism. This is me trying to help people understand and disseminate information about training and behaviour change. We can all have opinions, but there are also facts and sometimes the absence of certain facts, can change the very nature of the message.

There’s an important difference between Negative and Positive Reinforcement, ie. one involves an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus and one involves an appetitive (pleasant) stimulus. Think about that for a moment, one stimulus feels uncomfortable enough for the horse, physically, mentally or emotionally, to elicit some kind of behaviour change, that we can then reinforce by the removal of it. We might like to think about it as “mild pressure” but it was still strong enough to get some kind of response from the horse to attempt to escape or avoid it. Negative Reinforcement is also called Escape and Avoidance Learning! If it were that “mild and gentle” it would be neutral and the horse wouldn’t change their behaviour in order to escape it.

I also need to emphasise that there is more than the “4 quadrants” involved in learning. This is important to know, because we need to consider not only how horses learn, but also what is being paired (associated) AND how they feel while they are learning.

There is Operant Conditioning and there is also Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning and there are also other ways we learn. Classical Conditioning means that along with the stimulus there is a response, there is an association being made and that can be a feeling, an unpleasant, a neutral or a pleasant feeling or any feeling in between. Via Pavlovian learning, we become associated with these feelings. If you train mainly with Positive Reinforcement, you’ll have a horse who mainly likes you and the training, except in certain contexts. The exception will be in the contexts where you use Negative Reinforcement. If done well and enough of it is done, the Positive Reinforcement can bleed into other interactions, if you are lucky. Horses can be very specific about aversives because they can be very specific about context, they have excellent memories and they have scales in their brain weighing everything up.

We can get a seemingly calm and willing horse, because control may be a primary reinforcer, whether that’s control of the addition of an appetitive or understanding what to do to remove an aversive stimulus. It doesn’t mean they’re having fun, it simply means they understand how to avoid the aversive stimulus. But remember that they had to first feel the discomfort of the aversive stimulus and they also then made the connection with who applied it in the first place, YOU, before they figured out how to remove it. A negative emotional valence does have an impact and can impede learning processes. A perceived threat can disconnect horses from learning (and the trainer) and negative emotions can also lead to low motivation. Makes sense right?!

To sum up, an easy way to remember all this is that we have Skinner (Operant Conditioning) on one shoulder and Pavlov (Classical Conditioning) on the other when we are training.

All behaviour is communication

This subject is about another big, huge, challenging mind shift we go through when we move across from traditional (aversive/ forceful) adversarial style of horse training, handling and interactions. When we change over to a different, more positive, empathetic and co-operative way of being with and training our horses via force free approaches such as Positive Reinforcement training.

When we start giving our horse choices and a voice, we need to start listening to their voice and that is not an easy thing to do. Especially when your whole life, you learnt to ignore and punish that voice and when everyone around you says that it’s dangerous, it’s rude, it’s disrespectful and it’s stupid to listen to what your horse is telling you.

Your horse needs to listen and obey you, right? or maybe?

They are not our slaves, our minions, they are not sentient beings we keep in our back paddock, at our beck and call.

If they need to listen, pay attention and respect what we say, I think that should go both ways, don’t you?

But here is the dilemma.

If my mare bares her teeth, or my gelding swishes his tail and stomps his foot when he doesn’t like something I’ve done, what do I do? What happens now?

There’s a saying in the dog training world “never punish the growl”.

This is the moment where we decide, are we listening or are we only ordering and telling?

This is also the moment where we decide, do we get hurt because we are the boss and we ignore their communication and cause them to escalate? Or do we listen and change our behaviour, and eventually our horses tune down their communication because they are listened to and therefore value and trust us and most importantly, they are safe to be around?

If you choose obedience over a cooperative reciprocal relationship, how does “trust”, or a “bond” or a “relationship” or “consent” develop? It doesn’t, how can it?

Really, what kind of relationship or interaction is not listening, but just ordering? When it all goes the human’s way and the horse has no voice and no choice, they do what the human wants because …… why? They have to? It seems to me that it’s not a healthy or mutual or reciprocal relationship. It seems like we are more like a master, or a dictator, than a friend or partner.

The problem I see when we dictate and don’t listen, demand but don’t empathise, is that we create a lopsided relationship and also, an UNSAFE relationship.

If someone you don’t like or respect, someone who treats you disrespectfully and cruelly, who you didn’t like or caused you to feel unsafe, if they for example, fell down. Would you either step over them because you didn’t want to harm them, or not worry if you stomped on them or gave them the boot?

All behaviour is communication, what do we do with that communication?

Generosity

I whipped up a quick video and voiceover to try to illustrate a point I’d like to make that is super important!

I’ve talked about generosity before and I’d like to talk about the importance of it again. I realise “generosity” is a concept and can be extremely subjective. So let me explain.

You are training a horse or donkey who might be reluctant to interact, offer behaviour or perform cued behaviours and you struggle because you suspect fear, discomfort, pain, worry, etc. You know this because you are observing escape and avoidance type behaviours. If that’s the case, you are not only training behaviour, you are Systematically Desensitising and Counter Conditioning various things in the process as well. Sometimes the focus might be more on Systematic Desensitisation and Counter Conditioning, or more on shaping behaviour and it can even switch back and forth quite fluidly.

It’s important to remember that both Operant and Classical Conditioning are always happening at the same time, but sometimes we may be MORE generous because we are focusing more on the Classical than Operant side of things. This means we might be more generous with food because we need to focus more on how the equine FEELS (Counter Conditioning), rather than what they are doing or offering, in the moment.

What that can look like is that we are seemingly feeding for nothing. It could even look like we are reinforcing things we don’t want. It could also look like we are reinforcing problematic behaviour, for example, you ask for a hoof lift and your horse tries to bite you – I would still feed them, because not feeding them will be worse for them and you. I would say to them, I’m so sorry, I made a mistake, I asked too much, I missed some steps, I missed some signs and ask their forgiveness. Remembering also, you cannot reinforce fear or any emotion, so if the horse behaves in a way because they are scared or worried, you cannot reinforce that and in fact, not feeding often makes things worse and unwanted behaviour can escalate. Obviously if that happened, you would need to go away and review what you are doing and perhaps get more experienced help.

For whatever reason on that day, Seymour was not lifting his foot on cue, even though it was trained, but also taking into account he’s still in the process of feeling ok about the whole thing. I can assume and imagine all kinds of things about what he’s feeling and thinking, but all I have to observe is his behaviour. As you can see, I gave it a good try and he was not cooperating, so I continued to be generous and flipped it around to being more of a Counter Conditioning session and didn’t worry if he didn’t lift his hoof. I wanted him to feel safe, not feel pressured, coerced or frustrated, to enjoy the training and to look forward to the next session with enthusiasm, which potentially may not happen if I had withheld food for non-performance of behaviour.

Finally, please don’t ever make the equine wait for food, please don’t ever withhold food for non-performance or for “calm” or “relaxation”. Withholding and making them wait makes things worse, not better.

Paddock Paradise systems

Fantastic words that encapsulate the approach needed, from PP fb group member Emma:

“my biggest learn . . . . is making sure I embrace flexibility, observation, and keep my mind open to the changing needs of the horses and the land!

What I initially implement is just a framework to build on and change as needed.”

– – – – – – – – – – –

What I recommend when starting out and this is simply a guide, don’t set anything permanent up that you don’t have to in the beginning. Set up temporary fencing, step in posts and solar or battery charging and then look at where the water runs, where it drains well and where it doesn’t, what type of soil, grass, plants (weeds), trees you have, where it’s windy and where it’s sheltered, where does the cold wind predominantly come from, where do the horses prefer to sleep, roll (can be separate places) and where they run, where can you plant more trees, put in drains, utilise existing fencing, etc.

Then set up water and hay stations as far away from each other as possible. Where is there access to power or will you need to utilise solar, do you need to build shelter and you can then capture water in a tank. General rule of thumb is a width of one meter per horse plus an extra meter for turning. The more narrow, the more movement and less grass. The wider it is, the more grazing and lingering will happen. Always allow more room in the corners, especially if you have horses who like to gallop and avoid dead ends if not all horses get along 100% of the time.

Do you have machinery and/or a system for collecting, storing, composting and distributing manure and for carting hay?

Let paddocks rest, slash regularly and observe safe grazing times of day and year if your horses do tolerate grass. Consider cross grazing or cutting hay if you have enough acreage or if you’re keen and the area is small, you can cut it by hand as a treat for your horses.

Set up something temporary and just keep changing it and tweaking it til you’re happy. Experiment and let your horses and donkeys tell you what they like and what they don’t like. During that time set aside funds for possible mud control/surfacing and drainage options.

Try to ensure that there is various kinds of enrichment in your Paddock Paradise. Equine enrichment means adding or changing their environment with different substrates and terrain, social interaction with their own species and also other species, sensory experiences such as essential oils and herbs, providing puzzles and toys to fulfil their need for mental and physical stimulation and provide opportunities for contrafreeloading as well as offering a variety of foods to browse, taste and explore. Contrafreeloading means that many species choose to ‘work’ for their food, rather than have it just served up to them. Giving them opportunities to enjoy species specific behaviour will ultimately contribute to their overall health and wellbeing.

Remember that the basic ethos of a Paddock Paradise is to attempt to replicate the conditions that horses evolved to live in over the millennia.

“Just as nature provided what is best for the wild horse, Paddock Paradise is an attempt to replicate those essential factors that naturally create physical, mental and emotional well-being.”

(Jaime Jackson)

What is Shaping in Positive Reinforcement (clicker) training?

“Shaping consists of taking a very small tendency in the right direction and shifting it, one small step at a time, toward an ultimate goal. The laboratory jargon for the process is “successive approximation”.”

(Karen Pryor, Don’t Shoot the Dog)

Karen Pryor developed 10 tips/guidelines for shaping, called The Ten Laws of Shaping. The original ‘laws’ are explained in her book, Don’t Shoot the Dog and she later revised and altered these guidelines to reflect a more up to date understanding of the science and principles of Shaping, including removing varying reinforcement.

Shaping is a a complex skill and takes a great deal of practice, good timing, mechanical skills, excellent observation skills and GENEROSITY, which I’ve mentioned before. The more generous you are are marking and reinforcing the smallest approximation or behaviour the horse offers, the faster the learning and movement towards the goal behaviour. Hold out for bigger and better behaviour and the horse will get confused and frustrated and stop trying or will try other things that they have been reinforced for in the past (reinforcement history)

Following is the 10 principles, paraphrased by Ken Ramirez:-

PRYOR’S MODERN PRINCIPLES OF SHAPING

1. Be prepared before you start

2. Raise criteria in small increments

3. Train one criteria at a time

4. Keep training sessions continuous

5. If it doesn’t work, change the plan

6. Relax old criteria when introducing new criteria

7. Plan ahead

8. Don’t stop a session gratuitously

9. Regress when behaviour deteriorates

10. End on a positive note

Karen Pryor’s updated Modern Principles of Shaping:-

https://clickertraining.com/files/the-modern-principles-of-shaping-SF-edits.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2ZEkKf-rlw1we57nmddDA_xBkOfdW-A6Nx9qfwNwAkksJXEfnE7mWy8Is

If you’re not sure what Shaping looks like, this is a video example of Shaping featuring myself and Grace, this was her first time interacting with a ball:-

Grace’s first time interacting with a ball

A horse who feels safe, is a safe horse to be around

𝓐 𝓱𝓸𝓻𝓼𝓮 𝔀𝓱𝓸 𝓯𝓮𝓮𝓵𝓼 𝓼𝓪𝓯𝓮,

𝓲𝓼 𝓪 𝓼𝓪𝓯𝓮 𝓱𝓸𝓻𝓼𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓫𝓮 𝓪𝓻𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓭

I say this a lot.

But how do we know when they feel safe and when they don’t?

How do we help them to feel safe?

How do we make them safe horses?

How do we feel safe?

Train and prepare them with Positive Reinforcement training and Systematic Desensitisation and Counter Conditioning.

Train and condition in baby steps.

Teach them that all new things equals good things.

Manage their environment carefully.

Be very observant and analytical.

Learn their body language, stress, calming, appeasement and displacement behaviours.

Avoid over exposing or over facing them.

Avoid thinking “they’ll get used to it” or “this will build resilience” most likely it will to do the opposite.

Be consistent.

Be predictable.

Be reliable.

Be their friend.

Seymour’s Progress – May 2021

Yippee! What a fantastic day!

It was trimming day and Seymour finally got his back hoof trimmed for the first time! (This is a donkey who came to me very frightened, head shy and hadn’t been trimmed in years!). For non donkey folk – donkeys are very good at kicking and can even kick sideways and forwards!

All my patience, clicker training, desensitisation and counter conditioning to pretty much everything – being touched, bending over his feet, voluntarily offering to lift his hoof, having strange scary people touch him and ask him to lift his hoof, like my wonderful trimmer Tanya French. A big thank you to Tanya, I couldn’t have done it without you on Seymour’s team! She listened to me and to Seymour and she trusted that I’d done the training to be safe to bend down and ask Seymour to give her his back hoof (and not kick her head in!) We got it done and I am so thrilled and Seymour is so much more comfortable now, he was very sore on that foot.

His fronts got trimmed too and he just gets better and better every time with them.

It’s been such a long road with him and he is really starting to bloom. He even let me give him a really good scratch and massage all along his back and he relaxed into it and let his head droop all the way down to the ground. That’s probably another first for him, to really let himself enjoy my touch.

I think he’s turned a corner in his trust of people, thanks to Tanya and myself showing him that people can help him feel better. He feels so much better with 3 beautifully trimmed little donkey feet.

Onward to that last tootsie and he’ll be like a brand new donkey!