Have you ever looked at your trainer riding your horse and wondered ‘why can’t I do that’? Or wanted your horse to do something, such as load on to a trailer, only to have to get someone else to help you?

If so, the problem may be the fact that you are not training your own horse. Here are 8 reasons why you should:

Owning a horse means taking responsibility, not only for its maintenance such as providing food, water and shelter but also its welfare in more general terms. Looking at the Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, freedom from hunger and thirst and freedom to express normal behaviours and freedom from disease, are covered in how you choose to manage and care for your horse. However, the three Freedoms pertaining to freedom from discomfort, pain, injury, fear and distress are influenced by how we interact with the horse. How we train the horse can determine whether or not these basic welfare requirements are met.

Training that involves pain, discomfort, fear or distress is, sadly, not unusual. It is important to look critically at each new training method you encounter. The International Society for Equitation Science (ISES) has a set of Training Principles that enables you to assess any lesson or method. Click here to see the principles: https://equitationscience.com/equitation/principles-of-learning-theory-in-equitation.

Training is all about being able to raise and lower the emotional level of the horse. You need to know how to do this, not the trainer. How does your horse react when you raise the emotional level too high? Or, when the emotional level is too low? How can you tell when your horse is in the engagement zone?

When training goes wrong, when the horse gets anxious, tries to escape or simply nods off in the middle of the lesson, what has usually gone wrong is that the emotional level has been too high (anxiety) or too low (falling asleep). Training doesn’t require a big increase in emotional level (see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0174313) but it does require some to engage the horse with learning. It is only by training a particular horse that we learn just how that horse’s emotional level varies and where it is ideal for relaxed and engaged learning.

When you train your own horse, you are developing what I call a ‘bubble of communication’. This means you are constantly communicating with your horse with pressure-release and response-reward patterns.  Your horse is attentive and responsive to your signals. The engagement zone is like a bubble because a bubble is fragile and must be cared for to maintain and strengthen.

A horse in the bubble of the engagement zone is relaxed and listening, unlike the anxious or distressed horse. When you lose this relaxation, you know your horse is no longer in the engagement zone. Learning how to get your horse into the engagement zone, where the horse is a little more emotional that it would be if it were standing in the field but not so emotional as to be anxious, is the real art of training. By learning how to get your horse to such a receptive state and keep it in the engagement zone while working, you become your horse’s best possible trainer.

When you train a horse, according to the ISES Training Principles, you build a strong bond with the animal. Your training develops patterns of pressure-release and response-reward in the horse and teaches the horse to relax and look for answers when learning rather than seeking escape options – a response to confusion, distress or anxiety. When using evidence-based, ethical training methods, the more you teach your horse, the stronger this bond becomes. 

Your horse’s education rarely progresses on a perfectly linear upward trajectory. At times, especially as training becomes more complex and challenging for the horse, your horse may be so focused on the ‘new’ element that it appears to ‘forget’ a previously learned behaviour.

We are fond of saying ‘horses can only think of one thing at a time’ and if the new lesson is particularly demanding and an integral part of the response was not established as an automatic behaviour, you will need to go back and address this before continuing.

Let’s use the example of trailer loading to demonstrate this point. Your horse is relaxed and travelling in a soft frame under saddle, has good shoulder control and you are starting to establish independent hindquarter control. However, when you approach the trailer, your horse will not load. If we break this lesson down for the horse, we quickly discover that the horse is simply not responding to two cues, go forward and go backwards. If we trained our own horse, we will know how these two cues were established and thus know how to reinforce them now. In this example, fear or anxiety have crept into the training environment, possibly because of an experience the horse had in the past, but as we know how the horse learns and how to teach or reinforce desired behaviours, we are quickly back on track with a relaxed horse in the engagement zone.

Whenever I release a training video on flying changes or canter half-pass, I get so many people eager to give it a try. It is wonderful to see how keen riders are to progress with their training but sometimes we forget that these more advanced maneuvers must be based on strong foundations. To train both flying changes and canter half-pass, we need to have shoulder control down to a pivot on the hindquarter and independent hindquarter control and without these two elements our lesson is likely to end in confusion and anxiety for the horse. When training your own horse, you can be sure each step of the solid foundation has been laid before attempting to progress, thus easing and simplifying the process for our horse.

Another good example here is the movement of piaffe because it is often seen, in training demonstrations, as a movement at liberty and being reinforced with a form of positive reinforcement such as food or a secondary reinforcer such as a clicker. However, the movement was not taught with the simple use of food or a clicker in the beginning, these elements are used to shape the behaviour after the initial use of pressure-release elicits the first piaffe steps. Without knowing this, and if you did not originally train the movement yourself, you are unlikely to be able to improve or repair the movement, should things start to go awry.

With each new lesson you teach your horse, you are teaching a new pattern of behaviour – a cue that signals the horse to perform a particular behaviour to get a reward or a release (or, as is most often the case, both). Your pattern is going to be slightly different from mine, no matter how well I might try to explain my pattern to you. The position I am in, my timing, the amount of pressure I use, all of these things and more, will be different and, as far as your horse is concerned, signaling different behaviours.

 When someone else trains your horse and then you take the horse back, the horse has to learn your signals and cues as they will not be exactly the same as the other trainer’s. By training your own horse you skip this often confusing and frustrating step for the horse. It also means that, at the end of the day, you have a much better understanding of what you are asking the horse to do and how the horse is accomplishing the movement.

You know your horse better than anyone else and as you train your horse you learn more and more about each other. Most importantly, you learn how to recognize when your horse is happy and relaxed and when your horse begins to feel anxious or confused.

Horses are wonderful non-verbal communicators; we just need to watch a herd of horses together to realize this. Much of the ‘learning’ that goes on when we are training our horse is our learning – learning to recognize when the horse is happy, relaxed, too emotional or distracted.

I strongly encourage you to start training your own horse. People often tell me that they don’t feel they have the experience to train their own horse but it may be better to look at it as a blessing in disguise – an opportunity to learn together. Start with something simple, such as give to the bit or move your hips to the mounting block. You will find that when you break a lesson down into manageable chunks for your horse, just how easy and fun training can be and what a sense of confidence it will give both you and your horse.

The moment you begin training your own horse and taking responsibility for its behaviour and welfare as a result, is the moment you begin to build that bubble of communication. Once you know how to get your horse engaged with you and with learning things really start to progress. The first thing to change is your confidence and your horse’s confidence – you learn that you can change your horse’s behaviour and your horse learns that you are engaging and that lessons are fun.

To read this and other horse training, behaviour and management articles, visit Horses and People Magazine.

Important things to remember:

To optimise horse welfare and rider safety it is imperative that we always target relaxation when training, riding, and handling our horses. The horse’s level of relaxation is directly tied to its emotional level and that is often controlled by how predictable its environment is. Later in this article, we will discuss how you can make your training more predictable but first we should look at the difference between emotional level and relaxation.

It is important that we separate relaxation and emotional level so that we do not get the two confused. Emotional level plays a big part in how engaged your horse is with you and where its attention is focused.

“My horse is so relaxed, it’s asleep!” This horse might appear to be relaxed but it is not engaged and thus has a relatively low emotional level. What happens to this ‘relaxed horse’ when a dog rushes out of the bushes? It most likely wakes up, and potentially shies and runs off, as its emotional level instantly skyrockets.

Shying, the most frequently reported ridden behaviour problem in horses then, is a result of not engaging the horse and thus regulating its emotional level. In these podcasts I discuss how we need to slightly raise the horse’s emotional level in order to engage the horse with learning but that we must not raise it so high as the horse becomes at all anxious. This is training in the engagement zone and it is here that we target relaxation.

Being able to recognise relaxation in your horse is especially important and most easily done when comparing your horse’s behaviour and posture in different situations. The main indicator of relaxation is a lack of unnecessary tension in the muscles. Good examples of this are horses that are being very vigilant in the field, with a high, tense head and neck, a horse pulling on the bridle, vocalising (calling out) to its friends when alone. A relaxed horse in these same situations might be walking quietly across the field, travelling in a soft round frame in self-carriage or standing quietly in social isolation.

Any time we make the horse tense, we sacrifice relaxation. This might be something we do by mistake, for example, startle the horse by suddenly appearing around the corner or it could be something we habitually do such as an aid we apply or a piece of equipment we use.

The overtightened noseband is a good example of this relaxation sacrifice. Forcing the horse’s jaw closed creates tension in all facial muscles. If you do this yourself, simply close your teeth together and hold that position. Feel the tension that builds in your facial muscles and gradually down your neck and throughout your body. Now we have not even tied our mouths closed, never mind added a bit and rein tension to the equation. Clearly, trying to get your horse to relax while simultaneously creating tension makes little sense.

When training, the best thing you can do to help your horse relax is to come to the lesson prepared, knowing exactly what you are wanting to teach and breaking the lesson down into manageable chunks for your horse. Lesson planning when horse training, is as important as it is when teaching children in class. The teacher would never arrive in the classroom without having decided in advance what to teach and how to teach it (at least one would hope this would not happen.

It’s helpful to plan your horse training lessons in the same way. First, decide what you want to teach. Next, consider whether there are any prerequisites for that lesson, meaning is there anything the horse needs to know before you start the lesson. This is the most important step because if the horse does not have the education required to begin the lesson then it will end in confusion, in a higher state of emotion than it began and the horse will be completely unable to relax.

Once you have those points covered, you can break the lesson down into its four basic components. They will be the spot on the horse you want to move, the direction you want that spot to move (because all training involves movement), the motivator you plan to use to signal the horse to move that spot, and the reward the horse will receive (demonstrating that the answer, or movement the horse made, was correct).

We can use the example of give to the bit, starting with teaching this on the ground and on the left side of the horse, to demonstrate this breakdown:

1) The spot – the nose

2) The direction – laterally to the left

3) The motivator – light rein tension

4) The reward – release of rein tension, praise, and a scratch on the wither

By having the lesson planned in detail, it allows us as trainers to monitor the horse’s progress and makes it simple to see if the horse is responding correctly. Let’s think for a moment if we approached the same give to the bit lesson but without the breakdown of spot, direction, motivator and reward, and simply went out to teach the horse to travel in a soft round frame. With a very vague aim such as this, it makes conveying our message to the horse extremely difficult. The other problem that arises is that we are considerably more likely to become reactive riders, constantly correcting the horse.

As mentioned earlier, horses like their lives to be predictable and this is why they learn patterns so well. With proper use of combined reinforcement, pressure-release-reward, the horse’s environment becomes very predictable. From the horse’s perspective it looks like this: “I feel a pressure (which could be a tactile pressure but may equally be the pressure of proximity or being observed), I move in a certain direction, and the pressure is released and I am rewarded”. This is predictable. There is nothing here that will surprise the horse. You are being a proactive trainer and rider.

On the other hand, if you set out with a vague aim you are more likely to have to resort to correction (read punishment because they are the same – anything done in an attempt to make a behaviour less likely to occur in the future). The main problem with the use of punishment in horse training is that we know that horses do not learn as well from punishment as they do from reinforcement. It may be that this is because the use of punishment makes the horse’s environment unpredictable. The horse doesn’t know it has made a mistake, so the resulting correction comes as a surprise, shattering the horse’s nice learning pattern and any hope of relaxation. This rider is being reactive, allowing the horse to make a mistake and then correcting it.

Thus, to target relaxation, remain proactive, keep your horse’s attention and focus on the lesson, be sure to always break a lesson down into its basic components before commencing the exercise. If you would like to learn more about how to break any lesson down, visit the Kandoo Equine website and sign up for some free training: https://www.kandooequine.com/.

Race-2-Ride - Making a good transition

There has been much in the press over the last year about the welfare of horses leaving the racing industry, raising questions about the sustainability and ethicality of the current situation. In this article I am going to discuss how we can all help to protect the welfare of off-the-track horses by easing their transition from racing to sporting and leisure riding homes.

Having grown up surrounded by racing and racehorses, even taking one of my father's 'slow' Thoroughbreds to school with me as a young teenager, retraining off-the-track horses was always likely to be an interest of mine. However, it is not always straight forward, and we need to be mindful of certain aspects of off-the-track horses' past training to optimize the transition process.

What's great about them?

Both Thoroughbreds and Standardbreds retiring from racing will have been extensively handled and often habituated to working with other horses, crowds, and travelling on a truck or float. Of course, not all these experiences will have been positive ones for the horse, and we need to keep that in mind when re-training.

Ask any Thoroughbred or Standardbred owner what they think is the best thing about the breed and eight or more out of ten of them will tell you: their versatility. You will find both breeds in a wide range of disciplines from working on the farm, to dressage, show-jumping, hacking and trail riding, and I have even seen some having a go at reining! There is no doubt that these beautiful horses can turn their hoof to anything but their success and happiness in their new post-racing lives does depend on how we re-educate them.

7 important things to consider:

1)      Has the horse been started under saddle? This may seem obvious, and when we look at the Standardbred, the answer is clearly, no. This is good and gives us a place to start that horse. The Thoroughbred is rather different, and it is easy to expect too much from these horses' past training. Thoroughbreds are taught precisely what they need to know to race and often extraordinarily little else. Unfortunately, what they have been taught is rarely useful for their post-racing careers.

2)      Unlike the pleasure industry, the racing industry is profit-based and results-focused, which doesn't always allow sufficient time for training simple responses, such as 'head down' for bridling or to 'stand' for mounting. Both examples negate the need to train the response and while twisting the ear to get the bridle on achieves the desired result in that moment, it may also set the new owner up with a behavioural problem that requires addressing. Such problems arise whenever we, as owners or riders, have an agenda that is seen as more important than the horse's mental wellbeing.

3)      All off-the-track horses will have been desensitized to pressure cues, particularly bit pressure. Both Thoroughbred and Standardbreds learn to race with meaningless, often unrelenting rein tension, which again, is not a desirable response for the pleasure rider. Physical force, such as pushing horses into barriers or yanking on leads to stop movement, can have taken the place of sensitive, horse-centric training, the shortfalls of which will be evident when rehomed.

4)      Racing is a high adrenaline sport. Horses repeatedly practice the flight response - it is this very fear-based response that trainers and jockeys are provoking. We know that the flight response can be difficult to extinguish, as can any response learned using fear as a motivator, which is why, as new off-the-track owners, we need to be mindful of this during re-training.

5)      While there are exceptions to every rule, many, or probably most, racehorses will have little or no understanding of combined reinforcement. Often off-the-track horses simply haven't been taught how to learn (mostly as a result of the considerations outlined in points 2) and 3) above).

6)      Not all off-the-track horses move on to loving and caring pleasure homes. Due to their perceived zero value, these horses often pass through the hands of unscrupulous dealers, even being sold on with fictitious histories and breed details. Alternatively, they can find themselves changing homes often and being classified as 'project' horses, neither of which likely improve their welfare or training.

7)      Finally, off-the-track horses are often ridden and handled more by men than women during their racing careers. We don't yet know if this impacts behaviour but the Equine Behavior Assessment and Research Questionnaire (E-BARQ) is currently looking at this possibility. This study is examining whether horses ridden by men and boys differ in their behaviour in certain personality traits to those ridden by women and girls. This, as with all the E-BARQ research, promises to be remarkably interesting. If you haven't yet assessed your horse's behaviour using E-BARQ, then you can do so now by visiting this site: https://www.e-barq.org/

How we can help the horse:

1)      I would recommend taking your horse back to basics when it comes off the track and working through each of the foundation lessons, regardless of breed. Naturally, the Standardbreds, never having been under saddle, require this foundational work, but Thoroughbreds, while they have worn a saddle and carried a rider, it has been a very different experience to leisure or sports riding. By treating the horse as a blank canvas, you give it the benefit of calm, controlled, organized training and you are sure to create a safer and happier horse in the process.

2)      Time is something we, as ex-racehorse owners, often have more of than their previous trainers/owners, and couple that with a desire to spend as much of it as possible with our gorgeous off-the-track companions, it's a recipe for great things. Never underestimate the benefits of simply spending time with your horse, both to get to know him or her and to teach those little responses, such as tying up or bridling with your head down, that may seem trivial but can make the difference between an ordinary start to the day and a relaxed and happy start.

3)      As off-the-track horses have been desensitized to pressure cues, particularly bridle responses, it is necessary to be mindful of this and begin to engage the horse with learning. Consider the simplest of cues, such as leading your horse. Always remember the sequence of pressure-release-reward and be sure not to be holding pressure if the horse is responding correctly. This will help re-sensitize the horse to pressure cues, meaning you will need less pressure to elicit the same response over time, as the horse feels the release when he or she responds with the correct movement. Give to the bit is an excellent place to start.

4)      It is important to only practice those responses that you want your horse to repeat, so be careful not to encourage the flight response by chasing the horse in the round pen or on a lunge line. Because this response was reinforced during the horse's racing career, we now need to establish alternative, safer responses for the horse. This is a great time to get to know your horse and really understand his or her emotional level - learning to recognize those signs of changes in the emotional level and begin to engage your horse with learning.

5)      Learning how to learn is probably the biggest and most important obstacle to a successful post-racing career. By taking the time to engage your horse with learning and teach him or her about combined reinforcement you breathe life into the horse and into your relationship with them. This is my favourite part of re-training off-the-track horses, watching them engage with learning and realizing how clever they are!

6)      Off-the-track horses are not for everyone, despite being an inexpensive route to horse ownership. They require an experienced, calm, and knowledgeable owner that is prepared to spend the time re-training the horse. If you're that person - fabulous, because what a treat they are!

Where do I start?

1)      If you get a horse straight from the racetrack, remember it will be full of high-quality feed and will need some time to 'come down' and get that out of their system. Do this slowly and carefully so that not everything changes at once for the horse.

2)      Your new off-the-track horse may not be well socialized. This will depend on its history, but it is not uncommon for these horses never to have been kept in groups. Introduce your horse carefully, to one new herd member at a time and always allowing them to 'meet' over a safe fence.

3)      Some horses will have been stabled most of their lives and can panic if released into a large field. Again, break this down for the horse, ensuring your enclosures are safe and secure.

Securing their future:

Even when an off-the-track horse is fortunate enough to be placed with a reputable re-trainer and then rehomed, that training is unlikely to persist if the new owner does not understand how the horse learned the responses or have any training support in the future. Horses quickly revert to old behaviours when riders are inconsistent with cues and rewards.

It is for this reason that Kandoo Equine now offers OTT Training Passports. Here, new owners can access ethical, sustainable training, tailor-made for the off-the-track horse, together with a supportive community to help them through the journey. Training Passports belong to the horse and, in the event the horse changes home, the new owner then benefits from access to the training and community. To find out more about OTT Training Passports, visit: https://www.kandooequine.com/race2ride

Combined Reinforcement

We often hear riders say that they 'only use positive reinforcement' or that they do not use negative reinforcement, but it is also not at all unusual for the same person to state that pressure-release is the most effective way to train. So, what is the difference between pressure-release and positive and negative reinforcement and why is it important to know which reinforcement schedule we are using when training our horses?

The simple answer is that pressure-release is negative reinforcement and it is almost impossible to use negative reinforcement alone, or indeed positive reinforcement alone, when training a horse. We almost always use a mixture of both positive and negative reinforcement when training and we call this combined reinforcement.

The other method of modifying behaviour is via punishment and again this comes in both positive and negative forms. Punishment is the same as correction but, as when we use pressure-release rather than negative reinforcement, the term correction seems more appealing to us than punishment. However, it is important that we realise they are the same thing, simply because we know that horses learn better when reinforcement is used than they do when punishment is used.

The simple way to tell the difference between reinforcement and punishment is to observe what the rider or trainer is attempting to do in a particular situation. If the trainer is trying to make a behaviour more likely to occur in the future, then they will be using reinforcement (negative or positive reinforcement). If, on the other hand, the trainer is hoping to prevent the behaviour from happening in the future or make it less likely to occur at another time, they will be using punishment (again, either positive or negative punishment).

The same cue or signal can be applied as reinforcement or punishment, it is not, as is often assumed, to do with the severity of the pressure, rather the intention of the trainer.

Let's look at the example of tapping the horse lightly on the cannon bone as a signal. We could use this signal to teach the horse to back up from the ground by gently tapping the horse on the cannon bone and stopping tapping as soon as the horse took a step back - negative reinforcement/pressure-release. If we wanted to teach the horse to stand still and it took a step forward, we could also correct/punish the horse for stepping forward by tapping it on the cannon bone, thus making that behaviour less likely to occur in the future - positive punishment.

Negative reinforcement gets a bad rap because of the word negative but it simply means 'taking something away' and in most cases this means releasing the pressure (be it rein or lead rope tension, leg or seat pressure or even the pressure of our voice/verbal cue), thus the term pressure-release. Positive reinforcement simply means adding something and while positive reinforcement is often thought of as referring to the addition of a food treat, it applies equally to adding a scratch on the wither, stroke on the neck, a kind word or an opportunity to rest.

The same holds for punishment types. Positive punishment refers to adding something that the horse does not want. That might be a tap with the whip, a cross or loud voice or a kick with the leg. Where negative punishment means taking something, that the horse does want, away. This, while not seen as commonly as positive punishment, is evident with horses that are removed from their social group, deprived of food or water. A clear example of negative punishment is when a horse is put in social isolation, such as when a horse is tied to the 'tree of knowledge'.

Both types of punishment/correction are best avoided as horses are not known for their ability to contemplate their wrong-doings and thus alter their future behaviour. Rather, horses are masters at remembering what works well, what movements result in a release of pressure or a scratch or treat of some kind. In other words, horses are excellent learners when we make good use of combined reinforcement.

"I only use positive reinforcement"

If you halter your horse and certainly if you ride your horse, then it is almost impossible for you to only use positive reinforcement with your horse. The moment you pick up an ounce of pressure or even take the slack out of the lead rope or apply your leg under saddle, you are using pressure-release/negative reinforcement.

But why is this important to understand? The main reason riders/owners and trainers need to understand which reinforcement schedule they are using is that if you are not aware that you are using pressure-release then you will not have a timely release, often leading to confusion and frustration in the horse. If you approach every lesson understanding precisely the movement you are asking for, the pressure you are applying to get that movement and knowing when you are going to release that pressure and how you are going to reward the horse, then your lesson is likely to be clear and simple for the horse.

Trailer loading as an example of a combined reinforcement lesson:

Aim: Teach the horse to step on to the trailer

Pressure: Tap of the whip on the hip

Movement: Horse steps forward

Release: Step tapping when the horse steps forward

Reward: Stroke the neck and allow the horse to rest

This pressure-release-reward system can be applied to any lesson you want to teach your horse. By breaking lessons down into their most basic components, it not only makes it simpler for us as trainers, but it makes it much easier for the horse.

I try to break each lesson down to moving one part of the horse in one direction, using one form of pressure, releasing immediately I get the desired movement and adding a reward immediately after the release of pressure. This can be done from the simplest lessons, such as trailer loading, to ever more complicated lessons, such as flying changes.

If you, as a rider or trainer, are well enough acquainted with the lesson you are teaching to be able to break it down in this way then it is likely that you will be able to teach that lesson with minimal stress for the horse. It is only by recognising that you are using negative reinforcement, pressure-release, that you can be accurate with your signals and release. While the release of pressure (negative reinforcement) is a 'reward' for the horse, you can always add more reward (positive reinforcement) for the horse, possibly in the form of a scratch on the wither, immediately following the desired behaviour.

Those trainers and riders that are cognizant of the type of reinforcement schedule they are using are also considerably less likely to resort to correction (punishment) in their training. If you find yourself frequently correcting your horse or trying to discourage behaviours from occurring in the future, then you are being a very reactive trainer/rider. Here, the horse does something, for example steps forward when cued to stand, and we respond by stepping the horse back. Our focus is on what the horse is doing wrong and we react to that behaviour.

I find it helpful to turn the situation around and become a proactive rider/trainer by focusing on what the horse is not doing. In this example the horse is not maintaining self-carriage in the stand still or halt. I can then develop a lesson to teach the horse to stand, using combined reinforcement which will be simple and clear for the horse and not require the horse to use deductive reasoning ("what did I do wrong so that I was made to step back?").

As I can't force the horse to stand still, I can only correct/punish the horse for not standing, how might I go about training self-carriage in halt? I find the simplest way is to 'offer the horse the opportunity to stand', reward it for doing so, and cue the horse forward again before the horse decides to move off on its own. We know we can make the horse move. We also know that we cannot stop the horse from moving. Always begin with a lesson that you know you can achieve - movement of some kind and then offer the horse the opportunity to stand and relax, adding positive reinforcement when the horse is standing.

Proactive training is all about directing the movement and staying a few steps ahead of the horse, mentally. The horse can move each body part in six directions; up, down, left, right, back and forward, and we will only want one direction. Understanding this and knowing how you are asking the horse to move will give you a clear place at which to release pressure and reward the horse. While the release of pressure is a good thing for the horse, it is not actually the reward, simply a part of the negative reinforcement schedule. By being aware that we are using combined reinforcement, riders/trainers are considerably more likely to engage the horse with learning and reduce stress, frustration and confusion in the horse.

Our horses are learning with each and every interaction we have with them, and as we all know, they are not always learning lessons we wished to teach. To make yourself more mindful of your training and how your horse is experiencing your interactions, try being very aware of your own pressure-release-rewards patterns next time you are with your horse. When you put the head collar on your horse and lead it to the stable, be aware of when you put pressure on the lead, when you plan to release it and how you will reward your horse for stepping forward. It is through this type of mindfulness with our everyday activities that we begin to build confidence in our horses. A confident horse is one that, when it experiences a new pressure, perhaps a rein or leg cue, that it understands that it must find the correct movement to earn a release and reward. These horses willingly trial different responses and quickly develop self-carriage in all areas of their work and handling.

 Self-Carriage

What do you picture when you think about 'self-carriage'? Many of us picture a horse, perhaps in a dressage arena, travelling in a certain outline and maintaining gait and direction. But in this article I'm going to discuss why self-carriage has a much wider definition than this and how important it is to all riders and horse handlers, regardless of their level of experience or discipline they choose to enjoy.

While our first thought of self-carriage may invoke mental images of dressage horses, sadly, modern dressage is often a display of just the opposite. The term self-carriage literally means the horse is maintaining itself without needing support from the rider, whereas with modern dressage, most horses are subjected to unrelenting pressure on the bit and often the same from the riders' legs. This unrelenting pressure is in direct violation of the International Society for Equitation Science's (ISES) Training Principle #6: The correct use of operant conditioning, which explains that pressure must be released at the onset of the correct response.

Self-carriage is the focus of the tenth ISES Training Principle: 10. Regard for Self-carriage

"Lack of self-carriage can promote hyper-reactive responses and compromise welfare"

This definition is excellent for the ridden horse, of any discipline, but I think we can take the self-carriage concept further than this to improve our training and handling of horses in all aspects of the horse-human relationship.

Self-carriage simply means maintaining precisely what the horse has been cued to do until you signal the horse to do something else. Using a ridden example of riding a 20m circle at canter, the horse should maintain the canter, at the same speed, length of stride, in the same direction, with unchanging head and neck carriage and consistent body posture - all without the rider having to 'hold' or 'force' any of these elements. Thus, if you have to consistently correct your horse to keep it on the circle, keep your inside leg on to maintain direction or both legs to maintain speed, if you need that 'good contact' to hold your horse's head and neck in position or to elevate its shoulders, then you are not in self-carriage.

Now, this can seem a bit depressing because how many of us have a horse that will maintain a 20m canter circle with all of the above without the need for some intervention? Very few, I would estimate. But remember, this is what we are aiming for, and, with the correct training, exactly what we can achieve.

By understanding the concept of self-carriage, it allows us to train with this as our aim and, along the way, we get a huge array of benefits:

1.       We have to be clear in our mind about exactly what we want the horse to do and what we will use as motivation to encourage the horse to do that

2.       Once we have decided on #1, we need to know exactly when we are going to release the pressure and reward the horse

3.       Knowing this means we become very aware of when we have pressure and when we do not

4.       It follows then that our use of combined reinforcement improves as we use the pressure-release-reward sequences repeatedly

5.       In turn, the horse is able to relax as we are setting up easy-to-follow patterns of pressure-release-reward

6.       The horse gains confidence, learns the sequence and begins to anticipate the predictable pattern

7.       The horse is now in self-carriage, responding before pressure needs to be applied and continues until signalled to change something (such as speed or direction)

If we think about some of the common expressions we hear such as 'inside-leg-to-outside-rein'or 'a good contact', it begs the question of how these can coexist with self-carriage. Of course, they cannot coexist, and this is a good reminder that we should always be training with the aim of reducing the pressure required to achieve the response. This is done by providing the horse with consistent pressure-release-reward sequences, always beginning with the lightest possible pressure cue.

The lightest pressure cue is often a verbal cue. While we don't always think of our voice as a pressure cue, it is exactly that and, when used before a tactile signal, allows the horse the opportunity to respond before the heavier cue is applied.

Earlier I mentioned that self-carriage deserves a wider definition and application that is currently common. I think it's important that we apply the principle of self-carriage, continuing to do what has been asked until signalled to do something else, to everything we do with the horse and that we start doing so as early as possible in the horse's training.

By having self-carriage as our aim in all interactions with our horse it teaches the horse to be responsible for himself or herself in terms of their position and movement at all times. Self-carriage is as relevant to trailer loading as it is to picking up feet, leading or riding that 20m circle. We always want the horse to do what we've asked until we ask it to do something else.

When all training and handling is viewed in this way, it helps us become aware of the signals and pressure cues we are giving the horse and thus also be more aware of providing a timely release. We've all ridden a horse that needs verbal encouragement, or even kicking, every stride to stay in trot, or a horse that lags behind on the lead and seem to need dragging along. But what if we could teach the horse self-carriage in these instances? Couldn't we apply the self-carriage principles to picking up feet, standing at the mounting block or standing at the tie-rail? I think that it is not only possible that we could but also that we should for the benefit of the horse.

So, what does that look like? A horse that is in self-carriage at the mounting block will stand until it is asked to move off. A horse in self-carriage when with the farrier will hold up each foot until the farrier returns the foot to the floor. Self-carriage for trailer loading will be the horse that loads on to the trailer and waits quietly until it is signalled to back off.

By incorporating self-carriage into all of our training, from foundation training on the ground to advanced work under saddle, we can greatly improve our relationship with our horse. This is because teaching self-carriage requires us to be mindful of when and how we use combined reinforcement and makes us less likely to subject our horses to nagging or unrelenting pressure at any time.

With this in mind, how then do we go about incorporating self-carriage into our everyday handling and training? The simple answer is to always have a 'start' and 'end' cue for any behaviour. Let's look at an example: with trailer loading, we teach getting on (just one foot at a time) and getting off at the same time. By doing this, the horse learns to wait for the signal to get off and learns not to back out before getting that signal. The same is true for cleaning your horse's feet: you have a signal, running your hand down the leg, to lift the foot, and when you have finished you place the foot back on the ground and reward your horse. If you simply drop the foot this will be unpredictable for the horse (not to mention possibly jarring for his/her toe on the ground) and not a clear predictable signal that that the movement is complete.

Think about this next time you are teaching your horse something, be it shoulder-in or to pick up its feet - you want a cue to go into the movement and a cue to come out of the movement. Horses learn very well from predictable patterns and we all know they really don't like surprises!  This will make your horse's life predictable and give your horse confidence.

When you begin to integrate small changes to your training and handling routines, such as focusing on self-carriage, it's great to be able to measure your progress and see how it is helping your horse. You can do this by completing an Equine Behaviour Assessment and Research Questionnaire (E-BARQ) on your horse every six months. This will tell you how his or her trainability and rideability are improving and also how your horse's confidence and compliance are improving. Your attention to self-carriage should improve each of these E-BARQ elements. Go to https://www.e-barq.com/

To find out more about training your own horse using safe, evidence-based methods, visit: https://www.kandooequine.com/

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