This is a topic that I have recently been thinking long and hard about, and have come up with a theory I would like others to comment on. It's probably not new but I have developed it using a combination of the teachings of Mark Rashid and Karen Rohlf.
Mark talks about horse's main task in life is to feel more comfortable. They don't care how they get to feel more comfortable, just that they do. For example if they are thirsty they go to water and get comfort. If they are scared they do whatever it takes, runaway, buck (right brain extrovert) or go inside themselves and pretend the threat does not exist (right brain introvert) to make themselves feel better. In this context it does not matter if they feel as well as it is possible for them to feel just that they feel a bit better than right now. When you think about this it is easy behaviour to recognise, and we probably have a similar response ourselves. The difference with humans is that we have the ability to project a long way forward in time, which horses don't. They live in the moment. Thus we can experience discomfort for a long period to get to real comfort in the future whereas horses just want to feel better now. As I write this I am sat in a cosy cottage in the mountains of Snowdownia. Ritchie and I have just come off the mountains in pouring rain. We did pass some shelter stones that would have got us out of the rain, but we could project forwards to the cottage and so ignored the small increase in comfort of the stones in favour of a warm dry cottage and glass of wine. I suspect that a horse's mentality would have lead them to just take shelter under the stones and feel a little more comfortable.
Karen Rohlf has this idea that we need to coach our horses through discomfort to find greater comfort elsewhere. In this example it would mean saying to the horse "let's ignore the shelter stone and continue to the barn an hour away where you can spend the whole night in comfort with some hay". As we pass the shelter stone the horse will experience increased emotional discomfort as they wonder why we are not taking such obvious and immediate shelter. Karen actually does not use this example, I doubt she mountain climbs in the rain ! She uses the example of trying to get your horse to go in a straight line. Many horses have learnt to walk crooked, and for them that is comfortable. They would be more comfortable in the long term, however, if they learnt to walk straight. In the short term this is not going to be comfortable as it is not familiar and the muscles have probably developed to walk crooked. Thus as trainers we need to coach them through this discomfort because we can project forward and know that in the long term we are taking them to a place of greater comfort. The same can be said about training the horse to be collected. We have the knowledge that,once learnt, the horse will find it more comfortable to carry the weight of a rider when collected with more of their weight on the hind quarters. The horse doesn't know this, and will only experience the fact that in the training phase what we are asking them to do is less comfortable then the way they are familiar with going. Thus given Marks idea that all a horse seeks is to be relatively more comfortable than now it is easy to see why they will resist such training.
To make use of this idea we need two things. First we need a very clear picture of what the finished, more comfortable, product should look like and second we need strength of purpose and resolve to follow through with the training with the clear idea that we are "doing this for and with the horse, not too the horse". In James Roberts eyes one of the great crimes was to ever do anything to the horse, it must be done with and for the horse. Thus if we do not have a pretty clear idea as to what the finished product is going to be we should not put the horse through the discomfort of taking them there.
I have an example from my own current training with Filly. She is my 4 year old thoroughbred mare and is called "Filly". The problem is the application of porcupine (which is Parelli speak for steady pressure) to any part of her body to ask her to move it away from the pressure. Thus if I want to move the hindquarters away I apply steady pressure, increasing in force, to her flank area. I know that this is not physically a problem for her as she likes much firmer scratches there than I ever use in porcupine. She will escape this pressure and move those hindquarters away but it is done with a really negative emotion, tail swishing, cow kicking the lot. It is the emotional pressure of being asked to move which is the issue, not the physical. So emotionally having the porcupine applied creates a lot of discomfort in her mind, and she reduces this discomfort by a) escaping the pressure with a big move and b) acting so as to discourage any attempts to porcupine her again. She thus falls back into the little comfort zone where there is no porcupine pressure being applied. However she still has the fear of porcupine and discomfort being applied again in the future. I have knowledge of the finished product from other horses however. In the finished product the horses yield gently from this pressure with no mental discomfort at all and are thus not continuously stressed by the fact that this discomfort may happen in the future. The cumulative stress on this "finished product" horse is much less than on Filly as they can accept the necessary requests to yield that humans make of them on a day to day basis without the emotional discomfort she endures . But the only way I can show Filly that a better place exists is to apply porcupine pressure to her until she accepts it as just another part of her life, nothing to be defensive or upset about, just something that happens from time to time. But during the application of the pressure she is going to react with discomfort for a while until it has happened for long enough that she starts to understand that it's ok to move without emotion. Of course should the pressure be removed at an inopportune moment then she is going to get back to her old comfortable place and the idea that acting against the pressure works is going to be reinforced. This is going to make the training task harder as the hill of discomfort is going to become bigger and bigger each time it is reinforced with a release.
Having studied engineering at university I find it pretty easy to think in terms of graphs and diagrams. Believe it or not a graph from differential calculus sprung to mind as a good, if not perfect, representation of this idea, and I add it at the bottom of this page for nerds like me.
I'd be interested to hear folks views on this idea, whether it is totally nuts or just needs modifying or expanding.
Mark talks about horse's main task in life is to feel more comfortable. They don't care how they get to feel more comfortable, just that they do. For example if they are thirsty they go to water and get comfort. If they are scared they do whatever it takes, runaway, buck (right brain extrovert) or go inside themselves and pretend the threat does not exist (right brain introvert) to make themselves feel better. In this context it does not matter if they feel as well as it is possible for them to feel just that they feel a bit better than right now. When you think about this it is easy behaviour to recognise, and we probably have a similar response ourselves. The difference with humans is that we have the ability to project a long way forward in time, which horses don't. They live in the moment. Thus we can experience discomfort for a long period to get to real comfort in the future whereas horses just want to feel better now. As I write this I am sat in a cosy cottage in the mountains of Snowdownia. Ritchie and I have just come off the mountains in pouring rain. We did pass some shelter stones that would have got us out of the rain, but we could project forwards to the cottage and so ignored the small increase in comfort of the stones in favour of a warm dry cottage and glass of wine. I suspect that a horse's mentality would have lead them to just take shelter under the stones and feel a little more comfortable.
Karen Rohlf has this idea that we need to coach our horses through discomfort to find greater comfort elsewhere. In this example it would mean saying to the horse "let's ignore the shelter stone and continue to the barn an hour away where you can spend the whole night in comfort with some hay". As we pass the shelter stone the horse will experience increased emotional discomfort as they wonder why we are not taking such obvious and immediate shelter. Karen actually does not use this example, I doubt she mountain climbs in the rain ! She uses the example of trying to get your horse to go in a straight line. Many horses have learnt to walk crooked, and for them that is comfortable. They would be more comfortable in the long term, however, if they learnt to walk straight. In the short term this is not going to be comfortable as it is not familiar and the muscles have probably developed to walk crooked. Thus as trainers we need to coach them through this discomfort because we can project forward and know that in the long term we are taking them to a place of greater comfort. The same can be said about training the horse to be collected. We have the knowledge that,once learnt, the horse will find it more comfortable to carry the weight of a rider when collected with more of their weight on the hind quarters. The horse doesn't know this, and will only experience the fact that in the training phase what we are asking them to do is less comfortable then the way they are familiar with going. Thus given Marks idea that all a horse seeks is to be relatively more comfortable than now it is easy to see why they will resist such training.
To make use of this idea we need two things. First we need a very clear picture of what the finished, more comfortable, product should look like and second we need strength of purpose and resolve to follow through with the training with the clear idea that we are "doing this for and with the horse, not too the horse". In James Roberts eyes one of the great crimes was to ever do anything to the horse, it must be done with and for the horse. Thus if we do not have a pretty clear idea as to what the finished product is going to be we should not put the horse through the discomfort of taking them there.
I have an example from my own current training with Filly. She is my 4 year old thoroughbred mare and is called "Filly". The problem is the application of porcupine (which is Parelli speak for steady pressure) to any part of her body to ask her to move it away from the pressure. Thus if I want to move the hindquarters away I apply steady pressure, increasing in force, to her flank area. I know that this is not physically a problem for her as she likes much firmer scratches there than I ever use in porcupine. She will escape this pressure and move those hindquarters away but it is done with a really negative emotion, tail swishing, cow kicking the lot. It is the emotional pressure of being asked to move which is the issue, not the physical. So emotionally having the porcupine applied creates a lot of discomfort in her mind, and she reduces this discomfort by a) escaping the pressure with a big move and b) acting so as to discourage any attempts to porcupine her again. She thus falls back into the little comfort zone where there is no porcupine pressure being applied. However she still has the fear of porcupine and discomfort being applied again in the future. I have knowledge of the finished product from other horses however. In the finished product the horses yield gently from this pressure with no mental discomfort at all and are thus not continuously stressed by the fact that this discomfort may happen in the future. The cumulative stress on this "finished product" horse is much less than on Filly as they can accept the necessary requests to yield that humans make of them on a day to day basis without the emotional discomfort she endures . But the only way I can show Filly that a better place exists is to apply porcupine pressure to her until she accepts it as just another part of her life, nothing to be defensive or upset about, just something that happens from time to time. But during the application of the pressure she is going to react with discomfort for a while until it has happened for long enough that she starts to understand that it's ok to move without emotion. Of course should the pressure be removed at an inopportune moment then she is going to get back to her old comfortable place and the idea that acting against the pressure works is going to be reinforced. This is going to make the training task harder as the hill of discomfort is going to become bigger and bigger each time it is reinforced with a release.
Having studied engineering at university I find it pretty easy to think in terms of graphs and diagrams. Believe it or not a graph from differential calculus sprung to mind as a good, if not perfect, representation of this idea, and I add it at the bottom of this page for nerds like me.
I'd be interested to hear folks views on this idea, whether it is totally nuts or just needs modifying or expanding.
No comments:
Post a Comment