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Discipline versus Punishment versus Positive Reinforcement versus Other Opinions

Off Course
#101

Horses are very much like children. What works for one doesn’t on another. Sometimes a swat is needed, sometimes it is just a look, or a word said in the right tone. I have never found that harsh over- the- top discipline is needed when your basic foundation is good.

Our horses for the most part want to please us and do what we are asking. It is our job to ask in a way they can understand. To ask things of them that they are capable of doing.

My current mare at 17 has never been hit ( i raised / trained her). My 3 year old gelding has never done anything but try and do what I ask and my daughters 20 year old mare has never been disciplined since we bought her in 2010.

They do have opinions and test us at times but we work through it, we do not force them through with discipline and on them it works. I am heavy on praise/ affection.

I have had and ridden horses who needed a couple of swats with a crop on occasion or a couple of whacks on the front legs/ chest with a lead rope( while I yelled like a crazy person for 3 seconds) in response to biting me ( took 1 maybe 2 times of that–John Lyons methods).

All that to say that sometimes corrective discipline is needed and sometimes it will be forceful depending on the horse and circumstance, but in my experience with many, many horses it is not needed as much as is changing the way you communicate with the horse as an individual.

1 Like
#102

I guess I’m not understanding your use of “affects differently”. Can you give a specific example?

I can affect my mare differently from my gelding simply by what I’m using the CT for, but that’s the application/implementation, not the CT itself, which is making the difference.

if putting the foot down lets the horse have the sense of full body control again, then there’s nothing wrong with that step. Then she can work towards “good girl, now let me keep hold of your foot”

1 Like
#103

I smack it, hang on (if I can) and then put it down when she relaxes after the smack. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get to the “relax and hold after the smack” though. And by smack I don’t mean I’m slapping the crap out her sole - just enough of open-palm contact to hear and feel. But when she decides to jerk her hoof out my grasp I am not always strong enough to stop her. I know that it’s dangerous and she has landed on top of my foot once. That earned her a much bigger smack on the chest and a few steps backwards! She knew the difference and what her transgression was. Definitely negative reinforcement then. She can let me know when she’s uncomfortable or unhappy with something, but she cannot think that degree of protest is acceptable.

#104

start smaller. Lay your hand there if you need too. Then softly “bounce” your hand, and stop long before she even tenses up. you’ll need to learn to feel, as I promise she’s not going from total body relaxation to jerking her foot.

You punished her for behaving in a fearful manner to something you caused. That’s hindering progress for sure. You had your foot in the way of her coming down, so that’s also not her fault, it’s yours :wink:

You’re going from 0 to 10, and even if that’s on your way to 100, you need to go from 0 (which is to not ask her for anything) to 1, not 10.

#105

Yeah, I think with the foot it depends on the horse and the goal. :slight_smile:

No worries! That’s on me for not explaining correctly. Let’s take the amygdala, which is responsible for the fear response. The horse had the largest amygdala of any domesticated (genetically speaking, so the animals we breed for companionship or livestock), which makes sense since their flight response is so high.
The dog’s amygdala is not as big, but it is an important part of the dog’s brain since it sounds the alarm when fear is present, so to speak.

Now with training, the horse and dog will respond will differently. Generally speaking, horses will flee while dogs might attack (or at least defend or not flee, depending upon the dog). Clearly, dogs do flee, but not because they are a prey animal. The dog might be shy, cautious, or insecure.
My horse does not flee, but she is clearly a prey animal. If a dog barks at her, she is cautious and thinks about it. Some horses will charge because there are genetic components due to herd or band dynamics, but their amygdala is significantly large to protect them. It alerts them so they literally don’t think.

These differences determine how a person might train their critter. With horses, we generally have to teach the horse to be calm or to think. With dogs, that might not be the case.

I hope that clarifies! :slight_smile:

1 Like
#106

Not really LOL!

There’s a method of training - CT for example.
There are prey and predatory animals - horses and dogs.

CT doesn’t inherently affect horses any differently from dogs.

The application of CT can make a big difference. Do it wrong with either, and you get a horse/dog who’s all in your face hunting down treats. Or hovering in a corner in fear. Or standing there not knowing what you want.

I’m back to the original “Clicker training is different for each species. It’s going to affect dogs differently than cetaceans and certainly affect horses differently.”

CT is the exact same flow chart. It’s only teaching click=treat, and then setting the animal up so you can click-treat the right behavior, while ignoring the not-right behavior. That’s all, in a nutshell.

Any differences in effect are going to be what the person implements for the individual.

So, if you can give me an example of how the same application of CT affects a dog differently from a horse, that would help me understand what you mean. The generalities of prey vs predator, fight or flight, aren’t helping me.

2 Likes
#107

That is perfectly okay!

First example: my last horse used to bolt because she was scared. So, my goal was to get her to stay calm and think, so I would watch her cues to see how much was too much until she was going to bolt.

Second: I had a dog who was a rescue. Sweetest dog, but she would sometimes lunge at specific men. I was/am not a dog trainer, but I would ward her off by removing her from the situation and trying to get her mind off the man; probably not the correct response, but the men were generally just working on our house. I loved that dog and I had her when I was a teenager.

Based off research, their amygdalas are responding differently to these situations. The horse’s amygdala is saying “flee” and the dog’s is saying “attack.” Both are common evolutionary responses for the species. Neither animal is exactly thinking and both are performing common survival tactics. As trainers, our goal is to get them to “think.” I 100% agree with you that the training tactics are the same, but the “why” for the species is different. That’s what researchers are trying to figure out. A cow, dog, killer whale, horse, heck, even a guinea pig will all react differently to stimuluses. The clicker training may always be the exact same, but biologist, anthropologists, neuroscientists (especially), and vets want to understand why clicker training may work for such and such species.

One thing I’m currently interested in (not my research; I actually study consciousness, which will never be proven) are the evolutionary differences between bovine and bison. :laughing: It’s a silly side project since a lot of ranchers in the area are breeding bison for meat, so they’re gradually become genetically domesticated. It’s actually super fascinating.

BTW, I love discussing this kind of stuff. It’s so fun. :smiley:

2 Likes
#108

Food for thought on the zero to one, maybe I have gone straight to 10. I will say though, and I’m curious why y’all think this happened, is that after the chest smack and back up steps, I picked up her hoof again, held it, smacked it, she tensed a little but didn’t pull it away, then relaxed, and I set it down. So, did her area of concern shift from her hoof to me, and that’s what “won”? Did my reprimanding her for stepping on my foot also translate to a reprimand for snatching her foot away? Her attitude went from, “You’re annoying me, leave my foot alone, give it BACK” to “OH, hey, want me to pick up my hoof and hold it while you do that thing I don’t like? Okay, I still don’t like that but you be cray-cray so I’ll just stand here…”

#109

How would you all handle another horse who likes to chew on other horses’s manes and tails?

It’s a two-year old gelding who doesn’t have good boundaries or social skills. He’s chewed my friend’s gelding bald and he likes to chew my girl’s mane-- he’ll chew any horse that gets close to his pen. He’s about to be turned out with the herd.

A friend told me to just decorate my horse with mane bags and a tail sock, but I hate that this horse chews on my horse.

I talked with the owner and her response is that it’s a baby behavior. I’m hoping that the other horses reprimand him before my horse is chewed bald, but this two-year old is so dumb. He doesn’t quite understand what getting kicked in the face means.

Any other suggestions apart from mane bags and a tail sock?

#110

Grazing muzzle on the chewer?

1 Like
#111

Big bottle of cheap dish soap.

Or paste wormer. Never met a horse who loved the taste of that.

3 Likes
#112

It’s about impossible to extinguish either instinctual behavior or stereotypy, which is instinctual behavior expressed as an annoying or maladaptive obsessive action, when you aren’t there to redirect or punish.

You can only make it harder or remove the trigger. Hence cribbers and stall walkers do better on pasture 24/7 and horses that overeat do better on drylots.

You might be able to train very good dog to stay off the counters and off the sofa in your absence but you are much safer locking him in the mudroom or crating him.

You can’t train cats to stay off the counter when you are out. Or the equivalent with horses. If baby horse is doing typical mouthy post nursing instinctual behavior and the other horses won’t run him off, then protect their tails. I think muzzling a colt at this developmental stage is not a kind or useful thing to do. Akin to tying toddlers arms to the crib to stop thumb ducking. Yes that was a concept mid 20th century.

3 Likes
#113

Maybe a Kong or a Jolly Ball?

1 Like
#114

You can not teach them to do something that they will not do unsupervised, as others said a grass muzzle would be best. Nasty tasting stuff might work as long as your horse does not have a reaction.

#115

To start with are you picking up the hoof or is she picking her foot up for you?

I teach them to pick up their hoof for me. From there it means the weight is off that leg and it is easier for them to stand with the other hoof up and not leaning.

You should also never drop a hoof. This can cause problems with them anticipating the drop. This affects the whole horse.

The first time your intuition can be correct that you put the hoof down after the first smack. This is in a severe reaction as you described. After that you are teaching the horse that the cue to put her hoof down is to smack the hoof.

Smart horses only need to do something once to be taught it. Most horses 3 times and they have learnt it. Sim - 4 months to learn. Sigh.

#116

But “operant condition” does not mean " clicker training".

Operant conditioning just means the association of behavior and rewards. We can use operant conditioning to train behaviors, but training doesn’t actually have to include human interaction with the subject; they can lean these without our direct involvement.

The original “operant conditioning” was the rat in the Skinner box. The humans didn’t teach the rat to push a lever - it offered the behavior and got a reward. And then it made that connection and continued to exhibit the behavior because the reward was provided. There was no shaping of the behavior, and no transfer of the reward to the clicker.

Nearly all sentient beings can be trained to some extent with some form of operant conditioning. Horses respect an electric fence because it is negative reinforcement (or, positive punishment, depending on how you look at the behavior.) You can train fish to come to a certain part of a tank because that’s where you feed them (R+). You could reasonably teach cattle or bison to behave in a certain way by using some form of operant conditioning.

Of course you would choose the behaviors and the methods based on the species - if you want a horse to back up, moving into its space might be all it takes. If you did this with a dog, it might come to you rather than back up. If you did it to another animal it might go sideways, go up, or attack you.

Certainly that must have to do with their brain makeup, which guides their natural instincts. What works for a dog isn’t going to apply to every species.

2 Likes
#117

I completely agree.

To go back to my original point, it’s why or a driving force that a certain species does something. That’s what researchers are trying to understand.

Even with horses, before Karen Dalke passed away, she was researching the differences between feral and domestic horses and training patterns. She used the same techniques for her mustangs, but their processes were different than domestic horses even if the outcome was the same. I did some really brief research on the Przewalksi’s Horse (just language differences and how literature and science talks about these animals), and while we could definitely use clicker training to condition them, the driving force for these horses to do anything is different than other feral horses. And, yes, they’re feral. Some of that is probably because their ancestors are different than modern domestic horses (chromosome differences) so their brains have developed differently.

ETA: based off anthropologists’s I know, I highly doubt Przewalksi’s Horses would respond to treats and pets. They’re actually pretty docile, but boy are they grumpy! :laughing:

#118

Per recommendations, I am going to put a nasty tasting item in my horse’s mane and tail.

Thanks, everyone!! :smiley:

#119

A mare at a TB breeding farm where I boarded ignored her foal and would step on it, wouldn’t let it nurse, etc. They had to tie her up to let the baby nurse and I remember when they were out in pasture, the baby had it’s legs totally wrapped from being injured and trying gamely to follow it’s mother while the mare just walked away from it. It was heartbreaking. I think they weaned the foal at 2 months because the mare was such a pill.

#120

We had 2 parents of a suckling that were the same. Those ducks were clueless, the duckling didn’t stand a chance.

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