Horse Training
If you've been riding for awhile, chances are great that you've found yourself traveling down the wrong training path at some point in time. Maybe you have useda training technique into your routine that resulted in horse behavior that wasn't quite what you had in mind. Or maybe a few overzealous reprimands on your part resulted in some unforeseen, undesirable modes of misbehavior in your horse that you'd like to eliminate.
I recently heard a profound statement that I think says it all: When treated unfairly, the horse will never forget the trespass, but it is within his capacity to forgive it. An Arabian gelding I once owned and started under saddle had a small problem with trailer loading; he'd simply plant his feet and refuse to get in for a long time. He was eventually sold to an endurance rider, and the trouble started showing up during loading and hauling to and from their competitive meets. Some strong measures were employed to teach him to load, and he immediately developed a bucking problem he hadn't had before. His owner decided to sell him, but sent him to me to resolve the behavior problems first.
Two fundamentals of behavioral modification therapy, desensitization and counterconditioning, had been applied to retrain this horse with a successful outcome. In this case, I habituated the horse to loading into the horse trailer by doing it so often that loading lost the power to upset him. Counterconditioning is establishing a new response to a stimulus as a replacement for an undesirable behavior. The bucking problem was resolved both as a consequence of alleviating the trailer-loading problems and as a result of employing the behavioral principles of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment correctly in my under-saddle work. Eventually, these two undesirable behaviors were dropped from the horse's repertoire entirely.
In a 1994 study, which was presented in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science, I taught 17 previously untrained yearlings and 2-year-old horses to discriminate between a black and a white feed bucket for a food reward. Once each horse had figured out which color was correct, I reversed the correct color to see if he could unlearn what he had been taught and replace it with something completely opposite. Only about a third of the horses were able to unlearn theoriginal stimulus color and make the switch to the opposite color.
Think of the implications of the fact that most horses tested were not able to reverse their initial training. In fact, in similar studies of other herbivorous species (such as cattle), similar results were obtained, lending support to the theory that first training experiences are of critical importance in the overall trainability of domestic prey species.
Not only are the content and consistency of the horse's training important, but so is the frequency at which the lessons are delivered. In a Cornell University study, 15 ponies were trained to clear a small hurdle on three different time schedules; group I ponies were trained seven days a week, group II ponies were trained two times a week, and group III ponies were trained just once a week. After this trialexperiment, the ponies were reassigned to two different groups and taught to back up, and once again the ponies trained just once a week learned the task in fewer sessions. It seems that horses, like humans, don't learn as efficiently when things are drilled into them as they do when they have adequate downtime between sessions. To train horses effectively, we should try to allow enough time between the lessons to maximize learning.
The findings of these studies are supported by the popular advice of many leading trainers. She further states that horses have excellent and long memories, particularly for unpleasant experiences, and that many behavior problems can be traced back to past events. She emphasizes that horses should be trained through repetition, association and reward, and reminds her readers that it is just as easy for a horse to learn bad behavior as it is to learn good behavior.
Trainers should never consider it too late to repair the destruction of a misguided training attempt. Many errors, however, if detected by the trainer and reevaluated before unwanted responses become habitual, can be resolved with somewhat less effort. The mare Steve was on balked at the steep bank and deep, dirty water below. As Steve grew more persistant, she suddenly jumped from an absolute standstill halfway across the creek, and then ran out and up the opposite bank. I decided to climb on and give the water crossing a try myself, planning to get the mare into the creek and then to steer her upstream until she finally relaxed. I rode on home with frogs in my pockets, did some research and devised a new strategy with the intent of keeping her calm and willing throughout. This approach restored her confidence, and after many entries into and out of the water, I climbed onto her back in the creek.
The next time we went back (this time without any sedatives on board), I once again led the mare into the creek and then climbed back on and rode her into and out of the stream. The next lesson was approached entirely from the horse's back, and when this went well I knew we had repaired the damage.
It's never too late to try to rectify your training mistakes-some just take longer to repair than others.
For more information on horse trainning, go to http://horse-training-made-easy.blogspot.com/
I recently heard a profound statement that I think says it all: When treated unfairly, the horse will never forget the trespass, but it is within his capacity to forgive it. An Arabian gelding I once owned and started under saddle had a small problem with trailer loading; he'd simply plant his feet and refuse to get in for a long time. He was eventually sold to an endurance rider, and the trouble started showing up during loading and hauling to and from their competitive meets. Some strong measures were employed to teach him to load, and he immediately developed a bucking problem he hadn't had before. His owner decided to sell him, but sent him to me to resolve the behavior problems first.
Two fundamentals of behavioral modification therapy, desensitization and counterconditioning, had been applied to retrain this horse with a successful outcome. In this case, I habituated the horse to loading into the horse trailer by doing it so often that loading lost the power to upset him. Counterconditioning is establishing a new response to a stimulus as a replacement for an undesirable behavior. The bucking problem was resolved both as a consequence of alleviating the trailer-loading problems and as a result of employing the behavioral principles of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment correctly in my under-saddle work. Eventually, these two undesirable behaviors were dropped from the horse's repertoire entirely.
In a 1994 study, which was presented in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science, I taught 17 previously untrained yearlings and 2-year-old horses to discriminate between a black and a white feed bucket for a food reward. Once each horse had figured out which color was correct, I reversed the correct color to see if he could unlearn what he had been taught and replace it with something completely opposite. Only about a third of the horses were able to unlearn theoriginal stimulus color and make the switch to the opposite color.
Think of the implications of the fact that most horses tested were not able to reverse their initial training. In fact, in similar studies of other herbivorous species (such as cattle), similar results were obtained, lending support to the theory that first training experiences are of critical importance in the overall trainability of domestic prey species.
Not only are the content and consistency of the horse's training important, but so is the frequency at which the lessons are delivered. In a Cornell University study, 15 ponies were trained to clear a small hurdle on three different time schedules; group I ponies were trained seven days a week, group II ponies were trained two times a week, and group III ponies were trained just once a week. After this trialexperiment, the ponies were reassigned to two different groups and taught to back up, and once again the ponies trained just once a week learned the task in fewer sessions. It seems that horses, like humans, don't learn as efficiently when things are drilled into them as they do when they have adequate downtime between sessions. To train horses effectively, we should try to allow enough time between the lessons to maximize learning.
The findings of these studies are supported by the popular advice of many leading trainers. She further states that horses have excellent and long memories, particularly for unpleasant experiences, and that many behavior problems can be traced back to past events. She emphasizes that horses should be trained through repetition, association and reward, and reminds her readers that it is just as easy for a horse to learn bad behavior as it is to learn good behavior.
Trainers should never consider it too late to repair the destruction of a misguided training attempt. Many errors, however, if detected by the trainer and reevaluated before unwanted responses become habitual, can be resolved with somewhat less effort. The mare Steve was on balked at the steep bank and deep, dirty water below. As Steve grew more persistant, she suddenly jumped from an absolute standstill halfway across the creek, and then ran out and up the opposite bank. I decided to climb on and give the water crossing a try myself, planning to get the mare into the creek and then to steer her upstream until she finally relaxed. I rode on home with frogs in my pockets, did some research and devised a new strategy with the intent of keeping her calm and willing throughout. This approach restored her confidence, and after many entries into and out of the water, I climbed onto her back in the creek.
The next time we went back (this time without any sedatives on board), I once again led the mare into the creek and then climbed back on and rode her into and out of the stream. The next lesson was approached entirely from the horse's back, and when this went well I knew we had repaired the damage.
It's never too late to try to rectify your training mistakes-some just take longer to repair than others.
For more information on horse trainning, go to http://horse-training-made-easy.blogspot.com/
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