We had a busy day planned so we left early to get a head start. About 45 minutes into the trip, my peripheral vision detected a change in the rear view mirror. I looked into the rearview mirror to fully appreciate the image; there was a large amount of thick black smoke filling the space behind my car and other road users were running out. Thick black smoke was coming from my car!
I immediately took my foot off the accelerator, there was no need to worry about the hazard lights, everyone around me was quite aware that there was a hazard on the road, and began to drive the car onto the shoulder.
My mind was racing thinking about what was happening, the worst case scenario was that the car caught fire so fast, but calm was required, to think. The change in momentum of the car had woken my sleeping passenger and they asked me if we were at our first stop. We were, and it was also our last stop of the day.
When my passenger woke up, I gave him very clear instructions; “When the car comes to a stop on the shoulder, you’ll get out and walk north. Don’t stop until I tell you to.” That was all I said. My passenger was excellent, he followed instructions to the letter and most importantly he didn’t waste time asking questions.
It was after we were both safely out of the car and about a mile upwind of the smoke that I felt I had to apologize for “barking” instructions at my passenger. It turned out that my passenger didn’t think he had barked instructions at all. What they said was that he was very calm and my tone of voice made it clear that this was non-negotiable and this was not a time to ask questions. But at no time did I raise my voice. Which was exactly the message that needed to be conveyed in that situation. There was no time for “please…” and “would you be so kind as…”. The car was potentially on fire!
If I didn’t already have a strong relationship with the passenger in my car, would they have understood the underlying intent of the message? Would they have been offended by my non-negotiable request? Would they have done what I asked? That’s something to keep in mind when training horses. What kind of relationship do we have with them? Is it one they can trust us with, or do we need to build on that before we can ask them for more difficult things in potentially scary situations?
The horse needs to be able to trust the handler so that he can confidently and willingly offer behavior that he believes is the correct response in response to a request. That relationship of trust must be built over time. It is important that there is a relationship of trust when we ask horses to control their emotions. We cannot directly approach a horse and ask it to lower its head (asking it to calm down) if we have not first established a relationship of trust. If we have not earned the horses’ trust, they may agree to our request to lower their heads, but they will not be able to relax and allow their emotional state to change with the behavior; we have not given them enough reasons to trust us with their emotions.
Surely we have all experienced the stranger telling us “cheer up, it may never happen.” If it was just that we were deep in thought, then we could laugh. That stranger couldn’t read us well enough to know we weren’t being miserable, just very focused. But what if we had a really bad day and something horrible had happened? The stranger didn’t know us well enough to tell the difference, they were completely unrelated to be able to tell the difference.
Relationships matter. We can’t ask horses to do things that involve trusting us with emotional swings unless we have an established relationship where we can read each other well.
When we decide that we would like to teach horses to lower their heads, we must first verify that relationship. If the relationship is not in the right place for a given behavior, then that behavior will not be readily offered when requested. If the behavior is not readily offered, then we have nothing to reinforce (we have nothing to train).
This is not to say that the horse must already be regularly offering the desired behavior as part of its repertoire (although capturing is an option for training a behavior in the right circumstances), what it means is that when we guide the horse by our requests if the first approximations of the behavior do not appear, so we cannot train that behavior. The horse is not physically and/or emotionally prepared to offer that option. He is not on the table. If we try to force it, then we may be training emotions that we don’t want as part of our training.
If first approximations of behavior are not easily offered, then we must rethink the training plan. It may be that the relationship is not established enough, or the horse needs other behaviors to act as the basis for the behavior we want. If we want the horse to learn a behavior, we must ensure that optimal learning conditions are provided for us to set them up for success. Optimal learning conditions include, but are not limited to, ensuring;
- our relationship with the horse is in a place where they can read us and trust us to offer the desired response
- the correct foundations (knowledge and behavioral precursors) for the new behavior are in place
- we are dividing the teaching into small enough steps
- we have the right balance of the correct answer being clarified enough versus being delivered on a silver platter
- the level of distractions in the environment is conducive, not disruptive, to learning
- we are using the right balance between guided and self-directed learning
Relationships matter. It is necessary to establish the correct level of relationship with a horse in order to ask for certain behaviors. Something as simple as targeting can be used to start building the foundation of a relationship. A stronger trust relationship should be established from a history of reinforcement before asking a horse for behaviors such as head down where we are asking them to trust us to change their emotional state.