31/08/2023
𝐀𝐧 𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐨𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐫- 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞.
(If you find this sort of stuff boring, feel free to skip, or bounce on over to my Instagram where things are much shorter and sweeter 🤣).
There is no good or bad behaviour when it comes to horses - there is just behaviour.
That is sometimes a difficult concept for humans to get our heads around. We live in a society and social development is part of our evolution, which means our brains have developed the means to understand complex social constructs such as respect and verbal language.
Horses do not have the same level of social development. They have a hierarchy - they’re not brain dead or stupid - but it isn’t to the degree of humans. It’s often misunderstood that because horses live in herds with more dominant characters, and are seen to fight, that they must understand the same social constructs we do around respect and leadership.
This isn't really the case.
The horse herd dynamic is structured around survival, and each participant in the herd has a role to play. There will be more nervous, alert horses, and these horses have the job of letting the herd know there might be danger afoot. There are often more stoic characters, sometimes described as alpha, who are assigned the role of guiding the herd. There will be the more dominant or assertive characters, who fight off other bands or rogue stallions (these are usually stallions themselves, who “own” the herd, but not always). There are the young horses, whose role it is to continue the lineage of the herd and ensure the genetics continue to thrive if they are fit to do so. As the young stock grow and mature, they will find their role in the herd - or get cast off if they’re not required. Each of the horses has a place, without the same social construct of dominance that humans understand. Instead, it all revolves around the extension of the gene pool for those who are the most fit to survive.
As a result of the differences in our brain chemistry, due to what we’ve evolved to do, we often read horse behaviour incorrectly. Humans often see what is normal, survival related, equine behaviour as a horse “disrespecting” us. The horse isn’t doing anything more than trying to communicate with us - to the horse, it isn’t good or bad - it just “is”. It is the human that labels the behaviour good or bad based on what we expect or want the horse to do.
We can shape behaviour, using behavioural modification techniques such as positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment. These methods of training are a big part in most equestrian sports and horsemanship styles. All of the methods have the potential to be misused and abused, or to create harm. The most important thing about working out what works for you is to understand it fully and appreciate the training technique, so you know when and how to use it correctly and fairly with a horse and how a horse learns. The variety, pros and cons, in the training methods is another essay for another day.
When it comes to how we learn to interpret what a horse is trying to communicate, if they are demonstrating an undesirable behaviour, it becomes a bit of a puzzle and a problem solving exercise.
The first step, however, in determining how to help your horse with a behaviour is to accept it. Don’t overtly label the behaviour, don’t create a story about the behaviour - don’t make assumptions that you may later need to train yourself out of. Simply put, the behaviour is what it is. So instead of giving the behaviour a name, instead, think about it in terms of feedback. It’s not “bad” behaviour - it’s feedback.
In my next post on problem solving with horses, I’ll talk a bit more about thinking about “why” the behaviour is happening, and the different types of feedback your horse might be offering you.
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