This blog post is all about undesired behaviour. In the STM course there is a nice long PDF about it, but I am going to do my best to keep this as a very short summary.
Causes
There is a big long section on solutions for undesired behaviour so this is a very short summary.
If your horse is afraid of its new surroundings, the whip, or a spooky corner, be the leader and show the horse it is alright (eg put yourself between the horse and the scary thing), use positive reinforcement and operant conditioning to make the feared source change to a nice source (eg feed treats and relax in the spooky corner,) and use habituation to desensitise the horse (reward the horse for not reacting to the whip).
If your horse appears to be bored or lazy take a look at your actions. Are you really interested in the exercises, do you know why you are doing them? Have you lost motivation? and if they are lazy have you caused them to loose motivation via there being nothing in it for the horse eg too long, unexpected, or too much pressure without reward.
Aggression
I'm making the effort to pick up on aggression as I see if from both my horses. Sofie pushes and rears, Tonto pushes, threatens and kicks.
I think with Sofie the issues are actually far more to do with a disempowered me. Sofie is dominant and pushy by nature. In fact this is how she came to me for free. But her pushiness is worse if her handler is not 100% confident. In its mild form she pushes and invades space, but in the extreme she rears. Her rearing behaviour started around the time I lost my sharer and was worried about finances and her lamness issues. Looking back at the blog post you can see it comes in immediately after the entry about pony woes. I could not work out why she stared rearing, I thought it was a trick she just remembered, but I realise now it must have been triggered by my stress levels. I have noticed that the rearing starts back up again when I am stressed. Prior to the rearing Sofie gets mouthy and nickers. It is the strangest thing but I am getting more and more confident this is her way of reacting to my internal emotions.
....
but I fear we are going off the ST track here so back to summarising the rest of module 1.4. A good way of keeping on track and keeping your horse motivated is to play the hot cold game. So when the horse is onto something good you encourage them with your voice (+R) and release (-P) so that they know they are behaving as expected, and when the horse goes off track we let them know they are getting cold with a withdrawal of praise (-R) and a correction either with the voice or by applying some pressure (+P). Normally horses loose motivation because the riders get the timing wrong. This is something I really need to think about as I think I am a bit slow atm.
Causes
- pain - obvious, if it hurts the horse will avoid it
- disempowering state - handler being too extreme on the interaction quadrant
- relationship - human needs and emotional state of the handler is impacting on the horse
- fear - if a horse is scared it well either fight, flight or freeze
- aggression - I'm going to summarise in more detail in a bit
- misunderstanding - if the horse does not understand because we are not being
- lack of motivation - if there is nothing in it of the horse they stop trying
- repitions - accidental reinforcing of behaviour via letting it happen more than 3 times
There is a big long section on solutions for undesired behaviour so this is a very short summary.
If your horse is afraid of its new surroundings, the whip, or a spooky corner, be the leader and show the horse it is alright (eg put yourself between the horse and the scary thing), use positive reinforcement and operant conditioning to make the feared source change to a nice source (eg feed treats and relax in the spooky corner,) and use habituation to desensitise the horse (reward the horse for not reacting to the whip).
If your horse appears to be bored or lazy take a look at your actions. Are you really interested in the exercises, do you know why you are doing them? Have you lost motivation? and if they are lazy have you caused them to loose motivation via there being nothing in it for the horse eg too long, unexpected, or too much pressure without reward.
Aggression
I'm making the effort to pick up on aggression as I see if from both my horses. Sofie pushes and rears, Tonto pushes, threatens and kicks.
The main causes of aggression and offensive behaviour are:
- disempowering state of the trainer
- too much pressure
- too long pressure
- unexpected pressure
- steedy pressure
With Tonto, I think our issues are more with his reaction to any form of pressure, he is very sensitive about it. His ingrained fear and sensitivity, in addition to his troubled background and learned behaviours has resulted in him quickly escalating aggressive behaviour. If a stranger approaches to pat Tonto he can quickly turn, flatten his ears, snap his teeth and lunge at them if he does not feel comfortable. Thankfully he is rarely aggressive with me as he feels very comfortable with me. Occasionally he head tosses, and can pull faces when he gets over excited about treats but this is the most I normally get from him in terms of aggression. I have not done enough to stamp out the treat faces, something that I will work on I think.
So in order to stop Sofie from rearing I need to first - let go of my emotional baggage - this is very hard, especially whilst trying to deal with Tonto's failing health. This must be very hard on poor Sofie. Secondly I need to make sure I am always acting as the confident leader, walk with perpouse and dismiss those gremlins. Thirdly I need to notice what happens before the rear - the nicker - and nip it in the bud (with steps 1 and 2 and a firm NO to let her know that rearing is not OK). Forthly I need to re-direct the behaviour - 'I understand Sofie but lets not go there' and do something different - I am not sure what this is yet.
And on the pushy front, I think defending my space and back up is the key tools in my tool box. I have been using these during the ST exercises we have done. It also comes back to the ground work stuff I did back in November.
Perhaps Sofie and I could do with a bit of therapy. At the risk of sounding like a purple rider I am contemplating some Reki. Its not that I actually believe that Reki can heal through touch - but I do think that it does have the ability to unlock pent up emotions. I figure the gift Reki healers really have is being very attuned to horse/peoples emotions and allowing them to release them. I know I am a ball of anxiety and sadness with Tonto's failing health (I have been struggling with bouts of depressing and find it incredibly difficult atm) and it must impact on my horses. Perhaps some Reki could help us.
but I fear we are going off the ST track here so back to summarising the rest of module 1.4. A good way of keeping on track and keeping your horse motivated is to play the hot cold game. So when the horse is onto something good you encourage them with your voice (+R) and release (-P) so that they know they are behaving as expected, and when the horse goes off track we let them know they are getting cold with a withdrawal of praise (-R) and a correction either with the voice or by applying some pressure (+P). Normally horses loose motivation because the riders get the timing wrong. This is something I really need to think about as I think I am a bit slow atm.
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