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Horses can be taught amazing things. Not the least of them is to willingly go into a narrow, dark and enclosed trailer when they are naturally claustrophobic. Or they can learn to jump tall obstacles in a single bound, where their natural inclination is to go around them. The learning process has been described scientifically only this century; although humans have closely observed the ways of animals they hunted for millenniums. Despite having domesticated horses for some 6,000 years, very few principles have been passed on in oral or written tradition from antiquity. This is what we now know from the experimental approach:

A Russian physiologist Pavlov is known for his now classical theory of conditioned reflexes. This theory explains much of the learning process. Subsequently Skinner extended the idea to operant conditioning. During the war years it was successfully applied to many practical training tasks. Konrad Lorenz, a biologist, also made observations of natural behaviour like imprinting in animals.

Recently biology and psychology have converged on a rationale for instinctive animal behaviour based on all animal's prime motivation to replicate their genes. Collectively these ideas are at the core of evolutionary psychology. There is much in it that is useful to horseman. My purpose in writing about it is to apply this theory to practical horse training and management.

Motivation

Horse's needs are basically like our own- exercise, feed, shelter, water, successful reproduction (sex and more), society of the herd (protection and emotional support) and security from predators (or other situations causing anxiety). The animal's behaviour is shaped by instincts and modified by conditioning, in a desire to fulfil these needs. Their strong drive to rise in the herd hierarchy reflects these needs. The more dominant horses will get the lion's share of these resources and the sexually dominant will reproduce their genes. Make no mistake about it reproduction, is a powerful aspect of equine motivation-even in geldings. Geldings and dominant mares will often exhibit stallion behaviour with other horses like; herding, fighting with new comers, mounting others in the herd and so forth. Equine response to man is much related to the need for herd support and leadership. In the absence of emotional support from the herd, the horse will look to man to provide this leadership. It is the horses desire for approval from his herd leader (us) that is the source of his motivation. Without this willingness or motivation we couldn't use horses as we do. No amount of force on our part could every coerce a horse to go forward, jump or pull carts and so on if they don't really want to. Therefore the inclusion of man as a dominant herd member is a critical element of the Breaking process and should always be maintained. This alone is sufficient to motivate the horse in it's role as our means of transport and as our sporting partner.

Instinctive behaviour

All behaviour is the result of complex neural computations. In their simple form these are termed reflexes. Reflexes are the neural connection between an animals senses, his brain and his musculature (to produce the required action). More complex patterns of connections are now called neural networks. Touching a red-hot stove inadvertently with your finger is an example of a simple reflex. The reflex behaviour is to withdraw the hand immediately- so fast you only register consciously that you've been burned after the fact! This is not learned behaviour it's an instinctive, unconditioned reflex.

This example of a burnt finger is primitive and urgent, since survival depends on quickly detecting danger and taking action to avoid it. So critical is speed that the neural connection between the pain sensors of the finger and the flexor muscles of the arm is built in or hardwired. This action is automatic rather than going to the brain first for interpretation.

If you think about it, this is like a lot of behaviour horse's exhibit. Springing away from a sudden frightening stimulus, then bolting before he registers it's only a harmless piece of paper. It's this speed of reaction from instinctive reflexes that enables his survival in the wild. This is not learned behaviour. The horse doesn't need to have experienced predators, or to have previously seen paper to instinctively flee- these reflexes are built right into his genetic code by species evolution. The risk to the horse of unnecessary flight is low, but the risk entailed by delay for thoughtful interpretation of the situation is potentially lethal. Therefore the behaviour of horses is focussed on flight. In one sense instincts are the collective genetic wisdom of the species- at least of those ancestors successful enough to reproduce! Conditioned reflexes

Classical conditioning arises because learning proceeds as a result of experience. Experience can modify, extend or override instinctive behaviour. Instincts are best thought of as the hardware and operating systems of the thousands of computing devices comprising the brain. Conditioned reflexes arose from experiments of Pavlov. He observed that digestion started when dogs heard their keeper, rather than when they ate the meat he brought. Pavlov verified this by ringing a bell whenever meat was brought while also measuring salivation of the dogs. Finally with dogs trained in this way he could ring the bell and they'd salivate even when no keeper came. They had been conditioned to respond to a learned stimulus. Experiments revealed animals learned by association. An artificial stimulus like the bell occurring slightly before their instinctive response. You can also train an animal by association to substitute an artificial response for the original instinctive response. Thereby almost any animal can be taught almost anything -within his physical and psychological capabilities. Horses more easily develop conditioned reflexes than most animals- because of their great memory, their strong herd instinct and predictability of their behaviour.

Association:

Horses learn by associating stimuli. When two or more events occur together dramatically or repeatedly they associate them. A horse will expect these events to occur together in future, in the same sequence. This conditioning is affected by biochemical changes in short-term memory. An association can become hard-wired in long-term memory when the reflex is reinforced by repetition and reward. The next stage is to teach a conditioned dog to ring a bell to be fed. This special case Skinner has termed Operant Conditioning.

Observation and emulation

An important and thoroughly natural way that horses, and indeed all mammals, learn, is to watch their mother and other adults in the herd. They are naturally inclined to emulate them by behaving in the same way. From the moment of birth your horse has learnt how to behave within the herd by observation. It is a simple idea that many horsemen don't think of, or they think it's irrelevant. It is significant what a horse is exposed to in his environment when he is being schooled.

Have you ever seen kids schooling over jumps at Pony Club and seen one or two horses refuse jumps and before you know it half the horses are refusing jumps all over the place? What do you think has happened in that situation? Have you watched a young horse been given a lead over some scary fences by an older experienced horse and watched in amazement when he's jumped boldly? Incidentally, this is most effective if they are running at home in the same herd and the youngster has already learnt to trust the older horse.

I picked up on this idea of emulation when I had stabled a couple of my horses at a neighbours farm. Here it happened that they could see into an indoor arena where other horse were being schooled. I would regularly lunge an older horse there before working him. When I finally got around to working the youngster on the lunge several weeks later she lunged beautifully-unlike she had when I first got her. The difference was phenomenal. The only reason I could think of was to ascribe the change to the fact she'd seen her stablemate being lunged so often.

These horses could also see advanced event horses being worked indoors daily and subsequently my eventer's dressage greatly improved. In the Spring I did get a remarkable test out of him. How much of his learning was emulation of other horses he saw work in the arena is anybody's guess-I'm inclined to believe it was significant. I certainly wouldn't like to be schooling my young horse in an arena where other horses were refusing fences or mucking up-would you?

Next month: In Part 4 we examine how the training process works? What are the elements in the process of training that are crucial to control and which should you exploit?

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