Category: Horse Training Blog

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?

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:-

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.

Buddy Sour

Herd Bound

Destination Addiction

What do all these terms mean?

Separation Anxiety is one of the most common problems that horse owners face. It is a natural behaviour for horses – millions of years of evolution have taught them to be very scared if they find themselves alone and to rectify it immediately. Being alone is how an animal gets attacked easily by a predator and being alone means you are in danger and vulnerable to attack because you don’t have the safety of numbers to protect you. A horse cannot rest or sleep or eat properly alone and their goal will always be to re-join their herd as soon as possible. When you observe a horse experiencing separation anxiety, there is usually lots of running, pacing and weaving as they work hard to return to the safety of the herd.

The first experience of separation anxiety for domestic horses is usually at weaning. Many abrupt and sudden weaning practices cause mare and foal much distress and fear. Experiencing this kind of fear and trauma in their formative years, can affect a horse for the rest of their life and make them more susceptible to severe separation anxiety later in life.

Many training approaches that deal with the behaviours associated with separation anxiety focus on Punishment. Popular approaches are ‘making the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy’, ‘working’ the horse near other horses, circling and causing discomfort, fear and pain when the horse gravitates towards other horses. Keeping horses living in isolation to prevent them bonding or forming relationships with other equines is another popular approach.

The problem with these approaches is that they are working against the nature of the horse – against their basic instincts and biology that have been developed and successful for the horse, over millions of years.

Instead, we can work with the horse and teach them! Oftentimes we have to undo a lot of fear and trauma that they have already experienced, so we need to be patient to begin with. But as we help the horse to learn and never trigger their fear response, we will be rewarded with a horse who’s able to leave their friends or have their friends leave them without fear and stress.

Humane force free approaches to separation anxiety utilise Desensitisation and Counter Conditioning.

In order to do this, it’s important to note the point your horse starts to go over threshold ie shows subtle fear responses, or hypervigilance and hyperarousal and plan your training to start well before this point.

Training literally involves very small steps and we pair each step with food to create a good feeling/association with leaving the herd.

I found yet another fantastic blog from Eileen Anderson that discusses fear and how Desensitisation and Counter Conditioning can help you overcome it in yourself, your dog and this also applies to your horse. There’s some great examples of how small and detailed the exposures/steps need to be in a DS/CC program, to give you an idea.

You can find her blog here:-

You Can’t Cure MY Fear By Shoving Cookies at Me!

Finally, if anyone gives you advice that seems to work against the horse or tries to change the horse’s feeling of wanting to be with other horses via some kind of discomfort, then smile and thank them and walk away.

Do you have a horse or donkey that is really “in your face”? For example, are they always first to greet, even hunt you down, sniff, nibble, even push on you? But by the same token, they don’t seem comfortable when you try to touch them, they nip and guard themselves and there’s something about them that makes you feel not quite comfortable or safe?

I’ve got a donkey called Dorothy and at first, she seemed like the most friendly “in your face” asking for scratches type of donkey.

But I’ve learnt otherwise since that first impression.

I’ve learnt that she doesn’t like or trust people and a lot of her behaviour seems to be learnt and reinforced through what I imagine was a lack of choices and control. For example, if she can’t remove herself from people and situations, perhaps her behaviour can make the people go away??

When she first came to me, she seemed reasonably friendly, once she got over her initial fear. She would solicit scratches, but try to touch her outside of her soliciting and it was a big kicky “no!”

I think we need to be careful that we don’t just assume that if a horse or donkey comes to us, that they necessarily like us or want attention or to be touched. I think this concept is similar to the post I did earlier about being able to train a horse to move towards something they don’t want to go near, by using Negative Reinforcement. Moving towards something gives them control or an attempt to control the removal of an aversive stimulus (in this case us). I feel an animal can find ways to make things go away, by moving towards them, pushing, nibbling and generally being aversive and annoying.

The problem is that people think that a horse moving towards them is wanting to be with them and engage with them. I’ve even seen a video of one of those cowboy trainers saying a mouthy horse wants to engage, so we should engage! That’s a pretty big assumption and interpretation of behaviour. But what I saw happen and what supports what I suspect, is that the “engaging” involved smothering the horse’s muzzle and face with touches and rubbing and guess what happened? The horse “engaged” ie. mouthed and tried to bite the human less or stopped altogether, as that was the plan as an antidote for a mouthy horse. But hold on, if a horse wanted to engage and we engaged with them, wouldn’t the behaviour increase ie. be positively reinforced and therefore increase? But it didn’t, it lessened or stopped, therefore the horse’s mouthy, in your face behaviour was punished.

So next time you think a horse wants to engage, is friendly and doesn’t carry any fear, worry, anxiety or distrust of humans, think again. Just because they move towards us, try to interact with us, doesn’t mean they like us, it could well mean they want us to go away and that’s how they try to do it. It most likely works with their equine friends, but us humans tend to think that it’s all about us and our horses always love us and want to be around us and that’s not always the case.

Check out gorgeous Dorothy, she’s very vocal because she loves to train, BUT she still has reservations about a lot of the things I want to do, like trimming her back hooves. I’m giving her the time she needs, because I realise that although she seems joyful, there is an unhappy history to overcome as well.

I think it’s important to show real life training, rather than carefully edited, scripted and captioned training. I also have to live up to my own encouragement to everyone to be brave learners, be prepared to make mistakes and that ‘the animal is always right, so how can behaviour be wrong’. I think various trainers have said different iterations of this message, from Skinner to Bailey to Ramirez.

There isn’t really mistakes in this video, but it may look like it to some people. I’d like to explain and if you watch til the end you’ll see a rather funny blooper I’ve left in there.

Firstly, note there are 3 points in this post and video, the first is regarding Mercedes’ behaviour, the second is about being mindful of how you deliver your reinforcers, look after your body and your horse’s body and straightness and also how you deliver the reinforcer affects whether your horse is more or less ‘in your face’ and ‘muggy’. Thirdly, I wanted to talk about and demonstrate Feeding for Position and that learning happens after the click.

In regards to Mercedes behaviour, let me say that horses need to move, they are designed to move and domestic horses don’t move enough generally. Many domestic horses are often overweight or prone to becoming overweight, understandably. Therefore when I started R+ training, I was focused on movement and exercise, not standing around and giving a lot of food. This hopefully explains what’s happening with Mercedes’ behaviour in the video. She has a long and strong Positive Reinforcement history with movement, with doing things. She doesn’t do standing still very well in certain contexts. She’s very happy to stand still for certain things, but overall my training is about movement and I like that and I think it’s good for my horses. But if I want to do explanatory videos like these, you can see where this becomes problematic if you watch Mercedes’ behaviour.

The first point I’m demonstrating in the video is about HOW you feed. Looking after your back and your horse’s back requires some attention to detail and practice. Think about being ambidextrous and feed from both sides, both hands and in a way that is cleaner, smoother and easier for both you and the horse. You’ll notice how much straighter Mercedes is when I feed from my left hand on her left side and also how I’m not twisting my back. These small details can make a big difference.

This leads into what I also wanted to demonstrate and talk about and that’s the subject of Feeding for Position and more precisely, Bob Bailey’s famous words “The Click doesn’t end Behaviour, learning keeps going ie. Click for Action, Feed for Position.”

I often explain it as these glowing dots in space that the horse can see, they are places where there is R+ history, where the horse has been fed, reinforced for a behaviour specifically. The horse, any animal, gravitates to places of value where they’ve been repeatedly fed. They can also be super specific about the place, the body part, etc. You’ll see that in my video, I think it took about 2-3 trials and Mercedes kept her head at the ‘red dot’ ie. the place where reinforcement was last delivered repeatedly, down low and then up high.

This is exactly why it doesn’t worry me if she’s a fidget head and can’t stand still (such as in the video), because it would take very little for her to learn that standing still has value and she will quit asking, “when are we going to move??”.

Feeding for Position can be a very useful tool in your force free tool box. I feel that is where the art comes into the science of what we do. Some examples might be when we are teaching a behaviour, but then also using the food delivery to ask the horse to move away from you or to go somewhere else to get the reinforcement. This can be a way to teach a ‘go to a station/hoof target’ behaviour, where you would feed on the station, but then start to offer food away from the station, so that they learn to leave and go there and eventually on cue. Another example might be in Reverse Round Pen training, in order to encourage movement and really hammer home the message of voluntary movement. We would click for behaviour ie. more speed or a nice head or body shape, you might then offer the food/reinforcer ahead of the horse. Although you clicked for behaviour, the horse has to walk (another behaviour) to acquire the reinforcer.

Can you think of any times you’ve clicked for action and fed for position?

I hope you enjoy the video and I’ve given you some food for thought.

There is a 3.3.3 rule that applies to rescue dogs and I thought that we need something similar for horses. Obviously the ideal would be that horses are not continually changing homes, but the reality is very different. Therefore I feel that it needs to be acknowledged and recognised what a traumatic experience moving homes is for horses, so that we can make the best out of a bad situation for the horse. The source of this concept is from Dr Patricia McConnell and Dr Karen London, in their book, Love Has No Age Limit, Welcoming an Adopted Dog into Your Home.

I love this concept and I feel this can equally be applied to horses and probably many other pets and animals. I would go so far as to say that horses would need a lot more time than some dogs, but it’s most definitely meant to be a guide, not a rule and needs to be adjusted accordingly for the individual.

When a horse changes homes, it’s important to remember that this will be one of the most stressful events in their life. Just as it is recognised that moving is one of the most stressful things a human can experience, it is even more so for our horses.

This is because they have no warning, no preparation, no choice, it happens suddenly and worse, usually everything that is familiar to them is gone forever.

This can be completely de-stabilising, disorienting and quite frightening. It’s amazing most horses handle it as well as they do.

Imagine a complete change in diet, everything from the grass you eat, the taste and smell of the water, the hay and hard feed are different, the containers you eat out of look and smell different and if you had to protect your food from being taken away or stolen by other horses or animals. Imagine then experiencing digestive upset, cramps or you have trouble eating the food because it tastes so strange from what you are used to, or just tastes really bad.

What if you came from a small handkerchief sized paddock with just dirt and were thrown into a vast expanse of grass and trees and water and hills, or vice versa, it could be so overwhelming. What if you lived in a herd with plenty of room to run and was forcibly moved to life in a stable or stall. Everything would sound different, the wind, birds and other animals, machinery, traffic and even surrounding human sounds. What if there were obstacles in the paddock you’d never encountered before, what if you hurt yourself.

Imagine leaving all your friends behind, forever. You probably don’t know what a family is, having a mother and father or siblings or aunties and uncles. This is because you were suddenly removed from your mother and lived your whole life with strange horses and tried to get along as best you could. Some of them acted quite strangely, were over friendly, or aggressive, some were calm and some were fun, so you got by the best you were able.

Imagine starting afresh where you don’t know anyone and they don’t know you and you were desperately missing all that you left behind. What if you happily lived in a big herd of friendly horses and then found yourself all alone, not even another (strange) horse in sight. What if you’d resigned yourself to living alone, was pretty depressed about it, but got food and water regularly and were then thrown into a herd of completely strange horses. A herd who all knew each other and had their friends and knew where they fit and didn’t particularly appreciate you being thrown in the middle of their settled and organised herd.

Then there is this strange human who wants to interact with you, touch you, brush you, put gear on you and ride you. How very unsettling and scary would that be, especially when they seem to speak a completely different language with their bodies and their gear, compared to the previous human you had known.

Think about it for a moment, what we do to horses and what we expect from them.

It’s an awful lot.

But we can try to make it better.