Make Me Worthy Of My Horse
If you spend enough time around horses before long youre likely to encounter an injury. Some folks joke that they could bubblewrap their horses and put them into a round room and theyd still figure out a way to hurt themselves. Like humans there are some horses that cruise through life without a single incident while others just seem prone to elevate our stress level and diminish our cash level with frequent new and interesting injuries. There just might be more to this than meets the eye however as creating a safe environment for our horses actually begins with how we perceive them. Im sure just about everyone who owns a horse loves that horse and Im not going to get into who cares more for their horses because of what they do for to or with them. I am going to share with you how we can increase understanding by the way we approach our relationship with horses and enhance their safety as a result.
No matter what we ask the horse to do regardless of the disciplines we pursue when it comes to teaching or training we all use operant conditioning to get that horse to do something. Operant conditioning is simply causing or coercing a specific action or response by varying the consequence. An example is the pressure and release method whereby a horse learns to move off our leg not by pressure but when we release the pressure thereby signalling that the horse has done what weve asked. Another example of operant conditioning is what trainers like to refer to and all too often rely on as negative reinforcement the horse fails to comply with what we want and gets a smack for his trouble. Negative reinforcement even pressure and release forms of training are not centered around inviting the horse to learn these methods are instead focused on shortening the training period thereby getting the horse to do what we want sooner or faster. I believe this is a byproduct of our instant gratification culture Not only do I want it I
