One of the skills people develop as they become better with horses is the insight into where the limits lay of a horse’s ability to handle pressure. They develop an invisible sense of where the line is between asking too much, asking just the right amount, and asking too little.
Since each horse is different and each moment is different, this skill comes from a person having a highly tuned ability to read the inside of a horse in an instant and an understanding of their ability to bring a horse back from discomfort and worry to a place of comfort and understanding.
I guess what I am trying to say is that when training a horse each person works within the limits of their own ability to help a horse achieve focus, clarity, and softness.
All training relies on the principle of creating some anxiety in a horse to change from an old behaviour to a newly learned behaviour. To make the new lesson seem like a good idea and one the horse wants to choose means that the old idea has to appear less favourable. In part, this means we create some anxiety when the horse chooses the old response. This motivates it to search for a new idea. It doesn’t matter which training paradigm you are working with - +R, -R, +P, or -P. They all rely in part on the principle of the old response being less comfortable, and more stressful than the new response.
If you accept this premise, the question I want you to consider is how much anxiety should we let the horse experience when trying to teach it to let go of an old response?
The answer is not easy because it is a judgement call. Here is my take.
We never want to apply so much pressure that it tips a horse over the edge of emotional trauma that it can not recover. Pressure that is big enough to cause a horse to meltdown is never a good idea. An example of this that I have seen (but thankfully never happened to me) is a horse being saddled for the first time and the saddle slips under the horse’s belly. This traumatises some horses so much that they are always troubled to be saddled. They never get over it.
But which is better? She we delve headlong deep into a horse’s trouble and fixing that? Or should we chip away in small increments over a longer time?
Most people choose to address the training in small layers because it causes less anxiety in the horse and the human. It’s more manageable and less stressful for horse and human.
But you might be surprised that there are advantages to taking the horse to the limit of what it can handle and help it find comfort from that.
Provided the trainer has to skill to help a horse regain focus, clarity, and softness, the change you get from helping a horse come back from a place of more trouble is so much deeper and lasting. When a horse carries a lot of worry and comes out the other side feeling much better, the change is more significant than if it came through a mild amount of trouble over a longer period. If a horse carries a Hiroshima level of trouble inside and a trainer can help it find a better place from there, it is a much more significant improvement than if the trainer only addresses a fraction of that degree of trouble. It does mean there will be initially more stress placed on the horse, but the good feelings that replace the stress will be vastly deeper and longer lasting.
You’ll often see trainers get very big with a horse and allow it to leap around. This makes the average person very uncomfortable when they see a horse kicking up a lot of dust. But the change for the better on the other side can be dramatic. What may have taken a student a month to address can take a trainer, with the right skill, a day or two to put a smile on a horse’s face. This is because they can take a horse closer to the edge and help them come back in a better state rather than chipping away over weeks. Only circumstances determine which is best. Addressing the deeper worries is only wrong if you can’t help your horse come through to find focus, clarity, and softness.
Lastly, if you have a horse with mild emotional issues, just chipping away is often the perfect approach. However, if you have a horse with deep-seated emotional trouble, sometimes chipping away is not going to make significant improvements. You might need help from somebody with the wisdom and skill to challenge a horse’s emotional responses so they can learn to be the best they can be.
We should not judge a trainer or a training approach by how much pressure is involved and how that makes us feel. Training should be judged by how the horse comes out feeling on the other side.
Is it better to put a horse through a bigger stress for a short period or less stress for a longer period? Who knows?
