Today’s post is a tough one and I expect only half of you will agree while the other half disagree. But if it gets you thinking about the question, it is definitely worth discussing.
Which is the stronger drive of horse behaviour? The search for comfort or the avoidance of discomfort?
Firstly, I don’t believe the answer to the question is dependent on the training program or the skill of the human or the experience of the horse, or whether wild or domesticated horses are used. I think these factors can affect the degree of sensitivity to the forces that motivate and shape behaviour, but I don’t feel the basic nature of how a horse operates is altered by any of these factors.
There are three primary drives in animal behaviour – individual survival, sex, and hunger. When we are talking about comfort or discomfort, we are invoking the survival drive. A horse weighs up life’s choices in terms of survival/danger. The survival drive is stronger than the hunger or sex drives as evidenced by the fact that a horse will deny itself sex or food if it feels in peril. This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view. Why risk death for a morsel of food or a chance to reproduce if they can be put off for a less risky time?
A horse only understands the concept of comfort because of the concept of discomfort. Discomfort both triggers and taps into the survival drive. The strength to which survival is triggered by discomfort will depend on the horse’s perception of the danger level. Nevertheless, it is the sense of discomfort that motivates a horse to search for a new behaviour.
In contrast, experiencing comfort does nothing to drive a new behaviour. Only discomfort evokes new behaviours. Comfort has a null effect. Comfort is the end product of a horse’s avoidance of discomfort. Without discomfort, a horse does not seek or search for comfort. If they did a horse would never stop searching because of the promise that even more comfort may be found if they just tried something new. This would make horses untrainable.
Why does discomfort initiate a horse’s search for a new behaviour?
It’s because discomfort creates anxiety by stimulating the survival drive. It is the stress associated with a discomfort that causes the search for comfort. Each horse has a threshold level of stress it can tolerate before it feels the need to find an escape and search for comfort. In other words, a horse can cope with X amount of stress and still not seek comfort by changing its behaviour. The amount of stress a horse can tolerate varies from animal to animal. But once the stress exceeds X amount the survival drive is triggered and the search begins for a behaviour that will yield comfort and extinguish the survival drive to stress levels below X.
It’s easy to argue that discomfort and comfort are the same things or they are two sides of the same coin. But I don’t think this is true. The reason why horses are not comfort seekers is that comfort offers zero drive to change. Without discomfort, comfort does not exist. A horse HAS to experience discomfort to know what comfort is and that comfort is the better option. But once a horse finds an escape from discomfort it does not continue to search for even more comfort – the search is over.
I would argue the need to avoid the anxiety that comes with discomfort is the stronger driver of behaviour in horses. We know that behaviours that are derived from discomfort cannot be easily overcome by offers of food or scratches etc. For example, a horse that is truly fearful of loading into a horse trailer can’t be easily bribed with treats. Also, it is my experience that horses that have a higher threshold or tolerance for stress and anxiety are generally more difficult to work with because they are relatively unmotivated to find an alternative response since it takes considerably more anxiety to trigger their survival instinct.
If we accept that avoidance of discomfort is the primary driving force in shaping behaviour than the need to seek comfort, then we have to equally accept that the idea of a horse having zero stress in the training process is an impossible dream. We are often lulled into believing our horses are happy in their work because they appear so willing and show no obvious signs of anxiety. However, I believe that horses can be like icebergs in that there is a lot more going on below the surface than we can see. Just because we can’t detect anxiety in a horse does not mean it does not exist and I think the belief that our horses are happy and love their job can sometimes be an excuse to not do better. I have worked with thousands of horses in my career and I don’t believe I have ever experienced a horse with zero anxiety – including my own. They exhibit stress in the paddock when they can do what they like, so how can we possibly expect them to feel stress-free when starting to direct them during training?
Some people might find it challenging to accept that in our training we are using discomfort avoidance rather than comfort-seeking as a strategy. It’s hard to swallow that our horses may never be completely stress-free when working with us. But I think it is worth remembering that we are working with the innate nature of the horse that has shaped its behaviour since birth. We must work with the horse’s rules that nature gave it and not impose our rules. To approach the training in any other way is to not accept the true nature of a horse and instead try to give it man-made virtues, which make us more comfortable.
The bottom line is that the incentive to avoid discomfort is stronger than the incentive to seek comfort. If horses were first and foremost comfort seekers they would be untrainable because they would always be searching for something more comfortable and we would never be able to show them the “light-bulb moment” of what we wanted. In a horse’s life, the need for comfort is only a refuge from discomfort. Once a horse escapes from their discomfort to a level below the threshold level of anxiety it stops searching for more comfort and learns the response we wanted.
Early training with a young Arab gelding before its first ride. Comfort seeker or discomfort avoider?