1 ) Consistency
The biggest issue I have seen at just about every barn I’ve been to (with a few
amazing exceptions) is that horses are first and foremost not treated with any
kind of consistency in their daily life. And I know what most are thinking, if
they are fed at the same times everyday, and turned out at the same times
everyday, and ridden the same every day and so on, how is that not
consistent? And the answer is that it is consistent, but only in the
physical tense… What’s not consistent is how he is handled; for instance: the
person who feeds him is likely different than the person who turns him out, or
even who mucks his stall when he is left in, who is likely different than the
person who grooms and tacks him up, who is likely different than the person who
“trains” him, or rides him. There is a lot of room between all of those people
for a whop load of inconsistency.
That creates a lot of stress for a horse,
they never know exactly what to expect from anyone, and especially when you are
talking about a high stress environment like the show world… tempers get lost
on a daily basis and for most of us that doesn’t mean a whole lot, we’ve
learned to deal with emotional outbreaks because that’s who humans are.. but
that’s not who horses are. Horses don’t have emotional break downs in the herd,
they have incredible discipline when it comes to their herd hierarchy, and they
would not risk being sent out of the herd for having a bad hair day.
Here is where we need to become patient
in everything we do, we need to leave our humanistic responses on the sidelines
and never be a predator to them. Predators are not partners. They are danger.
And as long as you are considered a source of danger, you will never have a
fully relaxed and willing horse to work with. You are a factory for stress.
So how do we create consistency for them?
For me, it’s pretty simple; your team needs to be on the same page. And they
need to have the same core values and learned skills so they can apply them on
a daily basis in a similar fashion. Everyone has an idea of what training a
horse should be like, and how to do it, and that’s fine. But if you don’t have
any consistency in that, you aren’t going to get much past a stressed horse
with issues.
My team is small now, it consists of myself, my family and a few specialized
individuals of whom I bounce ideas off of and get valued information from. And
while we all have our own place in the horse world, we all follow the same core
value. The horse comes first, always. We aren’t in this for the ribbons, the
fame, or the fortune (what fortune?! ;) ) we’re in this to make our horses lives the best to what
they deserve, so they will work for us in return. By understanding how a horse
would react in situations allows us to tailor how we act in situations, so we
don’t evoke the wrong response. You cannot expect a horse to be anything but
what he is, and first and foremost, he is a horse. Not a sports athlete, not
sports equipment or your best friend, he’s a horse. But he should also be your
partner. Respecting those two things above all else, will get you farther in
training than any amount of years in the saddle will. You respect he’s a horse, so you need to learn to understand what being a horse means. You respect he needs
you to be his leader, so you need to learn to understand what being a “horse
leader” means too. You can’t just show up and expect a horse to understand you
are the boss and he should do what you say, just because. You have to earn it.
And you have to work and learn and study for that. But here’s the difference in
perspective, a horse expects you to know how to communicate if you want
something from him, because otherwise you are just another predator trying to
get a free meal. And he isn’t going to stick around for that for long. This is
where patience can dwindle for many, and fear and intimidation strike for some…
it’s a sad idea that such a large and powerful animal can be so easily
intimidated.. But intimidation and punishment only further complex the issue;
you have confirmed you are in fact danger. And you have created a more tense
horse. More stress.
2) The Use of Positive and Negative Reinforcement
In traditional horse training, negative reinforcement has been proven to be
the quickest way to train a horse to do anything. There are books and books
about how to use negative reinforcement over anything else, because it evokes a
response that we perceive as what we want, and that’s good enough for us!
Wrong. While negative reinforcement has a very important role in horse
training, it also plays a very bad one all on it’s own.
So what do I mean by negative reinforcement; in school I was taught it is the
removal of a stimulus when the desired response is attained. So an example
would be; removing a leg aid when
the desired response of moving forward is attained. It’s the removal of a
stimuli that creates the term “negative”, as it reinforces the action we want.
Now this is great, we all use this just about every minute we are around a
horse. But here’s the issue; in traditional training methods, that’s ALL they
use to train. So what’s in it for the horse? "Oh great, you stopped cropping my
side because I decided you were so annoying that I would rather trot forward
than stay at this comfortable walk with your annoying tapping"… Is that a mind
set we want for our partners? Is that the energy we’re going to take with us
into the show ring?
This is where the most important aspect comes in, the other half of the
equation. Positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is the addition of
something a horse likes to reinforce a behaviour. So giving a treat to a horse who has
performed the correct response on cue. That is how we exclaim YES to our
horses. Giving them something in return for them giving something to us.
Before I continue about positive reinforcement I want to tangent into a quick discussion about giving
horses treats, because I get in trouble with this all of the time. People tell
me all of the time about how they can’t feed their horses treats anymore
because they become nippy, and pushy and grabby.. and my response to that is
that you aren’t "treating" right.
My favourite example of this is with a marked
dangerous horse I worked with last fall. He had injured more than a few people
form his sudden outbursts of right brain introversion and was likely going to
end up in some pretty terrible hands. I worked with him at liberty extensively
before I got in close for anything, as his reactions to any kind of stimulus
was to strike, rear, and buck at the cause of the stimulus, and that terrified
me. He was the first aggressive horse I had ever worked with, so I was at a bit
of a loss. But I put his actions into order, I began to understand him.. and it
was clear after a few sessions he was just scared. He was so afraid of
everything, he had no thought process and his natural instincts took hold of it
all. His kicking and striking was because he had no idea how else to deal with
the world around him, no one had taught him anything was ok, just that
everything he had done so far was terribly wrong.
So anyhoo, I got to work with
him on the ground for a bit everyday, and I learned that the way to his trust
was with treats and “safe places” to retreat to when he got scared. When I gave
him treats though, I was SUPER specific and precise about HOW that treat was
attained. He always had to lower his head, infront of his body, not towards me
on the side of him, and to relax. He got a release of stimulus when he did the
right thing, and then was asked to lower his head, waited for a sigh of relief,
and then had a treat appear at his lowered nose. I don’t know why I decided to
do it this way, I think it had a lot to do with how scared I was of his front
feet and if he decided he didn’t like getting a treat that way, he might’ve
struck out at me.. but it became a beautiful thing. I taught him how to breathe,
how to relax by lowering his head, and how to have self discpline and to wait for a
treat to come to him. He never learned to go looking for a treat, because I
never gave him one unless he was relaxed and with a lowered head. Any time we
would move away from that position we would just continue working, or I would
re ask for him to lower his head and wait. The consistency and precision in
this simple task, became the ground base for everything I did with him after.
Now that said, there are some interesting exceptions to my treat rules; many
left brain extroverts can get a little over zealous with their treat
motivation; and can become so lost in the idea of finding the right answer for
you to give them a treat, that they forget to wait to be asked for something
and just start going through ideas that they know gave them a treat before.
This can be a little dangerous after awhile, and is not quite what we want, the
motivation is for sure, but the auto fire response is not what we want. We want
to encourage our horses to wait and listen, wait and ask, and then do. Not just
do do do… So some LBEs need a slightly different model, and it really depends
on who they are. Some need intermittent treats that are not by any schedule,
some need no treats at all, some need other ideas of positive reinforcement.
Other ways to positively reinforce your horse include allowing them to make the
next call, petting their ego a bit and allowing them to make a few decisions,
let them know they are still the 49% of this equation. Giving scritches and
rubs in their favourite itchy spots, or even just standing beside them and just
breathing deeply and relaxing can be enough. Make the decision to do the right thing the best thing they’ve ever done, so they’ll want to do
it again. And not just because they have to due to negative reinforcement,
because they want to be rewarded, they want to be acknowledged.
3) Making Everything a Positive Experience
This is the biggest break through you will ever have for a show horse. The
constant drilling of flat work, jump schools, flat work, flat work, flat work..
it gets draining, and worse off it gets bloody boring! We all hate going to
work our 9-5 jobs, why wouldn’t our horses? You don’t get Olympic athletes from
working a desk job you hate, you get Olympic gold medalists from passionate
fire driving every second of your life! We get up extra early to go train
because we crave the thrill of the chase, the thrill of that next jump, the
adrenaline that pumps us up and keeps us flying. But what keeps a horse
motivated? What makes them want and need to work for us, rather than just
because they have to… My answer to this is play and curiousity. Horses are
driven by curiousity to do just about everything in their lives.
Have you ever watched a herd of horses investigate something new and
scary? Their ridiculous run back and forth and pause, and stare, and spook and
run away and run back and pause.. and stare. Approaching and retreating, approaching a bit closer,
retreating again… until they are stuck in the bloody hay feeder and you swore
just an hour ago you were going to throw out because you never
thought any of the horses would eat out of it because it was the end of the
world as they knew it? But turns out they’re fine?
How do they make that end of the world moment change into a fun play moment?
When does it finally click in their brains that it’s fun, and they should be
investigating and playing with it instead of running away from it? That is
our ticket. That is what we should be striving for. To be so interesting and
exciting that a horse can’t wait to come be with us again, because the last
time they were out they partied all night and didn’t wake up with a hangover!
We need to use this model in our training for showing so we can have
enthusiastic horses step off the trailer at each horse show, excited and
interested in the day before them. By making every trip to the show grounds,
show ring, jump school, anything; super positive and interesting, we can ensure
that response in the future. There is a gentle balance here; between asking for
discipline and directing that enthusiasm into our pursuits, but also directing
our competitive nature into calm patience with an encouraging tone.
A prevalent example I see every show season; when we start taking horses out to
school at shows, we think we are doing them a great kindness by not
participating in any events at the first couple of shows, by just riding them around the grounds and
getting used to everything. But what is making them get used to everything?
Just because they are there? What have we instilled in them before leaving home
that is going to reassure them at this new place; that everything is still
good. We’re still safe.
By taking time to prepare before the show, before even
getting on the trailer; we can ensure a positive experience at the show itself.
So how do we do that? Well we know what happens at shows right? There are lots
of people, lots of noises, new scenery, new scary objects that in the first
second will likely kill us, but could very well be our favourite toy in a few
minutes… So what if we made an effort to play with our horses at home with new
things every day, until they got so used to seeing new things and loving those
new things; that they began to relate new things with something good. We had
created that partnership at home with natural horsemanship first, laid the
ground work, laid the path with every interlocking trust brick we could, and
THEN got on the trailer. But we still didn’t go to the show yet, we just drove
the trailer for a few minutes, then parked it in a different place at home, and
got off and made that an awesome experience too. And repeated that a few times
until it was so exciting we wanted to be on the trailer.. and then when we
finally did go to the show, we loved getting off the trailer because there was
something new to try outside of it. And better yet, our horses are so excited
to be with us because we are so positive, encouraging and helpful that they
can’t wait to see what we think of next!
Too often people get stuck in the same old boring habits; groom, tack up,
ride, untack, bathe, graze, back to their stall. Over and over. That same 9-5
job that we struggle out of bed for in the morning. And you know what, for some
people that’s ok, and if it’s done right to limit stress on our horses it can
be ok for them too! Not every horse wants to be an Olympic show jumper, not
every horse wants to be a trail horse.. the same way I’ll never be able to work
in an office again, there are just as many who would never be able to work
outside in -40C weather either. But it’s important that we find a way to make
those jobs our passion, the same way we need to make our horses jobs into their
passions. And we owe that to them.
My final thought is about how we need to be thankful to our horses for
everything they take in stride. Everything they give to us, and everything that
they could do to us.. and don’t do. I thank my horses for everything they do
out of nature for me, every time they stop and think about that scary bag in the
corner of their eye and decide not to spook, I thank their ability to have self
control. Every time they perk their ears and get excited about that new
obstacle ahead of us, I thank them for the effort, I thank them for the
thought. And after every obstacle we conquer together, I thank them for
trusting in me to fly with them. To walk along side them, and to be graced in
their presence… as there is nothing in the human world that could come close to
the feeling of having a 1200lb flight animal trust you to protect them. That
shouldn’t be an excuse to build an ego, or become dominant in your life.. it
should be a reason to find vulnerability in yourself. To not just see your
horse as a mirror of yourself, but see yourself as a mirror of your horse.
Allow yourself to trust in them, as they so willing trust in you. Have confidence
in yourself, as they have found confidence in you. Be grateful.
