More about Learning Theory
Little Bob is not registered with the Shetland Pony Society. He is a tiny 7hh 12 year old Mini Shetland who was bred on the New Forest.
He was sold as Bob-The-Uncatchable so we knew what to expect and he was clearly pretty terrified of me at first, perhaps because I am a giraffe sized human, but whatever the reason, he was a very tiny, very frightened pony.
At first, I often sat down on the floor to get down low enough to meet Bob at his own height to help him choose whether to come over or not. He was a little bit less afraid of shorter humans, as long as they moved slowly and didn’t try to touch him.
Making yourself small in a safe way, either metaphorically or literally is always helps when meeting a fearful animal.
He follows me like a little black fluffy dog these days, having lived here as a free roaming pony for three months since late October and he is finding a new confident way to be while amongst the lanky giraffe people, who mean no harm.
He was very difficult to catch when he arrived but has become much easier unless something goes a bit wrong - like I fumble and drop the headcollar or a funny sounding noise happens somewhere. He is still sound sensitive, and movement aware and has clearly had to live a vigilant life, living by his wits, at least in his view. I am now working on him improving his confident cooperation even more by using R+ to get him to thrust his own nose voluntarily into the open noseband of his headcollar.
I hadn’t really considered that a Mini Shetland would be a fearful character but it seems obvious now that these tiny pones are likely to feel very easily threatened. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why they have acquired a reputation for being difficult and uncooperative as defensiveness or anger is learned to be used as one of the coping mechanisms for frightening situations.
Most of my other horses are Spanish, who are noted for their fiery nature, connect-ability and cleverness, but it is very easy to frighten an Iberian horse. Their response to fear is often shown in their tension, hyper-alertness, rapid reactivity, flightiness and excitability and they also need us to become less threatening even though they are far bigger animals than a Mini Shetland. If we behave like a predator, we deserve to be treated like a predator, and it isn’t difficult to stimulate one of the fight, flight, freeze or fidget responses in any breed of horse as they are all prey animals. It is worth remembering that all of us can be triggered to use flight behaviour if the threat is big enough.
Fearful animals, who have needed to use their wits to devise avoidance or defensive survival strategies, definitely increase their powers of observation and ability to predict antecedents as this skill has become imperative in order to survive the perceived or real threats. Anxious animals will have learned to live in a state of semi constant heightened awareness, which will cause long term stress. Chronic stress is one of the major factors adversely affecting overall health.
*Dominance Theory *(1) is still a surprisingly popular training approach long after it has been debunked as a flawed method with damaging consequences. It is an ethically questionable approach to use at any time, but most especially when used if the cause of the horses’ behaviour is fear. The use of dominant over-controlling tactics with a fearful horse will cause a breakdown in the horse/human relationship bond and it will exacerbate existing fear and increase stress. Incorrect terminology is used to describe behaviour by the dominance theory practitioners, with oversimplifications and unsuitably anthropomorphic labelling used to describe observed behaviours.
It is worth remembering that the more often a behaviour is rehearsed, the more deeply it becomes embedded as a functional go-to coping strategy.
*Learning Theory *(2) on the other hand, is a scientifically proven, evidence-based approach which has unravelled the connections between environmental stimuli, emotional responses and observed behaviours. There has been vast university research data gathering on learning theory, providing overwhelming evidence from multiple research efforts across a wide variety of equine breeds over the world to prove the hypothesis. The emotions and behaviours uncovered by neuroscience research are observable across many animal groups, with the same areas of the brain being stimulated and linked to the same emotional responses.
A problem with horse owners is that interpretation of behaviour has become clouded by the plethora of internet disinformation. The use of convincingly reasonable words, drawing from reductions of earlier forms of horsemanship and supported with anecdotal human-centric plausible explanations. During a recent post-graduate survey, horse owners were asked to interpret photos and short videos of horses facial expressions and postures provided by the researchers. Over 1000 horse owners participated with the survey which was self recruiting from a wide variety of backgrounds, and their responses determining the emotion behind a behaviour, posture or facial expression were staggeringly inaccurate *(3) & (4).
So, back to the use of Learning Theory and Positive Reinforcement, where fish can be taught to successfully respond to simple “match to sample” task requests, marine mammals can be taught to make huge gymnastic efforts, (of course, ethically, just because we can do this with our marine mammals, it doesn’t mean we should, but it clearly demonstrates how a huge powerful animal can be trained to make complex and difficult behaviours without the use of fear, force and dominance) and groups of alligators can be taught to take turns and share food rewards nicely.
None of these activities could be taught using the dominance, force or fear based training approaches.
If dominant behaviour is noted with a domestic horse, then the animals environment is now, or has been suboptimal. An environment may be suboptimal for a variety of reasons, and as we are part of the environment too, this could include us, and more particularly, the way we typically behave and interact with the horse.
Using dominance, fear and threats of control towards an animal is guaranteed to make your animal increasingly less able to trust you. An animal who does not trust you will always be looking for get out options and therefore will be unreliable. If you use dominance, force and fear to control your horse, one day something will appear that the horse fears even more than you.
Adhering to the Five Domains *(5) rules will take you a long way into an improved equine environment, adding with habitat enrichment too, but it’s essential for the human to also change their responses to the demonstrated fear behaviours in order to help the horse better regulate the emotions. Our responses to the horses behaviours affect the horses deeply.
Animals can become fearful for so many reasons, and this may include pain. The surprisingly common practice of using one of the popular dominance theory- styled methods, (even when they’re watered down and made to sound prettier), convinces humans to try to use fear inducing threats to overcome a pre-existing fear, which could be caused by undiagnosed pain. Humancentric preconceptions and past investment into the methods using dominance to control in training is probably what makes it hard for owners to let go of dominance theory approaches. It maybe harder if the horse is a very tiny, young or weak to let go of trying to dominate by force and strength.
Whatever the cause of fear behaviour, the use of dominance, force and the threat of painful control measures will escalate fear behaviours to a point where the animal will either become subdued to the now all too familiar zombie obedience state (freeze), or they will try to challenge the human (fight), or they may try to escape (flight), or they might become unable to settle and stop wriggling (fidgeting).
The fearful animals learning history will need careful evaluation to determine why the fear driven behaviour may have been learned. Some individuals are more genetically prone to being naturally cautious so become fearful with relatively less aversive stimuli and my learned Learning Theory teachers who are very much more knowledgeable than I, believe that any fear learned behaviours cannot be totally forgotten, but can only be diminished and only then with patience and the right kind of support avoiding flooding and force.
Many people believe that training past fear isn’t really possible, partly because the fear itself prevents training in the true sense. Fear behaviours often re-emerge under situations of stress or pressure, though in time they may be seen in a much lesser form.
Buying into trying to understand the animals very real (to them) fears is absolutely essential, offering sympathetic, empathising, kind non forceful communication, not trying to ignore the fears and push the horse through, and avoiding the use of behavioural anthropomorphic labelling. We can help these horses better by accepting the individuals anxieties are genuine and real and not dismissing them as trivial. This doesn’t mean we cannot help horses move forwards past challenging behavioural fear related problems.
Improving the overall daily living environment, keeping the Five Domains strongly in mind, plus investigating the horses internal and external environment, checking hooves, teeth and general overall health and of course, ruling out problems caused by pain if possible.
Once the horse is more healthy and is mentally strong enough to train, (mental damage from being forced to comply normally takes a lot longer to resolve than physical damage) then ensure that the training environment feels safe (for the horse), improve your observational skills, and gain a better education using equine science to interpret behaviours to help gradually ease away historical anxieties at the horses pace.
This approach, using science based learning theory, will escalate the horses’ trust and confidence in humans rapidly and the horse will change their emotional state around you when working, becoming more optimistic, better focussed, less vigilant and less impulsively hyper reactive. If trust is not building with a fearful horse within a few weeks or months, or if fearfulness suddenly re-appears, a comprehensive re-evaluation of the whole situation must be made to rule out unidentified or new problems.
Consultations with experienced equine centred qualified equine science behaviourists with good track records with their own horses is advisable if you are facing working with a fearful horse with established patterns of fear response behaviours. Two heads are better than one, but beware the slick quick fix statements on websites and the flashy adverts on fb, often with the Nouveau Horsemanship “behaviourists” as these will be rarely using Learning Theory but mostly are using varying degrees of the use of fear, flooding, force and dominance to train.
Except for absolute emergencies, working with a horse cannot be just about getting the job done in the 21st Century, with our SLO to ride a horse coming increasingly under threat, there must be a focus on the ethics of how we ask for and gain trust and train co-operative care using equitation science to reduce the horses anxiety levels in all spheres of training.
Good training looks fairly boring and slow moving that is unless you know what you are looking for as each subtle change being asked for will be small avoiding flustering the horse and staying within the horses threshold.
If the horses’ behaviours are obvious, loud, demonstrative or reactive rather than quietly responsive, this is a sign that mistakes are being made by the humans.
Horses definitely know that we two legged creatures with no ears and no tail and flappy arms are not another horse, and we need to stop kidding ourselves about how translatable our body language is for a horse and instead teach a new consistent and unthreatening body language intelligence, formulated together with the horse and the human to forge a relationship of trust, relaxation, precision, predictability and understanding, using our body language, energy, verbal and tactile communication educations ensuring that our horses are thriving in our environment and not just surviving.
*Look for a person who has studied equine behavioural science, (not just canine) and is knowledgeable about equine centred learning theory, equine psychology and adheres to the LIMA Principles.
*Look for a person who can demonstrate that they have implemented good quality training with their own horses, who look happy to be with the trainer even when they have made a little mistake in training.
*Look for a person who has accreditation from a body who insist their members fully understand the use of Learning Theory and adhere to LIMA Principles and therefore ethical equitation science.
(1) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0737080617300059
(2) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159117300710
(3) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5575575/
(4) https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/24338/fenner_kh_thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
(5) https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/10/1870/pdf