Someone who has booked a lesson with me and who knows me from natural horsemanship days asked me if I still do natural horsemanship. It is a good question. I learned some really vital things. I learned how to apply an aversive and then release it - immediately. No one had ever explained how to do that in any traditional lesson I had had. They had shown me technique but never any principles. I learned from NH systems, a complete architecture of criteria for what makes a good riding horse. All the things that you would want a horse to be able to do and handle with confidence. I have now a very clear understanding and a complete set of criteria for taking a horse from completely unhandled to being happy and safe to be ridden anywhere. I learned a gazillion different ways to use aversives to form and reinforce behaviour. And some of them were fine for my horse and he did not seem to express any fear or any great frustration about responding to them. Most werent fine. He either got fearful or angry or both. Or worse, he suppressed those feelings because not to do so would produce consequences. What has changed is to do with what I learned as a result of spending time with a very advanced natural horseman. Advanced in his field at least, by the standards his system judges a person by. On his recommendation I studied a course at the University of Santa Cruz with a marine mammal trainer. Which is a very narrow definition. The species she likes most is the sea lion. But she can train anything. So can any of the experts I follow now. It is just that like me, they each have a species they like best. And for those who dont think sea lion training is relevant to horses, you should know that all organisms on the planet learn in the same ways. All organisms work to avoid or escape things they do not like and they work to gain things they do like. And all organisms form associations - they learn to like or to dislike anything that becomes associated with things they do or dont like. And all organisms habituate and learn to ignore stimuli or situations where there is gradual exposure at a low level of intensity. And the mammalian brain is constructed and operates in pretty much the same way in terms of things like its emotional and endocrine responses to stimuli and events, whether you are a rat, a primate, an elephant, a horse, hound or husband. And most species are capable of, and many do use aversives and the threat of aversives on each other. What the animal is capable of using to form and reinforce the behaviour of a member of the same or another species is no guide to how best to teach that animal. Because as a species we have a capability that many other species dont. We can plan ahead. Which means that while most other animals can only be tactical, we can be strategic. Which means that I dont need to limit myself to communicating with and motivating an animal the way he tends to do with other animals. And all advanced animal trainers using 21st century training protocols are deploying this information to training every single captive (and indeed some wild) species on the planet. Including birds and reptiles. What I learned from non-partisan expert animal trainers was learning theory. How all animals learn. The laws of behaviour. Like the laws of physics. The best information we currently have available right now about how animals learn based on evidence acquired and tested with animals through experiments conducted following the scientific method. And measured using brain imaging or electrical stimulation or using heart rate monitoring or testing for cortisol in saliva, or measured using systematic collection of data about behaviours or physiological changes known to be associated with feelings of fear or frustration or pain or stress. So now I do new things - I use positive reinforcement - and there are things I no longer do when teaching behaviours. I no longer apply increasing phases of intensity of aversives to produce a response so I can reinforce it by removing the aversive. So I dont use escalating phases of pressure. I no longer expose an animal to a situation in which he feels fear, and restrain him there or keep applying a stimulus that he fears or does not like until he gets used to it. I dont do that because I now know, based on my studies of the laws of Habituation, that this is called flooding. It is traumatic for the animal, it is dangerous for animals and humans and, the more important point - flooding may never work for some animals and can make them fear being exposed to new things. When someone says to me that they do not want to be the first person to ride their horse, I know that they expect - without knowing - that they expect the horse to go over threshold at some point and they want to make sure that the person riding the horse can handle that. Because the biggest danger with flooding is that the animal escapes from the situation or we lose our nerve and take them out of it. Because escape from an extreme situation in which the horse is very afraid is highly negatively reinforcing and makes it very likely the horse will repeat the behaviour that led to the cessation or escape from the aversive situation. So I no longer want to do that, or see it done. It is traumatic to watch if you have your eyes open and you have any empathy for the animal. And it is not necessary. So now I take the time it takes. I use systematic desensitisation and counter conditioning. Gradual exposure to low levels of things that we want the horse to learn to accept and ignore - and then - if appropriate, associating that experience with something the animal really likes. Like food. There are good things to be learned from every system. Sometimes you learn things you want to keep doing because they work. And sometimes you learn that there are things you dont want to do. Because they dont. Or because of the fall-out. I just prefer now to use stuff that actually works, without causing fear or pain. And I prefer to learn from people who really understand learning theory and emotions and ethology and who really understand the laws of behaviour and who deploy those in creative, imaginative and ethical ways. No fear, no force. Because if you do it properly, with excellence, it works. That was all I ever sought. To find something that works, in a way that my horse enjoys. So that is what I do! And I like it much better too.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 09:10:52 +0000
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