Protected Contact

The concept of training in Protected Contact (PC) is unique to Positive Reinforcement (R+) Training. PC means training with a barrier between the trainer and the animal and originated in zoos and wildlife parks, where a keeper’s safety was paramount.

It’s essential for beginner horses and humans, but also for more experienced trainers with nervous or fearful horses. Never underestimate the psychological power of a barrier between human and animal. There is a subtle difference that allows the trainer and horse to relax and feel relatively safe. I’ve talked previously about horses transitioning to R+ and PC is an important first step. Horses are very environment and context specific, so PC is the best way to say to them, “we are starting fresh and new”!! PC is the best way for them to come to the training open and with fewer prior unhappy associations and because we all know how horses can be curious and different in a new environment or context. If we weren’t in PC, old memories and associations are going to be at the forefront of the equines’ mind, such as not being able to walk away, not being able to behave in a way that gives us information about our training. This is because horses, ponies and donkeys are often punished for ‘speaking’ and being honest with us. Look away and they are corrected, pin their ears and they get told off, try to walk away and that is the ultimate act of “disrespect” and punishment will follow swiftly.

One of the wonderful things about R+ training is putting our ego aside, because traditional training is often very much about getting up close and hands on with our horses. Muscle memory and survival instincts are powerful and human or horse can often react defensively without thought when not in PC. So it can feel a bit strange and for many it can be hard to step back and give the animal space. But recognising when we need to use PC, whether for our own or our horse’s benefit, is very important.

When we accept that our training is not about controlling, micro managing or intimidating our animal, OR showing what an amazing uber trainer we are, we can see the power of the learning that is happening from a distance. We can see the animal (hopefully) enjoying pleasurable consequences from their own behaviour. The trainer has the time and space to observe their animal, think, re-organise and if needed, step back.

Equally important is having an alternative food source right there, while the horse is in PC, so they can have something to munch in the breaks and more importantly, have some level of choice and don’t feel coerced to stay for the only available food source. This is not a guarantee though and I will be writing on this in the future. Never assume the animal KNOWS they can walk away, because often they don’t know and will not, based on their prior history with humans.

Watch all the ways we can train in Protected Contact here :-

Horse Training, get creative and change something

Have you ever made a definitive statement about your horse?

“My horse is not food motivated”

“My horse doesn’t like being hosed down”

“I have a spooky/aggressive/dominant/submissive horse”

I’ve talked previously about how labelling our animals is not helpful in our training or how to solve problems.

But any one of us can fall into this trap, because it seems to be so ingrained in equestrianism and society as a whole. I’ve caught myself doing it with my horses and donkeys. The important thing is that I caught myself and I changed my thinking and my behaviour and then the animal’s behaviour changed as well.

Environment drives behaviour!

A couple of examples.

Two of my three horses love having a hose down on hot days at liberty in the paddock. My third horse Grace would scurry away and always stood back while the other two horses jostled for the best position. I always assumed that Grace just didn’t like to be hosed. She was older, maybe the cold water was hard on her? But one day I separated the horses and thought I’d offer Grace a hose. The other horses were well away from her and behind a barrier and she very willingly came up and enjoyed a thorough hosing. I felt so bad that all those times she stood back, she wanted to be hosed, but just didn’t feel safe! I know it seems obvious now, but at the time, I was sure she just didn’t like being hosed.

I have a donkey and he came from a ‘traditional’ home (they all did!) and has not been hand fed or bucket fed. As a result, he showed very little interest in me or in food in general when he arrived, apart from his hay. He would back up to me or sidle across for scratches, that’s obviously a learned (positively reinforced) behaviour, but he didn’t seem particularly overjoyed with my scratches. I have a routine and give all my equines a hard feed with their minerals and salt at the end of the day, but the new donkey had been quite uninterested in his dinner and often walked away from it and I have to rescue it before my other mini hoovers it up.

One day I decided to separate the two mini donkeys for their hard feed and guess what happened? As you can see in the picture, the new little mini chomped down on his dinner! He didn’t quite finish it all, but came very close. Clearly, like Grace, he felt more comfortable without competition for that resource.

It also made me think about his training and how I can change things and help him feel safer and perhaps I’ll get a better response from him and more participation. It’s easy to think that I’m a good enough trainer that I don’t need to train in Protected Contact (behind a barrier), but perhaps for this little guy, I need to do it FOR HIM to feel safe, not because I think I can do without it.

Not getting the behaviour you desire? Change something in the environment and see what happens.

Next time you are stuck in your training or make a definitive statement about your horse or give them a label, pause for a moment and think, how you can get creative and change something and see if you get a different result.

As we all know, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, is the definition of insanity.

The “lick and chew”, there’s no need (to scare your horse).

I saw a video today that had me very concerned.

Now that Natural Horsemanship/ pressure & release/ Negative Reinforcement trainers understand about the different nervous systems, the Flight/Fight and Rest/Digest states and the accompanying body language, they like to talk about it a lot, particularly the ‘lick and chew’.

What I find perplexing and I don’t seem to find answers in their explanations, is why?

Why the heck scare the bejesus out of a horse, so they are scared enough that their saliva dries in their mouth, their heart and lungs are pumping full steam ready to run and then celebrate when you see the physical manifestations of their body coming down from this horrible state of fear. Why celebrate the runny nose from tears, the neck shake, the sigh, the flared nostrils and triangular eye becoming normal again and the yawning and yes, the lick and chew. The holy grail of Natural Horsemanship it seems nowadays, is the lick and chew, apparently because it means they’re *now* relaxed.

Why oh why do we need to scare horses first so they can then be “relaxed”.

I would think that anyone who had such a fright, that they were dry mouthed and heart pumping in their throat, probably doesn’t feel relaxed afterwards. Shaky, relieved, in shock maybe, but not relaxed.

Imagine if we suggested that a classroom of children needed to be scared so hard that their mouths went dry, their eyes were wide and their hearts were pounding in their chest and then we let them calm down and suggested they were “relaxed” and could learn now.

Imagine that?

Yet that is what is being suggested for horses.

Worse, people believe it and do it to their horses.

Stop scaring your horses, there’s no need.

Horses know how to be relaxed.

If you want zen with your horses, give them a horse friend and a hay net and then watch.

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.

What is Shaping in Positive Reinforcement (clicker) training?

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! 🧡

Progress at 24 May 2021 !

Separation Anxiety?

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:-

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.