I'm very soft regarding my own horses, the slightest hint of ailment or injury and I'm worried!
This morning was no exception when I arrived in Penny and Khatani's cattle court to pick out feet, feed, turnout and muck out.
Got to Khatani's left hind and it was swollen and sore with what looked like a gash down the front of his hock! My partner mentioned something about him lifting that leg higher than normal when he did his weekly antibac hoof soak last night. Rang the vet and while I was waiting for them to call back with a visit time, I set about working with Khatani to keep still enough for me, and potentially the vet, to examine it without risk of any human injury (Khatani becomes very emotional if he thinks something will hurt!). At this point I should probably make a note to self that it's good to clean up the horrific looking would before calling the vet - it clearly wasn't fresh as all blood was dry...
So how to keep an emotional TB still while I examine and clean a wound? Positive reinforcement for the 'incompatible with kicking human behaviour aka keeping still'. Positive reinforcement for this job was to be horse and pony cubes, nice enough to keep still for, not as thrilling as carrots which can create self control problems in Khatani when he's very upset. Decided to mark positive reinforcement with a clicker as it, unlike my voice, can't convey my own emotion (arrgh my poor horse is hurt bad!!!!).
Clicked and treated K for keeping still while I first stroked his left rump, secondly ran my hand down his thigh, thirdly ran gamgee down his thigh, fourthly ran saline dripping gamgee down thigh, fifthly ran saline dripping gamgee over what actually happened to be a graze!. Sixthly, while I palpated the hock and surrounding limb to find softer and less painful swelling than I'd thought!
Not bad for an impromptu training session and hopefully a positive first aid experience for the emotional TB. Now just to keep an eye on that leg!
Monday, 6 December 2010
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Ethical equitation?
This is a subject that is frequently on my mind. Ethics are not something that can be forced onto others, they are a personal matter derived from what you know, think and feel about a matter. Despite this, many people promote more 'ethical' ways of doing things in many aspects of life, not just horsemanship. I play quite a substantial part in promoting more ethical ways of keeping and interacting with horses so I'm as guilty of the implied charges as anyone. Realising this brings me to thinking about what ethics are, and where they stand in relation to what we do with our horses.
We who care about horses are likely to consider the effects of our behaviour on them. And what we understand of our impact on them shapes our future behaviour towards them. This is so for many people who interact with horses, yet on any given day, at any given location where there are horses, we can observe a variety of human behaviour towards horses with varying impacts on them. We might not think that all of these impacts are good for horses, despite good human intentions.
Whenever we find that we might be lacking in information, there is a growing body of scientifically verified information availible on the effects of human behaviour towards horses that we can draw on. I'm not saying that science knows all and that it should be followed to the letter. What I am saying is that many aspects of human behaviour towards horses has been examined via rigorous, objective scientific method. As such, such information has a solid foundation in fact, sometimes confirming what tradition has always told us, sometimes blowing tradition out of the water. Being open to scientifically verified information can be most humbling as well as most enlightening and empowering. I find it most useful when acknowledged, and where appropriate, drawn into daily practise. Take 'equitation science' as an example. Some scientists have identified what many already know regarding the education of the riding horse. This knowledge has been distilled down into key points that some have pointed out to me as being highly mechanical, removing the 'feel' from horsemanship. I think that they can be treated as highly mechanical and appear to remove the sensitivity with which a trainer might bring to thier interaction with a horse. But I also think that the converse is true, correct training, applied with empathy for the horse will also have those key points of training held inherently within. Science's downfall is often the manner in which information is relayed, highly distilled in order to convey facts, losing feel for its subject, the horse. I think that most often this is only something lost in translation, not absent from the beginning, feel for the horse is what motivates equitation scientists in the first place.
So scientific information can tell us about how well our interactions and interventions with horses facilitate the horse's ability to be at his best. And in turn, this information can help us to decide what is ethical.
Perhaps a 'welfarist' approach might be taken. Pragmatically coming to the conclusion that you do indeed use your horse to your own end, but make a conscious decision to cause as little negative impact on your horse's welfare in the process. This, startling as it may be, does not preclude causing a little harm necesary for you to reach your own end e.g. riding using a bit when there is the alternative not to (there is a little documented evidence to suggest that bits are not good for horses and that they are happier ridden without one).
At the other end of the scale you might take more of a 'rightsist' approach, because you love to interact with the horse, but must only do so in a manner that actively enhances your horse's experience of life. After all, your horse not only has the right to be free from negative welfare, he also has the right to enjoy life. Providing your horse with all his needs, all of the time, and only engaging in interactions that bring mutual enjoyment such scratching an itch.
Perhaps instead you find yourself on a 'middle road'. An approach somewhere between the two.
No matter which of the above stances the 'ethical horseman' takes, all will consider themselves 'ethical', even though ideals and behaviour towards horses will vary greatly. Perhaps the most heated debates I've either been in, or have encountered are between people who behave differently towards horses, but who all believe they hold the moral high ground and cannot accept that the other might. Different people have different high ground!
Talk about ethics is often talk about welfare, and talk about welfare is often talk about ethics! Science might add to information that affects one's ethical stance, but it does not define the moral high ground. It is for each of you to be as informed about what horses need and like as you can be, and then find your own high ground.
We who care about horses are likely to consider the effects of our behaviour on them. And what we understand of our impact on them shapes our future behaviour towards them. This is so for many people who interact with horses, yet on any given day, at any given location where there are horses, we can observe a variety of human behaviour towards horses with varying impacts on them. We might not think that all of these impacts are good for horses, despite good human intentions.
Whenever we find that we might be lacking in information, there is a growing body of scientifically verified information availible on the effects of human behaviour towards horses that we can draw on. I'm not saying that science knows all and that it should be followed to the letter. What I am saying is that many aspects of human behaviour towards horses has been examined via rigorous, objective scientific method. As such, such information has a solid foundation in fact, sometimes confirming what tradition has always told us, sometimes blowing tradition out of the water. Being open to scientifically verified information can be most humbling as well as most enlightening and empowering. I find it most useful when acknowledged, and where appropriate, drawn into daily practise. Take 'equitation science' as an example. Some scientists have identified what many already know regarding the education of the riding horse. This knowledge has been distilled down into key points that some have pointed out to me as being highly mechanical, removing the 'feel' from horsemanship. I think that they can be treated as highly mechanical and appear to remove the sensitivity with which a trainer might bring to thier interaction with a horse. But I also think that the converse is true, correct training, applied with empathy for the horse will also have those key points of training held inherently within. Science's downfall is often the manner in which information is relayed, highly distilled in order to convey facts, losing feel for its subject, the horse. I think that most often this is only something lost in translation, not absent from the beginning, feel for the horse is what motivates equitation scientists in the first place.
So scientific information can tell us about how well our interactions and interventions with horses facilitate the horse's ability to be at his best. And in turn, this information can help us to decide what is ethical.
Perhaps a 'welfarist' approach might be taken. Pragmatically coming to the conclusion that you do indeed use your horse to your own end, but make a conscious decision to cause as little negative impact on your horse's welfare in the process. This, startling as it may be, does not preclude causing a little harm necesary for you to reach your own end e.g. riding using a bit when there is the alternative not to (there is a little documented evidence to suggest that bits are not good for horses and that they are happier ridden without one).
At the other end of the scale you might take more of a 'rightsist' approach, because you love to interact with the horse, but must only do so in a manner that actively enhances your horse's experience of life. After all, your horse not only has the right to be free from negative welfare, he also has the right to enjoy life. Providing your horse with all his needs, all of the time, and only engaging in interactions that bring mutual enjoyment such scratching an itch.
Perhaps instead you find yourself on a 'middle road'. An approach somewhere between the two.
No matter which of the above stances the 'ethical horseman' takes, all will consider themselves 'ethical', even though ideals and behaviour towards horses will vary greatly. Perhaps the most heated debates I've either been in, or have encountered are between people who behave differently towards horses, but who all believe they hold the moral high ground and cannot accept that the other might. Different people have different high ground!
Talk about ethics is often talk about welfare, and talk about welfare is often talk about ethics! Science might add to information that affects one's ethical stance, but it does not define the moral high ground. It is for each of you to be as informed about what horses need and like as you can be, and then find your own high ground.
Thursday, 3 June 2010
Offering behaviour
Using the clicker as a training tool is something I've really enjoyed doing for quite a number of years now, and sometimes it's hard for me to understand why anyone wouldn't want to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Oy7eBOFaE4
There are differences between using the clicker to train horses and using more traditional or natural horsemanship methods. With the latter we tend to stimulate the horse to perform some behaviour via means of our own actions. We prefer the horse not to do behaviour unless prompted by us. Unwanted behaviour is normally corrected, or more accurately termed, 'punished' by a swift verbal or tactile reprimand.
With the clicker things are different. We, as the trainer, are more passive and instead look for the horse to offer behaviour that we can capture. By 'capture', I mean signal to the horse in the instant that the specific behaviour is being performed that their behaviour has earned them a reward, usually a food titbit. The signal is usually the clicker noise, but it could be another easily perceptible signal, that has previously been associated with the titbit. The horse learns that that click announces food, and any behaviour that the horse can do that makes that happen is normally repeated fairly frequently!
When unwanted behaviour occurs during clicker training it does not normally meet any sort of interuption - unless lives really are at risk! Instead the unwanted behaviour fails to get any sort of reinforcement. Behaviour that fails to earn clicks and treats normally dissappears from the repertoire, but if the worst comes to the worst, incompatible behaviour can be trained to take the place of unwanted behaviour.
My latest example is pawing with the forelimb. This behaviour is normally rooted in frustration at not getting food when the horse expects that it should - after all, horses paw snow covered ground to get the grass beneath, it's a natural instinctive response to frustration. It may also occur when the horse is frustrated in other ways and can't solve the problem in the manner it would like. In this case pawing isn't really appropriate because it won't work to solve the problem. But nevertheless, it is an instinctive, unconscious response to feeling highly frustrated and relatively helpless - but not helpless enough to become shut down and inhibited. In this context, such inappropriate behaviour is referred to as 'displacement' behaviour.
One of my customer's horse's expressed pawing behaviour during training with a more traditional trainer. The behaviour was reprimanded either by a verbal correction, or by jolting the lead rope attached to the horse. The behaviour didn't decrease in frequency until the horse was performing other, incompatible behaviour under direction of the trainer, and therefore was not effectively punished as these reprimands failed to completely inhibit pawing.
This session compared to a more recent session with clicker training was interesting. The session with the traditional trainer had seemed to set a precedent for increased pawing behaviour, something we'd not been seeing recently in our sessions, but it by the most recent session it had made quite the comeback! So, as we were clicker trianing we ignored it - while taking care not to stand in front of the offending forelimbs! Instead we shaped standing still behaviour, in order to set up for new tasks inspired by our traditional trainer. Pawing no longer got any pay off, not even attention - it must be remembered that looking at and speaking to horses when reprimanding them does constitue attention, even if it's not exactly the quality the horse might want. Standing still did get a pay off, and so the horse became confident in performing this behaviour and able to offer further behaviour for us to capture.
So what's the moral of this story? To get into clicker training it may be necesary to let go of ideas about inhibiting behaviour, and to accept that horses can offer behaviour and that we can increase the likliehood of certain offered behaviour by clicking and treating it, and lose behaviour we don't want by ignoring it, and training incompatible behaviour in its place.
Want to know more about clicker training? Why not see my website for a presentation near you?
www.jenninellist.co.uk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Oy7eBOFaE4
There are differences between using the clicker to train horses and using more traditional or natural horsemanship methods. With the latter we tend to stimulate the horse to perform some behaviour via means of our own actions. We prefer the horse not to do behaviour unless prompted by us. Unwanted behaviour is normally corrected, or more accurately termed, 'punished' by a swift verbal or tactile reprimand.
With the clicker things are different. We, as the trainer, are more passive and instead look for the horse to offer behaviour that we can capture. By 'capture', I mean signal to the horse in the instant that the specific behaviour is being performed that their behaviour has earned them a reward, usually a food titbit. The signal is usually the clicker noise, but it could be another easily perceptible signal, that has previously been associated with the titbit. The horse learns that that click announces food, and any behaviour that the horse can do that makes that happen is normally repeated fairly frequently!
When unwanted behaviour occurs during clicker training it does not normally meet any sort of interuption - unless lives really are at risk! Instead the unwanted behaviour fails to get any sort of reinforcement. Behaviour that fails to earn clicks and treats normally dissappears from the repertoire, but if the worst comes to the worst, incompatible behaviour can be trained to take the place of unwanted behaviour.
My latest example is pawing with the forelimb. This behaviour is normally rooted in frustration at not getting food when the horse expects that it should - after all, horses paw snow covered ground to get the grass beneath, it's a natural instinctive response to frustration. It may also occur when the horse is frustrated in other ways and can't solve the problem in the manner it would like. In this case pawing isn't really appropriate because it won't work to solve the problem. But nevertheless, it is an instinctive, unconscious response to feeling highly frustrated and relatively helpless - but not helpless enough to become shut down and inhibited. In this context, such inappropriate behaviour is referred to as 'displacement' behaviour.
One of my customer's horse's expressed pawing behaviour during training with a more traditional trainer. The behaviour was reprimanded either by a verbal correction, or by jolting the lead rope attached to the horse. The behaviour didn't decrease in frequency until the horse was performing other, incompatible behaviour under direction of the trainer, and therefore was not effectively punished as these reprimands failed to completely inhibit pawing.
This session compared to a more recent session with clicker training was interesting. The session with the traditional trainer had seemed to set a precedent for increased pawing behaviour, something we'd not been seeing recently in our sessions, but it by the most recent session it had made quite the comeback! So, as we were clicker trianing we ignored it - while taking care not to stand in front of the offending forelimbs! Instead we shaped standing still behaviour, in order to set up for new tasks inspired by our traditional trainer. Pawing no longer got any pay off, not even attention - it must be remembered that looking at and speaking to horses when reprimanding them does constitue attention, even if it's not exactly the quality the horse might want. Standing still did get a pay off, and so the horse became confident in performing this behaviour and able to offer further behaviour for us to capture.
So what's the moral of this story? To get into clicker training it may be necesary to let go of ideas about inhibiting behaviour, and to accept that horses can offer behaviour and that we can increase the likliehood of certain offered behaviour by clicking and treating it, and lose behaviour we don't want by ignoring it, and training incompatible behaviour in its place.
Want to know more about clicker training? Why not see my website for a presentation near you?
www.jenninellist.co.uk
Monday, 1 March 2010
Beware the sharp, pointy, long and yellow teeth!
Aggression is a symtom of fear. Just think about what it takes for you to behave aggressively, such as to feel road rage or snap at a loved one. Aggression involves a lot of emotional energy, normally accompanied by a 'bad hair day'. Behaving aggressively on a regular basis is hard work and emotionally draining. The same is true for our horses and other animals, yet often we counter aggression with more aggression - the horse threatens to bite or kick, and we yell at or hit it! This is fairly natural. We got scared by the horse, and behaved aggressively back. It's true, aggression really is a symptom of fear!
But while I think we can all be forgiven for retaliating in the heat of the moment, we must be careful not to get locked into a downwards spiral of aggressive behaviour. Just think about what you learned last time you were frightened by a horse, and at very least, were tempted to retaliate with further aggression. It's possible that you were scared, and now you are aware of the potential for dangerous, aggressive behaviour from your horse in future. You might have found that this affected your behaviour towards your horse in similar circumstances - maybe you tied your horse up shorter, or were ready to deliver a reprimand in order to prevent being bitten, something we're often taught to do. You are simply more aware of the potential danger, and prepared to defend yourself.
Now think about it from the horse's perspective. The horse bit or kicked because he was scared. Scared of what might be unclear, but it is most probable that he was scared. He then recieved what he considered to be aggresive behaviour in return. This taught him he was right to be afraid, and this has an impact on his future behaviour. If a horse anticipates he may be frightened, then he is already priming himself to use defensive behaviour, including aggression. If he does behave aggressively again, and get the same result, retaliation from a scared human, then future aggression from both parties becomes more likely, unless there is intervention.
It's important to realise just what it is that is setting the horse up for aggression. One way to set horses up for aggression is to put them in situations where there is competition between horses for vital resources such as food, water, dry places to stand, shelter from the elements, and so on. This is one way to ensure a horse experiences mutiple 'bad hair days'. When such resources are in short supply, horses feel more agitated. And when they have repeated aggressive encounters with their herd mates, they feel worse. Feeling uncomfortable like this makes small niggles, such as accidentally jerking the grith when tightening it, into major discomforts that may trigger aggression. Horses may also become more aggressive towards people around their feed bowls, fearing that their people have now taken a liking to horse food and wish to take it from them. Fear of loss is as bad as fear of pain; both are highly averisve to horses.
It is fear of loss that may teach a horse to bite over food. It's a bit of a no-brainer, but hungry horses find being fed a highly pleasurable, and indeed, exciting event. But it's also an unpredictable situation from the horses's perspective. Humans can walk off without notice, taking the food with them, they often do when carrying food past a horse, whether the food is in a bucket or in a pocket. Horses can see this as totally devastating, and they are provoked to solve the 'moving food puzzle'. Horses have little natural preparation for moving food; only when they are a foal does their food actually have legs! Foals resolve the moving food problem by cutting in front of mum, forcing her to 'stand and deliver'. When people walk off with food, horses repeat the same action they used on mum. They catch up, over take, and park themselves in front of us. And if they are very tense, they can take this one step further. When faced with sudden and unexpected removal of something valued so highly, they are triggered to intense fear and frustration, and more extreme aggression is the result.
So what's the solution? Well, it does depend on the horse and the exact situation. But, aggressive horses need to be managed so that they have a happier lifestyle. This way they'll have fewer bad hair days and be less sensitive to aversive situations. But it is also important to remove the source of fear, by identifying it, and then taking action to either avoid it or desensitise and counter condition the horse to it. The aim of desensitisation is to help the horse learn that the perceived threat is nothing to be feared. Counter conditioning teaches the horse to actually enjoy the previously frightening event. In the meantime, it is our responsibility to handle an aggressive horse as calmly as we can possibly muster.
But while I think we can all be forgiven for retaliating in the heat of the moment, we must be careful not to get locked into a downwards spiral of aggressive behaviour. Just think about what you learned last time you were frightened by a horse, and at very least, were tempted to retaliate with further aggression. It's possible that you were scared, and now you are aware of the potential for dangerous, aggressive behaviour from your horse in future. You might have found that this affected your behaviour towards your horse in similar circumstances - maybe you tied your horse up shorter, or were ready to deliver a reprimand in order to prevent being bitten, something we're often taught to do. You are simply more aware of the potential danger, and prepared to defend yourself.
Now think about it from the horse's perspective. The horse bit or kicked because he was scared. Scared of what might be unclear, but it is most probable that he was scared. He then recieved what he considered to be aggresive behaviour in return. This taught him he was right to be afraid, and this has an impact on his future behaviour. If a horse anticipates he may be frightened, then he is already priming himself to use defensive behaviour, including aggression. If he does behave aggressively again, and get the same result, retaliation from a scared human, then future aggression from both parties becomes more likely, unless there is intervention.
It's important to realise just what it is that is setting the horse up for aggression. One way to set horses up for aggression is to put them in situations where there is competition between horses for vital resources such as food, water, dry places to stand, shelter from the elements, and so on. This is one way to ensure a horse experiences mutiple 'bad hair days'. When such resources are in short supply, horses feel more agitated. And when they have repeated aggressive encounters with their herd mates, they feel worse. Feeling uncomfortable like this makes small niggles, such as accidentally jerking the grith when tightening it, into major discomforts that may trigger aggression. Horses may also become more aggressive towards people around their feed bowls, fearing that their people have now taken a liking to horse food and wish to take it from them. Fear of loss is as bad as fear of pain; both are highly averisve to horses.
It is fear of loss that may teach a horse to bite over food. It's a bit of a no-brainer, but hungry horses find being fed a highly pleasurable, and indeed, exciting event. But it's also an unpredictable situation from the horses's perspective. Humans can walk off without notice, taking the food with them, they often do when carrying food past a horse, whether the food is in a bucket or in a pocket. Horses can see this as totally devastating, and they are provoked to solve the 'moving food puzzle'. Horses have little natural preparation for moving food; only when they are a foal does their food actually have legs! Foals resolve the moving food problem by cutting in front of mum, forcing her to 'stand and deliver'. When people walk off with food, horses repeat the same action they used on mum. They catch up, over take, and park themselves in front of us. And if they are very tense, they can take this one step further. When faced with sudden and unexpected removal of something valued so highly, they are triggered to intense fear and frustration, and more extreme aggression is the result.
So what's the solution? Well, it does depend on the horse and the exact situation. But, aggressive horses need to be managed so that they have a happier lifestyle. This way they'll have fewer bad hair days and be less sensitive to aversive situations. But it is also important to remove the source of fear, by identifying it, and then taking action to either avoid it or desensitise and counter condition the horse to it. The aim of desensitisation is to help the horse learn that the perceived threat is nothing to be feared. Counter conditioning teaches the horse to actually enjoy the previously frightening event. In the meantime, it is our responsibility to handle an aggressive horse as calmly as we can possibly muster.
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