Post by Elaine on Dec 17, 2008 19:58:00 GMT
Myth No.2 - You Can't Let the Horse Win - ross jacobs
8ok, haven´t read this, but thought would be interesting to start a discussion (in internet cafe dont have much time!) )
www.goodhorsemanship.com.au/Myths.html
Ever since I was a boy I have heard this. I still hear it these days, in fact I read it on a web site from a trainer who was responding to an e-mail question.
Winning or losing doesn't even enter a horse's mind. No horse is out to beat us or prove us wrong. Training is not meant to be an adversarial sport. It is not about having a winner and a loser. When interacting with a horse, the horse should always be a winner. Anytime you leave a horse feeling like he was the loser, you have taken something away from him. The only road that I know for getting a horse to want to go along with me is if by trial and error he has learned that I offer him a good deal. My job should be to do whatever I can to make it as easy as possible and with minimum trouble. So when he does give it a try it feels okay and he hasn't lost anything in the process.
That might all sound "airy-fairy" and some might be wondering how do you get a horse to do what you want if you don't show him that you are in charge?
Those that have hung around me will have heard me say many times "never ask a horse to do anything unless you get a change - if you don't get a change you should never have asked in the first place and you are teaching him to ignore you."
At first read that might sound similar to "you can't let a horse win." But it all depends on what you call a change. When you ask a horse to do something you need to get a change, but a change only has to be something different from what the horse was doing. A change does not have to be exactly what you wanted him to do. If it is, that is wonderful. But in reality a change is just something that's different. Getting a change means your horse is searching. He knows doing what he is doing is not working for him because you keep persisting with some pressure (using just enough pressure to motivate him to search), so he starts searching to find something that will get rid of the pressure. When he does, rejoice. If he is doing something even slightly in the direction of what you had in mind, release the pressure and rejoice some more. That's called a "try". If he tries something counter to what you had in mind, just persist with enough pressure to keep him searching and release when he stumbles on something better. Soon he will have discovered for himself what he should do to stop the idiot from annoying him.
This approach is not about making him do what we want or letting him get away with anything. That's human thinking - not horse. A horse just wants to find the safest and most comfortable option he thinks is available. So allow him to discover for himself what works and what doesn't by letting him be a winner every time he gets close to what we had in mind.
Often we make a bad situation worse because we refuse to let our horse win. Float loading is a good example. A situation that came up recently was in regard to loading a horse into a float. A lady was taking her horse to a show. The horse would go about half way in and stop. The lady got more insistent and then the horse would run backwards. The whole episode went on for about 2 hrs before she gave up in frustration. She rang me to ask for advice because she was very concerned that she had let the horse win and now she would never get her horse in a float. Long before the lady had given up things got worse. The horse got to the stage where she couldn't even get it within 10 metres of the float and he was rearing and striking. It would have been much wiser to have realized earlier that things were deteriorating to a bad situation and to have given up. There would have been no harm done. The problem of getting the horse in the float is very fixable. The horse had it's reasons for not going in the float. When she fixes the reasons the horse will load fine.
There is a theory among some people (even professional trainers) that if you let a horse win you have ruined it. Firstly, as I have said a horse doesn't have any concept of winning. But secondly, every situation is salvageable. If it wasn't then every mistake we make with our horses would be ruining them for life. A substantial proportion of our business is re-educating horses that people make mistake with. All a horse needs is to find a way to behave that feels better to them than the way they have been responding, then they will choose the better option every time for themselves. You will soon reverse the damage done by your mistakes.
So keep in mind that training is never an "us vs the horse" pastime. The object is to help the horse find a better way to respond and sometimes that might mean backing off rather than allowing the horse's feeling to become more troubled. You are always training for tomorrow and not everything has to be perfect today.
8ok, haven´t read this, but thought would be interesting to start a discussion (in internet cafe dont have much time!) )
www.goodhorsemanship.com.au/Myths.html
Ever since I was a boy I have heard this. I still hear it these days, in fact I read it on a web site from a trainer who was responding to an e-mail question.
Winning or losing doesn't even enter a horse's mind. No horse is out to beat us or prove us wrong. Training is not meant to be an adversarial sport. It is not about having a winner and a loser. When interacting with a horse, the horse should always be a winner. Anytime you leave a horse feeling like he was the loser, you have taken something away from him. The only road that I know for getting a horse to want to go along with me is if by trial and error he has learned that I offer him a good deal. My job should be to do whatever I can to make it as easy as possible and with minimum trouble. So when he does give it a try it feels okay and he hasn't lost anything in the process.
That might all sound "airy-fairy" and some might be wondering how do you get a horse to do what you want if you don't show him that you are in charge?
Those that have hung around me will have heard me say many times "never ask a horse to do anything unless you get a change - if you don't get a change you should never have asked in the first place and you are teaching him to ignore you."
At first read that might sound similar to "you can't let a horse win." But it all depends on what you call a change. When you ask a horse to do something you need to get a change, but a change only has to be something different from what the horse was doing. A change does not have to be exactly what you wanted him to do. If it is, that is wonderful. But in reality a change is just something that's different. Getting a change means your horse is searching. He knows doing what he is doing is not working for him because you keep persisting with some pressure (using just enough pressure to motivate him to search), so he starts searching to find something that will get rid of the pressure. When he does, rejoice. If he is doing something even slightly in the direction of what you had in mind, release the pressure and rejoice some more. That's called a "try". If he tries something counter to what you had in mind, just persist with enough pressure to keep him searching and release when he stumbles on something better. Soon he will have discovered for himself what he should do to stop the idiot from annoying him.
This approach is not about making him do what we want or letting him get away with anything. That's human thinking - not horse. A horse just wants to find the safest and most comfortable option he thinks is available. So allow him to discover for himself what works and what doesn't by letting him be a winner every time he gets close to what we had in mind.
Often we make a bad situation worse because we refuse to let our horse win. Float loading is a good example. A situation that came up recently was in regard to loading a horse into a float. A lady was taking her horse to a show. The horse would go about half way in and stop. The lady got more insistent and then the horse would run backwards. The whole episode went on for about 2 hrs before she gave up in frustration. She rang me to ask for advice because she was very concerned that she had let the horse win and now she would never get her horse in a float. Long before the lady had given up things got worse. The horse got to the stage where she couldn't even get it within 10 metres of the float and he was rearing and striking. It would have been much wiser to have realized earlier that things were deteriorating to a bad situation and to have given up. There would have been no harm done. The problem of getting the horse in the float is very fixable. The horse had it's reasons for not going in the float. When she fixes the reasons the horse will load fine.
There is a theory among some people (even professional trainers) that if you let a horse win you have ruined it. Firstly, as I have said a horse doesn't have any concept of winning. But secondly, every situation is salvageable. If it wasn't then every mistake we make with our horses would be ruining them for life. A substantial proportion of our business is re-educating horses that people make mistake with. All a horse needs is to find a way to behave that feels better to them than the way they have been responding, then they will choose the better option every time for themselves. You will soon reverse the damage done by your mistakes.
So keep in mind that training is never an "us vs the horse" pastime. The object is to help the horse find a better way to respond and sometimes that might mean backing off rather than allowing the horse's feeling to become more troubled. You are always training for tomorrow and not everything has to be perfect today.