The thing that separates good horse people from second-rate ones, is this idea that the best horse people are always working on expanding the ‘contract of trust’, whether it is a first-time experience or the horse has done it a thousand times. The second-rate horse people are just satisfied with obedience and are okay with a horse working to simply avoid trouble.
When Has A Horse Learned A Lesson?
A Little Bit of Stick and a Little Bit of Carrot
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.
Confirmational Bias
It’s hard to ignore that some trainers are leaning on science to explain and justify their training principles and methods. However, none of the trainers I am familiar with have a background in science and research. None that I know read the peer-reviewed literature. None of them appear to have the depth of knowledge to gauge the merit of the science they are relaying. They depend on a third party to explain it to them in a way they can slot into their training and teaching.