This summer someone said to me that they felt uneasy about me posting up information about how animals learn because it might make people feel bad for not doing it. None of the information I was posting in that context promoted any particular way of doing anything. It all explained how animals learn and by what processes - by association, by consequences and by the laws of habituation. And the material I was posting in that context was about systematic desensitisation and counter conditioning and did not mention flooding or the detrimental effects of that protocol, for instance. All that material did was to explain those things. I still have it all. I am looking back at the slides I used right now in preparation for using them again this coming weekend, and I think that there is absolutely not a single value judgment in any one of them. They just explain what it is. Despite my openly declared bias for aversive free methods of forming, reinforcing and altering behaviour I think it is very useful to people to know what all the options are to communicate and motivate animals to do or not to do things. And how they work, or, as it turns out, have huge costs and very few benefits. Because no matter what angle we come at this from, we all use all of it at some point, whether we know what it is or not. It is partly because that was how I was taught (for which I will be eternally grateful) that I teach all the ways animals learn and all the protocols for the deployment of that information, because what it gave me was something I never had before. Choice. If you dont know the full range of options available to you and how they work, or dont work, you actually have no way of knowing why something you are doing may never work, or that there are less invasive, much less aversive and way more effective options. If you think you have choice, but you are unaware of half of what is available and that you could do instead, or if someone has intentionally fed you misinformation about how alternative protocols work, you dont have freedom of choice at all. And that is very disempowering. If someone says to you well yes but the thing with training with food is that the animal will only do things if you have food on you they are not someone who is trying to empower you with choice. They are trying to narrow your choice to what they have to offer or know about. I have an easy answer for that. Stop threatening the horse with your dont make me pick up the stick / rein look and see how long the horse carries on performing for you. If all you have to offer is the threat of aversives and you stop threatening and you stop using aversives you will find as I and many of my students have discovered is that the horse will not do anything for you at all. And to start with it absolutely floors people when they realise that. The other reason I share all of it - the effective and ineffective with the costs and the benefits of each way of forming and reinforcing or altering behaviours and perceptions - rather than just focussing on the good stuff that I like and that does work, is also because I found myself very frustrated and felt very bad that I had been deceived, and felt even worse that I had done a lot of things to my horse or allowed people to do things to my horse that had not worked and never would. When I was able to deconstruct the protocols being advocated to me with the assistance of an expert in this subject and the tools of the language of psychology, I learned time and time again from many different educated and researched sources that a lot of what I had previously been taught was never going to work no matter how much I did it or how well I did it and no matter which expert horseman or woman I got to do it for me. And that the very people who were telling horse owners to do that, knew that with some horses it really didnt work no matter how long they did it for. Because they have horses in their barn who they no longer try to ride because the horse never stopped bucking or freaking out no matter what they did. Doesnt that make people think? It did make me wonder why a horseman who claims that his approach works with every horse would give up trying to ride his horse because he could never get it to where he felt it would not be inclined to buck? I just didnt wonder hard enough. That horse that never stops bucking or freaking out or freezing and exploding is never going to stop doing that no matter how long he is exposed to that form of treatment, unless and until he completely shuts down in that context. And some just never do. I dont intentionally set out to make people feel bad about what they have done or continue to do. I firmly believe that how we react to something is entirely our choice. And that it doesnt matter what someone says or what happens, how we respond to that is a choice we make. That is one thing I was taught that was spot on. We choose our own attitude and we have a choice between the stimulus and the response, about how to respond. There are times that I am mad as hell about the nonsense and lies I was told and madder still that I was so stupid as to fall for it. But I choose to redirect that into making sure that no-one else is denied choice for lack of honest information. If you hear the information and you still choose to do what you are doing now, well at least you are doing it consciously rather than thinking its the only option. Before you choose a protocol for teaching your horse or changing how he feels about something, or you applaud the finished product of a trainers work, ask this very simple question. What is in it for the animal to do that? What is reinforcing it?
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 08:47:09 +0000
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