CONSISTENCY IS KEY WHEN WORKING WITH HORSES
CONSISTENCY IS KEY WHEN WORKING WITH HORSES
There is so much to the concept of “consistency” in horse training. The idea that people tend to pick up quickly is that you need to be consistent in how you ASK a horse to do something. So, the cue or aid you present to the horse when you want it to do something has to be consistently the same for them to be able to work out what you want them to do. I see inconsistency in how people ask horses to do things all the time. I might ask someone to walk their horse forward and halt, and repeat this simple task a few times. It is common for me to see the person one time make a clicking sound and tap their horse with the whip. The next time they kick, then click and sometimes I see people kicking, clicking and tapping with the whip all at the same time! Personally, I consistently ask my horses to go forward from a gentle squeeze of my legs, each and every time. It makes it easy for the horse to understand as I ask the same way each and every time. Therefore, my communication with the horse is consistent. To the horse I am predictable and easy to work out.
The next type of consistency needed is in the consequences of what happens if the horse doesn’t respond to your first ask. Using the example above, if I ask my horse to walk forward and they don’t respond to my gentle leg squeeze, what do I do? Well then I keep squeezing my legs with gentle pressure and start making a clicking noise for a second before I start tapping with my whip in increasing strength of taps until the horse moves forward and then I stop squeezing, clicking and tapping. So the horse experiences a “release of pressure” when they perform the behaviour I am seeking. This is both how you train a horse to learn a behaviour but also maintain a behaviour and keep a horse motivated to perform. So I am consistent in how I ASK and how I ESCALATE the pressure I use to motivate the horse to respond. This consistency in how I communicate and motivate a horse is one of the fundamental reasons horses are more relaxed, responsive and focused when I work with them compared to someone who is inconsistent in the way they communicate and apply pressure to their horse.
Most people tend to get these two main ideas about consistency in horse training. But there is one more crucial aspect of consistency to get your head around. That is being consistent in how you RESPOND to a horse and the behaviour it presents. This idea is a bit tricky for two reasons. First of all it can involve applying pressure to counteract a negative behaviour in a horse and that requires good timing and feel. But, it also can be clouded by human emotions and whenever human emotions are involved things get messy. Let me explain.
If you want to encourage a behaviour you release pressure when the horse performs the behaviour, but if you want to discourage a behaviour you APPLY pressure when the behaviour is expressed. For example, if a horse kicks out at me in the round pen I am going to respond immediately by driving the horse forward. So that the horse learns that expressing aggression has negative consequences. In regards to consistently, if a horse is expressing negative behaviour it is important to respond to it in a consistent fashion! If you ignore it, don’t follow through with pressure or only respond to it every now and then and the the horse doesn’t get a consistent negative consequence to expressing the behaviour, then they will not be motivated to stop doing it! Therefore, responding in a consistent way and manner is important in addressing negative behaviour such as evasions or aggression.
The biggest barrier I see for people being consistent in how they respond to the horse is their emotions. I wrote an article a while ago here (https://www.facebook.com/.../a.10251.../1034602619932775/... ). It is an article that has been re-published a number of times in online magazines and it relates to the fact that humans can make decisions via their emotions or their intellect (ability to think, analyse, evaluate and problem solve). The article explains why using our intellect assists us in making better horse training decisions (not to mention any other decision!) than our emotions.
The biggest emotional barriers that I see that stops people being consistent is fear and guilt. Fear causes people to not respond adequately or at all as they are too scared they will escalate the behaviour. However, I find guilt the trickiest human emotion to deal with. I work with people that actually have excellent training skills but find themselves in a bad situation with a horse as they do not respond inconsistently as they do not want to upset the horse, risk the horse not “liking them anymore’ or because they feel bad about something they have put the horse through in the past. Unfortunately, what typically happens when responses are inconsistent, is that the issues get worse. The aggression increases, negative associations worsen and behaviour can escalate!
Therefore, think about consistency not just in terms of how you ASK a horse to do something but also consider the constituency of how you RESPOND to the horse. My strategy when people bring me difficult or problem horses to work with is to examine how consistent the person is when they ask, escalate and respond to a horse…..I do this because 99% of the time the solution to the behavioural issue will be easy to identify and luckily – straight forward to fix.
