They say that if you don’t write your own story, someone else will write it for you. And I think in the past few years, I have had my story written for me in several different ways—and for that, I take full responsibility, as I had not fully explained my thoughts on training horses. Now, as I face several different pathways forward in my career, it’s time for me to do so.
First, I would like to make it very clear that I absolutely have made mistakes with horses in the past. I am not proud of every decision I’ve made, but the more time I spend in this sport and the more involved I become, the more I adjust and grow. A “know better, do better” mindset is one that I take seriously.
My search for the most humane, kind training method that both respects the horse and leads to the development of a relationship of respect and harmony have led me to adopt an approach based on positive reinforcement (“PR+”). However, many of the theories of positive reinforcement require adjustment in the competitive dressage arena. For instance, what if a horse doesn’t find a wither scratch to be a high-value reward, when I am used to using this as a positive-reinforcement reward in the free-walk portion of the test? This is one of many problems that my students and I are working through together, as part of what I call “Competitive PR+” or “competitive positive behavioral shaping,” the application of PR+ to the competitive performance horse.
As a rider who has taken hundreds of lessons with half a dozen top professionals, I have had several moments where I was told to be quiet, stop asking questions, and just do what I was told. I could feel the open, receptive, learning part of my brain shut down. The remedy for this in my teaching has been to ensure that every student who comes to me feels as though they are an equal partner in the learning process—someone with their own knowledge and skill that they bring to the table. I work together with my students to process information and, at the end of the lesson, encourage students to take notes and recap what was learned so that the concepts are more “cemented.” Similarly, with positive reinforcement, you’re now bringing the horse into that equal partnership in the learning process. With traditional horsemanship horses are told to “be quiet, stop asking questions, and do as they are told.” Just like I was. So the open, receptive part of their brains shut down. I find that the horses that I have exclusively trained, are the most outgoing, interactive, and curious horses I know. They have no reason to believe their ideas, opinions, and questions aren’t just as valid as mine, so she makes them all known. And I try to say “yes and I hear you, can you explain more”? Or “I hear you, what if I offer this instead, does that make my idea more enticing?” to as many of her ideas/questions/opinions as possible.
As I hope that students will work through things together with me, that’s what we are doing with our horses as well by inviting them into the learning process and allowing them to ask questions without being told to shut up. Their questions show us the mirror and how we can improve- so we are on even more of a learning journey together. I don’t think competitive R+ is the ONLY way to achieve this with horses, I just think it amplifies it by leaps and bounds. Depending on the nature and personality of the animal, when they are told to “be quiet, stop asking questions, and do as you’re told,” they either learn to shut down when asked to do something (no longer thinking, just responding), or they go the opposite way and they explode.
Further, my adoption of an approach based on the biomechanics of the horse and human, and the way that humans can best balance, support, and condition animals, is also a result of my goal of finding the most humane, kind training method that respects the horse and prioritizes harmony. The rider must learn to correctly move their body in order to balance their horse, rather than forcing their horse to move itself in a way at odds with how its rider is moving. What is seen as the horse resisting, bracing, using its neck for balance, and especially rushing is often actually the result of a physical miscommunication, imbalance, or incorrectly applied aid of the rider. We must have the courage to question our physical abilities and remedy the disconnect, and we must also have the science-based, accurate knowledge to determine which part of the horse’s body is mirroring the human’s (and whether or not this is a problem!). In this regard, my cognitive framework is “The Horse Is Our Mirror.” We influence the horse to a great extent—much greater than many of us have previously realized.
While others may separate the worlds of biomechanics and positive behavioral shaping, in my teaching, they are perfectly complementary. Much of the positive reinforcement community is focused on the horse’s behavior but NOT the way that the horse is simply mirroring its human’s behavior, balance, imbalance, muscle memory, and neurological patterns. We cannot reach competitive heights while respecting the animal’s autonomy without realizing that the horse is simply mirroring our emotions at competitions. If the rider is not emotionally secure- and this is very important- the horse will never be emotionally secure. ESPECIALLY in a competitive environment. We cannot show the world that horse sport is not simply an exploitation of an animal chained (often literally) to the human will, but a clearly presented mirror, not shaped to the rider by force but by a uniting of intention and power with the rider.
We’ve known about the importance of biomechanics for … well, a longer time than the focus has been on incorporating it into riding. Dr. Hilary Clinton held the McPhail Dressage Chair at Michigan State University from 1997 to 2014, where her entire tenure was dedicated to the study of biomechanics in the horse, and, to a smaller degree, the rider. Mary Wanless has done even more work and theory on the rider’s position and how the rider can create a better balance (and, therefore, execute dressage movements better). However, the application of the biomechanics of the rider to the horse as a direct result of the horse mirroring the rider’s movements, as I explain here, has not trickled down to the average horse-rider pair. It has not, unfortunately, seeped into the daily rider or trainer’s thought process as they go to school a horse, and it has never been the main focus of riding in general. Here, I advocate that, for every horse, for every rider, for every discipline, biomechanics should be the main focus of the education of horse and rider. The first lesson for riders should be learning their basic anatomy, including how to identify the main impediments to the rider’s performance, including issues with the hip flexors, sacroiliac joint, piriformis muscle, psoas muscle, and LD muscles.
My belief is that the horse is our mirror, such that, if we move our shoulder, or hip, or head, or pelvis, the horse responds in kind and moves its shoulder, hip, head, or pelvis because its natural inclination to return to homeostasis. Homeostasis—or the tendency to return to equilibrium—for horses, as herd animals, is to sensitively pick up any change that occurs in the herd (even if it is a herd of two) and to mimic the movements of the herd leader. Any horse that has been started and accepted the rider’s basic aids accepts the rider as herd leader. This puts even more impetus on the human in the horse-human relationship- with great power comes great responsibility. It is the rider’s responsibility to learn the ways in which a miniscule change in their balance (forward, back, left, or right) changes the balance of the horse for the better or the worse. The old dressage training adage that the rider must appear to sit and do nothing is absolutely a false premise. Yes, ideally the rider must not make massive movements to throw the horse off balance, but the rider must first know how to use her body to influence the horse’s movement before making her movements smaller, and smaller, and smaller. The horse must first know the meaning of the rider’s movements (cultivated through positive reinforcements!) and then be able to respond to a smaller and smaller aid. If the rider cannot create the proper aid in the first place, the horse cannot know its purpose.
Correct biomechanics also involves investing time, energy, and resources into the correct saddle fit, bit fit, and veterinary care and an overall assessment of the comfort of the animal at all times. This project is not for the weary: finding a correctly fitting saddle might take up all of your energy for months, and finding a correctly fitting bit involves sedating the horse to properly evaluate the structures and conditions of the mouth. But these factors, as well as others, are imperative to the horse’s well-being and not ones on which to compromise or cut corners.
We must, then, begin to use such proven research as Costa et al’s Horse Grimace Scale (HGS) not only in our discussions of the sport but in our daily riding and training. We must have not only watched but absorbed the film 24 Behaviors of the Ridden Horse in Pain,– and again we must begin to use this in our training. Horse sport is considered a bastion of the wealthy and elite. So too was indentured servitude. We must not have our sport seen on the same ethical plane as indentured servitude, and we must not create a parallel from the stud chain to the chains placed on humans in centuries past. Horses are dangerous, unpredictable creatures—but when they learn to “read our minds” in a way that creates true harmony and cohesiveness, we know we are on the right path.
As I said, if you do not define your philosophy, someone else will define it for you. And I also said that I have made many mistakes in my past. This does not mean that I will not make more mistakes in the future. I most certainly will. Any trainer that does not recognize their fallibility is deceiving themselves. All that we can ask for, as a community, is that when we know better, we do better.
shariwolke 