Horse body language: Are they saying no?

Is your horse trying to say no?

We are so often hearing “why does my horse...?”, “Is my horse being naughty?”, “Does my horse hate me?”, “Why won't my horse...?”

This perception and wording of what you ask yourself when you are working your horse plays a significant role in not only how you train but also how your horse works.

If you are trying to find ways to make your horse do something you are inevitably going to come across the argument of who's the bigger bully.

But when you can think of working with your horse in a way where they have a choice to say yes or no then we can start to work together. If we can see that willingness is a yes to our ask and resistance is a no to our ask we can ask WHY is our horse giving us a no (therefore rule out pain and other issues) and ask HOW can get a yes.

One of the ways we do this is by being flexible with our goal posts. Our goal posts is basically getting the yes. And if we can set willingness and yeses as our goal posts, its impossible to come away without a win. Its when we have certain expectations of what our horse should do for us + willingness and yeses that we are setting both ourselves and our horses up to fail.

For example, consider if you are going out to work your horse with the expectation of doing a 90cm gridwork session. You go out to catch your horse and they high tail it to the back corner of the paddock (first no). Eventually you catch them and they are fidgeting and fussing around for the saddle and channeling their inner giraffe for the bridle (second and third no). Then they won’t stand still for you to mount (fourth no). They start mucking up for you in your warm up pulling through the bit, testing and fighting every aid etc. How well do you think your actually training session is going to go?

Now consider your if instead you adjusted your goal posts to have willingness and yes as the goal for the day. You go to catch your horse the go to the end of the paddock so you work on some focus, attention and connection exercises and they hook on and follow you up to the barn. They start fidgeting and fussing around for their tack so you work on getting a yes to put the saddle on and getting them to put their own bridle on. They won’t stand still for the mounting block so you work on getting them to invite you into the saddle. So you can start to see rather than it being an argument the whole way through you acknowledge the no and reshape the exercise to make the yes the goal.

How much different do you think your horse would be by the end of the training session? What about a week of training them like this? A month? A year? How could the relationship with your horse change if the focus of each training session was willingness and yeses instead of task achievement?

Will it take longer? Short term? Yes. Long term? No. If you put the work in at the beginning to set the expectations and the standards it does take a while of you showing up with consistency of your expectations to condition the horses interaction but once this is established the more difficult exercises that become big road blocks actually become relatively easy to progress through.

So rather than getting frustrated, impatient and disheartened because every training session is a battle and you constantly feel stuck, flip the script. Break it down it to small achievable goals, build the yeses and eventually the yeses come easily to the bigger asks. And the best thing is, once this is well established, when your horse does say no, you know their is a good reason and can catch it before it becomes a big problem.

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You need to teach your horse HOW to learn

Horses aren’t born into this world knowing how to be ridden.

They don’t know appropriate and safe ways to interact with humans.

They don’t know what’s expected of them.

In some cases, such as where they are weaned early, kept separate from other horses or go through poor living conditions such as dogger pens and feed lots, they don’t even know how to socialise with other horses – they only know how to do their best to protect themselves.

Our most common tool for training is negative reinforcement through pressure from halters, bits, spurs, and whips. Horses don’t automatically know what these pressures mean and what the appropriate response to those pressures are. Expecting them to know this is like a person starting a new job with a completely complex computer program, being shown their seat and left to figure it out – they are either going to try and fail, try and succeed, look for help or break down and quit.

Is it any wonder that horses become “naughty” if teaching them to learn isn’t done well?

Horses first need to learn how to process pressure and what it means. They need to know that pressure isn’t pain and isn’t there to hurt them, but is there to help them seek the answer.

Which means we need to know how to use pressure & release correctly to teach this.

The first and most important lesson you need to learn to communicate more effectively with horses:

“You can’t beat understanding into a horse”.

If a horse doesn’t understand what you want using the whip, spurs, halter or bit, using them harder and harder and harder doesn’t make them understand any better.

A lot of times, when a horse isn’t doing what its told, it’s classified as a naughty horse and you are told to be harder and stronger with them. However, in my experience if a horse isn’t doing as its “told”, it’s more commonly because it doesn’t understand, or can’t do what’s being asked. So they “act out” or are “naughty” because they resort to instinctive behaviour or past experiences to respond to the ask – and their instinctive behaviour when confused, intimidated or scared is to fight or run away.

There are definitely times when horses will challenge you and your authority but that’s not with the intent of being naughty – it is with the intent of testing if they can trust you. Are you strong enough and confident enough to lead them and keep them safe? If they decide you aren’t a good leader, they won’t feel safe doing as you ask and will react with the intent to protect themselves.

This is the one situation where being heavy handed can work. However, it’s not the best nor is it the most effective tool, especially if you’re already working with a bold, strong, confident horse. You need to be a really…. really… reaaaaally good rider to convince these horses with a heavy hand because their responses can escalate to big dangerous behaviours and it is hard to not get hurt in these situations until we get submission.

That is why we should teach discipline through consistency and following through with our ask, then rewarding for EFFORT, not necessarily the best most correct behaviour. We first condition how our horses mentally and emotionally process the ask before we get them understanding what the ask is. This may take a little longer in the outset, but sets us and our horses up to learn easily down the track.

When there is a clear pathway of consequence, our horses start looking for the right answer, interacting and engaging with us and enjoying the learning process.

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Is Negative Reinforcement Really So Negative?

Have you ever wondered if the training you are doing with your horse is considered positive or negative?

Have you ever heard someone strongly debate the fact that negative reinforcement used in training is a form of punishment and therefore cruel?

Negative reinforcement does offer some confusion, given the name implies it is already unpleasant. So let’s delve a little deeper into what it is, how it differs from positive reinforcement and punishment, and when you may be using it with your training.

What Is Negative Reinforcement

Negative reinforcement is a training tool that SUBTRACTS an stimulu, usually a level of discomfort, in response to a desired learned behaviour.

AHA! There it is, that word! Discomfort!

But let’s delve a little deeper into the that as well.

The adverse stimuli, or discomfort, doesn’t necessarily mean HARMFUL. Let’s think of a few human experiences where negative reinforcement comes into play:

• On a certain day of the week, you leave home earlier to avoid particularly bad traffic. Leaving home early is the learned behaviour, and bad traffic is the negative stimulus or discomfort.

• You partner or housemate rinses their dishes in the sink before loading the dishwasher, to stop you from complaining. Washing the dishes is the desired learned behaviour, your complaining is the negative stimulus.

• You grab a child’s arm (negative stimulus) to stop them from going near the kitchen near the stove, and release when they go the other way (desired behaviour). (Note, this may take many tries. Thank goodness I work with horses, as they are usually quicker at catching on!)

When we apply these examples to horse training, you get:

• Pull on the reins (negative stimuli) to make the horse stop (desired behaviour). When the horse stops, we stop pulling on the reins - thus, making it negative reinforcement.

• Applying pressure with the legs to make the horse go. When the horse moves, we stop applying that pressure.

See where I’m going with this?

The big issue is when people confuse negative reinforcement with punishment, and vice versa.

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What Is Punishment?

Punishment, on the other hand, is the infliction of discomfort in RETRIBUTION for an offence, which, in the case of training, is not complying with the desired behaviour. The level of discomfort is also usually excessive than required if negative reinforcement was used.

To take one of the human examples, punishment would be to continue to shout and nag at your partner/housemate regarding the dishes, even after they get up and do them. Or to continue to shout and nag at them because it’s not “good enough” even though they are trying their best. And then continue to hound and nag at them for more tasks to be done with no appreciation of the effort they’ve already given.

In the case of the use of punishment in horse training, I can see you now conjuring the trainers or riders using excessive force with whips and spurs, buying stronger bits and nose bands and generally bullying into submission. Perhaps even using whips around the head for a horse not behaving, or locking the horse up and not feeding them. Not only are these methods unethical, but you cannot teach a behaviour using them - in fact, you weaken the behaviour, or weaken the personality that will exhibit the behaviour.

And this isn’t what horse training should be about.

What About Positive Reinforcement?

This one tends to make us feel warm and fuzzy, simply because of the word positive. And to be honest, it is a critical tool in the trainers box that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Positive reinforcement is to use a REWARD for the application of a desired behaviour.

In people world, when someone thanks you (hopefully) for holding the elevator doors open, that is positive reinforcement. You are more likely to repeat the behaviour as you received a positive stimuli in response.

We use positive reinforcement with our horses when we:

• Give them a treat for standing still when catching them in the paddock

• Give them a pat and a kind word for trying or executing the requested exercise.

To use solely positive reinforcement with an animal that outweighs you 5 to 1 is unlikely to succeed quickly (or safely), but a combination of positive and negative reinforcement, with the exclusion of punishment, will provide a safe, stable and comfortable training experience for both horse and human. Therefore, the correct use of negative reinforcement can be classified as positive training.

One last thought…

The trick to using positive and negative reinforcement correctly is to not become emotionally engaged in your horses behaviour or results (i.e. frustrated and angry) this creates a situation where either you must win or the horse will win. We are creating a situation where we both win because what we want and what the horse wants are the same thing.

Be clear in your own mind about what you are trying to achieve with your horse, the purpose of the exercise, what the pressure will be applied for and what it will be released for.

Be ready to adjust your expectations to what your horse gives you willingly.

Timing and follow through. This is key to the success of negative and positive reinforcement. We have to time the release and reward for the behaviour we want and maintain the pressure for the behaviour we don’t want.

Comment below with your thoughts!