Why learning science is important to horse training.

Horses, like most other animals including humans, do what works, and stop doing what doesn’t work. Learning Theory is not more complicated than that. Sadly, B.F Skinner who made Learning Theory famous in the early 60’s and the learning theorists who followed him were not thinking about horse trainers and owners when they made learning science sufficiently obscure to be inaccessible and irrelevant to the average horse person.

Undoubtedly, coaches are more likely to understand training principles in practical, rather than scientific, terms, and many have an instinctive and effective feel for training without a background in learning research. So why do we need all that science speak for what everybody knows is just common sense?

Why Learning Theory?

Equine welfare may be compromised when we substitute a sound understanding of learning principles with an assumption of horses’ innate sense of cooperation (“he has a great work ethic”), comprehension (“he knows what his job is here”), and a belief in the reciprocal benevolence of the human horse relationship (“he is my partner and loves to win as much as I do!”). A sounder grasp of learning science allows us to recognize why horses respond as they do, which can reduce equine behavioural problems and provide for more positive and fair horse-to-human interactions. Below, I discuss some learning theory basics that are relevant to how we interact with our horses. Let’s start with the Learning Quadrants.

The Learning Quadrants:

Reinforcement occurs when a response is strengthened because it leads to rewarding consequences. Much of the confusion about positive and negative reinforcement occurs when we think of these terms in the sense of good and bad: However, learning theorists are scientists, not moralists, and conceptualize these terms in the sense of adding something and taking something away. Reinforcement always serves to strengthen a behaviour.

Positive reinforcement: Something pleasant is added

Positive Reinforcement occurs when a desired behaviour is rewarded with something pleasurable, making it more likely that we will see the behaviour again. If you want your horse to urinate for the drug tester on command, set up situations where the behaviour is likely to occur (a freshly bedded stall after a lengthy ride), provide a consistent verbal cue or signal, and reward the horse with a treat whenever you catch him in the act. Eventually the cue and an inviting context should produce the desired result. Horses do what works.

Negative Reinforcement: Something unpleasant is taken away

Negative reinforcement occurs when a desired response is rewarded by taking away a mildly aversive stimulus, making it more likely that we will see this behaviour again. The release, the ending of something aversive, is the reward that lets the horse know this is the behaviour we are after because it leads to a good consequence. Most equine training is accomplished through negative reinforcement. For example, we apply pressure to the horse’s sides with our legs, the horse moves forward, and we ease the pressure. We tell the horse what behaviour we want by reinforcing it with the removal of the unpleasant event.

Negative reinforcement is a useful, effective, and in some cases the only, method for training a horse under saddle. Horses’ evolved tendency to avoid pressure (both physical and psychological) by moving away makes them excellent students for negative reinforcement training. Horses do what works.

Punishment serves to reduce or eliminate an undesired behaviour (although, as we will see, not always entirely successfully). As in reinforcement, punishment can be both positive and negative, although we tend to be more familiar with positive punishment. Since there is often confusion between punishment and negative reinforcement it is worth stressing:

Negative reinforcement involves the REMOVAL of an unpleasant stimulus, thereby STRENGTHENING a response. Punishment involves the PRESENTATION of an unpleasant stimulus (Positive Punishment), or the removal of something pleasant (Negative Punishment), thereby WEAKENING a response. Negative Reinforcement and Punishment are opposite procedures that yield opposite effects on behaviour.

Positive Punishment Something unpleasant is added

Positive Punishment involves adding an unpleasant event with the goal of weakening a behaviour. A horse becomes unruly while being led and is yanked harshly with a chain over the nose. Horses stop doing what doesn’t work.

Negative Punishment Something pleasant is taken away

Negative Punishment involves the removal a pleasant event with the goal of weakening a behaviour. A horse starts kicking his stall door in anticipation of being fed and we take the grain cart right past him. Horses stop doing what doesn’t work.

Punishment, especially positive punishment, is often ineffectively delivered, its benefits temporary at best, creates an unfair and inhumane learning environment, and ultimately has no place in equine training .

So Why Learning Theory?

There is a great deal more about Learning Theory that is relevant to equine training that I will have to save for another blog post. My goal here is to stress that learning science allows us to understand what horses do and do not do from a fair perspective. The next time we are tempted to say that a horse has a poor work ethic (of course the horse has a poor work ethic. They have no work ethic! They were evolutionarily designed to hang out with their buddies and eat grass all day) we might consider that ultimately horses, like us, do what works and stop doing what doesn’t work. It is up to us to figure out how to turn that simple truth into having them continue to give us their unfailing cooperation, their athleticism, and their very soul that we demand of them every single day.

---

Why Punishment has no place in horse training

Punishment, although it may seem immediately effective, seldom erases an undesirable behaviour, but merely suppresses it. What punishment often teaches both horses and people is how to avoid it.

Punishment can backfire. Instead of the animal associating the punishment with the crime, they may develop an aversion to the situation in which it occurred or the person who delivered it. A horse who is repeatedly punished for refusing to jump the water obstacle, may eventually become fearful of the entire jumping arena, or the rider or trainer who wielded the whip.

For punishment to be effective it must be contingent – i.e. that it immediately follows the undesired behaviour. When an animal is punished for an event that happened even minutes before (such as our example of a horse being whipped for refusing a jump) there is no contingency between the refusal and the punishment. Generally, the whipping happens while the horse is in front the jump or running away from it, rather than at the exact time of the refusal, making the punishment ineffective, unfair, and arguably inhumane. Also, punishment needs to be delivered at exactly the correct intensity (sufficiently strong so the animal does not tune out an unpleasant annoyance, but not so strong as to trigger a fear reaction and flight response). Unfortunately, this optimal intensity is often impossible to know until after the punishment has been administered.

Finally, punishment does not tell the horse the behaviour that you do want. Rather than punish undesirable behaviours (of which there may be many), it is more efficient to reinforce the behaviours that you want to see again.

---

Combined Reinforcement

What is Combined Reinforcement? Here is a step to step guide on how to successfully implement this practice.

Combined Reinforcement

Licking and chewing: Food for thought

In the Natural Horsemanship parlance when a horse begins to lick and chew while in the round pen this is seen as the pivotal point where the horse says, “I accept you as my alpha leader; I am ready to join up and follow you anywhere”. However, a dive into the science behind licking and chewing offers a different explanation – one that creates a more just and realistic playing field and gives our horse a better chance for successfully meeting our training goals.

Dr. Sue McDonnell, equine scientist and head of the Equine Behavior Lab at the University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center says that licking and chewing arises as the horse transitions from activation of the sympathetic nervous system (Yikes!!! Incoming floating white plastic bag! Time to get the hell out of Dodge!) to the parasympathetic nervous system (Danger averted; deescalate, Breeeaaathe). Dr. McDonnell notes that licking and chewing most likely originates from a surge in saliva output as the body switches from the dry mouth typical of the sympathetic nervous system (pain, fear, or confusion can all turn on the sympathetic system), to the return of saliva associated with the resulting body relaxation of the parasympathetic system. These behaviors are nearly always indicative of a horse being released from a higher to lower state of alarm or distress. In the round pen the horse is chased, the alarm system is activated, eventually the horse tires, the pressure eases off, the immediate threat is diminished, and the parasympathetic nervous system works to return the horse to a state of equilibrium.

In a 2018 study, equine researchers Margrete Lie and Ruth Newberry studying 200 feral horses in Ecuador, discovered that in threatening encounters, both the aggressor and the submissive horse licked and chewed. Interestingly, and counter to the licking and chewing as submission explanation, aggressors engaged in this behavior slightly more often than the submissive horses.

That the trainer needs to become the horse’s alpha leader because this mirrors how horses relate to one another under natural circumstances oversimplifies the complex social structure of equine herd living. Horses hierarchies are fluid, context specific, and more likely to be bilateral (i.e. where each horse has an individual relationship with each other horse) rather than retaining a concept of an inflexible hierarchy of the entire group across all situations.

The dominance/submission model also suggests that horses’ undesired behaviors stem from a defiance to the trainer’s authority, and thus overlooks the multitude of more plausible and parsimonious explanations – that the horse is in pain, does not understand the question, that there is no correct response, or that the horse is physically or psychologically unable to comply. Ultimately, the simplistic explanations of a complex social structure which is used to justify a dominance training method misrepresents how horses learn, is potentially counterproductive to training, and could well jeopardize horse welfare.

See also the International Society for Equitation Science position statement on dominance: https://equitationscience.com/equitation/position-statement-on-the-use-misuse-of-leadership-and-dominance-concepts-in-horse-training