Figs & The Flip Side

One of my pet peeves is triggered by the casual use of the buzz word, "Natural Horsemanship". I have to wonder if there haven't been some great masters of horse training that have been grossly misinterpreted and their words bastardized over time. Have these concepts morphed over time like the game of Telephone, where one person whispers a phrase in the ear of the next person and down the line until the phrase is no longer even remotely resembles the original phrase?

It's pretty funny when you're a kid, not so funny if you're a horse and the gentle advice of a training master has become twisted into a directive recommending punishment as the only solution in training horses.

How many times have I heard the phrase, "Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing difficult?". Too many. A continuation of that statement by one of the Natural Horsemanship Gurus (He Who Shall Not Be Named) is the statement: "If you never make your horse feel uncomfortable for wrong behavior, nothing motivates him to stop making a mistake."

Ok...lets think about this logically and attempt to digest these concepts, one piece at a time... Make the right thing easy. I like that idea, if we set our animals up in a win-win situation, they come to understand what we want and we've made it easy for them to give us what we asked for. Everyone is happy. YES!

But then there is the flip side... make the wrong thing difficult. I can interpret that a couple of ways, one with a punishment oriented spin, and the other with a more positive spin. Let's start with the more positive spin, because that makes ME more comfortable.

Ok, the more positive spin would go something like this: I want my horse to pick up the left lead so with an understanding of footfalls and exactly when to cue the canter based on the footfalls of the current gait, the horse will naturally and automatically give me the lead I want – that is making the right thing easy. I’ve created a win-win situation, I ask and he gives me what I want, no fuss, no muss, many carrots, everyone is happy.

The flip side of that might be to cue the horse for the left lead and as soon as he picks up the right lead, pull him down hard, hit him with a whip and ask again. Eventually, perhaps by accident, he picks up the left lead and then the rider can ease up on the pressure as he is now "making the right thing “easy”.

Or, and odds are you’ve heard this one before, let’s say the horse doesn’t want to go as slowly as you want him to. So He Who Shall Not Be Named (of the make the wrong thing difficult camp) says tell him to speed up when he doesn’t slow down when you ask. According to this strategy, if you keep him moving, air becomes a commodity that he values, and therefore you have a bargaining chip of sorts. AND as an added bonus, by causing discomfort, you cause the horse to have respect for you too!

So, while we’re on the flip side, I have to ask, what behavior modification did the horse learn from being run until he can’t breathe? What happened to the Three Second rule that says if you must punish a horse, do it within 3 seconds of the infraction in order to be clear to the horse of WHY you lost your cool.

And why must a horse be uncomfortable in order to respect another being? Does a foal lack respect his dam unless she bites or kicks him on a regular basis?

The “make the wrong thing difficult” of the Punishment Variety has so many reasons why it’s not a good strategy:
1. The punishment often doesn’t fit the crime
2. The punishment is often delayed long enough so the reason isn’t clear to the horse (and therefore isn’t an effective behavior modification strategy).
3. If there is no behavior modification, what is the point of the punishment?
4. Punishment potentially creates fear & confusion in the horse (and sometimes anger)

So, what are the results of punishment?
1. A breakdown in the relationship between horse and human
2. Feeds the predator in us that likes to push around “lesser beings”
3. Perhaps some of us feel more powerful when we can dominate an animal many times our size?

And sometimes it does modify behavior, yes punishment CAN work as a training strategy. However, anyone can whack a horse, and not just anyone can train a horse.

Ok, I hear you, you’re saying “If you think you’re so smart, how in the world would you slow down this horse that is refusing to listening to its rider?

Here are some things to try, depending upon the horse & situation, that will not hurt the horse/human relationship:

1. If the horse is naturally more forward than you would like, circle. If you ask the horse to circle just small enough to slightly challenge his balance, he will regulate his speed without being strong armed by the rider or pushed to a point of oxygen deprivation

2. If the horse is strung out and not very balanced (he may be falling on his forehand or running to keep his balance) lots of transitions will help balance him back on his hind quarters. Also, as he anticipates the cue for a transition in a stride or two, he will, he will begin to prepare for the upcoming transition which over time will create a more balanced horse.

Note: If the horse can’t execute a smaller circle or transitions between gaits upon request, then the trainer needs to back up and establish better basics and not expect the horse to perform at a level beyond his training or physical conditioning.

3. If the horse is tense, the secret is going to be working toward greater relaxation. Pushing a tense horse will only feed the tension, and will not solve the problem. On the topic of relaxation, there are lots of ways to approach this, but first there are a few things to consider:

-- If he’s tense at the current level of work, it’s likely that he’s missing some basics and the trainer should back up a few steps or break down the current task into easier to digest chunks.
-- If he’s tense by nature (regardless of the task at hand) he probably needs some confidence building and ground work is a good place to start. One behavior that works very well is teaching the horse to lower his head on cue. The head down position releases endorphins that trigger relaxation. This is a great default behavior for the horse to understand and he can learn to utilize this himself (without a human cue) when he’s stressed
-- If the horse is tense, he may be confused about what is being asked of him, make sure he has solid basics and can perform them in a relaxed manner before increasing the difficulty.

Back to the statement made by "He Who Shall Not Be Named," hand in hand with making the wrong thing difficult... this bears repeating... he said “If you never make your horse feel uncomfortable for wrong behavior, nothing motivates him to stop making the mistake.”

One word pops into my mind when I read that: REDICULOUS!

Why would this be? How could anyone think that makes sense? That statement assumes horses are only really motivated by punishment and that the only way to modify a horse’s behavior is by discomfort. In other words, horses can’t be motivated by “good” things. If he can value avoiding discomfort, doesn’t that also mean that he can value comfort? How can anyone have such a one sided view? Let’s have some balance, please!

Ok, I’m no NH Guru making millions of dollars by selling halters with my name on them or special training sticks, but still, it seems perfectly obvious to me that patterns can be set and behavior can be modified without discomfort. Actually, that is a basic scientific concept. Science has proven that animals repeat most often behavior that is rewarded.

And you don’t have to be a scientist to see this in action. Proof of this concept happens every day with each of us. Horses learn things that we intend them to learn and also things we didn’t intend for them to learn, all based on what is rewarded. Rewards may be intentional or unintentional, but to the horse, a reward is a reward and a motivator to repeat what earned that reward. Horses are constantly learning, they don’t have to be made “uncomfortable” in order to modify their behavior.

For example, I have a fig tree in my back pasture. For years I ignored the fig tree, and the horses did too. I occasionally experimented with making fig bread with some of them, but mostly the tree existed as a fig buffet for the local birds.

This year, I noticed that every time I turned out my new pony, Etude, in the back pasture, regardless of having put out fresh water or hay, he had a single purpose in mind. Ignoring everything, he consistenly marched over to the fig tree and rooted around in the dirt for a while before joining the other horses eating hay.

I noticed the dirt under the tree was quite trampled and bare. I thought maybe he was looking for a low branch to scratch his back. I thought the behavior was curious, but didn’t give it a whole lot of thought until it hit me that little sucker was after the FIGS!

What Etude had discovered is that some percentage of the time he would be rewarded for ignoring what was normally of high value to him (hay) in order to investigate the ground around the fig tree. I’m sure he didn’t always find figs, in fact, he probably rarely found any, but the behavior was rewarded enough times to inspire consistent change in his routine.

Now, fig season is coming to a close, and Etude still checks out the base of the tree. What he learned is that he could bypass the sure thing (hay) for a intermittent reward (figs) because the figs have a higher value to him. Did his behavior change because he was made uncomfortable? NO. Yet, clearly there was behavior modification at work here.

Mother Nature motivated Etude’s behavior modification without discomfort. We could take a lesson from her book and give up the silly notion that the ONLY way to motivate a horse is by making him uncomfortable.