“Clear is kind, unclear is unkind.
Most of us avoid clarity, because we tell ourselves that we are being kind. When actually doing this is being unkind and unfair. “
Brené Brown, Dare to lead.
When this comes to horse training, lack of clarity creates murky, blurry, inconsistent ‘success’ points for the horse to aim for, and it makes it harder for us as trainers to provide the clarity of release, or reinforcer vital for them to confirm their response as correct, and learn the meaning of aids.
To develop on this and work further with clarity you need to be sure of two things;
1. What are you, most specifically aiming for at this current point in time, aka this week, this day, your horse to understand?
2. What does your horse need to do physically to make this happen?
Now you might be saying something like one of these phrases I commonly hear, “I’m really not aiming for the Olympics” “We just trail ride.” Or “He’s just a paddock puff.”
Any one of which seems like a logical reason that the second question I need you to understand above, would be irrelevant to your specific goal, or need from your horse behaviorally.
Tricky thing to understand however, is that unless we are aiming for a free for all, autonomous existence form our modern horses – we need them to understand what we require of them, and unless they start to exist completely on the ethereal energy plane, OR speak (yes verbalise) our given language, all we are left with is behavior, and, the outcome of behavior – a physical display of movement.
So lets look at those three phrases again with more information..
“I’m really not aiming for the Olympics, I just want my horse to stop rushing in the canter.”
“We just trail ride, I need to work out how to stop him pulling the reins out of my hands.”
“He’s just a paddock puff, he just eats grass all day but when I go to put his halter over his muzzle to move him to a new paddock he ALWAYS jumps and throws his head up and then sometimes he runs away.”
So now we have more information, We not only have the human placed limitations on their expectations, but we also have what they, personally, are wanting to achieve. Its very easy at this point to jump to conclusions as humans, and ask ourselves why the horse would be doing these things from our human brains perspective – which, having a vastly more developed prefrontal cortex is much more designed for imagination, thinking ahead, planning, reflecting on any possible outcomes.
So in these situations we might also come to the conclusions of;
“She’s just too fast and forward, she just wants to go, she loves it and is so excited. When I don’t let her she gets so frustrated and tense.
“He is so rude, he just won’t accept the bit. He just wants to go faster. He gets really excited when I touch the reins at all.”
“He ONLY does it when I want to catch him, He’s very naughty. He knows that I am just about to put the halter on.”
The problem here in scenario one in developing a solution is that no matter how much we try to explain to the horse that we want them to slow down and not go as fast by staying calm, by us indeed stopping the rushing, if previously they had become positively stressed by the work, we will loose the enthusiasm. Simply forcing the stopping of the behavior leads to other replacement behaviors, particularly if there is a escalation of tension as they are asked to persistently slow down.
With scenario two, If we try to approach it from firmly focusing on the horses submission to the bit, by being strong and not letting the horse pull, we confirm that the horse does indeed have a reason to experience a heightened ‘energy’ response to bit pressure. Holding a posture against a pressure requires an inclining energy output.
And lastly, with the horse that lifts their head and runs away as the handler is trying to put the halter and is perceived as not wanting to be caught, and controlled, if we focus on this ‘premeditation planning perspective’ that us as humans have we easily fall into solving the failure result, such as the horse running away, not the precursor to the response – which is the lifting of the head.
Horse brains are very different. They don’t have the same prefrontal cortex development like our species has evolved to have. They have a limited to no prefrontal cortex at all, which is the vital piece responsible for our human characteristics such as thinking ahead, think back (reflecting), planning, imagining and therefore be able to think deviously, wishfully, deceptively, revengefully and manipulate the situation to their gains. On top of this, they have a very enlarged amygdala, the part of the brain that is responsible for fear responses.
So what does the horse brain do well?
Memory + Reactivity = learning, response, and movement.
So that guides us to the point of us looking at what we are actually needing the horse to physically do, so then we clarify what we want it to learn, so it can do what it does best, remember it for next time we as the question of it bit providing the aids.
Scenario 1 again ...“She’s just too fast and forward, she just wants to go, she loves it and is so excited. When I don’t let her she gets so frustrated and tense.”
To move faster, the horse needs to lift the legs off the ground faster.
So, to move slower, the horse needs us to help it to understand that the movement response to our aids is to prolong the time that the limbs are spent on the ground, and to do this, with our knowledge of the horses neurophysiology, we need to encourage the horses leg that is off the ground (swing phase), to stay up log (increase the swing phase).
So the answer to question 2 is “I need my mare to keep her hooves on the ground longer.”
Scenario 2 again...“He is so rude, he just won’t accept the bit. He just wants to go faster. He gets really excited when I touch the reins at all.”
For a horse to begin to accept the bit, it cannot decide to bring it into his life into the future – it just needs to know what it means. So, in this case….
The answer to scenario 2 here is “I need my gelding to understand what pressure from the bit in his mouth means, that he needs to keep his hooves on the ground for longer.”
Scenario 3 “He ONLY does it when I want to catch him, He’s very naughty. He knows that I am just about to put the halter on.”
Again, the answer to Scenario 3 is “I need my gelding to understand that when I put the halter over his nose he needs to drop his head and keep his hooves on the ground longer.”
Not every single undesired behavioral or performance display is as clear cut and dried as fixing one thing and resolving all – but it provides us the base we need, to help the horse to understand what we need form it. Many variable will come into the picture, along with our understanding of the horses response, the environment, our understanding of our response, our response time to the correct response, our physical capabilities and also our response to when things don’t result in the response we want. However, understanding what your horses default pattern of behavior or movement response is certainly gets us closer to being able to critically think through what we can bring to the process of training, to then reflect it against our capabilities, skills and possible limitations.
As a ‘neophobic’ animal (fear response to new things) the horse is always learning about survival, in every aspect of its environment, and in everything we as humans do to it, or in it's environment.
If nothing changes in its environment, it leads to neutral response in the horse.
If a change, with a varying result occurs, it leads to anxiety in the horse.
If a change, with a consistent result occurs, it leads to relaxation in the horse.
Being able to provide this consistency of result at the core of what the horse understands as behavioral reactivity, is how both the horse, and you ends up with relaxation mentally, and in turn physically in how you work together.
“Horses have no such dense, granular pre-frontal cortex tissue in their brains and this places differences and limitations on their mental abilities.” Dr Andrew Mclean.
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