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Andrew McLean takes a look at
TRAINING PSYCHOLOGY
Part 2

Behaviour is the result of the interaction of genes and the environment. As with all mammals, genetics only predisposes the horse to behave in certain ways - the rest is up to learning. Learning confirms or denies genetic tendencies, so all equine behaviour can be modified by experience.
For example the sex drive of a stallion can be modified by learning to the point that a well-trained stallion behaves obediently around mares. Moreover, obedient horses are easily habituated to things in the environment that would normally send them bolting.
In general, horse riders and trainers give far too much credence to genetic predispositions and pay nowhere near enough attention to the potential of learning. Vicious stallions, crazy horses, horses that pull, shy, kick, bite or whatever, are made and not born that way. They may be genetically predisposed to be so, but the truth is they are more a product of their life's experiences and training.
It is often for reasons of placating our egos that we choose to blame genetics rather than admit our failings as trainers. This is a pity because our own learning curve does a nose-dive when we blame the animal's genes, and the horse itself may be written off.
The answer for us all is something I am now about to explain, for it lies in mostly one form of equine learning - Trial and error learning (also known as Operant conditioning).
This form of learning is as simple as 'trial and error' sounds. It is where the horse 'trials' a behaviour to solve a basic need such as food or pain avoidance. Whatever behaviour results in that particular drive being satisfied, bingo! The brain gives it the green light to happen again in the same circumstances. A habit begins to form so as to speed up the association of stimulus and response.
Even at birth, foals are able to learn by trial and error. They are born with the predisposition to suckle something, but learn the whereabouts of the mare's teats by trial and error. After a few trials, they no longer make mistakes.
All through it's life, the horse will trial certain behaviours to solve new problems. Because of his extraordinary memory, the horse remembers the things that happen by 'accident' that result in the flight response, or aspects of it, such as tension. That is one good reason why you should try to avoid him learning to express tension in any form in-hand, on the lunge or under saddle.
It is the reward of freedom that, as trainers, we tap into in trial and error learning, in the form of negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is the removal of pressure and/or pain when the animal has performed a behavioural response to the pressure.
We pull on the reins, the horse stops, we release the reins. We squeeze with the legs, the horse goes forward, we soften the legs. As Tom Roberts said, when you sit on a pin you get off mighty fast, not because it hurts but because it stops hurting when you get off. The horse stops because the discomfort disappears when we release the pressure, provided we do release the rein pressure! He goes forward so as to remove the pressure of the legs. He turns to remove the pressure of the turning rein. Until he does these things from light cues, you must release every time.
Freedom not only rewards 'good' behaviour under saddle, but universally rewards all sorts of behaviours. Freedom from restraint rewards pulling back and breaking free when the horse is tied up. Freedom from enclosure rewards his escaping from a yard or stable when he has learned the way to open gate latches. Freedom from effort rewards laziness. Freedom from human touch around the head rewards head shyness. Panic and adrenalised responses are the vehicle of his freedom, and when he bolts, bucks or rears, the freedom that results when he rids himself of the predator from his back is highly rewarding.
For most of his millions of years of evolution, any animal on his back was bound to be looking for a meal, so evolution has produced instinctive processes like bucking that resulted in survival. In addition, these 'vices' and evasions can become cultivated through a process called learning to learn. So he can begin to seek the wrong way (which profits him) rather than the right way (which profits you) of doing things leading us to believe that he is nasty or vengeful etc., but in truth he is just expressing a summary of his previous training.
Patting the horse is an overrated reward. One of the dangers of patting the horse as a reward is that it can become the focus of our reward system to the detriment of the release of pressure. We pat the dog, we pat children, we pat everything: patting is endemic to humans, it seems. But how meaningful is it as a reward? Not very. Because we pat and say, 'good boy' whenever we feel pleased with the horse, we diminish the reward, and these things come to mean 'I like you', but not 'well done'!
In animal training, we must only attach rewards to a behaviour, otherwise they just become background noise. Food, as well as voice and patting easily become background noise. Furthermore, patting is not as rewarding as one might think, for a few reasons.
Firstly there is a definite blurry line between patting and a light smack on the neck which most riders do at some stage, when they are lightly punishing the horse (say if the horse bites another beside him). Secondly, horses are not born with an innate understanding of patting. For it to be perceived as a reward, it would need to be associated consistently with an intrinsic reward (like food) after an act.
Scratching at the withers, however is a different story altogether from patting. Researchers called Feh and de Mazieres showed a few years ago that grooming at this site (a very convenient spot!) directly lowers heart rate and therefore produces relaxation, more than any other area of the body.
Feeding tidbits for no good reason other than you love the horse can be detrimental to the action of food as a training tool. It is just as easy and more beneficial to ask the horse to, say, step back from pressure, then give the tidbit. The secondary problem with tidbits is that the horse soon anticipates them, and starts barging the provider and therefore loses some obedience. So when you train, first think to soften the pressure immediately, followed by a scratch at the base of the neck and when consolidated, use vocal rewards.
Training psychology provides principles and guidelines for training.
These are often adhered to by good trainers, but are never provided as principles in themselves in contemporary horse training. A most important theme is that the basic responses (go, stop, turn and leg-yield) are the foundations that are trained in breaking-in. These basic responses are the essential aspects of the horse's training that provide the template for his future behaviour.
Whilst 'breakers' do the initial work in breaking-in, the process of consolidation goes on for some years after that, and can be easily undone during the early formative years. (These are usually undone by applying rein and leg aids together - pulling and kicking).
The basic responses are also the ones that are compromised when the horse has problems at any stage of training. His refusing to jump can become a habit, and provided riding faults are not preventing the horse from jumping, and providing the horse is not over faced, the problem boils down to the quality of the 'go' button. Like many poorly trained jumpers, maybe the horse has no 'go' button to speak of, but an electric 'runaway' button instead. The problem with the horse that refuses to load onto the float is that he doesn't have a go button either - he doesn't lead forwards. Even shying is a forward problem.
One of the most important things to remember is that training must be consistent. Your aim is to consolidate certain behaviours into habits. With a young horse - or in retraining - you require the horse to go, stop, turn and leg-yield. But you don't just want them to be performed in any fashion. You need them to be performed ultimately with strict criteria, so that the end result is that the horse has rhythm, a soft contact and is loose in his body, round and relaxed.
When the particular criteria for each response are trained and then consolidated the horse will have no source for confusions in his training. It is a little known or appreciated fact that calmness is a certainty when habits are consistent and predictable - not always an easy or speedy task in retraining!
When the relationship between stimulus and response is variable, confusion is the result and conflict behaviour involving tension is almost inevitable. Therefore it is important to target responses of the same quality in each session, or progressively build on the quality each session, and don't relax standards from one day to the next. The reason for this is that you are aiming to consolidate habits in the horse. So don't allow random movements, or any movements that are not initiated by you, to be exhibited by the horse. Random movements allow the horse to be on autopilot, and when that happens, his fleeting taste of freedom may motivate him to further develop his evasions. Some horses, of course never take these opportunities.
Training the basics must, whether you are breaking-in, training or retraining, be progressive. It is like teaching a child to spell. At first you will reward any good try. So the child spells cat as, say, K-a-t-t-e. You reward this, it's near enough, and then slowly correct aspects so that in the end the child spells correctly. It is the same in training.
When you train the horse to go forward, in the beginning you reward him for simply going frontwards. Then you add on to this response that he must go immediately, then rhythm, then straight, then with no change in head and neck outline, then activity and finally that he goes unconditionally, that is he goes wherever you point him. I'll be describing all this in later articles.
Similarly, if the horse has not got all the criteria for his responses consolidated, then don't do two things at once. So if the horse has problems in turning, such as falling out, and he is also losing forward, don't turn and kick forward at the same time. Separate everything until consolidation, and so turn a single step and then put the go button on immediately after the turn step. Otherwise it's like trying to train a dog to sit and shake hands when he still can't sit on command.
Train only a single response from a single signal.
Training is far clearer for the horse when you train just one signal for one movement. So at the basic level, go is always both of the rider's legs, not the inside leg. Leg-yield is the inside leg. Stop is both reins equally, and turn is the same side turning rein. These things must be consolidated, and when they are, they form the concrete foundations upon which all training sits. It is a danger to use the seat for stop when the horse has not got a consolidated stop response from the reins.
Good training is about keeping things simple.
It is the horse's initial response to the stimulus that is proof of your trained response. Just because you squeezed him with your legs and he is traveling forwards does not mean that he has a consolidated go button. Just because he halts does not mean his rein responses are good either. Check his initial responses to the aids. When you first urge him to go, does he delay his step, is the first one short or hoppy, and does he raise his head and swish his tail.
These are symptomatic go button problems. When you stop him with the reins, does he lean on the bit before he stops, does he delay his stop for a few steps, does he change his outline or drop the bit? These are stop button problems which, like go button problems, blur into the mire of the average training programme.
All training must have an Operant conditioning basis for it to consolidate.
This is largely because Operant conditioning (pressure/release) allows greater controllability of outcome than Classical conditioning (benign cues like voice commands). In horse training, as I mentioned earlier, Operant conditioning takes the form of pressure/release (but includes positive reinforcement such as clicker training). This basically means that you must train pressure/ release responses such as the reins for stop and turn, and legs for go and leg-yield.
I spend my life seeing problems that have arisen due to cues like using the seat to stop a horse with a hard mouth, (instead of retraining the mouth) and bucking as a result of using no leg just a wriggling seat or a voice command to go. After consolidation, however, you can add cues, and you can even blend responses such as rein and leg aids, but not before.
Pressure/release training has certain rules for it to work effectively. Good training has always resulted from the proper attention to these rules, and problems right across the board in training - ranging from horses not leading into floats to rearing under saddle also result from the violation of these rules.
Take the example of the horse that refuses to go into water. Firstly, pressure is applied, for example the rider's legs for forward, but the horse still refuses. The pressure must be maintained, and increased if there is no response. If intermittent pressure is used, such as the whip-tap, there must be no gaps in between taps longer than a second, or the horse perceives this as a reward for the wrong behaviour (not going forward). The pressure is removed immediately, however, when the horse gives a forward step. Not just when he gets into the water, but when he gives a forward step.
The basic principle is that the release of pressure rewards whatever behaviour preceded this release. This is because the horse learns that the behaviour he gives switches off the pressure. The consistency of this in the training of the timing is fundamental to relaxation. On the contrary, tension and escalating flight response result when the timing of release of pressure is slow or non-existent.
It is because the horse is motivated to relieve himself of pressure that self-carriage must be our goal at every step of the way in training. The horse should never have to endure pressure or pain in his work in hand or under saddle. Short necks are therefore not only wrong in principle in dressage, because they block various physical potentials in the horse, but they are also bad for the horse's mentality - they put him into a state of mental conflict which has to express itself in one form or other - rearing and bucking are the commonest manifestations.