We all know that humans have belief systems that shape a great deal of how we react to other humans, animals, and the world at large. If we believe our love interest is going to leave us, that tends to prove out to be true, for whatever reason. If we believe that we can tackle any task put before us, our successes far outweigh our failures. Whatever attitude we have about the world (it's a good place or a bad place or something in between) is what we tend to see in our day to day lives. And what we see day to day reinforces our beliefs. It’s a big circle of perception, we think something is true & we see what re-confirms that notion over and over again. That is why making significant changes in a deeply rooted behavior is so hard for all of us.
Animals have similar belief systems. Horses in the wild believe that if a predator is running toward them, they are likely to be lunch unless they leave the area FAST. Their belief systems are similar to ours, built off of experiences, learned from the environment they live in. They don’t actually need to be lunch to have this confirmed, their belief system confirms their perception of the event. They notice the predator, they run, they are NOT lunch, their belief is confirmed.
I'm bringing this up because over the years I've ended up with some aggressive horses, always some sort of “rescue” that has fallen on hard times. I’m sure you can see why most humans wouldn’t want to deal with this – all horses are dangerous but these horses are over-the-top scary. Most of the time sellers take these to auctions or misrepresent them because most buyers won’t touch an aggressive horse with a ten-foot pole. So, I haven’t gone out of my way to find these horses, but a number of them have shown up and I’ve been faced with how to rehab a belief system that says aggression is the best answer for some horses when they ask the question: “how does a horse handle a human?”
I don’t believe that horses are naturally aggressive, I think it’s purely a learned behavior. Yes, some are more dominant personalities than others, but attacking is not normally the first choice when a horse is frightened. In the wild, frightened horses only attack if they are cornered and have no option to escape. Flight is the first choice for defense. Regardless, what I’m about to say applies to horses who are not aggressive as well, this post is about behavior modification, but for the reader, just know it is possible to cope and learn new strategies to replace aggression, or a person can set out to avoid creating aggression (the better and easier of the two options).
So, enter human: stage left. (-;
I don’t believe that horses are naturally aggressive, I think it’s purely a learned behavior. Yes, some are more dominant personalities than others, but attacking is not normally the first choice when a horse is frightened. In the wild, frightened horses only attack if they are cornered and have no option to escape. Flight is the first choice for defense. Regardless, what I’m about to say applies to horses who are not aggressive as well, this post is about behavior modification, but for the reader, just know it is possible to cope and learn new strategies to replace aggression, or a person can set out to avoid creating aggression (the better and easier of the two options).
So, enter human: stage left. (-;
We put so much value on our horses suppressing their flight instinct that we go to great lengths to convince them to stay. We round pen them, driving them away until they don’t want to leave any longer. We flood them with scary things like plastic bags on the end of a whip, trying to convince them they are not in danger. We tie them, hobble them, sack them out with various objects and generally go to great lengths to “de-spook” them. Often a horse comes out the other end of all of our methods having learned leaving isn't a very successful strategy and the world isn't such a scary place. But sometimes what he learned is that he is not allowed to flee and that humans are bearers of bad tidings and he should be very afraid. And in the worst case, he learns to stuff down his emotions and hold everything in, so he may look like he's coping but inside he's stressed and on the verge of a meltdown.
In the face of an emotional meltdown, if he can’t leave, the one option left to him is to get the human to leave. And what’s the best way to do that? Come out fighting. Now, conventional "horse wisdom" says that we can't let a horse get away with biting or kicking, they must be punished in some way because they are putting us in danger.
Yes but... you knew there was a “but” in there somewhere, didn't you?
For horses with aggression issues (I don't mean the colt that nips in play, I mean a repeat offender that uses aggression as a strategy to put some distance between himself and the human) the problem with the idea that horses can’t be allowed to “get away with biting” reinforces the horse's already established beliefs.
So, you are thinking, "How could that be? The horse should know if he's punished, he did something wrong!"
Even in the absence of moral guidelines, I'm not convinced that punishment is the most effective method, but if you have to use it, it would be good to understand the conditions that make it work as well as possible:
1. The punishment must be an understood consequence to a specific behavior
2. Avoiding the punishment is more important to the perpetrator (for the lack of a better term) than executing the behavior that results in the punishment.
Both of those attributes need to be true in order for punishment to have the impact humans anticipate. That’s the rub, does reality = expectation or desire?
1. The punishment must be an understood consequence to a specific behavior
2. Avoiding the punishment is more important to the perpetrator (for the lack of a better term) than executing the behavior that results in the punishment.
Both of those attributes need to be true in order for punishment to have the impact humans anticipate. That’s the rub, does reality = expectation or desire?
For something to be an “understood consequence”, The Perp (horse) needs to be able to make the connection that a specific action will produce a particular undesirable result. That's not the hard part, IF the punishment follows the offensive action immediately, the horse generally will get the idea. Also this implies consistency in human behavior, which is difficult at the best of times. So, let’s assume we have great timing and react the same way each and every time we encounter aggression – that’s the easy part because that’s the part we can control.
The second criteria is a possible problem for several reasons:
1. If the horse expects to be punished regardless of what he does (this happens if he doesn’t understand the punishment is a consequence for a specific behavior, see #1 above) then he can’t avoid punishment based on his behavior. Modifying his behavior has no impact on the outcome. This horse must feel like he’s in a war zone with attack possible at any time. Back to the point, if he feels he can’t avoid punishment, #2 listed above just doesn’t even exist for him.
2. If putting distance between the horse and the human is more important the possible consequences, then #2 above again doesn’t exist for the horse – it’s not even a consideration. Also, often once a horse resorts to aggression, he finds quickly that he CAN move the human away and although they may have a fit of anger and lash out, they come back less and less frequently, so the long term results are quite satisfying for the horse.
The reason why it’s sometimes a huge challenge to rehab a horse with aggressive strategies is all wrapped up in their belief system. The belief system may have evolved because the horse didn’t understand his behavior resulted in a specific consequence. But regardless of why this happened (we can’t really know, can we?) if the horse is so driven to put distance between himself and the human and fleeing is not an option, the second part of the formula (value of avoiding punishment) is not significant either.
Horses that are used to creating distance via aggression are in essence yelling at us because their more subtle communication didn't get the result they needed. Their primary and only natural defense is to put distance between themselves and what is bothering them. I'm not saying their behavior is acceptable, only that to them, they communicated as best as a horse could and the human didn’t seem to notice, so they are now escalating the pressure.
Humans don’t deal with that well, WE want to be the ones to escalate pressure, we don’t expect the horse to be the one controlling the escalation process.
1. If the horse expects to be punished regardless of what he does (this happens if he doesn’t understand the punishment is a consequence for a specific behavior, see #1 above) then he can’t avoid punishment based on his behavior. Modifying his behavior has no impact on the outcome. This horse must feel like he’s in a war zone with attack possible at any time. Back to the point, if he feels he can’t avoid punishment, #2 listed above just doesn’t even exist for him.
2. If putting distance between the horse and the human is more important the possible consequences, then #2 above again doesn’t exist for the horse – it’s not even a consideration. Also, often once a horse resorts to aggression, he finds quickly that he CAN move the human away and although they may have a fit of anger and lash out, they come back less and less frequently, so the long term results are quite satisfying for the horse.
The reason why it’s sometimes a huge challenge to rehab a horse with aggressive strategies is all wrapped up in their belief system. The belief system may have evolved because the horse didn’t understand his behavior resulted in a specific consequence. But regardless of why this happened (we can’t really know, can we?) if the horse is so driven to put distance between himself and the human and fleeing is not an option, the second part of the formula (value of avoiding punishment) is not significant either.
Horses that are used to creating distance via aggression are in essence yelling at us because their more subtle communication didn't get the result they needed. Their primary and only natural defense is to put distance between themselves and what is bothering them. I'm not saying their behavior is acceptable, only that to them, they communicated as best as a horse could and the human didn’t seem to notice, so they are now escalating the pressure.
Humans don’t deal with that well, WE want to be the ones to escalate pressure, we don’t expect the horse to be the one controlling the escalation process.
And for the human to respond in turn by punishing, the horse's beliefs about humans which is likely that we are consistently inconsistent dolts that don't respond to basic communication and then fly off the handle when a situation is clarified. So, the horse thinks they were clear (the horse said, “You won’t let me leave but I need you to back off, so I’m going to make this perfectly clear in no uncertain terms… ”. What the horse typically gets in response is the body language version of yelling in response that sounds something like this: "I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU, I'M A BULLY AND I CAN PROVE IT!"
If the horse's experience is that humans don't listen, they react violently frequently and for no understandable reason, and the horse can’t leave when he’s very uncomfortable, the choice should be obvious here: the best defense is a good offense.
Part of the problem is that if humans behave in a way that is inconsistent to a horse, the horse can't make the connection between the behavior and the consequence. Or even if they can make that connection, if the punishment feels inevitable, why bother to change? If they anticipate punishment regardless of their behavior, they have nothing to lose, no matter how they act, they may as well vent their frustration in the form of aggression.
As I mentioned previously, I'm not convinced that punishment is the most effective method to alter behavior, and the reason is, even if the horse understands what he did wrong, and sincerely prefers to avoid future punishment, if he doesn’t know how to change, he can’t change. In order to make a change, horses are no different than humans. Change requires understanding what needs to change and more importantly understanding what new behavior replaces the old behavior and being comfortable with that new behavior.
The idea of being comfortable with that new behavior is where belief systems come in to play. For example, let’s say you are in the grocery store with your 4 year old child and the child goes into melt down mode over wanting a candy bar. The options are give the child a candy bar or not. Often this escalates into a drama filled emotional melt down for both parent and child. In order to stop this from happening the base behavior needs to change because once the melt down starts, the child is pretty much beyond reason. Same for the horse, once the aggression starts, it’s a bit late to be problem solving.
Back to our child in meltdown, in order to avoid this grocery store scenario, the child needs to understand that if he asked for a candy bar and is told no, he needs to let it go and not move on the stage where he gets emotionally worked up. But faced with no getting what he wants often doesn’t allow rational thought, he just launches into phase two, which is the meltdown phase. What does he want? Is it really a candy bar or something even he can’t articulate?
There are laws to protect our children from being beaten in grocery stores, which is largely why this example is going to fall apart and lose it’s realistic application. Unfortunately there are no laws that stop a human from becoming aggressive with horses. So, being the concepts are the same, I will continue and lets say you won’t be locked up for beating your child in public. (-;
To change this meltdown scenario, the child needs to see there is another workable strategy other than a melt down. They need to understand that they can control their outcome and ultimately get satisfaction in another way. And what would that be? If the child believes that only a melt down of screaming self pity will console them or net them what’s missing in their short little life at that moment, then that’s what the child will do. If the child believes that he can control his outcome by offering a different behavior, then he will be more inclined to offer something different in the face of the parental “no”. The catch here is that he has to believe something else will work to his advantage and also he has to KNOW what that behavior is, having practiced it enough to be confident he will get predictable results.
Back to our horse (aka The Perp) has to learn a replacement strategy for the "bad" behavior and be confident that this new strategy will get him what he wants. For the horse this means distance from the offensive human.
OK… so now I can hear you thinking, but the point is that I want to be close to my horse and now you’re telling me he’s wanting me to distance myself, so if I get him what HE wants, I won’t get what I want.
Life isn’t always so mutually exclusive. Enter stage right: Jesús Rosales-Ruiz, PhD and Kellie Snider, Behavior Analysts at the University of Texas who began to experiment with negative reinforcement to help aggressive dogs cope with their emotions. The results of this work is now called CAT, which stands for Constructional Aggression Treatment. This work was the subject of Kellie’s master’s thesis under the direction of Dr. Rosales-Ruiz. The first thing the reader needs to understand is that in the world of behavioral sciences, “positive” means to add something and “negative” means to take something away. So, negative reinforcement basically means the removal of pressure. This isn’t all that different than many horse training techniques, except for with CAT the reward is offered once the animal chooses a different coping strategy, rather than the one that isn’t working for us (aggression). The difference between this and the typical Natural Horsemanship application of negative reinforcement is who controls the behavior. In NH, the pressure is removed typically once the horse submits and does as he is told, and the pressure holds steady or perhaps increases as long as the horse doesn’t do as asked. It is removed based on physical behavior, regardless of the horse’s emotional state or ability to handle the pressure/stress.
Part of the problem is that if humans behave in a way that is inconsistent to a horse, the horse can't make the connection between the behavior and the consequence. Or even if they can make that connection, if the punishment feels inevitable, why bother to change? If they anticipate punishment regardless of their behavior, they have nothing to lose, no matter how they act, they may as well vent their frustration in the form of aggression.
As I mentioned previously, I'm not convinced that punishment is the most effective method to alter behavior, and the reason is, even if the horse understands what he did wrong, and sincerely prefers to avoid future punishment, if he doesn’t know how to change, he can’t change. In order to make a change, horses are no different than humans. Change requires understanding what needs to change and more importantly understanding what new behavior replaces the old behavior and being comfortable with that new behavior.
The idea of being comfortable with that new behavior is where belief systems come in to play. For example, let’s say you are in the grocery store with your 4 year old child and the child goes into melt down mode over wanting a candy bar. The options are give the child a candy bar or not. Often this escalates into a drama filled emotional melt down for both parent and child. In order to stop this from happening the base behavior needs to change because once the melt down starts, the child is pretty much beyond reason. Same for the horse, once the aggression starts, it’s a bit late to be problem solving.
Back to our child in meltdown, in order to avoid this grocery store scenario, the child needs to understand that if he asked for a candy bar and is told no, he needs to let it go and not move on the stage where he gets emotionally worked up. But faced with no getting what he wants often doesn’t allow rational thought, he just launches into phase two, which is the meltdown phase. What does he want? Is it really a candy bar or something even he can’t articulate?
There are laws to protect our children from being beaten in grocery stores, which is largely why this example is going to fall apart and lose it’s realistic application. Unfortunately there are no laws that stop a human from becoming aggressive with horses. So, being the concepts are the same, I will continue and lets say you won’t be locked up for beating your child in public. (-;
To change this meltdown scenario, the child needs to see there is another workable strategy other than a melt down. They need to understand that they can control their outcome and ultimately get satisfaction in another way. And what would that be? If the child believes that only a melt down of screaming self pity will console them or net them what’s missing in their short little life at that moment, then that’s what the child will do. If the child believes that he can control his outcome by offering a different behavior, then he will be more inclined to offer something different in the face of the parental “no”. The catch here is that he has to believe something else will work to his advantage and also he has to KNOW what that behavior is, having practiced it enough to be confident he will get predictable results.
Back to our horse (aka The Perp) has to learn a replacement strategy for the "bad" behavior and be confident that this new strategy will get him what he wants. For the horse this means distance from the offensive human.
OK… so now I can hear you thinking, but the point is that I want to be close to my horse and now you’re telling me he’s wanting me to distance myself, so if I get him what HE wants, I won’t get what I want.
Life isn’t always so mutually exclusive. Enter stage right: Jesús Rosales-Ruiz, PhD and Kellie Snider, Behavior Analysts at the University of Texas who began to experiment with negative reinforcement to help aggressive dogs cope with their emotions. The results of this work is now called CAT, which stands for Constructional Aggression Treatment. This work was the subject of Kellie’s master’s thesis under the direction of Dr. Rosales-Ruiz. The first thing the reader needs to understand is that in the world of behavioral sciences, “positive” means to add something and “negative” means to take something away. So, negative reinforcement basically means the removal of pressure. This isn’t all that different than many horse training techniques, except for with CAT the reward is offered once the animal chooses a different coping strategy, rather than the one that isn’t working for us (aggression). The difference between this and the typical Natural Horsemanship application of negative reinforcement is who controls the behavior. In NH, the pressure is removed typically once the horse submits and does as he is told, and the pressure holds steady or perhaps increases as long as the horse doesn’t do as asked. It is removed based on physical behavior, regardless of the horse’s emotional state or ability to handle the pressure/stress.
With CAT, we give control to the horse to influence his environment. Of course if he’s learned an aggressive strategy, that’s going to be his first thought: aggression is the tried and true, proven solution to his problem. CAT helps him sort out alternative behaviors in a very low pressure situation and ultimately extinguishes the unwanted behaviors by letting the horse processing his list of potential coping strategies, determine they no longer work, and search for something that does work. Once he discovers what does work, he has now gone through the following processes:
1. He resolved the issue without being punished, making room for a possible change in his belief system about humans
2. He valued distance above all, and the new strategy worked, without his standard aggressive meltdown.
3. He found a way to control his environment (how close can he get to the human and still feel safe?) without being pushed past his limits.
Once this is established, the human is telling the horse that limits will be respected. The horse now has a new strategy for coping, which he can practice and get results prior to reaching the aggressive meltdown stage. This new strategy can be used to close the gap between horse and human, as long as the human continues to listen and respect the horse’s signals that he needs some space. Once again, we’re back to respect. Respect is a big word in the Natural Horsemanship circles… they want the horse to respect the human. It’s time for the human to reciprocate and respect the horse as well.
So, I started out addressing dealing with equine aggression, which for many is the hardest behavior to modify. BUT CAT works on other issues as well. So far I've applied this to fear of water, electric clippers, fly spray, wormer tubes and other irksome fears that came installed in my pony, Etude. More on those in future blogs...
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