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What on Earth is "Consent-Based Training"?

Off Course
#101

I think something a lot of people are not thinking about, especially with horses, is a thing called “learned helplessness”.

Learned helplessness is the concept in psychology where the subject does not resist/try to escape/otherwise exhibit non-conforming behavior because they had previously been taught they cannot.

An example of this is breaking away from the halter - a horse could relatively easily break away from most halters (maybe not a rope halter, but the regular nylon, especially with leather crown piece) and could most definitely drag us around should we be foolish enough to try to hang on.

The horse generally stops when it hits the end of the lead because it has been taught as a foal that it cannot escape. There are exceptions, of course - such as my mare’s dam or the horse I saw at a show that set back until he broke the halter, walked a few steps from the trailer (leaving his buddy and a hay net) and started grazing calmly.

However - if you think your horse doesn’t break the halter and run off when spooked purely because it “consents” to your presence, you are fooling yourself about how much your horse loves you over it’s flight instinct. Are there horses out there that will run to a human in times of danger? I’m sure there are but they probably had a LOT of work on the ground to develop that trust and find the human to be the equivalent of the herd leader.

I do think mindful training is important - does your horse like it’s job? Are ears perked when you ride? Is it relaxed? Is it comfortable in it’s surroundings? Does it run when you try to catch it?

I knew a horse that would run from you next time you tried to catch it if you two had a bad ride last time. The previous rider just treated the running as “bad behavior”. When I started riding, I noticed the pattern and worked on my riding.

I knew a mare that the barn owner and assistant had trouble catching because they ignored the cause/effect of behavior. If she leaned away from you when you walked to her and you didn’t stop moving, she would run. All you had to do was stop moving and wait for her to relax (this took seconds so isn’t a big deal).

There are many ways to be mindful and understand your horse’s personality but consent? Especially consent for everything? NO

6 Likes
#102

IME it really depends on the horse. Some horses will escalate their fear if they can’t be allowed to move their feet. The goal would still be to keep their head facing the direction of the scary/concerning thing, but some horses will just implode if forced to stand still. Prey animals want to be able to move if they feel they’re threatened My old and current TBs, and the current one’s son (85% TB) were/are much more comfortable if allowed to move their feet, even if I’m keeping them focused on The Thing. My WB was quite ok standing stock still to process things

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#103

This is a common issue with timid riders - the horse starts getting nervous, so rider starts getting nervous and pulling on the rein. This causes horse to feel trapped and get more nervous, rider pulls rein more…continue positive mutual responses and then there is “an explosion”.

It is one of the hardest reactions in a human to “untrain”. On thing I have done with these individuals is to train them to respond to the horse’s stress with a different behavior. The best behavior I have found is to have the human work on bending/flexing the horse (ideally having the entire horse’s body bend left for a few strides, right for a few strides, etc - though often this results in just the neck bending but it still works).

This helps the human feel a sense of control and gives them something to think about. bending the horse, allows the horse to keep moving in a controlled way and, if done right and in the right circumstance, the horse starts to stretch down, which releases seratonin and dopamine, which further relaxes the horse.

Anyway…oh were we talking about training horses and not humans?

5 Likes
#104

Sooooo much more competent training of humans is desperately needed!

Controlling a horse with 1 rein at a time is a great exercise for horse AND rider. The horse doesn’t feel trapped, the rider feels somewhat in control. Even doing figure 8’s, laterally relative to The Thing (so an elongated shallow 8) keeps the horse from retreating, allows him to move (if that’s his thing), allows the rider to start feeling if the horse is changing because locked in ears don’t tell the WHOLE story, and “movement is medicine” for the brain too :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#105

Curious story, two of us on race bred TB colts on their first week, riding out in the canyons behind an old horse, that was a feral caught at 5 and made a great ranch horse, very unflappable.
We are coming out of the brush on a cleared little spot with a pile of old brush on one side by the fence where the dirt road ends by a gate.
We turn and start to walk by the brush pile when old horse seems to do a double take, stops and looks at the brush, but not worried, just looking.
Both colts behind him stop and also just look.
Seconds after, three big wild turkeys explode out of that brush, all three riders grab everything we can, old horse eases out down the road unconcerned, colts same after him, horses already knew what was there and about to happen.
Us clueless humans almost had a heart attack, those big awkward turkey bombers wobble when they take off and almost run over you.

Things could have gone bad in a hurry there, but our lucky stars were with us that first morning out.
Those situations show us how little we know, what all can happen and NOT happen.

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#106

I don’t think leading the horse into an action with a treat is consent based training. The horse may go for the treat because the desire for the food outweighs anything else in the moment. The desire to please may also apply - confusing consent with willingness to please. :wink:

I have actually seen something questioning whether clicker training can be a form of coercion as the animal may do something it doesn’t want to just to get the food rewards. Again, this gets into what narrow definition of a thing people are choosing, and specifically is probably coming from the “pure R+” trainers denial of putting any pressure on the animal to do the thing that gets the click/treat.

4 Likes
#107

That is far from universal in my experience. My most anxious horses have been best served by keeping their feet moving with enough difficulty in moving to require a large part of their attention. This apparently allows their brain to register the spooky thing, and take the time to recognize that it isn’t posing a danger.

It is counter intuitive, and I don’t know why it works.

When my fourth horse was reacting to the spooky corner on the longe, I discovered that asking him to do something right beside it was very helpful. That thing was usually a transition from walk to trot to start, and because he was thinking about the thing, the transition was delayed so that it was effectively behind him when he actually transitioned to trot. Which could be argued that I was telling him to run away, and therefore reinforcing the idea of the thing being dangerous. Yet it didn’t have that effect.

Instead, each transition got quieter, and earlier, and stayed further out on the line of the circle. I was then able to have him trot towards the thing, transition down, and walk past. Very soon after he could trot towards the thing, transition to walk, and halt - at first just past the thing, then right beside it. Again he would be a little anxious about standing beside the thing at first, and I would have him walk on almost immediately. Before he decided the thing was okay.

Standing still and letting him look, listen and think about a thing would result in anxiety increasing to the point he had to leave the situation, and he would bolt.

6 Likes
#108

I think it depends on how you follow the logic and how you define “consent”.

If the surgeon says “have the surgery and live or don’t have the surgery and die” - are you really consenting to the surgery?

For me, I balance it with - are you doing it no matter what?

So, for bowing:

Is the horse is given completely free rein to do not not (in the case of my horse - standing in the aisle sans halter/lead or anything so she could choose walk away as an option-they have free access to the barn so she could go to the field if desired and sometimes she opts for that instead of treats/brushing/etc). This to me is consent based.

Is the horse not really given an option - such as halter/lead on - horse in stall and not allowed to leave until behavior performed? So, if I had a halter and lead on and was pulling the horse’s head or horse was not allowed out of stall until behavior performed, then it is operant conditioning.

I would look at dog behavior similarly - you can look at something like the “sit” command as both but more often than not, a lead is attached, behavior must be performed before getting dinner, etc. So it is operant conditioning training rather than waiting for dog’s consent. My friend’s dogs - 100% consent based training for the “sit” command - you want treat, you sit, you want to bark at the incoming car or run off in hot pursuit of a scent, you can…you don’t get the treat, but you are not ever required to sit.

EDIT FOR CLARITY: 100% consent based training IS operant conditioning…it is just solely positive reinforcement, if it uses any of the behavior modification quadrants.

1 Like
#109

I would like to add here that this is a great discussion. Thanks to everyone for their well reasoned points!

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#110

Sorry that you have that attitude towards your horse….
The older I get, the more I enjoy that my horses do like me a lot…. I don’t need to be scared that they will run me over, because they care for me…. They live outside 24/7 and run to me everyday in order to get caught and ridden. Horses are used to be in a herd and there are friendships inside a herd… and I know that horses can also develope friendships with non horsey herd members…. For me that is what makes riding and training fun and I am sorry that you don’t have this experience…

#111

Let’s not forget one more point, the horse/dog have to understand there is a request and what that is to give consent, right?

You may be offering a treat for a behavior the critter is not aware at all what it is, has to guess if it wants the treat, how part of that request for consent is asked becomes even more important/interesting to define.

Years ago we trained heeling in a room with a loose new puppy/older dog by reinforcing when they came near and walked along with us, then added space, the hall, the rest of the house, the yard, etc.
They all caught on quickly and we may say, the consent was not to heeling, but to play along with our games.

#112

Can you elaborate on what attitude you think I have towards my horse?

4 Likes
#113

Yes, I think that’s a whole philosophical debate, BUT…if I my horse understands that the “bow” command is followed by treat and opts to go outside instead, is that or is that not giving her consent?

I would ask her but I feel like this would reopen the “why can’t we just walk to Canada where I hear the weather is much nicer” conversation…

3 Likes
#114

Well obviously you believe in learned helplessness ….

#115

While I disagree with your surgery example, I can agree with your liberty “bow” training. I think the problem comes when people want to use similar consent style training for non-negotiables.

1 Like
#116

How old was your horse when you acquired it?

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#117

Learned helplessness is a real thing. Just because someone knows about it doesn’t mean they create it. More likely the opposite.

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#118

I bought her as a foal

#119

Good, then I am thinking you know how she was trained. Even if she was in a halter before you bought her, you are likely more familiar with how that was handled than someone who purchased their horse as an adult.

As I stated in my initial post, many horses were not trained but the current/final owners. Some were - many who advocate “consent only” or “positive reinforcement only” are not aware of how their horses received some of the manners they received.

For example, a common way to teach a horse that it cannot break the halter is to tie it to the fence as a foal/weanling and leave it there. It will try to leave, cannot leave, learn that pulling against the halter to free itself is a failed effort.

This is not universally true and I noted two examples in my initial post. One was a horse I saw at a show who VERY calmly broke his halter to get some grass. Another example is the mare who is the dam to my current horse, who I do not think (though I do not know for sure) was haltered as a baby and knew she could break the halter or rather didn’t think of it when she was upset.

Now, to counter that - someone I knew trained her horse to the halter in …let’s say… traditional way - which is to tie up as a foal/weanling and let her learn she couldn’t break it. If she was tied to the fence during feeding time, she never tried to break free, was found with a foot cocked and napping. She was tied in the instances where the horses were fed on the fence as she got far less than other horses. She was left once for 14 hrs and while the individual that forgot to set her free was admonished, it should also be noted that she stood calmly for that entire time (as evidenced by lack of sweat, lack of ground behind disturbed, etc).

In other words, this horse that has great ground manners, is friendly, easy to catch, easy to work with has a “learned helplessness” behavioral trait. Many horses do - I would say MOST horses have some sort of learned helplessness/humans are bigger and tougher than me behavioral traits that do NOT come from “consent based training”. Individuals that buy horses as adults seem to miss this aspect of horse training.

It isn’t necessarily abuse but a part of learning manners - especially when instilling in the horse an understanding that the creature that weighs 1/10th of what they do is not to be treated the same as the creatures it hangs out with on it’s “off time”

4 Likes
#120

I guess it depends on the definition of “abuse”. Tying a horse who can’t escape no matter how frightened he is, as a prey animal, is mental abuse even if he doesn’t physically harm himself. And, tying a foal or weanling who struggles but can’t break free, can cause physical damage to himself you might not see for months or years. That’s physical abuse.

No part of learning manners should be about learned helplessness. There’s a difference between being told over and over, sometimes VERY emphatically (in the more dangerous behaviors) that Behavior A isn’t acceptable AND being rewarded for a more appropriate behavior, and rattling a plastic bag all over a frightened horse who can’t get away until he gives up and stands there

The horse who playfully strikes at his human (or even striking out of some frustration), as he would a horse buddy, and getting yelled at with arms waiving and sending him scrambling backwards, who learns that 1 time that’s not ok, didn’t learn via “learned helplessness” because he wasn’t helpless, he had choices.

Horses learn things all the time, whether we’re actively teaching them or not. We can teach wanted behaviors by rewarding them and using R+ to strengthen them to the point they become an ingrained, automatic habit.

We do the same with unwanted behaviors when we’re not paying attention to everything the horse is doing in the process of being rewarded.

When the horse has a choice to do something that gives him something positive, whether food or wither scratches, that’s not learned helplessness.

14 Likes

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