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How Horses Learn, Part 3
by Andrew McLean |
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The instinct to gallop off instantly from perceived threat is one of the most essential instincts of a prey-species such as the horse, which has spent most of its evolved history as food for other animals. True enough, sometimes the horse may turn and fight, depending on the nature of the threat, but generally the only time a horse will fight is when he is hopelessly cornered, (including under saddle) or when he has learned through reinforcement that attacking is an effective dominating mechanism; he has profited through the use of this behavior.
At any rate, fear and anger are very closely related; most anger is unresolved fear. The flight response is the outcome of fear, and goes hand in glove with the simultaneous production of adrenalin. It poses the greatest problems for riders and when we talk of fear in the horse we must include the affects of adrenalin at all levels from mild tension ranging to outright panic and bolting. It's not that the bolting horse won't stop, it's largely that he doesn't register. Adrenalin, in sufficient doses, switches off all other systems and responses including the trained responses. It is plain survival, and everything is switched off except "GO."
Since the domestication of the horse 6000 years ago, the flight response has been mostly bred out of the horse, for most breeds of horse were and are hauling, rather than riding breeds. It is even more of a priority to diminish fear, through selective breeding, in a hauling than a riding breed. Generally, it is in the "hotter" breeds such as the Thoroughbreds, Arabs and the racing strains of Quarter horses, and their first out-crosses where the potential to produce an overwhelming adrenalin response to a stimulus is more likely as in their wild ancestors.
For all horses, but particularly for the "hotter" horses, it is important to train them to be calm and listen, so the flight response must be avoided throughout the entire training process. Being animals which make strong associations between things especially when it comes to fear, we should take the view that the horse must never be put in the position in the presence of humans of exhibiting the flight response. The more it happens, the more likely it is to happen again because of the horse's ability to develop habitual patterns. Studies show that when any reaction of animals becomes linked with fear, it is impossible to eradicate -- it can be "masked," through learning but not extinguished from memory. In other words, given the right circumstances, the response may re-emerge. So the key to good early training is not to spark the adrenalin reaction beyond the lowest levels. If your horse is lazy, then the answer lies not in adrenalising him, but in re-establishing his response to the light aids.
The situation has most likely come about through:
- the lack of clarity in the timing of your aids;
- your initial aids not producing a response in the horse;
- not softening instantly when the horse has given the correct response;
- the partial extinguishment of the forward response by nagging him with your legs when he is already forward;
- hanging on to his mouth when you ask him to go forward.
The major problem with adrenalin is that it retards learning in a serious way. A small amount of adrenalin inhibits learning in a small way and a lot of adrenalin leaves the horse unable to learn anything except for the association of the adrenalin response. This is why I have abandoned, and have come to oppose, chasing the young unhandled horse in any way be it through lungeing, "bagging down" or worse still, teaching him to face and come up.
"Bagging down" is an unnecessary aspect to a thorough breaking in if the bonding job is thorough. Lungeing presents no problem providing it is done after the horse is sufficiently bonded to the handler. By bonding, I mean producing a state of calmness in the horse signified by his floppy eared, soft-eyed, softened body and low head carriage, which is maintained wherever you touch him and whenever you approach. The horse needs your touch, for he is in every sense a contact animal. The more you touch him, scratch the base of his mane, and just generally show him affection, the stronger your relationship will be. Bonding is the primary building block of trust. Lungeing before this is achieved is risking the horse interpreting the exercise as an adrenalin producing act of chasing, and could be the horse's first association of humans with adrenalin. Whereas many horsemen place a lot of emphasis on inherited factors in behavior, I am not so sure. True, the predisposition to act in certain ways may very well be inherited, but the behavior itself is learned, in the sense that it has been given the conditions for its expression, and expressing it is practicing it. This viewpoint at least gives all horses the potential to be calm.
Driving the horse in long reins also can lead to the same problems, and I have seen many Thoroughbreds and some Warmbloods irrevocably made hot through driving before or in the absence of thorough bonding. Driving is not an essential requirement for mouthing, in fact, it can tend to harden the horse's mouth unless done expertly. Driving the unbonded horses tends to cause the horse to raise his head too high, to flex incorrectly so he can see more of you, to take too strong a contact because you are chasing him (yet preventing his complete running away because of the bit), and then there are the problems of the extra length and weight of the reins and the difficulties of maintaining synchronous movement with the horse at all times. In the Jeffrey method for example, the horse is mouthed with the "breaker" lying along the horses back, with short reins, and with the important prerequisite of a calm, bonded and quiet horse.
When fear becomes associated with humans, it doesn't take much to spark the horse into an adrenalin reaction, and it takes less provocation over time. In bad cases, the mere presence of a human on board will get his adrenalin flowing, his learning is slowed and his body retains a tight level of tension. The problem becomes the horse's fault and he is the "crazy "one, but a more sensitive training regime would have avoided the problem in the first place. In mild doses of anxiety, the horse has a hard mouth and a tight body -- he has what behaviorists call "learned helplessness," he has learned to deaden to pain.
And you're really in trouble if the horse learns, through trial and error learning, to use the fear response as an evasion. If the horse loses his respect for you as his director, his submission to your demands diminishes also, so an evasion emerges. Fear is the most difficult evasion, and bolting is the most dangerous expression. The bolting horse needs the help of an expert horseman, and it can prove futile.
Shying, especially where the young horse is encouraged to develop his natural suspicion by the rider turning him away (escaping) from the object of his fear, can be utilized as an evasion where the horse eventually shies at even familiar objects. In these cases, riding the horse actively forward with big steps, correcting and targeting those hesitating steps, and bending (shoulder-in), flexing and circling near these objects tends to reduce this form of shying. With this evasive form of shying, not making a big deal but insisting on forward, contrasts to the way of dealing with it in the young horse where you want to nip the behavior in the bud. With the young horse, I find it essential to very quietly insist they face the objects of their extreme fears for some seconds until they are calm, with no step backs, then reapproach again from both reins, rewarding them for doing so. Time spent in this way helps prevent the horse from becoming an habitual shier. Remember, horses notice every change in scenery. The horse has an extraordinary photographic memory of his physical world, which is constantly updated. Human observation skills are pathetic by comparison.
Think also of the problem float loader. In some cases, the horse may well have had a fearful experience in loading, such as hitting his head on the roof struts of the float during early training. For some of the larger European horses, many Australian floats are simply too low and allow early float problems to take root. But in most cases the horse simply refuses to enter the float, and learns through trial and error that increasing fear response works like a charm in eventually causing the owners to abandon the idea of loading the horse altogether. The problem is now one of decreasing obedience, and further losses of submission may be experienced in other seemingly unrelated activities such as riding.
What is now required is to increase the level of obedience through various techniques such as maintaining the horse's focus of attention, lowering his head through postural submission, invading his space from all quarters so that he retreats if requested, and keeping his attention on his tasks such as in this case, disallowing him to face away from the float. As it is with jumping refusals, turning away from the task (escape behavior) reinforces the disobedience. So, particularly in cases where submission is lost, (or never really achieved) the horse, growing ever insecure from the conflict in the pecking order, produces the fear response. If by trial and error, the response reinforces the horse (i.e. he has a "win") then it is stored in the memory. His loading problem will be reinforced and continue to develop.
Loading problems are not, as often imagined, caused by floating accidents, unless the whole floating experience is distressing.
Travelling problems generally arise when the horse is unable to balance himself on the outside wall of the float during a turn. It is usually a driving problem; just too much speed around corners. You should imagine that you have a glass full of water on the float floor and you aim not to spill a drop as you corner the float, especially with the inexperienced horse. To cure horses with scrabbling problems in the float, you need to change the associations which precede the onset of the problem, (if changing sides or removing the center partition do not work). For example, most wall scrabbling problems are maintained by the strong visual association of either the familiar corner approaching, and/or swirling scenery as seen by the horse through the window of the float. Blocking out the window entirely with newspaper and tape and reintroducing the view many trips later with a criss-crossed pattern with electrical tape is a successful way to extinguish the problem. Gradually the tape can be removed a strip at a time after successful trips have been undertaken. But care must always be taken to corner carefully from this time on.
Mild doses of adrenalin (tension) are frequently caused by conflicts arising from riding faults and in these cases, achieving rhythm, balance and lightness of contact with the help of a qualified coach will be the solution. Working the horse long and low and actively forward is an effective way of reducing the horse's tendency to produce adrenalin in a given situation, paying particular attention to achieving a soft rein contact.
The anxious horse which is constantly pulling is basically running away, and soon develops a hard mouth. Hard mouths are not softened by miles of work but by training the horse to switch on his mouth again. This can be done by changing the position of the bit higher or lower for a time, changing the bit itself to give you increased control and thus prevent the expression of the habit, and doing lots of transitions where you are meticulous in softening when the horse gives the desired response. You must learn how to ride in balance at all paces, including the gallop in the case of the event horse.
If your problem is one where the horse switches off and pumps adrenalin when you compete, which is especially a problem when it comes to dressage, then your best strategy is not to work it out of him with a long laborious single session as his problem is not one of a deliberate ploy to foil your chances at winning fame and glory. It is an associated adrenalin attack which may arise in public each time or only in certain locations (the horse has a greater memory of the physical world than we do). Your best tactic is to take the horse out as often as possible to minor shows or training days where success is not important to you, to eliminate as far as possible your tension as a prime mover in the adrenalin attack! You should make as many sessions as possible of riding him forward without fuss or fight everywhere possible, then tie him beside the float for more than five minutes, then repeat the whole process over again and again.
Adrenalin at home in the training situation can be alleviated similarly, working in sessions of two minutes (it seems to take that long for the anxious type of horse to build his adrenalin to the point of severe behaviour deterioration and lose his learning ability) and five minutes off, just standing around, holding the horse, soothing and scratching the base of his neck and making no fuss (it seems to take about five minutes for adrenalin to dissipate). I find this system to be effective in many cases. It's worth it, as these horses frequently have lots of talent as performance horses, and at any rate the most rewarding training of all is to rehabilitate anxious horses. But again, rehabilitation is slow because of the deeply rooted connections of fear, and occasionally, it may seem impossible and too dangerous.
If the horse is anxious in all aspects of human association, then your best course is to work from the ground up with lots of body contact, scratching and grooming for weeks or months until the horse loses his fear. Because fear is so powerfully incorporated into memory, the rehabilitation process is slow. On the bright side, if you never cause a fear response, then anxiety is a less behavior behaviour to the horse; his trust comes through his bond with you. Prevention is best. In all your training avoid fear, and especially avoid its translation into flight.
When teaching the young horse to jump, it is very easy to arouse anxiety. When his legs touch a rail, he has two physical reactions to the discomfort; he can lift his legs higher, which is the response we encourage, and he can run away from the jump rail faster, which we don't want, as it will later translate with unconstrained practice, into accelerating to the rail, beginning a bad habit. We anthropomorphically call it "keen," but in fact the habit is properly termed "jumping anxiety." By maintaining your horse's calmness, your training will be safer for you and your horse, and he will learn his lessons a good deal faster, to the point where fewer repetitions are required to instill a habit into the horse's repertoire, compared to the more adrenalised horse, which in addition is more careless and hollow in general than the calm sensate one.
When teaching the young horse dressage and jumping it is a good idea to turn him out for a few weeks once he has shown progressive improvement over the weeks. When he comes in again from his spell, you will find him better than ever in most cases, providing you don't bring him in from his holiday in the peak of the spring flush, where his robustness and extra vitality might raise his dominance levels and make him worse than ever!
The reason the spell is so effective in producing clear learned patterns is not, as is often suspected, because the horse reflects on his trained behavior during his time out, but rather that the new habits in his brain respond to the effects of the previous training session and the pathways develop and consolidate during the spell to facilitate future reactions. This consolidation will allow the new behavior patterns to fire more reliably and more frequently with less fatigue, as time goes on, than with younger less developed pathways.
If you look, for example, at the very young horse such as a weanling, you may notice that only a few repetitions of teaching him to lead tires him out, and the response appears to fade. That is because the pathways have not had the practice and development to maintain the constant firing that the new habit of leading demands. In such cases, the foal may become irritated, or sour as we say; it is in fact neural fatigue, and we should be careful to finish new tasks before the memory fade sets in. When the same horse comes in as a yearling, he can sustain more repetitions than previously because we have put in place these habits six months earlier.
I hope that this series has highlighted for you the uniqueness of the horse and how understanding through science, his principles and potentials, and his differences and similarities, will help in training him. I am not saying either, that what I have written is all there is to the horse, but far from it; there is still a lot to be learned, and because of the complex nature of all living things including ourselves, one must always take into consideration the individual differences between horses. Whilst it is very tempting to humanize his behavior, you must ask yourself if it is fair to do so.
I would argue that it is unjust to treat an animal against its nature, and with a set of rules that he cannot possibly aspire to. All aspects of intelligence are adaptations to enable animals to function optimally in their respective environments, so we should cherish the horse because of his special endowments which allow such an extraordinary partnership between our two species. To this end we could say that the horse transcends us, that he is beyond reasoning; his extraordinary photographic memory and powers of observation render us pallid beside him and when we come to know him well enough that he leaves his fear behind, we can develop a closeness that blurs the species gap and leaves only the coldest of hearts untouched. |
Andrew McLean, Animal Behaviorist at The Australian Equine Behaviour Centre, can be contacted by email at eqbehsol@ontherun.com.au. The center's soon-to-be-launched website is at www.aebc.com.au.
© 1996 by Andrew McLean. All Right Reserved. Reprinted here with author's permission. |
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