[QUOTE=philosoraptor;6181240]
Sorry I did not find your other thread… so forgive me if I am misunderstanding your statement. You say that the horse determines what is abuse. I’d be curious to hear why you say that?
I don’t think the animal decides what is abusive; I think there are rules to follow when using punishment. I think when punishment is used appropriately, it reduces the chances the animal will keep giving the behavior. If used inappropriately it’s inflicting pain/discomfort/fear without purpose, which is what I’d consider abuse.
For example, a common mistake I see is people who strike their horse way too long after the horse made his mistake. Positive punishment (eg. hitting, whacking with a whip, shanking) must occur when the horse is misbehaving, not 15 seconds or a minute later. If the undesired behavior has already stopped, it’s too late to be punishing it. If you apply punishment once the horse has moved on to a different behavior, then the correction is being applied to the newer behavior and NOT to the undesired one.
Take for example the horse who learned to step away from the mounting block while the rider is trying to get on. So imagine today he’s put by the mounting block but won’t stand still and the rider falls. He scoots across the ring away from all the commotion. By the time that rider gets up, dusts themselves off, picks up the whip, and walks across the ring to the horse, it is TOO LATE to use punishment to teach the horse about standing at mounting blocks. It might feel good to a frustrated rider to whack the horse a good one once she ran after and caught her horse. However, the horse gets nothing out of the experience except perhaps a little distrust of his handler. Worse, some horses will learn to avoid being caught in this type of setting and will run far away from a rider who just had a fall.
There are a few variations of the rules of punishment for animal trainers, but they seem to converge with the same general ideas. Here’s one trainer that tries to explain the rules:
http://servicedogsawyer.blogspot.com/2009/03/rules-of-punishmentfood-for-thought.html
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think applying punishment in animal training is always immoral. I just feel there should it must be applied fairly, promptly, and consistently. Anything else is just hitting for hitting’s sake.[/QUOTE]
Yes, timing is essential. Any punishment the animal doesnt understand is abuse. Any punishment past what is necessary to make the point clear is abuse. Any punishment that leaves physical or mental damage is abuse.
What I meant is, that different animals have different levels of sensitivity and what is a mild correction for one could be abuse for another.
As a sidenote, training or retraining an animal who has been inadvertently abused with inappropriate correction is incredibly difficult IME because the simplest, quickest, easiest tool has been taken away from you. On the other hand, animals who have received fair and appropriate correction are trusting, confident and easy to live and work with.
One of the best examples I have is a horse who has been taught to stand using the return/reward method. Everytime the horse moves out of place he is quietly returned to his spot and told STAND. Reward in the way of treats is of course dependent on the horses innate personality and should be done randomly but as a appropriate reward, works best that way. Anyway. Eventually, once the horse understands STAND, he then needs to be corrected if he moves - NOT TRAINED FURTHER. This is where I see people really screw up with animals. Their animals never become reliable because they dont know when they have trained and its time to move in, or maybe they never do train because they are inconcistent or wont take the time or whatever.
So you at this point have a horse hopefully, if you have taken the time to teach him STAND, who now if he moves gets a growl or a tap of the halter or whatever is appropriate for him. If correctly trained the stand overrules his desire to flee and if he feels the need to flee he can be corrected to stand. When he gets his feet trimmed, he knows STAND overrules everything and so he does not really need to " learn " to have his feet trimmed per say if he knows STAND is the rule. He is easy to train to be mounted because STAND comes first.
Now. If you reinforce STAND with further movement, such as moving their feet, you send a mixed message. Stand/move. Might tentatively work with a naturally phlegmatic horse but not with a more sensitive one. It creates confusion and an unsafe environment for the person under the horse, who needs the horse to STAND to be safe, not MOVE if he gets nervous or disobedient. Its no different than whoa/go, really. The horse never becomes reliable and therefore safe. They are not safe to mount, for example, when they think they should move if things go wrong.
Not using negative reinforcement ever in training certainly can be done. It does not IME create a reliable horse or a reliable dog. Often it inadvertently creates situational training (animal is only reliable under certain circumstances, such as at home) and the owner doesnt understand why when he takes his horse or dog somewhere it now has no manners. Well, for example, if every time your horse moves instead of STANDS, you run him around in an environment where he is not stimulated, he might seem to understand. But when you take him somewhere where he is stimulated, moving his feet becomes exciting and builds his adreneline up and the horse you thought was so obedient is suddenly uncontrollable. But the one who was trained to stand, and then corrected for not, can be corrected when he is disobedient and he understands why and what to do.
Sorry am mixing up dogs/ horses/ people I am in a big hurry and certainly did not explain this well but I have to go!
But while they were working through it, I was not going to take chances. The current Heeler would probably be excused as well…because she would think it was an invitation to play rough and probably knock the kid over “playing”!
) because at that age Lord only knows what they might do. And quite frankly, I do not expect my dogs to put up with her trying to practice “posting” on my old arthritic ACD. The dog is too old to be able to get up well with DD on her, and if I’m not on top of things that doesn’t leave her much options to aviod the pain.