1.3 understanding horses, part 1 - elements in horse training

So we are still on the theory modules (though I have a little confession and skipped ahead to the 2 modules so that I could start with a bit of basic ground work practical - still that is another post for a later date).

Module 1.3 is all about understanding the horse. It claims that for successful training you need four things:

• relationship
• respect
• communication
• motivation

For the relationship, you are aiming to make the horse like you, and you achieve this with unconditional love, by expecting nothing in return and just handing out with your horse. Now hear I hope Sofie and I are leagues ahead of most as I have spent a good year just hanging out, and prior to that I always spend at least 80% of my time with her grooming or chilling. She has plenty of unconditional love.

Respect is all about being a good leader. So it is not about intimidation and domination - but instead being a respectful leader, telling using clear boundaries, coaching and allowing the horse some autonomy when appropriate (telling, coaching, and handover). The telling is more directive learning, so more authoritarian but helpful when you are starting something new, the coaching is where you encourage and support the horse so that it can take some ownership of the learning and the handover is where you allow the horse to decide what it would like to do within the boundaries you have set. This can improve its spirit and your relationship. Funnily enough this is very similar to the adult learning principles I picked up doing my diploma in human learning and development. If I were to critique myself I would say I always aim to be a respectful leader, but easily slip into domination/bossiness when I hurry or get frustrated. I have caught myself trying to bully Sofie when I get frustrated. It never results in a good outcome so I must be really vidulent and stop myself.

Communication is something that some would argue is natural, if we learn the horses natural body language then we should be able to communicate with them in a natural way. But straightness training argues that you might start with natural body language you will need to do a bit of learning and conditioning to get the highly sophisticated movements we desire. Makes a lot of sense to me. On a quick reflection of my communication style - I think I aim to be clear but often end up confusing Sofie, so my body language could do with some refining.

Motivation is all about working out how to influence your horses behaviour. Straightness training works on the operant conditioning principle. Where you can either reward -/+ or punish  -/+ to encourage desired behaviour and deter negative behaviour.

• + reward - offering a 'good boy' or treat when the horse does something good
• - reward - releasing pressure when the horse does something good, for example opening the hand and releasing pressure on the forward down
• + punishment - correcting the horses behavior by taking action, tap with the whip or back up when walking into your space. It is OK to do this so long as you are calm and unemotional, intimidating the horse is a no-no
• - punishment - is taking something away that the horse likes - this is much easier to do with humans than horses, so its not a tool that is often used for horse training.

I remember covering this in psychology many years ago - its nice that some of my lectures are coming in handy. I am going to aim to use more of the rewards than the punishment as I think Sofie will respond better to these. I am also worried about using + punishment because I know I have lost my temper in the past and can intimidate. This is not how I want to train Sofie. I might need to use + punishment a bit though as she can be very pushy, therefore might need some correcting. I am going to have to learn how to do this firmly but gently. Interestingly, during this module different training methods were discussed to explain how they work on the opperant model. Paralli was discussed and it is generally using + punishment and - reward. It was explained that Paralli can be dangerous in the wrong hands as the + punishment can extend to intimidation (to be fair this is true of many training techniques) but it sort of chimed with me. I have long felt uncomfortable watching Paralli and I couldn't put my finger on why, I now realize it is because I didn't like the constant pressure and I had seen too many occurrences of intimidation, with clearly stressed horses. I should caviate now, I'm not saying all Paralli is bad, I've just seen a fair amount of bad Paralli and I have just understood why it made me feel uncomfortable. Its punishment, but not being transparent about being punishment which means that some people unwhitingly abuse it.