When I started riding at 8 at a hunter jumper barn, my awareness about how horses learn and communicate was non existent. I got the typical gruff kick-to-go education that most kids probably got 30 years ago.
At 13, I switched to a dressage barn and started to learn about rider bio-mechanics or how our bodies impact our horses movement and balance. This started me off down the road I am still on today.
At 15, I started as a working student at a hunter jumper consignment barn that had recently adopted Parelli Natural Horsemanship. This was the first time I learned about applying pressure in a
deliberate way to shape behavior. PNH also helped me grasp some of the underlying problems causing "bad behavior" in my first horse, a feisty playful thoroughbred. It was also, in hindsight, where I first started to develop an aversion and distrust for this particular brand of horsemanship. What turned me off was a combination of the language used in PNH ( I felt like it was anthropomorphic and vague, but for other people I know this system really works which is great), and some instances I personally witnessed people being abusive to their horses. I feel like PNH opened my eyes in so many ways --- both in good ways like that we could be so much better to our horses if we considered their biology, and how they learned, and in not so good ways-- that when you try to market the complexities of the horse-human relationship into a nice little monetized package the nuance is lost, and a lot of horses are still misunderstood and mistreated. It was at this point I pretty much vowed never to follow another of these "big name clinicians" again.
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| Taking it easy with my old retired guy |
After my mixed experiences with PNH I was even more hungry for knowledge about horse training, and so I stopped going to clinics and taking lessons and started reading. I read books by or about
Tom Dorrance,
Ray Hunt and
Xenophon, and
Mark Rashid, I enjoyed seeing the similarities across all of these horse philosophers -- the importance of good timing, compassion and patience, but I still felt like I had a hard time applying the theory into practice. I ended up selling my first horse, the young, feisty Thoroughbred, during this time because of my busy life as a full time college student, and also because of all the mixed feelings and changes I was feeling around horsemanship in general.
After college, I got my first real job and my retired show horse from childhood that I had adopted and cared for had passed away (the gray in the pictures), so I was left horseless. I was ready to try anew and to put some theory into practice. Enter Bodhi and un-started 2 year old Haflinger.
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| One of his first shaped behaviors: soccer! |
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| Our first ride. |
I was boarding Bodhi at a small private farm with no other riders. It was just Bodhi and three retired pasture puffs, so I had to do it on my own. I went back to the literature and found 2 books that I really based Bodhi's entire early education on: John Lyon's
Perfectly Practical Advice on Horsemanship series and
Don't Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor. The books by John Lyon's are surprisingly filled with applied behavioral theory that immediately made sense to my scientifically trained brain. Don't Shoot the Dog is the perfect primer to learning theory that perfectly complimented the negative reinforcement-heavy Lyons' Horsemanship books. Learning about the difference between reinforcers and punishers was a serious game changer and led me to learn about using positive reinforcement in horse training--- which blew my mind wide open at the time. I fully admit that it had never occurred to me that there were two types of reinforcers (negative and positive) and that we normally only use one in horse training (negative). It was huge shift in my conciousness to learn about the power of R+ and how to mark and shape behavior. It was like all of a sudden I noticed one hand had been tied behind my back and I finally got it free. Bodhi also transformed before my eyes. He went from a slightly stubborn, naughty pony to an engaged student and partner.
Bodhi and I went on to have a wonderful 8 years together (which you can learn about in my first blog
here). A large part of his training and development was using positive reinforcement but I still used pressure and release (negative reinforcement) too. Bodhi and I continued our education with this foundation of understanding that I would always reinforce the behaviors that I wanted with positive reinforcement (pats, cookies) or negative reinforcement (remove the pressure I was using and let him rest), and we got to learn so much by going to dressage, reining, extreme cowboy and obstacle clinics, and learning from trainers across the reinforcement spectrum. I also felt like I had this secrete weapon of behavioral shaping with a marker (clicker) up my sleeve that gave us an edge. I would always just smile knowingly when clinicians would scratch their heads at how quickly Bodhi picked up on things.
Also, I felt like once I had a basic understanding of behavioral theory I was able to finally decode the flowery language that left me confused with some of the big names. It still annoys me, but now I can at least understand what all these used-car-salesman clinicians are trying to say! ;) I felt like I was just building my tool box with all these great tips and tricks and I have the confidence to just leave the stuff that I find too anthropomorphic or forceful in the sawdust.
That brings us up to the tragic death of Bodhi, and the new cast of characters you all know now.... and what I am learning now -- and what I will write about next so stay tuned :)
When I started riding at 8 at a hunter jumper barn, my awareness about how horses learn and communicate was non existent. I got the typical gruff kick-to-go education that most kids probably got 30 years ago.
