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TEACH YOUR HORSE ANYTHING

The best way to make sure your horse is calm, attentive and responsive is to teach him to enjoy learning things, and he will do that best if he understands what we want. Many people say that we have to learn the horse’s language. While this is right, it isn’t enough. We also need to teach the horse our language. Then we can have a real two-way communication.

In order to do this, we take advantage of two realities:

Horses are very good at making associations — that is, they can easily associate something unfamiliar (eg plastic bread wrapper) with something they like (eg bread).
They will also do just about anything for food.

We can use these two facts to teach the horse to enjoy the learning process so that he looks forward to his time with you and his brain will be involved in the activities you do together. Once you are both comfortable with this process, you’ll be able to teach your horse anything very quickly and easily.

These days training a horse is much more scientific than previously, because we have much more information to work with, and have greater expectations. This technique is used for any kind of training that you may want to do with your horse, whether on the ground or ridden.

Nature has always known what the science of learning is now discovering: Mankind plays to learn. Humans are born playful, playing to learn, not learning to play. Studies show that the “higher cortex” of our brain is opened and expanded through play, improving our thinking, reasoning, creativity, and learning skills. Science points out that there are no poor learners, only poor learning environments — there are no dumb students, only ineffective trainers.

The basic concept is this:

You will teach your horse to understand your signal that says ‘that’s what I want.’ He discovers that this signal is something he wants to hear — he will then become very motivated to try and do what you want. In this way you ensure that you will have his attention whenever you want it. It also helps your horse to learn how to learn.

There is another concept that is having a positive effect on enlightened businesses of today — CEO’s have found that one of the greatest motivators is rto eceive feedback on results. Employees want to know how they are doing on the job. It makes little difference if they are at the top or bottom of the chain of command, this information is important. Positive feedback encourages the person to repeat the behavior they just did that was recognised with words of praise.

This is part of the psychological concept of operant conditioning — where behaviour alters depending on the consequence. This was initially studied in depth by renowned psychologist B.F. Skinner, who was the first to propose the concept that if a behaviour generates a positive consequence, an animal is more likely to repeat that behaviour. He went on to formulate various additional components of this basic concept, such as positive reinforcement, counter conditioning, extinction, etc — all of which play a very important part in animal training.

Positive Reinforcement

We give the horse a cue (the trigger), he performs an action and gets a reward (food). The effect of the reward is to strengthen the correct response. This is known as reinforcement. We have two types of reinforcers. The first one is a primary reinforcer, which is The Thing the horse will work for, like oats or sugar. It is something he instinctively wants, not something he has learned to want.

The second type of reinforcer is conditioned, or learned. (In this form of psychology, ‘conditioning’ means ‘learning’). A conditioned reinforcer is something the horse has learned to respond to — a learned thing, like a soothing voice, or being brushed. When I say ‘good boy’ there is nothing about the words ‘good’ and ‘boy’ that are inherently reinforcing/rewarding. However, over time my horse has learned that they have meaning. How did he come to know that? Because I always seem to say it when I am handing out treats or stroking him. So, let's say you have just asked your horse to walk on and he does it. Ah-ha, you think, and you say ‘good’, stop him and rub his neck, maybe even give him a bit of carrot. He very quickly comes to understand that ‘good’, stroking and carrot are all connected.

The main primary reinforcers we can use in training are food and pain—these both have a very powerful effect on the horse. Because horses want to avoid pain, and want to obtain food, the most effective training uses rewards, usually food.

This system of Positive Reinforcement enables the horse to associate events or things, and through doing this, to learn. Events that occur together will become associated. Giving a sugar lump to a horse two minutes after a pat on the neck will not develop a useful association. The lump and the pat have to arrive together if the pat is to become reinforcing.

Consider for a moment the way in which we praise horses: we either scratch at the withers or pat them on the neck. Scratching the withers is something the horse enjoys, because horses have evolved to find grooming one another rewarding. Indeed horses indulging in the familiar 'I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine' occupation have reduced heart rates that suggest they may be getting pleasure or stress reduction from the stimulation. So, a scratch in the correct part of the withers can represent a primary reinforcer.

By comparison, the far more common practice of patting horses on the neck is not a primary reinforcer — it has meaning only if the owner has associated the pat with something pleasant. In the same way, horses learn that when we say “good boy” while stroking or scratching the withers, it means something nice.

This highly effective system has been adapted and developed by animal trainers. Some of them use a mechanical clicker instead of saying words like ‘good boy’, others use a kissing or clucking sound. This is a bridging signal. It says ‘Yes! That's exactly the behaviour I wanted. Now I'm going to give you a reward.’ The advantage is that they sound produced is distinctive and short, and the horse comes to recognise its meaning. When a horse is first being trained, the correct association is established by making the sound just before giving a delicious reward and doing this many times to convince the animal of the signal's reliability. Any secondary reinforcer can be instituted in this way.

Rewards

When the horse responds with a behaviour that is close to what the trainer wants, the trainer gives a reward (positive reinforcer). Food is the strongest reward we can give to a horse. This food can be carrots, apples, pellets, oats, bread, or breakfast cereal such as Fruit Loops or Nutrigrain (generic brands are much cheaper).

It is important to remember that when training horses, the trainer needs to have both hands free; in other words, it can be very difficult to hold food in one hand while you are lunging the horse, or doing in-hand training with a whip in one hand and a lead rope in the other. There are a couple of ways to keep both hands free: wear a belt bag, holding small pieces of food (eg carrots, apples, bread), or use breakfast cereal and keep them in a pocket.

You reward as soon as the horse thinks about doing what you want. Don’t wait for the complete behaviour, take a few steps, each one closer to what you want than the last, and rewarding each one.

Extinction

Extinction results when the learnt response occurs but is no longer followed by a reward. The effect of this is an eventual reduction in response.

As an example, we, as humans, rarely work with reliable enthusiasm if we are not paid. The same can be seen in horses. If they don’t get their expected rewards they are less likely to behave in ways that have previously paid off. The behaviours drop out or become extinct. Extinction occurs when an animal no longer receives a reward for a correct response and eventually stops responding.

Variable schedules

Animals learn fastest when they are reinforced after every correct response. This is known as a continuous reinforcement schedule.

After a response has been established (this being achieved quickest on a continuous reinforcement schedule) many trainers adopt a variable ratio schedule in the knowledge that it is often very difficult to reward responses every time they occur especially if they form part of public displays, competitions or if they have to occur at some distance from the trainer. Trained behaviours learned on a variable reinforcement schedule are the most persistent and they are slower to extinguish than those resulting from fixed and continuous schedules.

Negative reinforcement

In this context, negative refers to the removal of something, while positive refers to an addition. So, when trainers reinforce a behaviour with the removal of something unpleasant, they make the behaviour more likely in the future. The response has been negatively reinforced. Punishment and negative reinforcement are interrelated. By definition an animal must know that a stimulus is aversive in order for its removal to be reinforcing. So, in order to use negative reinforcement a trainer has to use a form of positive punishment as well.

Negative reinforcement occurs when an animal learns to behave in a certain way to avoid unpleasantness. For example, some trainers when teaching a horse to walk onto a float will tap him persistently with a whip until he moves forward, and then stop the tapping. I don’t see the point in making something unpleasant or irritating for the horse, only to remove it when the horse does what I want. This doesn’t encourage the horse to produce that action again, because he will have to undergo the irritation first.

I prefer using positive reinforcement as much as possible, as this motivates the horse to repeat his behaviour that had been rewarded — he becomes motivated, and therefore very easy to teach. Negative Reinforcement doesn't produce anyof this kind of motivation, and can actually be regarded as a form ofpunishment.

Punishment

Trainers who use punishment to eliminate undesirable behaviour have to be careful that the wrong association is not created. Rather than correctly associating the undesirable behaviour with a painful consequence, the horse will learn to fear the trainer or the training area.

The punishment procedure makes the onset of an aversive stimulus contingent on a particular response. The punishment procedure may or may not lead to a reduction in the response. The situation is complicated because the punishing stimulus also brings about other responses, which may actually increase the performance of the 'punished response'.

Punishment merely suppresses behavior, it doesn’t extinguish it. The horse will always associate punishment with the punisher. It’s not informative and has only a short-term effect, and may lead to increased poor behavior, requiring increase severity of the punishment.

Precision and Timing

Rewards should only be given when the response has been asked for and the horse does it. So if your horse, after having learned that he will get a reward when he holds up his leg, then proceeds to hold up his leg every time he is near you, he should be ignored, because you didn’t ask for that behaviour. Your objective is to have the horse respond to your request, not to perform tricks.

The reward has to be immediate (within half a second) so it can be associated with the action of the horse.

Habituation and desensitisation

Habituation occurs when the horse gradually ceases to respond to repeated stimulation, for example getting used to traffic. A gradual introduction to cars and the experience of many cars passing without causing any harm, habituates him to traffic. Natural responses become diluted with habituation, which is just as well because without it horses would be far less trainable. This form of learning can only be temporary though and the original, more primitive behaviour patterns can resurface if the horse is put under stress. Horses habituate more rapidly to a new stimulus when it is first associated with an already familiar situation. .

You must proceed at a slow enough pace that your horse never becomes fearful during the desensitization process. Counter conditioning is typically used to reduce fears. The horse learns to associate pleasure with the thing that previously evoked fear.

Teaching the cues

When teaching cues to the horse, cluck first, then give the reward, never the other way around. When a horse receives a clear 'yes' signal paired with a food reward, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in which produces calmness and less fearfulness.

I use the clucking sound, made with the tongue against the roof of the mouth. All my horses know that this means ‘that’s right, what you just did.’ The only times I use a food reward these days is when I’m teaching them something new, and I need them to concentrate and focus on what we’re doing.

Latent learning

Often we can work at something, and then after a day or two, the horse seems to be doing it so much better — as if he went to the library and studied it overnight. That’s an example of latent learning. It’s the type of learning that occurs, but you don't really see it (it's not exhibited) until some time later.

With this in mind, it is a good idea not to try and achieve everything in the one session, because there’s a pretty good chance that after a couple of sleeps, it will all come together. It’s so much easier than persevering and trying to break through barriers until exhaustion.

Latent learning also occurs when the horse has learned something but it isn’t immediately apparent. They are very good at this and an example is their capacity for recalling places, routes and locations.

The three key responses

‘Touch’

The first step is to get the horse to touch your hand when you say ‘touch’. You can wait for the behaviour to occur, or you can use shortcuts that trigger the response you’re after. To start off with he has no idea of what you want, so you will have to help him to understand by touching his nose with your hand, then cluck and then reward with food (from the other hand). Don’t hold out the hand with food, because then the horse will smell the food, and won’t learn the ‘touch’ lesson.

Very quickly the horse will start touching your hand with his nose—then you should move your hand further away, up, down, etc, and each time he touches it he gets rewarded. When he understands this game, you should only reward with food intermittently, but always with the cluck.

Reinforcement (cluck and reward) is given at every stage of the process, not just when the whole action has been done correctly. Often just one piece of cereal is a sufficient reward. Each time he moves even slightly in the right direction, give him one Fruit Loop. When he does the whole action right give him a handful.

The essential element of success in training a horse depends on our ability to maintain the horse’s attention. Once the horse has found out that cluck means something good (with or without the food), he will always be on the lookout for an opportunity to get the' cluck’.

‘Down’

Your aim is to get him to lower his head and neck in order to touch your hand. The verbal command for this is ‘down’. You have to be careful here, because the horse can’t see anything directly under his nose, so you have to make sure he knows where your hand is before he can touch it.

Turn his head and neck to either side to touch your hand (cluck/treat).
Stretch his neck out to the front (cluck/ treat).
Say ‘down’, stretch his neck out and then gradually take it down (cluck/ treat).

The lesson is learned when your horse will lower his nose to the ground

‘Foot’

Physically lift the foot at the same time as you say ‘foot’ (cluck/ treat).
Say ‘foot’ and tap the foot or fetlock (cluck/ treat). Only reward if the horse holds the foot up, not if he just lifts and drops it.
Say ‘foot’ and touch the upper part of the leg (cluck/ treat)
Say ‘foot’ and point at the required leg (cluck/ treat)

Don’t cluck or treat if he lifts his foot without being asked for—then it becomes a trick, not something he does because he understands your verbal request.

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