I found this essay really hard to write clearly. The nuances of the topic can become a little muddied. I’ve struggled to put into words what is clear in my mind. I hope I’ve done a better job at weaving the thread of ideas together than I feel I have.
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There seems to be some confusion in the horse industry that certain training methods are kinder and more gentle than others. For example, the reason many people are attracted to positive reinforcement techniques is that they mistakenly believe they offer a kinder and less stressful approach than negative reinforcement methods such as pressure and release.
I want to say that if two or more methods are equally effective in modifying behaviour one method is no more gentle than another. When a method is done well it is a myth that some approaches are kinder to a horse than others. I emphasize this on the one condition that a method is “done well” (which I will explain in more detail later in this essay).
All horse training incorporates the metaphoric “stick and carrot” principle. It balances a little bit of stick with a little bit of carrot. The stick is emotional discomfort. And the carrot is emotional comfort. The stick is designed to motivate a horse to search for an answer to a question, eg, can you move here or can you go faster? The carrot is intended to make the horse feel that its answer was a good idea. This is so it will give us the same answer the next time we ask the same question.
Training is always a balance between how much stick and how much carrot to use.
People get confused by what type of stick and what type of carrot they should use. But in their raw fundamental state, the stick and the carrot always work through the same mechanism to change a horse’s thought. It doesn’t matter if your stick is physical pressure or emotional pressure. It doesn’t matter if your stick is applied with the principles of positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement. No matter what type of stick you use, the stick’s sole role is to always elevate emotional discomfort. And the carrot's only function is to alleviate the emotional discomfort. It’s irrelevant whether the carrot is in the form of removal of the stick or the application of a reward. The purpose of the carrot, in any form, is always to reduce anxiety and create comfort.
Later on, when the training is more established the stick is replaced by a cue and the horse experiences little or no emotional discomfort when we ask it a question. Likewise, the carrot disappears and there is only the removal of the cue or the substitution of another cue with little or no anxiety. But this is only after the “stick and carrot” principle has given clarity to our cues. In the training stages of teaching clarity, we rely on the addition or removal of emotional comfort to modify our horse’s responses. However, later on, emotional discomfort should not be part of creating changes in our horse’s thoughts and responses.
Emotional discomfort is the prime motivator for modifying behaviour whether it is the anxiety caused in the hunt for a reward or the hunt for a release. It’s all driven by a horse’s emotional discomfort, anxiety, worry, or whatever you want to call it.
So how much emotional discomfort do we need to motivate a search AND how much comfort do we need to offer for it to feel like a “good deal” to a horse and bring clarity to the search?
The answer is not simple. Emotional comfort exists on a scale. The scale runs from anxiety being barely noticeable at one end to creating a feeling of life and death at the other extreme. Somewhere between those two extremes lies a level of discomfort that motivates a horse to search for a response that is different from its present behaviour. This level of discomfort is called "the threshold discomfort". It’s the absolute minimum amount of emotional discomfort a horse needs to cause it to let go of its thought and search for a new idea and response. Anything less results in zero search and anything more verges on punishment, over-reaction, and damage to the relationship.
The threshold discomfort may sometimes be a lot of anxiety and other times a minuscule amount depending on how strongly a horse feels it needs to cling to the thought it already possesses to stay safe. But the threshold discomfort is always independent of the method we use to create it. The threshold discomfort may vary from horse to horse, situation to situation, and even moment to moment. It is always changing. Nevertheless, it is the same no matter the method of training. As long as we try to work at the level of the threshold discomfort no method is kinder or crueler than another.
To find the threshold discomfort, and not go past it into deeper trouble, we should ask for a change of thought that is as close as possible to the thought the horse already has. When we have established clarity by helping the horse associate emotional comfort with the change of thought, we add another layer by asking for another change thought close to the one it already has. In this way, we add layer upon layer until we get the result we want while never imposing anything more than the threshold level of discomfort.
For example, if I want to teach my horse to place one foot over a pole and stop I might begin with applying a threshold level of discomfort to teach it to stand 1m from the pole. Then I might teach it to walk over a pole using only the threshold level of discomfort. Then I might teach it to stop in front of the pole before has walked over the pole. Then I might teach it to walk towards the pole, stopping and waiting with each footfall before asking for another step. Then I might ask it to stop in front of the pole and place only one foot over the pole and stop.
I choose each layer by how much emotional discomfort I need to create a search, but not so much as to exceed the threshold level of discomfort. I don’t move to a new layer until the anxiety of the preceding layer is diminished yet I can still inspire a change of thought.
Just to summarise, all training works by inducing emotional discomfort in a horse to search for a new response and then reducing that anxiety when the horse gets it right. When the training is done well, the level of emotional discomfort doesn’t exceed the threshold amount required to evoke a change of thought and a search. Every training method depends on this and none are more gentle or cruel than the other if this principle is applied.
