Level 6—Proof – Clairety Horsemanship

Level 4—Straightness, Level 6—Proof, Research

What is Converse Conditioning?

In science, whenever a phenomenon is observed, it is helpful to give it a name so it is easier to refer to while investigating it. Converse conditioning is a more recently named training phenomenon that has not been studied yet. Let’s explore what it is.

In converse conditioning, a horse learns a new, opposing response to a previously learned cue. For example, if a horse is originally taught to accelerate from rein pressure, as is often the case with race horses, teaching that horse to decelerate from rein pressure would be an example of converse conditioning.

Perhaps when you started handling horses, you expected them to walk when you walked and stop when you stopped. But then you learned a bit more about horse behaviour and realized that would be confusing for the horse because there are some situations where you do not want the horse to move when you do (like saddling up or getting on for example!) and so you trained your horse to only respond to pressure or voice cues and not move when you move—this is another example of converse conditioning.

Both of the above examples were positive ones, where the outcome for the horse’s training is improved consistency and clarity. Converse conditioning also works the other way around.

If a horse is first taught to move quicker from a tap of the spurs, but then the rider changes that cue to mean slow down, the rider using his leg no longer always means acceleration. When to accelerate from leg pressure and when to decelerate will be hard for the horse to distinguish.

Another example of converse conditioning creating confusion or danger is when a horse that knows to decelerate from rein pressure is taught to simply shorten its neck to rein pressure. This may be done to try to have the horse move in a certain posture or frame, but causes confusion for the horse and could put the rider in danger.

So you see that converse conditioning is not necessarily good, nor necessarily bad, but it occurs frequently in horse training. It is therefore a good idea to understand what it is and in what scenario it will be useful and in what situations it may be detrimental.

Can you think of any more examples of converse conditioning? Comment your experiences below!

Level 4—Straightness, Level 6—Proof, Solving Behaviour Problems

Feed the Spook

Spooking, or stepping quickly forwards or sideways without being cued to do so, is a natural behaviour in horses that can be very annoying and even frightening to us who handle and ride them. There are many opinions about how to make a horse less spooky, including:

° punishing the horse for spooking

° restraining the horse in the ‘spooky’ area

° lunging the horse in endless circles until it ceases to react

These three conventional responses to spookiness are actually not very effective. Punishment justifies the horse’s original fear, restraint uses the ‘flooding’ desensitization method which may be unethical, and lunging is only a temporary solution, often lasting only as long as the training session. What, then, to do?

In most situations, we cannot definitively say what causes a horse to spook, simply because we cannot ask the horse what scared it. All we can objectively know is what the horse did. For example, maybe the horse stepped suddenly to the right and accelerated. This information is much more useful than what the horse may have been scared of, as it suggests an operant training solution: step the horse to the left, and slow down. Since most spooks involve a turn and a change of speed, making certain that straightness and self-carriage of speed and line are trained thoroughly greatly reduces spookiness in many cases I see.

If the spook is still persistent after checking these basic responses, consider this very counterintuitive approach. Reward your horse when he spooks. Food rewards are incredibly powerful, but if you use food, also use a bridging cue like a clicker or saying ‘yes’ in a particular tone at the time of the spook, because you will not be able to deliver the food until a few seconds later, and would thus reward the wrong thing. Scratches may be useful, particularly around the withers, but with a highly aroused horse, the reward of touch may be significantly less meaningful.

What is the logic behind this approach? A spook is an automatic response, a behaviour that the horse has not thought about. It is a reflex. Therefore, when you reward, the reward is not linked with the spook in the horse’s mind, but rather with whatever he spooked at. In this way, the spooky thing or area is counter-conditioned, and the horse begins to associate that area with receiving food, and the spooks diminish.

The first time I tried this method, I was very tentative, not wanting to make the problem worse, of course. After only one training session where I fed every spook, both horses that I tried it on did not spook at all in the subsequent session, and continued to improve as I consistently applied the research. Learning theory is fascinating, is it not?

10 First Principles, Level 6—Proof, Training Exercises

Early Training of Foals

Foals are cute, high energy, and very trainable. The same principles apply to training older, naive horses as to training foals, but there are some special considerations to keep in mind because of the stage of development foals are in.

Using the International Society for Equitation Science’s (ISES) 10 Principles of Equitation Science in the training of foals has proven effective at producing horses that are safe and easy to handle. Because early training experiences have been demonstrated to affect a horse’s behaviour without any further handling for up to two years, the foal’s first experiences of training are critical.

This article is a brief breakdown of what foals should learn and how they can be taught.

Principle 1: Account for the Horse’s Ethology and Cognition

The naive, three-year-old horse can focus enough to learn for approximately 20-30 minutes at first, and this time is slowly extended through training. The foal, therefore, has a shorter attention span lasting only 10-15 minutes. Training can begin at the foal’s third week of life, and should not be conducted daily. Two to three days in a row with at least one rest day in between has been shown to be effective.

Training sessions should take place in a small enclosed area with the mare present. The mare can have a positive effect on how the foal perceives human contact, provided she has a positive relationship with people herself. Two handlers are required for foal training sessions: the mare’s handler keeps her close to the foal during the training session and can feed, groom, or stroke her while the foal’s handler conducts the training.

Being in a small enclosure with the mare makes it easier for the foal’s handler to ensure that the foal does not learn to run away from people or to move away from their touch or their presence. Each session should focus on one very basic and simple task, such as moving towards a light sideways and forward pull on the lead rope. When the task has been repeated successfully or nearly successfully three times in a row, the learning session is finished for that day.

Principle 2: Use Learning Theory Appropriately

The foal can quickly learn to go, stop, back up, and turn from light pressures on the halter and lead rope.

The foal can be taught to stand still for very short periods of time, and to be handled all over, including picking up feet.

The foal should learn that interactions with people are positive and enjoyable, so the foal’s handler must be consistent and a competent trainer. Through this consistent training, the foal will learn that people must be treated differently than the other foals it is growing up with.

Habituation to lightweight objects such as blankets can also be undertaken with a foal, once basic responses to halter pressures have been trained.

All of these things can be trained using the framework of stimulus (pressure or cue), response (behaviour), and reinforcement (reward). Rewards for proper behaviour can be the release of pressure and withers scratching.

Principle 3: Train Cues that are Easy to Tell Apart

Each of the above responses that the foal will learn needs a distinct cue so the foal does not become confused or stressed by cues for different responses that feel too similar.

Principle 4: Correct Use of Shaping

Shaping transforms a newly learned behaviour from an initial first attempt that may not be entirely correct to the final correctly trained behaviour. To do this, the handler must slowly and progressively increase expectations of the desired behaviour and reward for ever-improving responses.

Principle 5: Ask for Responses One at a Time

Horses can only attend to one stimulus at a time and can, therefore, become overwhelmed by simultaneous cues. Cueing for two responses will either confuse the horse or cause stress and potentially conflict behaviours such as rearing, biting, kicking, bolting, or bucking as the foal tries to escape the stressful situation. In training sessions, ensure that one response is completely finished before asking for the next one.

Principle 6: Train One Response per Signal

In early training it is helpful to reduce to a minimum the number of signals that the foal is taught, and to ensure that each signal only means one thing. Other signals can be added later on as needed, but the basic requirements of handling a foal are such that the cues and responses can remain quite simple until it is time for further training.

Principle 7: Form Habits

Keeping training consistent as to handler, cues, and environment allows the foal to more quickly absorb the training. Once each response is consolidated in this consistent context, a new environmental feature or different handler can be substituted one at a time to expand the breadth of training.

Principle 8: Train Self-Carriage

The foal should learn right away to continue offering the response last asked for until something else is requested. This is an important skill for all future training, so the horse does not have to be constantly signalled to keep going. Constant signalling will result in habituation to the cue, and the horse will eventually stop responding to that cue entirely.

At this point in training, the mare can be used to help the foal learn to continue walking by following his mother after receiving the go signal, and to stand still following a stop cue because the mare is stationary.

Principle 9: Avoid Flight Responses

Foals should not learn to play with people like they would play with another foal. It is cute while the foal is small, but he will not understand that he has grown and cannot leap up on a person when he is older. Foal play also includes practice of flight responses such as running, bucking, and rearing, and learning to perform these behaviours in the presence of people is not something to encourage.

A small area for initial training helps to prevent the expression of flight responses, and training methods should never seek to intentionally trigger a fear response.

Principle 10: Keep Arousal to a Minimum During Training

In order to learn, the foal should be as relaxed as possible, but not to the point of falling asleep. The handler should pay attention to signs of stress in the foal and be ready to take a break, allow the foal physical contact with its mother, or go back to easier, previously learned responses in order to reduce stress and promote learning.

Conclusion

Mini training sessions following these principles will set the foal up for positive future learning experiences. These early sessions are teaching the foal how to learn from and interact with people, which are crucial skills for every horse to know.

References

ISES. (2017) Principles of Learning Theory in Equitation. Accessed August 5, 2021 from https://equitationscience.com/learning-theory/ (this article based on the 2017 version of the principles, as is the study by King et al.)

King, S., Wills, L., and Randle, H. (2019) Early training of foals using the ISES training principles. J. Vet. Behav. 29, 140-146.

Level 6—Proof, Research, Training Exercises, Training Traditions

Training Foals

Handling Foals

When a foal is born, it is so tempting to get right in there. We want to help the mother, make sure the baby is well, and even start training it right away with the imprinting method popularized by Miller and Close (1991). Miller hypothesized that foals would be accepting of handling and new situations later in life if they were flooded at birth with things they will experience later. Flooding is a desensitizing method that works by overwhelming the animal’s defences until it gives up. Newer research is suggesting that, unless the foal needs immediate intervention to survive, letting mother and baby be alone together is actually the best course of action (Henry et al, 2009). The consequences of just one hour of neonatal handling are astounding.

Short Term Effects of Immediate Handling

In the study, nine foals were left alone with their dams immediately after birth and nine foals received about an hour of imprint training within ten minutes after foaling following the method described by RM Miller. After this one hour treatment, both groups were treated the same, being turned out in social groups and observed periodically.

Foals that received imprint training for an hour in their mother’s presence took longer to stand for the first time and nurse for the first time than foals left undisturbed with their mothers. The imprinted foals also showed trembling, fast breathing, and abnormal sucking. This included directing sucking behaviour at the air or the handler rather than the dam.

Mid Term Effects of Immediate Handling

At six months of age, differences were still observable between experimentally handled foals and those left alone after birth. The imprinted foals were more dependent on their mothers, staying closer on average, exploring less readily, interacting more with their mothers than with others in their social group, and even playing less. They were also less likely to approach an unfamiliar human. These results show that early handling affected the imprinted foals both socially and emotionally.

During weaning at seven months of age, both groups of weanlings showed the same level of whinnying for the first day. After the second day however, the weanlings that were not handled at birth were much calmer and were playing with their peers, while the imprinted weanlings continued in distress even four days after weaning, and also showed aggression towards their peers.

Long Term Effects of Immediate Handling

At one year of age, in social groups with other horses of the same age, differences between imprinted and unhandled horses were still visible. The imprinted horses spent less time in proximity to their peers, and also tended to be more aggressive with their peers.

Conclusions

Even one hour of interference with the earliest interactions between mare and foal has long lasting effects that are not yet fully known. If the effects of the early separation and human handling are still so strongly visible at one year of age, it is possible that the effects will continue through the horse’s life, though further research is needed to confirm this.

Imprinting foals seems to create social misfits in the herd that are insecurely attached to their dam, and have difficulty exchanging the maternal relationship for relationships with peers as normally happens. These differences occurred even though the lives of the imprinted foals after the one hour of handling was exactly the same as that of the control group foals.

Practical Suggestions

For the welfare and proper development of a foal into a healthy and socially well adjusted individual, mares and foals should be allowed to interact alone on their own time scale as much as possible for the critical first hours. This time is essential in forming an appropriate bond with the mother and with peers later in life, and also in fostering a positive relationship with humans.

Another study (Henry et al, 2005) has shown that if the mare has a healthy relationship with humans through calm, daily handling, the foal initiates more interactions with the handler at a young age, is more accepting of touch and novel situations, and at one year old is easy to approach and handle. The daily handling of the dam in this study was very simple, involving hand feeding and soft brushing for fifteen minutes per day on the first five days of the foal’s life. Their findings suggest that short, unobtrusive handling of the dam has a positive effect on the foal’s relationship with people that lasts just as long as the negative effects of imprint training. This could be a more ethical solution than imprinting is to the desire for foals to accept human contact and form a relationship with us.

References

Henry, S; Hemery, D; Richard-Yris, M-A; Hausberger, M. (2005) Human-mare relationships and behaviour of foals toward humans. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 93:341–362.

Henry, S; Richard-Yris, M-A; Tordjman, S; and Hausberger, M. (2009) Neonatal handling affects durably bonding and social development. PLoS ONE, 4:4.

Miller RM; Close, P. (1991) Imprint training of the newborn foal. Western Horseman, 1991

Level 6—Proof, Research

Teaching a Horse to Choose

A recent article looking for ways to improve research into the preferences of horses found that horses can be taught to communicate preferences to their handlers by using symbols. Mejdell et al (2016) used positive reinforcement training to teach 23 horses to choose whether or not to wear a blanket, and tested the efficacy of the training through weather challenges. They predicted that if the horses had correctly learned to discriminate the symbols they would vary their choices based on the weather.

Horses were trained over 14 days to understand the consequences of choosing the ‘blanket on’ symbol versus the ‘blanket off’ symbol both in their home box and outdoors. At first the horse was taught to touch a single board with their nose and were rewarded for this. Then the relevant symbol was shown to the horse (i.e. ‘blanket on’ symbol if no blanket was worn at the time of the training), the horse was rewarded for touching it, and the action was carried out. ‘Blanket on’ and ‘blanket off’ symbols were then presented together, and only the relevant choice was rewarded until no mistakes were made.

Finally a ‘no change’ symbol was added with the other relevant symbol. This was the beginning of introducing choice to the horse. Either choice was rewarded and carried out accordingly. A choice of ‘no change’ prompted the trainers to perform a sham handling of the horse as if putting on a blanket or taking one off to prevent horses from choosing ‘no change’ simply to avoid being touched. Random choices were then presented, with only the relevant choices being rewarded, and irrelevant ones being ignored until no mistakes were made. When horses passed this stage, they moved on to temperature challenge tests to ensure they understood the consequences of choosing different symbols.

For the temperature challenge, horses were rugged heavily indoors until they were obviously warm, then presented with the choices of ‘no change’ or ‘blanket off’ until they reliably chose the obvious answer (but all choices were still rewarded). The cold challenge was outdoors until mild signs of temperature discomfort were shown, then the ‘no change’ or ‘blanket on’ choices were given. After passing this stage, the horses were ready for preference testing.

On two warm, pleasant days and two cold, unpleasant days, the horses were taken from their paddock to the test area in a random state of blanketed or not blanketed. The symbols were varied in position and relative distance to each other. The horses’ responses were very consistent with the weather; all horses chose ‘blanket off’ on the warmer days when wearing one, or ‘no change’ when not. On the cold days, all but two horses chose ‘no change’ when wearing one or ‘blanket on’ when not.

The researchers concluded this kind of training is an effective way to study preferences in horses, and can be used in the field in place of less portable Y-maze testing that has been done previously to determine preference.

The article is open access and can be found with this reference:

Mejdell, C; Buvik, T; Jørgensen, G; Bøe, K. (2016) Horses can learn to use symbols to communicate their preferences. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 184 pp 66-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2016.07.014