During last hundred years we had many scientific discoveries on how people and animals learn new things. This is very broad subject and very well covered in the literature and here I will give you only short summary with practical information on how this works with horses.
Horses can learn in four different situations:
R- happens when reward disappears
R+ happens when reward appears
P- happens when punishment disappears
P+ happens when punishment appears
In the list above I used “reward” and “punishment” because these words explain well what really happens and correspond to widely used acronyms R-, R+, P-, P+. However, in the literature you will find “reinforcement” standing for R+ and R-. In my eyes, this is a methodological mistake, cause reinforcement happens after the situation. Anyway, we have negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement, negative punishment and positive punishment. Negative is “-” and describes the situation when something disappears and positive is “+” and describes when something appears. Reinforcements/rewards and punishment need to be understood in the broader sense: reward is anything that your horse likes and punishment is everything that your horse dislikes. No matter what you think and how you feel about it.
First thing that you need to remember is that horse learns this way regardless of whether you believe in this or not. This is simple fact proven in hundreds of experiments and we should understand this fact and remember about this.
The other thing that you should remember is that horses learn “all the time”. Not only when we are teaching him during our training sessions. He learns something “24h / 7 days” of the week. All interactions with outside world can lead to some learning processes so we have to think how these interactions proceed and what horse can learn from them.
The other important thing is that reward and punishment are relative to your horse. That means that your horse will “judge” what is reward and what is punishment for him. Very well-known example of rewards vs. punishments misjudgment is beating the horse. Normally we think that beating is punishment but for horses that have very little interactions with outside world it is a reward – being a social interaction with another being. So you have to always stay open and think what is REALLY a reward and what is a punishment in every particular moment for your horse.
Another very important thing is that learning is not remembering the facts and acting upon them in the future. It really goes deep into emotions of your horse. You have to watch not only behaviours of your horse, but also the emotions of your horse during the training.
Now I will briefly describe all four learning methods
P –
Punishment disappears. This method is based on a situation when something unpleasant (punishment) disappears as a result of desired behaviour. We have two elements in this kind of training: unpleasant situation and desired behaviour. In practice this method is widely used by trainers that are using pressure as a teaching technique. The pressure is taken off when the horse is doing what he is asked for. This method can be very effective, but the downside of this method is that horse is looking for any possible way to escape this unpleasant situation. That means that the horse will look for ways to avoid training at all or run away.
Horse motivation during such training is very low. It is very difficult to ask for “more” using this method. Punishment – understood as the unpleasant situation that will be finished or taken away – generally increases horse’s stress and diminishes his learning abilities. If you want to understand this process try to remember very short poem when someone is staying above your head and shouting at you.
P +
Punishment appears. This is very popular method when the trainer is punishing the horse when the undesired behaviour is appearing. In simpler words: we are punishing the horse for doing something wrong. When you use punishment the horse tries to avoid the whole context of this situation in the future. That means that he will avoid the place where the situation occurred, the people that were with him at the same time – everything that he will connect with this situation.
We do not use P + as a training method.
But to keep the situation safe for you and your horse do not make any assumptions about what you can and what you cannot do. This kind of assumptions are not working. When your horse’s behaviour is dangerous for you or for himself and when this particular behaviour should not happen again we have to use punishment. Whenever something dangerous happens do not think – act. Your instinct will tell you what to do and how firmly your should act or how decided you should be. It does not mean that we will teach with this method any behaviours. It means that we will take advantage of this during all potentially dangerous situations.
Be careful: if your horse is crawling with his front leg, and you hit his shoulder or even shout at him – you are not punishing him, you are rewarding him. You think that you use P+ but in fact you use R+. You are interacting with your horse, so you are doing what he wanted you to do. This is not the way to eliminate this behaviour.
Another problem with punishment is that, if you use it as a training method, you have to be prepared to use stronger and stronger punishments with the time.
Using punishment as a training method creates a very low motivation and it’s very hard to ask with this method for anything “more” and keep your horse engaged and motivated in the training. Generally your horse will do only the minimum to avoid punishment. The stress level is very high, and thus learning ability of your horse is very limited.
Punishing is reinforcing for the punisher. We like to punish. Even talking or listening about punishments is fascinating and thus reinforcing.
R –
Reward disappears. When undesired behaviour appears reward is taken away. This is very important training method that you can use to effectively remove undesired behaviours. The practical example is when you feed your horse and your horse is crowding you or is too excited, you can take away the food and wait for your horse to calm down.
Generally every time you use R+, which is our preferred training method, you will have also some sort of R- at the same time.
R +
Reward appears. When desired behaviour appears reward appears. This is our preferred training method. It is very important for you to really understand what is happening when you are rewarding your horse. The first very important thing is that you are rewarding not only behaviours but also emotions of your horse. It is very important to NOT start R+ training before you have a CALM horse and truly CALM situation when you are with your horse. If you reward your horse for something he does when he is excited, nervous or anxious – he will be only more excited, nervous and anxious in the future. I believe that rewarding overexcited or nervous or scared horses created very well-known myth that feeding horses leads to misbehaviours.
We feed our horses during training sessions a lot, and I can assure you that it doesn’t lead to anything dangerous. But you have to remember that your horse learns everything and it is very important to feed your horse ONLY when he is calm and is not crowding you.
Briefly about CLICKER TRAINING
I believe that you already know much about clicker training. There are also many sources of information about this technique. What I would love to share with you are my practical experiences gained during clicker training chickens, dogs and horses.
Clicker sound is a secondary reinforcement
which is a fancy name for signal meaning “reward is coming soon”
Generally, everything you can do with clicker you can also do without a clicker. But it will take more time and will require better timing and better technique from you. It also can be more stressful to your horse.
There are a lot of myths about using clicker but I do not want to address them now. I will only guide you through starting clicker with your horse.
Some practical points to remember:
Clicker has to be introduced first.
You start using clicker with few short sessions of clicking and feeding a horse without any requirements. You just click and treat your horse to associate clicker sound with food coming.
During these sessions start feeding your horse in a safe way – feed your horse in front of him, not near you, not to provoke him sniffing and crowding you later on. You have to be quick. Click and immediately treat. You have only 1-3 seconds to feed your horse after you click to let him associate clicking sound with reward coming.
One click at a time.
To mark desired behaviour and/or decision of your horse it’s enough to click once. Clicking more than one time will only confuse your horse, because each click means “that” and refers to only one decision/behaviour at a time.
After click always reward.
If you click you have to reward. This is a deal between you and your horse.
Mark the behaviour, feed in the position.
Mark with clicker sound behaviour your horse is presenting/doing and feed your horse in the desired position. For example: if you teach your horse to turn his head away from you – mark with clicker each time head shifts to the side and feed him in the position to bend his head away.
Size of the treats doesn’t matter.
In fact it is proven that the smaller the treat the better it works. It is not about the size of rewards but about the emotions of positive excitement and curiosity clicker creates. Thin slice of a carrot is enough to reward a 700kg horse. Teaching is not feeding.
To have better results always have at least 3 different types of treats on you.
Mix the treats and do not associate them with the behaviour done. Do not save more valuable treats for better behaviours. Surprise your horse, excite him a little bit with the unknown treat coming after each successful attempt.
But my practical experience shows that when you do clicker training with very young horses, especially with young stallions, from time to time clicker training makes them sexually aroused. In such case it is better to use only one type of treat to not over-excite them. With older and laid-back horses use 4-5 different types of treats and mix them as much as you can.
Jackpots.
From time to time reward your horse with a surprisingly big reward in order to keep his motivation high. Actually if my horse stops trying I sometimes reinforce him hugely just to change his attitude and wake up his curiosity. Be creative.
Shaping with clicker.
Shaping is very similar to playing “hot and cold”. The difference is one: you only say “hot”. So, you give only positive feedback. By shaping you can create desired behaviour from any given starting behaviour. Timing is very important. Click and mark the behaviour when it starts. Do not try to click in time of behaviour, because you will be to late, and you will click when behaviour will finish.
Time and clicker.
People have the tendency to do everything in rhythm. If you are not aware of it, and thus you are not paying attention to it, soon you may be clicking in a rhythmical intervals. You will not reinforce your horse’s behaviours but you will give him a rhythm to follow. This way you will teach your horse to stop and wait for the next click to come and to not present any behaviours.
Cues.
Are very important. We want each behaviour to be associated with one cue and to be presented when this cue (verbal or visual) appears. Many people wait with introducing the cue till the behaviour is taught. My practical experience shows that if you don’t introduce the cue at the beginning of teaching your horse a new behaviour, your horse will choose any other element of this situation to be cue for this behaviour. It is important to introduce the cue right from the beginning.
It is very important to remember that a cue is a unique chance to be reinforced. If you give cue and your horse is not responding, take the cue away and start again. If you make the cue stronger or change your cue, you make it more difficult for your horse to understand what you mean.
Environment.
During training we can manipulate with the environment to help the desired behaviour to occur, for example: we can ask for certain behaviours in certain places to help them happen there.
Remember about random clicking and feeding. Regularly check if you are not following any specific rhythm.
Helping is not teaching.
Do not help too much. Teach your horse, do not feed him – if your success rate is 100% you are feeding your horse and not teaching him anything new. Good success rate vary between 2 failures for 5 trials to 3 failures for 10 trials depending on a horse and his training advancement.
Show that you remember about all previous accomplishments.
Reward even for the things your horse already knows: “I know that you know this and I show you that it pays off”.
Believe in what you do!
Always believe in the things you do. If you could do better, you would.
Keep your goals clear.
Your goal should be to teach your horse to do something, not to make him do something.
SMILE to your horse!!! :-)
