Articles The Principles of Training One of the outcomes of Andrew McLean's PhD thesis was the proposition of eight training principles. These were presented for the first time at the satellite meeting of the 2003 congress of the International Society of Applied Ethology held in Abano-terme, Italy. The Pressure Principle: The removal of physical pressure or

discomfort reinforces (rewards) whatever behaviour precedes the moment of removal (i.e. leg(s) rein(s), spurs, whip-tap, headcollar).

Pavlov's Principle: Relaxation and attentiveness can only occur if the horse responds to predictable signals that do not invade the pain threshold. Thus, training the horse to respond unconditionally to light aids in hand and under saddle is essential.

The Exclusivity Principle: Each response should be trained and elicited separately (do not pull on the reins (stop) and kick with the legs (go) at the same time).

The Shaping Principle: Responses should be progressively improved, step-by-step, learned response by learned response, toward the final outcome.

The Proportional Principle: Increasing pressures of aids should correspond with increasing levels of response i.e. a small leg aid should result in a smaller go reaction, while a bigger aid should produce a stronger go response.

The Self Carriage Principle: The horse must travel in-hand and under saddle free of any constant rein or leg pressure, otherwise he will switch off to them

The Fear Principle: Fear is quickly learned, not easily forgotten and is strongly associated with the movement of the horse's legs. It is important to learn to identify the range of fear responses in horses and to diminish them to avoid the horse experiencing them.

The Mentality Principle: Appreciating the similarities and differences in mental ability between horses and humans is crucial to effective and humane training.

Pressure Principle The removal of physical pressure or discomfort reinforces (rewards) whatever behaviour precedes the moment of removal (i.e. leg(s) rein(s), spurs, whip-tap, headcollar). The pressure principle is the most fundamental principle in the training of performance horses. The bit in the horse's mouth and our legs around the sides of the horse deliver various pressures to the horse's body. Our aim is to shrink those pressures into invisible light aids as efficiently as we can. Pressures are learned by negative reinforcement (pressure removal), and then when converted to lighter aids can be maintained by positive reinforcement (adding something rewarding like a wither caress). When you think of pressure/release, think of Tom Robert's words where he would pose the question "When you sit on a pin, why do you get off?" Most would answer "Because it hurts" but Tom would correct them and say "No, you get off because it STOPS hurting". That provides a powerfully clear message about how the reins and legs work to produce responses in the horse. Train pressures thoroughly One of the most important points to make here is that we must train using pressure/release thoroughly, rather than rely too early on fragile associations. A good example is training the horse to lead correctly. Horses are more than capable of learning to avoid any signals from the head collar by simply learning to copy your footsteps. When you move the horse moves, when you stop it stops. Simple. Except when you decide to lead it somewhere it doesn't want to go, like over a creek or into the float. Now of course, the lead pressures don’t work as he has learned to follow your feet. Any increase in lead pressure is no likely to make him try a hyper-reactive response. So the horse learns that the pressure disappears when he rears up or goes sideways. That's how most ‘bad' behaviours are learned. He rears - the pressure on the rein and leg disappears; he bucks - the whole problem (the rider) disappears; he shies - the rider loses balance and control. The truth is whatever behaviour immediately precedes the removal of pressure, the horse learns that it caused it. The more flight response involved, the faster he learns it. The more signal/response unreliability, the greater the insecurity and the more likely flight response behaviours are to occur. Thus we need to place boundaries around the horse's behaviour, and this is through the use of the reins and legs. The use of bits in horses mouths is ancient. The Institute for Ancient equestrian studies reveals that progress with deceleration control came early: there is indirect evidence of bit wear on horses' teeth found in the Ukraine from 4000 BC; that antler cheek-pieces were used as anchors for rope and that hide or sinew mouthpieces have been recovered at sites on the Black Sea. It is believed that metal bits originated around 1500 BC. Establish pressure/release first There are a number of reasons for the priority of establishing pressure/release behaviours first. Perhaps the most important is that correct pressure/release provides solid boundaries for behaviour. This is essential for a ridden animal that can gallop at 70 km/hr, weighs around 500 kgs can kick at the force of 1.8 times its own bodyweight. It is small wonder

that in the Western world, the annual death rate is one death per million head of population and a serious injury rate of one serious injury per 350 hours of contact. The bottom line is you have to get the horse under control. With correctly trained rein responses you have a greater chance of stopping a bolting horse more than any other way. With correctly trained leg or leading responses, you have the greatest chance of making it go across that creek or into that float when it just won't budge. Secondly the correct use of pressure/release is efficient. It rapidly induces the behaviour that we target as our response. For example we want the horse to step sideways from the tapping of the whip on his hindleg. We increase the speed of the tapping until he moves. If he moves toward the whip rather than away from it we can increase further the speed of the tapping. We can pay ‘colder-warmer: you got it!' with pressure/release and achieve results rapidly, thereby lowering the number of incorrect repetitions. Another advantage of pressure/release versus mere associations is that operant learning (trial and error, negative and positive reinforcement) is more stable than unrelated associative cues. Everyone who lunges horses will be aware of the fact that horses rapidly learn to go forward and to slow on voice commands. Yet you still need to have that lungeing whip nearby because every now and then, the voice command fails. The less similar a cue is to the pressure/release effector, the more easily it is forgotten. So the visual picture of a lunge whip tucked under your arm is more effective than voice, but it too is less effective than the whip itself. Finally, when pressure release is correctly trained, it begins to achieve a reliable pattern of response in about 5 repetitions. That is mighty fast by any measure of learning. Successful trainers of young horses will know exactly what I mean here. When a horse first learns to stop from rein pressure, it takes only about 5 repetitions and the pressure used from then on is almost always light. The difficult part is actually getting the pressures right. There are no established national institutions that teach us how to use pressure/release correctly. It is one of those things that is thought of as an art, a gift so most people blunder along not knowing how to use pressures correctly so they avoid situations where they might need to. The horse soon learns to dictate his own pressures. The horse teaches the rider not to use his reins, leg or whip. ‘Hot' horses are adept at making the rider keep the legs off. Horses are great trainers! Not all horses are the same Horses vary tremendously in their responses to pressure. This is related to their sensitivity, and just how aversive they find the particular pressure. Some horses need very little increase in pressure, and tend to offer the correct response almost at the first experience. Others need more pressure before they are tempted to respond, and others respond but offer all the wrong responses as they mentally trawl through all their entire possibilities before coming up with the right one. Horses that take a while to offer the correct responses or to offer any response at all are often referred to as being stupid. Yet when you use food as a reward as I have done with some of my experiments on mental abilities in horses, the ones that seem stupid with pressure are frequently very clever when it comes to learning that involves food rewards. This shows that what we are really testing when we

use pressures is not intelligence but motivation. Horse’s reactions also vary according to their affective (emotional) and arousal (wakefulness/awareness) states. It is also likely that the bond between horse and human also has a profound impact on learning efficiency. The bond is to a large part developed from ‘attachment’ – in other words the rapport that results from touch. Speed of release Horses have enormous difficulty in learning something when the reward is too many seconds away from the behaviour. In fact, optimal learning occurs when reinforcement or reward adjoins the correct behaviour. You have to be quick. This is also one of the reasons why giving the horse one good whack is unenlightened. Chances are, this sudden and dramatic pressure that amounts to punishment will result an explosion of the wrong response, rewarded by removal of the whip. Now you have really trained the wrong thing. Some years ago, researchers Haag, Rudman and Houpt demonstrated that punishing horses lowers their ability to offer a new behaviour in solving a problem. Similarly Professor Daniel Mills, an eminent ethologist, pointed out that punishment in training is problematic because it tells the animal what not to do, but not what to do. He showed that punishment has the potential to desensitise an animal to the punishing stimulus if the punishment intensity is not correct. Mills also pointed out the risks of deleterious emotional changes that can interfere with attention and learning, and the fact that punishment may be associated by the animal with the person delivering it. He concludes that punishment is a dangerous minefield of problems that amount to abuse, and are best avoided. Motivating pressure Careful use of pressure-release however is an entirely different thing. If you think of pressure on an arbitrary scale of 0 to 10, you will better understand the correct use of negative reinforcement. Level 0 is no contact, i.e. a loopy rein, or legs away. Level 1 is contact (neutral). The horse has to habituate to this ‘neutral' level of pressure. Level 2, 3 & 4 are the various doses of the light aids that eventually elicit all responses. Levels 5 to 10 are the increases in pressure and these are intolerable for extended periods. In training and re-training, the way pressure should be used for all responses, both rein and leg, is that it should reasonably quickly escalate from the light aid through to the stronger pressures then release the instant the horse gives the correct response. The release needs to be abundantly clear to the horse, however after a number of successful repetitions the release doesn't need to be a loss of contact, simply reverting to the contact level (1) is sufficient. When you discover which particular level of pressure results in the correct response, you increase to that level each time and SKIP the pressures that don't work until the horse offers the same quality of response from the light aid. So it is critical to always begin with the light aid. This is called the ‘motivating pressure'. So your level of pressure might go 1, 2, 6, 0, 1. This translates as Contact/light aid/motivating pressure/release/contact. Timing For effective habit formation, the training of transitions (therefore the use of pressure-release) should be within an identical time-frame. Without such a time-frame, transitions take far longer to acquire. Therefore optimal

training also means that the pressures should be synchronous with the rhythm of the footfalls of the horse. The most effective way to achieve this is to focus on the separate beats of the forelegs and implement the ‘three beats of the rhythm' principle. So in terms of forelegs, a walk to halt transition may go RF, LF then RF again. This corresponds exactly with the three elements of: light aid, stronger pressure, release. Importantly, this is the way horses actually learn to respond from light aids, rather than always needing stronger pressure. It is the close proximity of the light aid to the release of pressure that enables all horses to maximally perceive and respond to the light aid. This is as much to do with duration as anything else so in the canter and gallop, the three beats of the rhythm is best applied where a complete stride is seen as one beat - therefore in those gaits the whole sequence is compete in three strides. Using pressure release this way thoroughly during training obviates the need for stronger bits in cross-country. The event horse that is ‘strong in the mouth' cannot perceive the light aid as it is too far away in time from the release. Collaborative research with Amanda Warren-Smith and Dr Paul McGreevy (Uni of Sydney) showed that initial acquisition of lead forward responses in foals was most effectively trained after releasing pressure on completion of just one step forward. However once this has occurred, the most effective protocol for longer term retention was to subsequently release on the third leg step which coincides with the format in the above paragraph. This doesn't mean the horse can't learn transitions in any other sequence, it just means that this is the most effective way for optimal learning. And of course it stands to reason that reducing ambiguity has got to lead to better welfare than a hit and miss training strategy that can encourage conflict behaviours. Conflict Conflict behaviours are those that we commonly call resistances, evasions and bad and dangerous behaviour. These are induced by confusions that arise through poor timing of release or no release at all. Therefore the way in which trainers and riders use pressure determines the horse's future to a very large extent. When you get the pressure/release mechanism right, you provide very solid foundations in training; when you get the pressures wrong the horse becomes confused and can ritualise (make a habit of) his conflict behaviours. That's why good trainers always aim for consistent results each time. They are fussy, and with good reason, otherwise you are rewarding different results each time and the horse doesn't have a clue what you want. That is also why a good foundation in hand and under saddle is critical: during stress the animal will, like his owner, tend to default to his first habits. Pressure itself is aversive or unpleasant to the horse - his aim is to remove the pressure. The more unpleasant the pressure, the more neurotic it can make the horse if the animal cannot find a way, or rather find a behaviour that makes the pressure go away. Pressure without release such as strong unrelenting contacts and nagging legs result in desensitisation of the horse to pressures. Some individual horses can apparently live with it (but not without some negative effect), others cannot. Conflict behaviours such as bucking, shying and leaping, are best treated by deleting them with downward transitions, and then repeating the aid that caused the incorrect

response. This sequence is repeated until the correct behaviour is shown and it should be given ample practise. Incorrect behaviours should not be given more than three strides of expression otherwise the horse takes this to be the correct response simply because when the behaviour exceeds three strides it is incorporated into his repertoire. Prevention is always better than cure. This is particularly true when it comes to anything to do with the flight response. Once exhibited they are more deeply learned with less practice that the ‘correct' things we try to train horses to do. The proper and humane use of pressure-release is the best tool we have to prevent such behaviours. It is important to train speed and line control in our horses in hand and under saddle with clear pressure-release principles. When these shrink to light cues, we can maintain them through the use of positive reinforcement. We have to be careful not to fall into the trap of trying to control these things with the seat or weight before the horse has learned the boundaries of pressures, and their conversion to light versions of the rein and leg. Then later in training if the subtleties of seat and posture go awry or transitions fall out of the three beat sequence (which they are prone to) we have a back-up plan that works immediately, limiting the amount of incorrect and confusing experience.

Pavlov's Principle Relaxation and attentiveness can only occur if the horse responds to predictable signals that do not invade the pain threshold. Thus, training the horse to respond unconditionally to light aids in hand and under saddle is essential. Pavlov's principle is all about training the horse to operate from light aids, including seat, weight and positional cues. There is a definite science about training horses and other animals to operate from previously neutral signals, and Ivan Pavlov (1849 - 1936) was the first to describe it. He was a Russian scientist and in fact wasn't searching for any behavioural principles when he discovered and revealed the process of acquiring signals. This process is now known as classical or Pavlovian conditioning. Pavlov was doing some rather gory experiments on a dog with a glass plate sewn over a large hole cut right through its ribcage to its stomach so he could see the digestive process first hand. He gave the dog a meat extract so he could see what goes on in the animal's stomach during salivation and digestion. During the course of the experiments however, he soon noticed that the dog began to salivate earlier and earlier in each session - the dog was beginning to ‘anticipate' the food. Now most of us would be happy to explain the dog's anticipation as simply that, but Pavlov was determined to delve deeper. He wanted to know what ‘anticipation' actually was - to uncover the mechanistic principle behind anticipation. In humans and perhaps in some animals as well it can involve some kind of mental visualisation of the anticipated event, but is this always the case? And does it need to be so? Pavlov found that there were some strict rules that govern the way an animal learns to associate a previously neutral stimulus with a particular response. He found that the timing of when the newly learned signal appears in relation to the already known stimulus is critical. Timing of associations Pavlov showed that new cues must be given just before or during an inborn or previously learned signal or aid. For example, if the rider wishes to train the voice aid "whoa", the word should occur just before and overlapping the application of the rein signal for ‘stop'. The further the word occurs after the rein aid, the less the horse learns the voice aid. The rider must also remember that as the horse does not actually understand what "whoa" means, but rather learns it as a cue, it must always be delivered with the same tone and pitch. Shouting "whoa" won't make the horse stop more quickly, it is only the learned version of the voice aid that is meaningful to the horse. In dressage voice aids are not used. Instead, as the horse learns to respond from lighter rein and/or leg aids, the horse becomes increasingly aware of the associations of seat and weight that naturally occur with rein and/or leg aids if the rider's position is correct. These responses are learned through classical conditioning as the seat and weight aids occur just before and during the rein and /or leg aids. Similarly during training the horse to lunge, the horse learns to respond to voice aids. However the fact that the trainer needs to keep the lunge whip in his hand is testimony to the fact that classical conditioning is but a thin veneer in training. Voice, seat,

weight and position associations are easily forgotten and need reminding with the primary aids of rein and/or leg. Pavlov's work suggested that classical conditioning doesn't need any kind of visualisation or comprehension in the animal of an anticipated event in order to work - it simply needs the correct order of presentation. That's why classical conditioning can be seen in worms and houseflies as well as horses and humans. Recent studies show that classical conditioning involves older brain parts beneath the conscious mind. Classical conditioning partly explains the placebo effect in human medicine and many other reactions. If the sound of running water makes you want to go to the toilet, that's classical conditioning. As you respond to traffic lights and other road signals yet you aren't consciously aware of what you are doing, you just do it - that's classical conditioning. The life of all animals is full of associations that have formed and will form between various signals and events. Acquiring signals that predict events makes life predictable and controllable for animals. It evolved to improve the efficiency of the animal's interaction with its environment. Any environmental event that coincides with a known signal will quickly become incorporated as a new cue. So, the sound of rustling bushes which precedes the appearance of a predator (and triggers the flight response in the horse) quickly becomes a cue for running away. Predictability Horse training relates to the notion of predictability in a very definite way. The reason we must place all of the horse's trained responses under the control of light aids isn't just for convenience - it is for the horse's mental well-being. The horse needs unobtrusive, pain free signals for all its movements in hand and under saddle. Good coaches and trainers have long known the importance of lightness of the aids as well as the fact that if the horse needs stronger pressure to motivate him to do something, then these pressures must always be preceded by light aids. But it was the work of a man called Professor Piet Wiepkema, a Dutch cognitive scientist, which first brought me to understand the relationship between an animal's well-being and the nature and consistency of the signals that it encounters in its life. Take a moment to contemplate this - any animal's existence involves giving and receiving signals and/or ‘pressures' from its environment. The signals/'pressures' it issues to its environment in order to procure benefits for itself are either inborn ones or learned ones, and the ones it receives from its environment are either from the physical or the behavioural world (including signals from its rider or handler). Animals have evolved the ability to offer and learn to respond to mild unobtrusive signals so that they don't have to endure a life of painful or unpredictable events such as the sudden attack by another horse during a squabble over resources such as food or mates as well as to predict predatory attacks. For example, horses soon learn that before another horse attacks, it lays its ears back. Consistency Animals are thus able to learn signals that surround all events that not only predict nasty things but also nice ones too, such as the arrival of the person carrying a bucket - it means food. Wiepkema showed that how often a particular signal consistently predicts a particular response is directly proportional to the amount stress in an animal. If the signal always leads to the same response, the animal is relaxed in its response to the signal. When

a horse behaves badly he is unconsciously telling you that you are doing something WRONG and he is confused and showing conflict behaviour. Think of your own life. What makes you calm (or not) as an adult is that you have (or have not) found ways, generally using language, to control your responses to others and to control to a predictable extent the behaviour of others. All organisms need to be able to make their behavioural world predictable. The less predictable and controllable their world is, the more stress and tension they show. In horse training, predictability comes through the horse learning to respond in the same way from a light aid for each response (stop, go, turn and leg-yield). Responding in the same way means responding: •· immediately and to a light aid, •· in a self-maintained tempo and stride length, •· with self-maintained line (straightness), •· with self-maintained contact and outline, •· with all of the above properties everywhere and every time. So when you look at the above qualities of the rein and leg aids, you will appreciate that each response requires the development of a number of characteristics. These need to be trained one by one as you will see in ‘The Exclusivity Principle' and ‘The Shaping Principle'. This is why correct horse training has always focused on producing a consistent set of responses each time an aid is given rather than a random assortment of various incorrect responses. The German training scale is the best known of mankind's attempts to train consistency of outcome in horse training. What is not well known in any equitation discipline is that problem horses are a result of defects in consistency of outcome from the aids. Instead, horsepeople typically describe a horse's training in terms of its ‘will to please' rather than its reaction to the aids. Horses are frequently described as ‘naughty', ‘dirty', ‘dumb' or ‘hot' rather than using terms that describe what the horse's legs do or do not do in response to the aids. This antiquated vocabulary will inevitably change as horsemanship becomes more grounded in academic principles and the negative welfare effects of such ignorance are more widely appreciated. Signal priority It is important in horse training to recognise that there is a priority in training signals. At the very earliest stages in horse training, the horse learns to respond from pressures, such as lead rein pressure for leading, and under saddle it is the pressure from both legs that means go forward while pressure from the reins means slow/stop or step back. Good trainers ensure that at the very beginning of each rein or leg pressure, that there is a light version of that particular pressure. This has been known for centuries and is described at length in classical training literature. This light aid therefore should be the very first cue that the horse learns in-hand and under-saddle for go, stop, turn and leg-yield. The horse learns through Pavlov's principle, (classical conditioning) to respond from those light versions of the pressures. While the horse is acquiring these signals, the rider is riding the horse’s back without any disturbance. A stiff rider whose seat and posture is giving wrong or conflicting messages can thwart the proper education of the horse. That’s why seat training is essential. Furthermore, during this early response training the horse also learns, again

through Pavlov's principle to acquire the seat weight and position characteristics of the rider as they occur during the light rein and leg aids. Horses learn can these aids readily and unfortunately sometimes well before the horse has thoroughly learned about the pressures that actually enforce responses. Therefore, training the horse to respond from light aids in the 10 basic responses should always precede any early reliance on seat and position cues. Too many people rely on seat and position aids and forget to either establish or maintain the underlying foundations of rein and leg signals. When the response to the seat and position aids begin to fail and the horse no longer responds as he should, he soon forgets these aids entirely, as Pavlov predicted. Pavlov found that a conditioned response will be repressed if the stimulus proves "wrong" too often. If the seat does not produce a reliable response, the horse will stop responding to it. The same is true for the leg and rein aids - if they don't work, the stronger motivating pressure should follow. It's as if the horse is saying: "Please don't use a force 6 pressure, I'll do it from the light aid.'' Using the right amount of pressure is a vital skill in horse training - not too much and not too little. Problems also occur if the rider maintains the mild pressure of the light aid when the horse has already responded. The horse desensitises to the light aid. Losses of predictability However the problem with the horse that has become desensitised to the aids for whatever reason is not just that he loses his response to light signals. There is a big price that is often paid for this and it is called conflict behaviour. Conflict behaviour incudes flight response behaviours (i.e. fast ones) such as shying, bolting, bucking, rearing and leaping. It also accompanies associated health and welfare issues that include worsening colic attacks, immune suppression, hormonal changes and poor and ‘stringy' body condition. Conflict behaviour arises from the stress that occurs due to losses, from the horse's viewpoint, of predictability and controllability of its behavioural world. The horse is trying to run away from the stressful situation. Conflict behaviour may also arise when the trainer does not regularly target a consistent set of responses from an aid. When all of the properties of each response (rhythm, straightness etc) are automatic from each light aid, the horse becomes relaxed in its body because the aid predicts a precise response. The horse's world is now predictable. The horse's general life is calmer too - things like separation anxiety disappear as well as other nervous tendencies. This is because, unlike before when responses were more random and less precise, the horse is now able to ‘read' humans in terms of their signals. More than anything else it is responsible for establishing what are known as rapport and trust between horses and humans. The horse is no longer insecure and whinnying for its mates. It is as if the horse is shouting: "Help, I can't read humans, I can only read horses, is there anybody out there?" Think about this. Does a small squeeze of the legs result in the right response but a bigger kick result in the opposite response, i.e. slowing or showing ‘piggy' behaviour? Opposing responses are the most serious of all responses - when a horse quickens from the reins or slows from the leg aids. These cause major behavioural problems and often show up in their earlier development as erratic ‘out of the blue' behaviour. The horse surprises you because quite suddenly and quite unprovoked, it leaps, runs,

bucks, shies or rears. Obedient, well trained horses are like obedient, well trained dogs - they just don't call out or become controlled by their environment. They are ‘on the aids'. Of course young horses going out for the first few times can be expected to be more nervous, but after five or so outings they should become unfazed by new surroundings if they are on the aids and their responses are consistent. Positive reinforcement There are many associations that we train into the horse's repertoire of signals. One of the most important is the acquisition of verbal praise such as ‘Good Boy' for reward. Few people consider how the horse acquires this as a positive reinforcer, and consequently few horses adequately respond to it. We assume the horse knows what we mean, as if the horse has some kind of pre-programmed English vocabulary in its head. Because verbal commands have to be learned, they are called secondary reinforcers. To be effectively learned they have to be associated with a primary reinforcer, such as food or scratching/caressing the horse at the base of the withers (a site at which French researchers demonstrated a significant lowering of heart rate more than any other site). Because the base of the withers is so close to the hands of the rider, scratching/caressing is the most useful primary reinforcer. To train the horse to respond to ‘Good Boy', the words should occur just before and during the scratching. The words and tone should be the same each time. Soon the words come to evoke the relaxation that results from scratching at the base of the withers. The words should be re-associated with the wither scratching from time to time. The effect isn’t only for reinforcing wanted behaviours, it likely taps in to Attachment Theory and so increases the rapport between horse and rider. Patting on the other hand makes horse vigilant and does not reward behaviours. Precise timing The light aid should be directly connected in time to the stronger aid that follows it. It should not be isolated by a gap in time before the stronger aid. In horse training, the time gap between the light aid and the stronger pressure should be the same as the time gap in between footfalls in the rhythm of the gait (see The Pressure Principle). Training horses effectively therefore requires skill and speed in decision making and action. In a fraction of a second you have to decide if the horse responded adequately to the light aid, and if not back it up with stronger pressure which is subsequently released the instant the horse gives the correct response. This way the horse optimally learns the light aid, and it rapidly evokes the correct response without any increase in pressure of the aid. This is the aim of all horse training - to transform the pressure-release training rapidly to lighter versions of the pressure, and then the next phase is the transformation of those aids into seat, weight and position aids. Through careful repetitive training, the horse eventually learns his responses to the light aids and he can now avoid stronger pressures altogether.

Exclusivity Principle Each response should be trained and elicited separately (don't pull on the reins (stop) and kick with the legs (go) at the same time). The basic psychological principle of one signal at a time is appreciated by professional animal trainers but rarely by contemporary horse trainers. In fairness to horse trainers this is largely because the training of other animals rarely calls for two responses at any given moment. While the basic training of the horse involves just single responses (go, stop, turn and leg-yield), training after Elementary level begins to involve composite responses. For example, shoulder-in, travers, then later on half-pass, pirouette, then piaffe and passage all involve mixtures of the basic responses of go and stop etc. In fact these composite responses do not require simultaneous aids but a consecutive execution of them. The more consolidated a horse has become in his basics, the closer the aids can be brought together. Rein aids and leg aids stimulate totally different aspects of locomotion. When you think of rein/slowing aid you should think of it as a component of reverse/rein-back. When a horse goes backward the forelegs drive it backward during the protraction/stance phase (when the leg swings forward but while contacting the ground). However when the horse goes forward, the legs are retracting in stance phase (legs pulling backward while I contact with the ground). In one sense they are similar as they both stimulate legs swinging forward and backward. However the difference between forward and backward is in the swing direction of the legs and the contact with the ground. Now, when a horse actively slows or stops, the muscles of reverse are activated (i.e. the limbs push against the direction of movement rather than pull along it: the greater amount of pushing against the direction, the more rapid the slowing). So you see, using reins and legs together is contradictory and one or both responses will be detrained. The importance of separating aids has been known for centuries in horse training. In the French classical academic riding of the 18th century, a vital maxim was known as ‘the independence of the aids.' Francois Baucher was the first to elaborate this with his principle of "Jambes sans mains, mains sans jambes" (legs without reins and reins without legs). In other words no simultaneous use of opposing aids. Interestingly Baucher didn’t always believe this. In fact he preached the opposite called l’effet d’ensemble (literally the ‘together effect’: simultaneous reins and legs) until he had an accident where a chandelier purportedly fell on him injuring him severely and killing his horse. During his lengthy convalescence, he came up with reins without legs and legs without reins. Certainly a wise move. Unfortunately the maxim of the independence of the aids was lost in modern training. Contemporary training nowadays relies heavily on German methodology and The German system refers to a doctrine of using reins with legs and in fact never using rein aids without accompanying legs. This was loosely written by the German master, Gustav Steinbrecht (1808-1885). I believe he was misquoted. Steinbrecht indeed did proclaim this but what I believe he meant was never use a leg aid without rein contact (but not rein

aid), and never to use a rein aid without leg contact (but not leg aid). I say this because when Baucher went to Germany to show his training, the Germans were unimpressed and thought his work crude and harsh because at that time Baucher was doing his l’effet d’ensemble (he hadn’t developed his reins without legs maxim until after his accident and after his failed trip to Hannover). This leads me to think that Steinbrecht, who lived and worked at the same time as Baucher, preached the separation of the aids. Unfortunately this false doctrine is incorporated into the Handbook of the German National Equestrian Federation. Consequently many riders are inclined to apply two aids at once. The problem however isn't German but is throughout the world. For many, however, the parallel forces of money and medals have resulted in many trainers being in too much of a hurry, and clashing aids are often the means to the end. So let's have a look at what happens when two stimuli are applied simultaneously. Both Pavlov and Hull described what happens when two different stimuli compete for the same response: withdrawal (stop and go responses have their origin in the unconditioned response of withdrawal from an aversive stimulus). It’s called overshadowing. Overshadowing If the horse perceives that one stimulus is more intense than the other simultaneously applied signal, it will give priority to the most intense. The other one will undergo diminished responding to the point of habituation (switch off that response). Because of the greater sensitivity of the mouth, most horses will, in the case of simultaneous rein and leg aids become dull to the leg aids because they prioritise the intense rein aids. In such an impoverished training system the rider is then compelled to use greater leg aids (sharper spurs with increasing frequency) until the leg aids finally overshadow the rein aids. Unfortunately the result is not infrequently seen as deep bleeding lacerations on the horse's sides from spurs. This is the reason why the call is urgent to promote self-carriage right from the start of every horse's training. No horse should endure overshadowing of the basic aids and responses during training, because then they must endure the pain of stronger aids forever after. It is common to hear that riders will say that heaviness of rein pressures is not only typical in training but to be expected if training is deemed, in their eyes, correct. Part of the problem lies in the traditional misunderstanding of what the rein aids should produce. In terms of psychological principles, the rein aids like the leg aids (and unlike the seat and weight aids) are trained via operant conditioning. The effect of the rein aids should be an opposite mirror image of the go aids. While the go aids should be trained to produce upward gait changes, faster strides and longer strides in the horse, the reins aids should similarly be trained to elicit downward gait changes, slower and shorter strides and their effect should be not only immediate and from light aids but also within three beats of the rhythm, just like the go aids. How close can the aids be? In inexperienced horses the aids should be separated to the point where one response is completed before asking for another (by at least 3 seconds). As the horse's training becomes consolidated, responses can be brought closer together, as by this stage they will be controlled immediately by the light aids and will be automatic habits. In experienced consolidated horses, the

closest the aids can be to each other is during one footfall of the beat of the rhythm of the particular gait. Take piaffe for example: the go aid begins the swing phase (as the hoof leaves the ground) and the stop aid can occur when the leg is half-way through its swing phase. That is as close as aids can be if the perfect effect is to be maintained. But some horses don't seem to mind two aids on at once .... What happens when two opposing aids are presented at once varies between horses. Some horses seem to tolerate these confusions and all that happens is that they dull to the pressures of both go and stop to some extent. The horse loses his immediate response to the go and stop aids and the light aid gradually transforms into a heavier one. Other horses however may react violently to the simultaneous application of two opposing aids, and may try to run away, panic, bolt, rear, buck or shy. Others might express various levels of conflict behaviour in out-of-context situations such as developing separation anxiety, become hard to catch, difficult on the ground or poor traveling. These out-of-context conflict behaviours are the hardest ones for riders and trainers to diagnose. The fact is horses can develop these behaviours because they are worried by their confusing training. Dogs and other animals certainly do manifest their training confusions in separation anxiety. In Britain, Professor Daniel Mills performed an exhaustive survey of dog obedience and its relationship to stressful behaviours such as separation anxiety and constant barking. He found that while most owners rated their dogs obedience far higher than independent tests proved, there was also a positive relationship between dogs that were poor at commands of ‘sit' and ‘stay' and those that exhibited stressed neurotic behaviours. It is only a matter of time before most horse trainers will see to their advantage that the same understanding applies to horses. Horses are not nasty, mean, naughty or malevolent, they are just plain confused and the blame rests fairly on our own shoulders. We have a moral responsibility to train them as best we can. Clarity As trainers, you have to be clear to reward the same response each time. Furthermore you need to ensure that the goals of each response are sufficiently different from each other. For example you have to be careful that the release of the reins doesn't mean go. This is very confusing for the horse because the same stimulus (reins) elicits two opposite responses. Around one hundred years ago, Pavlov showed what happens when the right and wrong response begin to merge and become too similar. He trained dogs to discriminate between a circle and an oval shape whereby one shape was punished, the other rewarded. He then gradually merged the two shapes until the dogs could no longer discriminate between the two. These events induced aggression and tension in some of the dogs; others responded randomly to all stimuli regardless of shape, and others just fell asleep. Most were unable to participate in the experiment any further. Constant confusion has that effect - it lowers the animal's tendency to offer responses in the future. Another scientist, Masserman, trained cats to open a box when a light signal flashed to obtain a food reward. Later, when the box was opened the cats received a strong blast of air in their faces. Under these conditions the animals became severely disturbed. Some became hyper reactive and

aggressive, others became dull and almost all of them showed signs of acute stress, with raised blood pressure and gastric disorders. As I have mentioned previously, animals are wired to associate a stimulus with a particular response. Clear light aids that lead to clear consistent responses naturally result in calmness because they afford controllability and predictability to animals with regard to their behavioural world. In 1977, Professor Frank Ödberg and Dr Marie-France Bouissou pointed out the high wastage rate of performance horses in a presentation to the Waltham symposium. These researchers revealed that one study showed that 66.4% of horses sent to slaughter were sent there for behavioural reasons and were between the ages of 2 and 7 years. In another study they showed that of 2970 horses sent to a Munich slaughterhouse, between 25% and 50% were there for non-medical reasons, and most were less than 3 years of age. On the basis of their findings, Ödberg and Bouissou called for a return to the classical principles of academic riding of the 18th century. They were specifically referring to the importance of principles such as ‘legs without reins and reins without legs'. The aids can come close, but it is bad horsemanship if they clash, especially for extended periods. Blocking While on the subject of two aids on at once there are of course a number of stimuli being perceived by the horse during riding (and handling too). For example the rider’s seat may be salient to some extent, and equitation theory dictates that the seat and body posture including postural cues should be used correctly and in conjunction with rein and leg aids. When used separately, what is known as blocking can occur. Here is how this process works: when 2 conditioned cues are presented together, conditioning to one of these cues on its own may be inhibited. For example, if a light and tone together are paired with food, they will produce an unconditioned response, (e.g. salivation) however one element on its own may not. This is most likely why the rider's seat, when paired with either rein or leg aids facilitates a correct response but the seat when entirely on its own may not produce a response. Even the rein and leg aids, though trained by the more powerful process of negative reinforcement can still be partially blocked if seat characteristics are not included with the original rein and leg aids for associated responses. So education in rider position is essential for correct training. The demands of horse training are complex - the important thing is that the signals always lead to the same response, and that opposing responses are not asked for at the same time. If your horse shows some kind of resistance or evasion, take the blame off the horse's shoulders and ask yourself how you managed to produce this kind of conflict behaviour. Honesty is the best policy, but in horse training it's also the safest and the kindest as well.

Shaping Principle Responses should be progressively improved, step-by-step, learned response by learned response, toward the final outcome. Shaping is a term used in behavioural psychology and understood by animal trainers of many different species. It is about targeting and rewarding responses, then step by step adding more refinement towards the ultimate desired response. A performing dolphin, for example, is progressively trained to not only leap out of the water, but also to add a couple of somersaults and in tandem with other dolphins doing the same thing. This is impossible without shaping. In my interpretation of shaping as it applies to horse training you should first achieve control of the horse's legs in terms of obedience (an immediate response and from a light aid) then train rhythm (speed control in short, medium and longer stride lengths). Straightness should logically follow rhythm because a crooked horse does not have a perfect rhythm: it shows unequal drive and therefore drifts. After straightness the outline or head carriage is finally trained. It makes sense to me that the legs must be trained first to give correct responses because it is the legs that are the origin of almost all correct and incorrect behaviours and randomised leg movements are associated with almost all unwelcome behaviours such as head tossing, even biting and kicking out. Another critical reason why the horse's legs should be trained first before outline is that a step of the horse's legs constitutes a definable (and perceivable from the horse's viewpoint) single learned response: it has a beginning point and an end point that are patently clear. In the end the important thing is the aids produce a consistent package of shaped components of each response. Training is therefore about adding each component one by one. It doesn't matter whether you train western pleasure, polo, racing or dressage - a well-trained horse has consistent outcomes from the aids. This occurs through breaking down all aspects of training to single trainable units then building on them. Each one has to be consolidated on its own. That means repeat and repeat until the horse offers the same response to the aid each time. Then you move up the ladder and train the next quality, consolidate that one and so on and so forth. Eventually you end up with the final outcome. In a trained horse, it isn't enough that when you squeeze your legs the horse goes forward any way he chooses. You have to gradually mould his behaviour by training one aspect of a response at a time. In the earliest stage of training, a horse might go forward with various delays and from only heavy aids. He might be heavy in the hands and running; he might be crooked, with his head high and back hollow, and with a kick out or two and some tail swishing. So the task is to prioritise all the qualities of each response we want and then add them on top of each other, one by one. Step by step training is essential so that the horse himself can learn to repeat the correct responses through many repetitions. When horses give wrong responses, you cannot expect them to know what is right - only you know that. Training too many things at once places the horse in a dilemma

as to what response to offer at a given moment. Sticking to one isolated aspect of a response allows the horse to quickly get the hang of the right answer. It is also essential that we train things in a particular order - any old order just won't do. The order we train things is so that one aspect acts as a building block for the establishment of the next. Gustav Steinbrecht (1808-1885), one of the great luminaries in the German equestrian tradition was adamant about the importance of shaping: He declared that training exercises should not be hurried and should "...all follow one another in such a way that the preceding exercise always constitutes a secure basis for the next one. Violations of this rule will always exert payment later on; not only by a triple loss of time but very frequently by resistances, which for a long time if not forever interfere with the relationship between horse and rider". Perhaps you should read this a second time. Steinbrecht did not write this as a throwaway line. He was absolutely emphatic about this critical aspect of shaping and every behavioural scientist in the world would support his warning. Yet not enough trainers build on training in any logical way. These days, the first thing most of us want to do is to pull the horse's head in and make it round. This makes no sense when the legs of the horse are not yet under control. Furthermore, forcing lowering of the neck and roundness of the outline is like painting a smile on the face of a miserably depressed person. A horse's outline should reflect his contentment. When a horse is in true self-carriage in terms of rhythm, straightness contact and impulsion, it tends to become round all by itself. The neck and head of the horse are consequences of the training of his legs. In the twentieth century, a fellow by the name of Haungk developed the German training scale. It evolved from the teachings of the Italian master, Caprilli, the French master de la Guérinière, the traditions of the school of Hanover and the teachings of the German masters von Weyrother, Seegar, Seidler and Steinbrecht. The German training scale is a progressive training scale that involves the following steps: •1. Rhythm, •2. Looseness, •3. Contact and acceptance of the bit, •4. Impulsion, •5. Straightness and •6. Collection. The German training scale is a step forward of major significance in the practical and theoretical development of horse training. After it was finalised in the early twentieth century, the Germans experienced unparalleled Olympic success in dressage and jumping, and a major part of this success must be a result of their systematic approach to training. Well before the German training scale was published, the Frenchman, Francois Baucher developed his own training scale, which was integral to his "second method". Unfortunately he had already been to Germany, on invitation, where his first method (a bit of a fizzer compared to his second) was soundly rejected. Louis Seegar and other noted German trainers were not impressed with the great master Baucher. The Germans criticised Baucher's constant use of the aids, especially the spurs, which they attributed to his loose rein connection. What's more his horses were too

much on the forehand. One of the great steps forward of the evolving German training system was the raising of the horse's poll which made the movement ‘springy' especially when combined and developed through half-halts and transitions. Baucher also insisted that all half-halts should involve the rider's leg before the rein, however Seegar, (Steinbrecht's instructor) disagreed. When the horse is already forward and the rein aids are trained so as to cause the horse to ‘sit' then the hand can be used to initiate a half-halt before the leg. However there was another ingredient in the Germans rejection of Baucher. In those days, horse training was largely a practice of the military and the wealthy. Baucher was neither, he came from a working class background and worse still, the circus. Baucher meanwhile had a very nasty accident while riding in the manège. A giant chandelier fell on him injuring him so severely that he could never ride again in public. He took years to recover. However his injury had a legacy. It gave him time to reflect and experiment with pupils, and sometime later he came up with his second method. This one was far more worthy of a great master, and dealt with the earliest stages of training. However, Baucher never published his second method, and possibly the only written material that provides an accurate description of that method was the description published in 1891 by one of Baucher's pupils, Francois Faverot de Kerbrech. De Kerbrech described Baucher as a ‘master scientist' owing to the attention Baucher paid to observation and experimentation. Baucher probably learned some important lessons from his interactions with other great trainers such as Seegar, and certainly his second method bore little resemblance to his first. Baucher adhered to the maxim ‘hands without legs, legs without hands' and thus avoided the confounding effect of the combination that destroys so many horses today. In addition Baucher seemed to understand the processes of negative reinforcement and the subsequent importance of the release of pressure. He insisted on the importance of in-hand training with the same qualities as under saddle, again something that is rarely seen in today's dressage trainer's tool-box. De Kerbrech's writings suggest that Baucher's second method incorporated ‘shaping' responses progressively though adhering to a set of requirements that are arranged in the order of a training scale. These are as follows: To train and adhere to lightness To obtain obedience to the legs To obtain straightness To get the horse used to working without help from the aids To collect and engage the horse. In the system we have developed that largely arose from an amalgamation of principles of learning and practical training, we follow the following shaping program in foundation training, training and re training: Basic Attempt - the horse is rewarded for any good try that resembles

the right response. This applies to horses that do not know or do not offer even a crudely correct response from the aid.

Obedience - the horse is made more ‘sharp' i.e. the response is initiated immediately and completed in three beats of the rhythm of the gait. This results in the transformation of signals from pressure to light aids. Losses of obedience occur at all levels and are associated with most riding behaviour problems.

Rhythm - the horse keeps doing what is asked of him i.e. keeps gait, tempo and stride length and moves in and out of transitions with evenly spaced footfalls within three beats (i.e. cruise control)

Straightness - is essentially a deeper aspect of rhythm. The horse is trained to maintain his line. A crooked horse is one where the horse's legs have unequal drive - i.e. they are not in equal rhythm and drive. A crooked horse therefore tends to drift one way or the other depending on whether it is falling out or falling in, unless it is held on line by the rider. The horse should learn to hold his own straightness.

Contact - while the horse is already on a contact all the way through training, he is now in a position where it can be further refined as his legs are now fully under control. This is where final aspects of the outline are developed, depending on the training stage of the horse. In the earlier stages the horse learns to lengthen his neck as his stride lengthens (longitudinal flexion); he then learns to turn with lateral flexion and later learns vertical flexion through the action of ‘inside leg to outside rein'.

Proof - This means that responses with all of the above qualities occur anywhere, any time the horse is given the aid. Of course proof is happening all the time in that each training day conditions change. However it is important to note that challenging environments should only be tackled after consolidating good work at home. How the horse copes with the different environments is a direct reflection of the quality and consolidation of the work at home.

In-hand work Shaping of course doesn't only apply to work under saddle - it is essential for in-hand training also. From my experience, a horse that is good under saddle but not so good in-hand is a time bomb. Naturally confusions and contradictions in one area of training will eventually infect the other. Ideally, in-hand work should also follow the same training scale as under saddle. A properly trained horse should lead without strong pressure on the lead rein but from a light aid, without rushing or stalling, without crowding the handler (i.e. straight) and with a correct carriage i.e. poll just above the withers. It should also step backwards with the same qualities. It should remain immobile when halted. Some trainers drive horses in long reins to improve various aspects of training. Driving horses correctly is a real skill and unfortunately most people that do it allow incorrect behaviour and tension to be incorporated into their work. In-hand training was seen as essential by the nineteenth century German master, E.F. Seidler. Seidler specialised in the rehabilitation and training of the rather wild Polish horses that were used by the German cavalry at Schwedt and later in Hanover. He used in-hand work to correct "spoilt malicious horses who endanger the rider by rearing, bucking, dangerous leaps and other obnoxious tactics......for experience teaches that he who has thoroughly mastered the work in-hand leads a horse within a few months to a higher level of activity than he could by riding even in a longer time period." Let the horse make mistakes Because horse training involves use of the bridle and driving aids, it is tempting to prevent the horse from making mistakes during training.

However the making of mistakes is how an animal learns, through reinforcement, what is the right answer and what is not. As I mentioned earlier, training is not and should not be about holding the horse in some kind of wrestling match between the hand and leg, but training him to go on his own. In-hand many horses do not stand still when requested. People then often resort to all sorts of gadgets. Yet all you need to do is to loosen the lead, let him make the mistake of moving and correct him - put him immediately back to where he was, then loosen the lead again. The reason for this is partly that people do not let the horse make mistakes and learn what he should and should not do. Instead they permanently hold the lead rein firmly. Training is about rewarding ‘every good try'. When training lengthening at walk or trot, people are often afraid to let the horse quicken his tempo, because lengthening is about maintaining the tempo yet increasing the stride length. The longer strides increase the horse's body speed without increasing leg speed. In the early stages of training, many horses will offer quickening of the legs instead of or as well as lengthening of the stride. At least quickening is half right in that the horse has increased his body speed. If the horse is allowed to quicken yet still sent more forward, he will soon express a longer stride. Then the aids must cease until he loses that longer stride and reapplied to achieve it again. Length will typically evolve from speed (especially in sensitive horses) because fast legs are inefficient in all quadrupeds. It is more energy efficient for an animal to achieve a faster body speed through longer strides than faster ones. Obedient transitions in and out of longer and shorter strides create rhythm. Why consistency or uniformity? When training is complete, you want the horse to perform the movement the same way each time you press the button i.e. you want all the elements of the correct response obedience, rhythm, straightness and a consistent outline and with impulsion. All of these things cover complete control of the horse's entire body. In other words there isn't a body part left that can do its own thing. Consistency you see, is not only what we as riders desire, it's good for the horse's state of mind too. Professor Piet Wiepkema of the Netherlands described consistent outcomes from stimuli as critical to an animal's mental well-being. All animals including humans have evolved to decrease stress when responses to stimuli are consistent, and to increase stress when they are not. Real trust comes about when one animal can ‘read' another - when a response to a stimulus is predictable. This gives animals (and humans) control and certainty about their environment and resources. In evolutionary terms, it's a way of weeding out maladapted individuals that develop chronic stress. There's nothing worse than unpredictability in others to raise your stress levels. Not surprisingly, the more consistent an aid results in a uniform response, the greater the calmness in horses. On the other hand, losses of consistency and uniformity in animals (and people!) result in one or more of the following three states: aggression, tension or dullness. Aggressive and tense behaviours include increased aggression towards humans and other horses, shying, bucking, rearing and bolting. Chronic conflict states also deeply affect the horse's physiology and immune status and can result in ulcers, colic, ‘catabolic' condition (stringy looking poor-doers) and even self-mutilation (biting

themselves). Good training is good for the horse; bad training can be a death sentence.

Proportional Principle Increasing pressures of aids should correspond with increasing levels of response i.e. a small leg aid should result in a smaller go reaction, while a bigger aid should produce a stronger go response. Compared to other forms of horse training, performance horses need to be much more responsive in terms of speed and power variations. For example if your aim is simply to enjoy trail riding then the task of training is considerably less complex than that of an event horse or a dressage horse. All you really need is a good set of brakes and accelerator and a horse that maintains his own speed. In trail riding establishments, sometimes training is considered to be of less importance than having a quiet horse that is more compelled to follow other horses in the group rather than be guided by the random pressures of a naïve rider. An imperative aspect of the training of performance horses is that their speed is highly adjustable so acceleration and deceleration can occur rapidly from one extreme to the other, or that it may occur more precisely from one level to the next. For example a horse needs to be able to be rapidly accelerated away from one cross-country obstacle to the next, and to be slowed and shortened in a minimum space of time. Those too slow to accelerate or decelerate incur time penalties. The same abilities are required in the jump-off in show jumping. Dressage horses require abilities to perform transitions into extended canter from collected canter and back again in three beats of the rhythm. In the beginning of the horse's training, these variations come from variations in stronger pressures, and soon the pressures ‘mirror' responses. Then they undergo a natural transformation where the horse learns to give the same variations in speed adjustment from more subtle variations in light aids, because the horse perceives that the light aid always precedes the stronger aid, and is therefore predictive of it. The ‘motivating level' of pressure In order to train the horse to respond to variations in the aids, the horse must first be able to achieve gait changes (i.e. walk to trot, etc) that occur without delays. This naturally means that riders must use the amount of pressure that actually works. Imagine the range of pressures that are possible from the reins or the legs on the scale from 0 to 10 (I have previously described these in ‘The Pressure Principle'). What is known as the ‘motivating pressure' is the amount that results in the horse offering the response targeted by the trainer. During initial training we discover the amount of pressure that works and the next task is to compress the sequence of light aid, stronger aid to release to comply with what is known as the ‘operant contingency’. The operant contingency is a three-part framework of cue, motivator, reward. So we shorten the time during which the horse receives pressure, so that the transitions occur within three beats of the rhythm of the particular gait (2 steps walk and trot; two strides canter and gallop). This means we have to skip all the building-up pressures and smoothly go to the amount that works. The light aid is the first signal that the horse perceives and this is

followed by the stronger motivating pressure (the amount that works), followed by the release. The importance of the release is to reward the response / light aid association. These three components of the operant contingency: the light aid, the pressure and the release should coincide exactly with three beats of the rhythm of the particular gait. When I talk about three beats I always mean that the response occurs in 2 beats, complete by three. If there are too many steps/strides between the light aid and the response, the light aid will not be learned. One pressure beat in between is optimal, and any more than one sees deterioration. Soon the horse learns to respond from the light aid alone, but still the response should occur within three beats in the horse at the lower levels. As the horse becomes more educated, and habitual, response times speed up. The term beats is used because as I mentioned earlier, in the walk and trot the three beats refers to three steps of the forelegs, whereas in canter and gallop, it refers to three strides. Lightness is a result of getting response in three beats so even in a cross country horses, rather than opting for a stronger bit, I found using pressure-release in three strides only was key for lightness in gallop. Once I learned the correct use of the operant contingency, I didn’t need strong bits even on ‘Advanced’ level Three Day Event horses. Training variations Once the horse operates from light aids from gait to gait, the next step is to train variations - variations within the gaits (faster walk / slower walk and longer walk / shorter walk) and then finally more extreme variations from gait to gait (e.g. walk / canter and canter / walk). These should also occur in three beats (ie be complete by beat three). Their training involves pressure release of the rein and leg aids to ensure the correct timing. One of the most common problems that I encounter in my clinics is that many horses do not show variations in responses that correspond with variations in the aids. Instead when a slightly stronger aid is used the horse frequently gives an ‘opposing' response. An example is that a stronger rein aid makes the horse go faster, or a stronger leg slows the horse. Opposing responses must be very confusing for horses because they correlate highly with the worst behaviour problems such as rearing, bucking, bolting and shying. In the early stages of development, opposing responses also show up as erratic ‘out of the blue' behaviour. The horse surprises you because quite suddenly and quite unprovoked, it leaps, runs, bucks, shies or rears. To train variations you need to ensure that there are clear differences between the aids that you use for gait changes and the aids that you use for length of stride variations. Too often riders use the same aids and then it is small wonder that the horse jogs when asked to do a free walk on a long rein. In terms of rein and leg aids, the aid for gait transitions (into and out of walk, trot canter and gallop) are best trained as more prolonged aids (complete by the third beat) which shorten in duration as the horse ‘s education increases. Variations in tempo are similar however the dose is slightly less. On the other hand, the aids for lengthening and shortening are brief (for a portion of a single beat only). Accompanying these aids are differences in seat aids. The seat aid for lengthening/shortening is a longer/shorter sweep of the seat whereas the seat aid for tempo changes

are simply tempo changes of the seat and the seat aid for changes of gait are the seat flowing into the new gait. If riders are consistent, horses have no difficulty perceiving these combinations. Being clear with these aids is essential for the sanity of horses: retraining them in both rider and horse often has a huge effect in transforming a tense horse into a relaxed one. Focus on leg and rein aids first Now we are faced with the human learning dilemma. How best to teach people to use both seat and leg aids? It is whole minefield of problems teaching people to do more than one thing at a time. As soon as the horse is light to rein and leg aids, it is important use the seat and posture in a uniform way that follows the horse’s back as perfectly as possible. Another aspect of position that is essential is that the rider must be careful not to be displaced by the horse i.e. that the horse doesn’t learn that he can tip the rider one way or another. Rider position And then there's the balance problem - it's hard to be consistent with the aids without miscuing or unbalancing the horse through the rider's losses of balance. That's why, if you're attempting to train or retrain a horse, you need to have a high level of core stability in your position that is best achieved on the lunge or on a horse that doesn't pull or isn't too lazy. ‘Strong-mouthed' horses are particularly bad for a rider's position and especially bad for children if they want to learn correct equestrian skill. Through constant tension on the reins riders don't learn to ride the horse forward. Instead the horse runs away (making the rider think it's forward) and the rider ‘water skis' on its mouth. Don't rely on seat aids only It is not sufficient to rely on seat aids alone, because on their own they cannot maintain responses in three beats of the rhythm and they are unlikely to as a result of the effects of ‘blocking’. After a while the transitions from the seat alone may stretch out to take five or six beats and the horse loses impulsion and can't lower the hindquarters. Try for example going from walk to halt counting the beats it takes to achieve it without the rein becoming heavier or the jaw opening. Dealing with resistances In training and retraining, pressures should be proportional to the amount of resistance offered by the horse. Only the motivation pressure should be used, but in saying that, it MUST be used. For example if you use the legs for ‘go' and the horse stalls or fails to go at all the pressure of the go aids should be increased to the level that motivates him to go and not a whisker more. That is the art of good training and is a major characteristic of successful trainers - they know how much pressure to use. If you use too much you run the risk of creating fear and lowering the horse's inclination to ‘try' offering responses. If you use too little you run the risk of the horse habituating to that level of pressure and having to subsequently use greater pressure than if you had used the correct motivating pressure in the first place, and gradually dulling the horse to greater pressure resulting in what is known as ‘learned helplessness'. If the horse offers the completely opposite response such as going backwards you then increase the leg pressure a lot more until he trials the correct response. This is the way to tell the horse "that is definitely not the answer - try again". Similarly the

amount of rein pressure used to slow the horse if he mildly accelerates is far less than if he suddenly bolts or bucks. The advantages of being sharp to the aids Horses that take longer than three beats to move from gait to gait or to achieve variations within the gaits correlate highly with behaviour problems. Transitions that take too long result in the horse enduring and perhaps habituating to long periods of pressure. They lose their responses and in the case of the rein aids they may lean on the bit resulting in mouth opening, jaw crossing, tongue problems, and general body tension. Horses that take too long to respond to the leg aids become dull, tend to be nagged by the rider and may kick out to the leg aids. Horses that are dull and slow to respond to both rein and leg aids may rear or even self-mutilate in some cases. Maintaining proportions of light aids and their corresponding responses is important in maintaining good behaviour. Training horses to be quick and light to respond to the aids is good for the horse's well-being - it enables the horse to ‘read' you and is thus a major component of gaining ‘trust'. It also trains the horse to be quicker with his hindlegs, to ‘sit' and lower his hindquarters.

Self Carriage Principle The horse must travel in-hand and under saddle free of any constant rein or leg pressure, otherwise he will switch off to them At first, the concept of self-carriage seems simple enough. It means that the horse self-maintains his own rhythm, tempo, stride length, straightness, outline and rein and leg contact and engagement. It therefore implies that he mustn't occasionally or constantly quicken, slow, drift raise or lower his head, lengthen or shorten his neck, lean or drop the bit, squirm away from the rider's leg contact or fall onto the forehand. For the horse to truly carry himself, it is not just about his outline as most riders imagine. And neither is it about the rider constantly maintaining the horse in all the qualities required - it's about the horse being trained to maintain them himself. Self-maintenance of the horse's own responses to the aids is a centuries old requirement of equitation that is central to classical and academic riding. Above all, it is also central to the horse's mental well-being. In today's dressage it tends to be more of a dream than a reality, because there is little agreement about lightness and the extent to which the horse should carry himself. Yet self-carriage is fundamental to successful performance in most equestrian disciplines. Even in horse racing, particularly over distance, it is always better if the horse self-maintains his own speed and line, rather then being constantly wrestled to stay in cruise control or being constantly hauled on one rein with a lugging bit. Contact Where dressage differs from practically all other equestrian disciplines is in the constant contact of hands and legs to the horse's mouth and body. This contact is necessary to maintain direct connection for subtle changes in mobility and has a relaxing effect if trained correctly because rein and leg are not suddenly applied in a surprise attack. Instead the flow of signals allows for movements within the natural quadrupedal rhythm of the animal, and always begins with a light increase in pressure (the light aid). How much weight and how much is too much? How much contact is too much? To explore this we need to see it from the horse's point of view. Mouths are very sensitive organs, and even more so for a discriminative grazer such as the horse. Research from both the University of Ghent in Belgium as well as the University of Sydney show that the most comfortable and non-invasive, psychologically speaking, level of pressure (i.e. self-carriage) is around 200 grams. In effect the reins should be straight and with a direct and unwavering connection to the horse's lips and tongue. The leg aids should be of the same quantity and quality. Because the rein and leg aids are learned in an entirely different way from the seat and weight aids (the former by negative reinforcement and the latter by classical conditioning) for very important reasons it is critical that the process of negative reinforcement or pressure release is learned correctly in the first place and self-carriage form these aids is confirmed. It is not a problem that brief moments of stronger pressure are used in the early stages of training the rein and leg responses, but it is critical that these are released instantly the horse gives the correct response. These

processes of pressure-release with rein and leg responses are central to training self-carriage. For example if the horse quickens it is slowed and the rein pressure is reduced to the level of contact when the horse is at the correct speed. The same process trains straightness and outline. However if mistakes are made during training and the horse is left maintaining a stronger contact, or if the reins and legs are maintained together in too strong a contact, both stop and go deteriorate and the horse is left in a state of constant pain, from bit and leg (spur). The French (and Baroque) view of lightness is derived from the academic principles of 18th century riding and researchers, Professor Frank Ödberg and Dr Marie- France Bouissou commenting on the high wastage rates of performance horses called for a return to these principles because of the disappearance of lightness. There are simply no grounds for opposition to this view that have substantial merit. Conflict behaviour Constant pain in animals, as opposed to mild discomfort, is never tolerated without a price being paid somewhere in the horse's behaviour, mental wellbeing and even in his physiology. The horse begins to express what are known as conflict behaviours. In short-term conflicts the horse may become tense and/or show defensive behaviours such as rearing and bucking. It may begin to shy or show other behaviour that riders mistakenly perceive as naughty. However when the pain is long-term, serious assaults on the horse's health occur. The animal's digestive system may be challenged and ulcers and colic are more common in performance horses than trail horses. What is rarely understood is that the price of constant pain can be expressed in behaviour totally out of its original context. The horse may begin walking its fence line (trying to flee the stressful situation) or showing increasing separation anxiety (insecurity). It might even self-mutilate by biting its sides or shoulders or it may bite objects. All of these can occur because the horse is ‘worried' by its training at a deeper level than the conscious. Putting up with pain In animals there is always a ‘grey area' where mild discomfort merges into increasing pain. In the early stages of training, contact is mildly uncomfortable but soon the horse habituates to the feel of the bit in the mouth and the rider's legs on its sides. There are no negative welfare consequences associated with accepting contact at the correct level of pressure. The same is true for girth pressure - the horse soon gets over it. Pain is a different matter altogether and cannot be habituated to without continued stress. This state is known as ‘learned helplessness' and studies show that affected animals withdraw into themselves. They give up trying to offer new responses in training. Horses with constant mouth pressure from severe bits, and those tolerating constant spurring are in clear states of learned helplessness. In training, it is therefore a matter of vital importance that horses are not expected to become used to pain. Contact of rein and leg (including spur) should therefore be defined as lower than an animal's pain threshold. True enough, that what one animal may perceive as pain, another might perceive as mild discomfort - there are differences between individual animals according to their sensitivity. However the difference is probably not as far ranging as most people would imagine. Any horse that is enduring

constant pain will most likely be expressing some dysfunction in its behaviour pattern that will involve raised anxiety levels. For this reason judges must be trained to be acutely aware of signs of stress and anxiety including tail swishing and teeth grinding. There ought to be precise objective deductions for losses of relaxation. We need to be aware that as the sport of dressage evolves, (and nowadays extravagant movement often receives higher rewards than correct training) that we do not become increasingly blind to and tolerant of tension in the horse. In fact the FEI codes of conduct explicitly state that the horse's welfare is paramount. Loose swinging tails, soft mobile and attentive ears and physical looseness are clear signs of relaxation. Short necks Another problematic aspect of contact concerns the tendency of many horses to shorten their necks because they find the pain of the bit so aversive, yet they remain light. The riders are duped into thinking that there is no contact problem because the horse is light. Shortened necks are a particularly enduring problem in dressage that judges and trainers alike are concerned about. When necks are shortened to avoid bit pain, the neck also suffers some neck pain - the neck kinks or ‘breaks' the C3 vertebral joint. The break can be so sharp that the neck loses its gentle curve and instead has a peak. The mane of the horse may, as the horse shortens its neck suddenly twang to one side. Bony changes occur at the C3 junction itself and frequently the pain is chronic. Crooked necks are also painful. French research shows that if necks bend at the base (where the thick neck base emerges from the shoulder) when the horse is collected, there is a dislocation of the spinal canal and considerable pain results at around C6 and C7. Bending necks from left to right can be not only confusing (confusing the original turn response) but also painful. The correct amount neck length can be easily determined even at the advanced stages of collection: the distance from the bit to the rider's hand should never be shorter than the distance from the horse's ear to the rider's hand. The correct amount of contact is also important in maintaining the clarity of the aids and responses. This clarity is also essential in the horse's mental well-being. If you think of contact as being a neutral stimulus, then anything beyond it is an aid. If contact is too much on and off or too invasive into the area where the amount of pressure would normally be an aid, then the horse begins to develop conflict behaviours. So when rein and leg pressures are inconsistent or applied together, the horse not only becomes confused but the stop and go signals are dulled. This is why, to keep it clear for the horse, the rein and leg signals should not be used for responses that do not include their original purpose - i.e. decelerating and accelerating. There are no naughty horses, just confused ones Over the years I have been trying to convey that there are no naughty, bad, mean or dirty horses. None. There are only horses in various stages of confusion. When they do things that we don't like they are telling us (albeit probably unconsciously) that we are doing something wrong, they can't process the question.... Naturally, genetics determines that some horses will be more trainable than others, but the end result is entirely in your hands. We have a huge

responsibility in using animals in sport for our personal gratification, and at the very least we owe it to them to apply the ‘innocent till proven guilty' law to their behaviour. We should accept that maybe we have trained the wrong response sometimes. We all do our best, but loading the horse with responsibility for his own behaviour sends us down the wrong track in fixing problems. The ‘respect' argument has also been taken much too far. The horse that walks all over you isn't being dominant (I used to think otherwise) or lacking respect. He is simply demonstrating that hasn't been trained to lead straight, and nor does he stand still. Thinking in terms of ‘respect' is not only scientifically incorrect, it also encourages corrective, punitive measures that are out of the context of the original expression of the problem. It is a positive step that throughout the world it is slowly becoming incorporated in some dressage tests for rider's to ‘prove' self-carriage. The proof of self-carriage is through the rider releasing the reins for a couple of strides. In fact at any level and during any movement the reins and legs should be able to be released for a couple of strides or steps to demonstrate self-carriage. Self-carriage is like peace: you can't have a bit of it - either you have it or you don't. Facing up to the true meaning of self-carriage is the biggest hurdle judges, trainers and riders have before them. The stakes are high: improved mental and physical health of the horse, far less behaviour problems and improved safety for riders.

Fear Principle Fear is quickly learned, not easily forgotten and is strongly associated with the movement of the horse's legs. It is important to learn to identify the range of fear responses in horses and to diminish them to avoid the horse experiencing them. What is fear? The fear response is the horse trainer's greatest adversary. Fear in animals such as horses largely expresses itself as the flight response - the horse's attempt to flee from threatening situations. Fear is the activation of the flight response. The flight response involves the animal's entire body. Behavioural scientists describe fear in terms of the HPA axis (the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis). This unwieldy name suggests the origin of the flight response - the brain and the adrenal glands. A structure deep inside the brain called the amygdala, sorts out stimuli as to whether they are fearful or not. Fearful stimuli receive special recognition by the brain in terms of remembering - unlike other information, once learned fearful responses are not forgotten. You can layer new responses on top, so they become less easily retrieved, but forever after, fearful responses need careful training to keep them at bay. Furthermore recent evidence shows that retraining is most effectively done in the original eliciting contexts to avoid a context-specific re-occurrence. Once the brain has perceived a fearful stimulus, alertness is raised and the adrenal glands produce adrenaline and then perhaps glucocorticoids such as cortisol (a long-term stress hormone). Other, less important stimuli in the horses perceptual field are now largely ignored. That's why a horse in a full blown flight response can gallop into fences, cars and can collide with trees and other obstacles. Even if the horse manages to jump a fence, its jumping response is diminished to the extent that its legs drag over the wires, perhaps taking out the top couple of wires. A flat hollow jump characterises the flight response and is not uncommonly seen in not so well trained eventing horses in cross-country. The greater the amount of flight response, the more it is inclined to accelerate and the more it is tuned out to almost everything else, including the aids. The flight response is extremely variable. It's like a dimmer switch on a light - it can be fully on or partly on. The flight response shows up in various behavioural ways too. For example, bolting, bucking, rearing, shying, tension, running, hurrying, jogging, rushing, hollow back, high ‘upside down' head carriage, teeth grinding, tail swishing, tail clamping and freezing. In all of the above responses except freezing, the legs lose their smooth rhythm and become quick and jerky. Bolting is the strongest expression of the flight response. It is a defence mechanism allowing the horse to run away from threatening situations. Few animals on earth are as fleet as the horse, especially over a longer distance. Bucking is also a defence mechanism. It is a movement evolved to remove predators from the horse's back. Rearing is an aggressive/defensive move that is not only about predator removal but also part of stallion to stallion rivalry. Shying is a small component of the bolting reaction where a sudden swerve assists in

avoiding capture. Bucking, bolting and shying are reinforced (rewarded and thus repeated) by the loss of grip of the predator. Under saddle and in hand if the rider or handler loses contact during these hard-to-control manoeuvres, they are similarly rewarded through loss of contact. Do all horses show flight response in the same way? Not all horses run away from their fears. Running away is most prevalent in thoroughbreds, Arabians and racing-bred quarter horses. The research of Dr Debbie Goodwin shows that the running away genes that these animals possess in varying amounts are derived from hot adapted ancestors whose principal predators were members of the big cat family. Running away is a great solution because cats are not long distance runners. They rely on short bursts of speed, and only one member of the cat family, the lion, is cooperative. Cooperative hunting increases the chasing distance by a few hundred metres. But with a head start, fleet animals such as horses and antelopes can out run them. Cooperative hunting is the most efficient form of hunting, yet even cooperatively hunting lions have a success rate of only one kill in six attempts. With the dog family, it is a different matter altogether. Cooperatively hunting dogs such as wolves and the African hunting dog don't tire and give up so easily, once they have singled out their prey. The main canine predators of the ancestors of domestic horses were wolves and while few animals on earth can beat a horse over a couple of miles, a pack of cooperatively hunting wolves could soon catch up. Therefore, these cold adapted horses of central Eurasia that were preyed upon mainly by wolves tended not to run but to strike. While zebras won't defend their young against lions, they run for it, they will stand their ground with hunting dogs and hyenas and are deadly with their hooves. Most of our domestic horses are mixtures of the cold adapted striking strain and the hot adapted running strain. You may have noticed that some domestic horses will run away while others might stand their ground and strike when threatened. One trial learning While most things we try to train the horse to do involve a number of repetitions, unfortunately the flight response can be learned in just one experience. Usually it takes a couple of repetitions but even so, that is a very short time for acquisition. You can imagine why fear responses would need to be remembered and repeated. Patterns of escape that result in surviving a predatory attack need to be instantly recorded for later use - there's little room for trial and error when you are lunch for a lion. It is for this reason that during training, when it comes to fear behaviours the best solution is to delete the fear and give it the least chance of practice. This is what error-free training is about and I will describe it later. What rewards the flight response? The flight response is confirmed when any running away behaviour results in escaping the object of fear. In other words by increasing the amount of distance between the horse and the scary object. This reinforcement is not just about large distances of many metres that are made between the animal and its fear, but even over centimetres. For example if a horse is fearful of the whip or is head-shy, moving its stepping one step away from the whip or raising its head from your hand confirm the flight response and in very few repetitions. If a horse is afraid of the farrier, it is confirmed

when its stepping away increased distance between itself and the farrier. So the farrier should not step away if at all possible. What he should do is attempt to make contact with horse and repeat the advance/ touch retreat session a few times. On the other hand, if you want to teach the horse to accept such aversive things as electric clippers, one method is by removing the clippers the instant the horse is immobile. If you have read and understood “The Pressure Principle” article, you will be aware that removing your hand is negative reinforcement – you are negatively reinforcing immobility and clipper tolerance. Identifying fear It is important that as horse trainers we learn to identify the flight response for what it is. Universally horsemen get this wrong at all levels of equestrian skill. It has long been central to classical dressage and is seen in the modern German training scale that the horse should maintain his own speed until requested otherwise. This is what rhythm is about. If a horse cannot go in self-carriage he is either running away (accelerating) or slowing down. If the horse is running away he will be showing some degree of flight response. A typical example is a horse that is said to be too bold into his jumping obstacles. These horses accelerate when faced with an obstacle, and even at pony club level the dangerous behaviour of these horses is explained away as ‘keenness'. This is completely wrong. Such behaviours are almost always learned where, in the first place, the horse runs away from obstacles (the rider has not controlled the rhythm) and soon he associates the obstacle with the acceleration and the obstacle itself becomes the cue that elicits the manic acceleration. When this happens, the slowing effect of the reins are progressively lost and eventually need retraining, or a stronger bit is used. The horse develops a hard mouth which is a switching-off behaviour rather than an actual loss of feeling. In this instance the horse's blood profile has the same signature of fear, chemical-wise, as a horse that is running for its life escaping a pack of wolves. Jumping horses as well as riders need to be trained about rhythm, where it is clearly understood that the horse must be trained to keep his speed himself and the jump must never elicit any more acceleration than a soft and quiet drawing effect towards the obstacle. It is not only a matter of horse welfare - it is a matter of rider safety. In dressage and all other areas of equestrian pursuit we should recognise tension as fear. No fast movements In most equestrian work the horse's legs should not be quick. In dressage, for example, changes in the body speed of the horse are effected by lengthening the stride while keeping the speed (activity) of the legs the same. The ‘great masters' of the past centuries who are responsible for what dressage is today knew much more than we give them credit for. They knew that fast legs lead the horse down the track of the flight response and it is often a one way street. They knew that a hollow back is tense and fearful and can feed increasing tension. They realised that increases in speed were best arranged by keeping the legs at the same speed of revolution, but within that revolution a longer stride means more speed. The fast jerky leg movements of shying and jogging feed the flight response and keep it well-oiled for increased use. If a horse shies at a certain place it should be ridden there more slowly and the rider should be ready to use the

reins and decelerate the horse immediately it begins to shy. If the object that elicits the shy is on the right, it will be the horse's right foreleg that pushes the forehand away in panic, so the rider needs to be ready to slow the right foreleg with the right rein more so than the left. This should be repeated until the horse maintains his rhythm past the scary object. However, if the shies are random it is a strong hint of conflict behaviour - it means that the horse is confused about the aids and that it is heavy and delayed to either the stop, go or turn signals. Any acceleration or fast deviation of line should result in the immediate application of the slowing or turning aids so that the fast movements are not incorporated into the animal's repertoire. They must be prevented in this way from developing further practice. This means we need to train in an error-free way and when the horse shows a flight response we must prevent his legs from expressing it as much as possible. Error-free means delete the behaviour during its expression (not after it) and then immediately ask the same request again. This means slow the legs then ask for ‘go' again. This often requires initial tuning up of the stop response in hand. If bucking is dealt with by just kicking on forward, the buck pattern may elaborate before it stops, and thus it may become incorporated into the horse's repertoire of behaviour from the ‘go' aid. Of course if the horse is only doing a minor kick up of the hindlegs, applying the go might be all it takes to achieve the correct ‘go'. If it isn't fixed this way, then it needs to be trained error-free. Any sudden quickening is most effectively dealt with using the reins to immediately slow the stride, and the amount and strength of the slowing is governed by the severity of the horse's behaviour. Whether the horse is shying, swerving, accelerating, shooting backwards or bucking, it seems that the faster the legs move the more indelibly it is remembered. Is any amount of flight response useful? An important aspect of horse behaviour is that increasing amounts of flight response or adrenaline are necessary for increases in speed. So not all aspects of the flight response are detrimental. Galloping would not be possible without an increase in heart rate. So eventing and the various codes of racing require some of the internal mechanisms that are associated with the flight response. The big problem is how much is too much. Anyone who has had the misfortune to ride a bolting horse knows that they don't slow or turn. Yet a properly trained racehorse going at the same speed is still able to be slowed and turned. The bolting horse is clearly in a much firmer grip of the flight response than the well trained racehorse. When the flight response is involved in the forward response more than the minimum necessary amount to maintain a particular speed, the animal is running away. This again raises the question of self-carriage. A key feature of self-carriage is that the horse is in cruise-control. Ridden and led horses whose speed is held by human hands are expressing a minor form of bolting. Confused horses also tend to run away and are held in speed and rhythm by the rider. The horse is unable to escape and his back is further hollowed, his steps tense and choppy. Spontaneous recovery How much experience with tension and running away can we safely allow our horses? None. Because behaviours that are associated with the flight response can be remembered with just one episode, fearful experiences lie

there in the archives of the brain in storage, waiting. Fear responses are subject to what behavioural scientists call ‘spontaneous recovery' - the tendency to suddenly reappear in the behaviour of the animal at the original response strength. The greater the amount of the flight response that the animal has experienced, the greater its likelihood to show spontaneous recovery. So ignoring a reasonably serious bolt or buck or a shy can result it coming back to haunt you when you least expect it. Usually the behaviour returns during periods when the animal is challenged and stress levels are a little higher - i.e. during the acquisition of new behaviours. Chasing fearful horses in round-pens can also have the same effect in spontaneous recovery. If the horse is running around with all the signs of tension - high head, hollow back, short choppy strides, problems could be brewing. It's bad for the horse's mental well-being and bad for his associations with humans. Basically the horse is practicing and storing the flight response for later. What's more the horse is storing an association of fear and humans. If a horse is being chased around a round-pen with a hollow back, a high head carriage and with fast legs, then despite the immediate short term benefits proclaimed by the advocates of round-pen work, it can be a recipe for further and sometimes more severe expressions of the fear response, and for rifts in horse human bonds. Humanistic interpretations aside, you should try to put yourself in the horse's shoes. Eons of being high on the menu of predators has meant that the horse is particularly vulnerable to associate being chased with fear. The best you can do for your horse is to avoid chasing it if tension is likely to appear. On the other hand there is nothing wrong with correct lunging, or slower round-pen work, provided the horse is not hyper-reactive. If a horse goes around the round-pen or the lunging yard in cruise-control and not hollow, there can be great training benefits there. Any sudden quickening in lunging can be dealt with through downward transitions via the lunge rein. Control the horse's legs Dr Temple Grandin, An American ethologist showed a few years ago that ‘holding therapy' works with horses. She observed American cowboys putting wild mustangs in crates with only their heads protruding and then filling the crate full of wheat via an overhead silo. Then they were subjected to bags etc swinging toward their faces. The horses were unable to express their fear responses because their legs were immobilised. When horses emerged from this contraption they were far quieter and easier to control; their flight response was dulled for some time afterwards. For many years Australian breakers and horse whisperers have been hog-tying horse's legs and throwing them to the ground or hobbling them. All of these techniques temporarily subdue the flight response, although they are mostly misinterpreted as producing ‘respect' and ‘submission'. What is actually happening is that fearful stimuli are disconnected from the flight response. However doing these sorts of things are nowadays mostly seen as ethically unsound and risky practices. The best and easiest way to control the horse's feet on a more permanent basis is to do very effective groundwork on a regular basis. Correct groundwork provides complete control over the horse's legs. In the AEBC system of groundwork we condition the horse to move only from a lead rein signal, and that the lead rein signal should be trained thoroughly so that the

horse can be stepped forward and backward immediately from a very light lead signal and will continue doing so until signaled otherwise, maintaining a straight line and a wither-height head carriage. The horse also is required to ‘park' until signaled to move. Other trainers have similar techniques, however the common denominator of them all is that the legs of the horse are under control and no random movements are allowed, especially no fast random movements. It is well recognised that the more the horse practices fast random movements, the more he is prone to do so. Similarly under saddle, complete control over the horse's mobility is the solution for prevention of dangerous behaviours as well as for their rehabilitation. As I have mentioned earlier in this series, the various pressures of rein and leg place boundaries around the animal's mobility, by achieving complete control over the horse's feet in terms of acceleration, deceleration and direction. The transformation of these pressures to light aids adds relaxation to obedience because the light aids are unobtrusive and predictable. Conflict behaviour When animals experience the flight response regularly over a long time, they develop higher levels of certain stress chemicals such as cortisol. In behaviour studies, cortisol is a fairly reliable indicator of stress and over a long term has damaging effects on an animal's physiology. Long term tension can also result in conflict behaviours that include separation anxiety, aggression, and even self-mutilation. When a horse becomes confused, its first reaction is usually tension. This tension generally makes the horse inclined to run away from the stressful situation. The more confused the horse becomes, the greater the tendency to run away, leap away or shy away. Opposing responses predispose the horse to high levels of flight response. Opposing responses to aids involve reactions such as slowing from the leg aids, accelerating from the rein aids, turning left from the right rein or right from the left rein (as in falling-in or falling-out) or leg-yielding into the leg rather than away from the leg. In horse training however, the greatest amount of tension arises from the blocking effects of strong rein and leg at the same time. Only a small amount of horses show no clinical signs of tension under these circumstances. Animals simply can't accelerate and decelerate simultaneously so the horse learns that aids are only ‘aids' when they occur from pressures above the tight-pressured contact. Such a training regime means that sharp rowelled spurs and double bridles with crank-up nosebands become mandatory items of training yet common sense would dictate that higher standards in training should require less rather than more weaponry. Identifying and treating fearful behaviour is one very essential part of horsemanship. For the sake of ours and our children's safety and we have to throw away the myths that the horse that is rushing toward the jumps is displaying ‘keenness' and knows what he is doing because he is basically willing to please. If horse trainers learned to correctly identify the range of fear responses that horses exhibit during training, and learned the value of not incorporating fear patterns of movement in all equestrian disciplines, horse riding and training would be far safer for both horse and rider. It is heartening to see that the equine science universities in the UK and

Australia are embracing this understanding which will ultimately filter out to the rest of the equestrian world.

Mentality Principle Appreciating the similarities and differences in mental ability between horses and humans is crucial to effective and humane training. We humans are a collectively insecure lot. We are determined, it seems, to prove that as a species we are not intellectually alone on this planet. Here on earth, we're desperate to show that many other animals, perhaps all, are just like us, but going about their lives a bit differently. So important was the horse to Western civilisation in the last two millennia that all European cities are adorned with statues of the horse. The horse fought our wars, it toiled for us; it helped build much of the New World. Nowadays it fulfills our dreams, and still fires our imaginations and inspires wonder in those who occasionally pause to reflect. Horses are not just pleasure vehicles - much is expected of them. A horse may be our best friend, our only friend, our child or our partner. So powerful is the horse in the human psyche that Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist believed that the image of a horse evokes our deepest primal drives. The horse has always been a paradox. How could such a big, powerful beast be typically so gentle, so forgiving? Similarities In some ways we're not unlike horses. The similarities between horses and humans probably helped to bring us together in the first place. Like us, the horse is a highly social being. That's why horses kept in isolation are more inclined to develop behaviours like windsucking and many other problems compared to group housed horses. Anyone who has witnessed separation anxiety also knows that friends are important to horses. So strong is the instinct for togetherness that grooming and stroking horses in the area just in front of the withers has evolved to lower heart rates - it strengthens bonds. It's the best place to positively reinforce a horse. It’s proof that attachment theory also applies to horses. It’s even likely that at least to some extent, attachment theory may also apply to the hose/human bond. This means we should see touch as vital to horses and we should give up patting and replace it with wither caressing. My life’s experience with horses assures me this is correct. The horse also has an excellent memory although in some respects theirs is much better than ours. While our memory is affected by our recall and reasoning abilities, the memory of the horse is more stable, probably because it is unclouded by reflection. Equine scientists Anja Wolf and Martine Hausberger showed that horses can remember reactions without practise at least for many years, and this probably extends to a lifetime. Thinking, analysing and reflecting however, corrupts memory. We humans are always reflecting on our memories, dragging them up out of storage when we think or tell a story, then afterwards we re-store them again. Only this time they are stored a little differently than before. They may be altered by the contexts in which we reflect (physical, emotional, perceptual aspects of the moments of reflection). On the contrary, the horse only retrieves memories of events and places when it is confronted with the original or similar stimuli. This makes for a much clearer and more accurate

memory. Every horse person is aware of the fact that the horse knows if there is something slightly different in its environment. You could say the horse has a photographic memory. Yet most of you wouldn't be able to recall hardly anything of the design of say a ten dollar note, (to the joy of counterfeiters!) despite the fact that you see them constantly. To the detriment of training, the horse remembers far more than you do of what happened where. During schooling you may notice that the horse goes better on one quarter of the circle than elsewhere, and gradually, if what you are doing is right, the good area increases. On the downside, the horse remembers tension and fear better than anything else. Horses are mammals and so their learning mechanisms are similar to those of humans. Like us they are swift at trial and error learning (learning the right reaction through reward), excellent at classical conditioning (i.e. learning associations, cues or aids) and masters at habituation (getting used to things). They can also learn to generalise to stimuli, (alterations in aids) and they can even learn categories of things (based on similar physical characteristics). However according to one of the most respected researchers in this field, Professor Christine Nicol of Bristol University, experiments indicate that while horses are capable of forming categories of similar characteristics of things "there is no evidence that they can develop abstract concepts". So while there are some mental similarities that horses share with humans, there are also some important differences. Understanding these differences is central to achieving a high level of success with all horses rather than just a few. Differences During my PhD, I wanted to investigate ‘understanding' in horses. I wanted to see if the horse had a facility similar to our prefrontal cortex (front of the brain) where it could imagine, ‘see with the mind's eye', where it could ponder on past events or think of the future. I decided to design an experiment that was later published in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science. The experimental design utilised the horse's well-known ability to be cued to the delivery of food to either one of two feed goals in a test arena. One by one, each horse was held by a handler in the middle of the arena facing the feed goals. There was a feed goal to the right, and a feed goal to the left, and a person sitting beside each feed goal. The person sitting beside one of the feed goals would stand up and pour feed into the feed goal. The horse would see this and would then be immediately released. Over 40 trials the horses soon learned that when they saw food being poured, that's where the food would be, so they would go to the correct feed bin. But as soon as we separated the pouring of the feed and the release of the horse by ten seconds, the horse's success rate plummeted to 50% - in other words it became random. They couldn't remember where the food was actually being poured after ten seconds. While individual horses occasionally seemed as if they could manage the ten seconds, again their results would drop. Statistical analysis showed that horses collectively or individually could not recall the correct goal in a two choice situation where each goal was equally rewarded. Interesting things happened to when the horse's discovered they had failed. A couple of ponies and warmbloods would lay their ears back and make a bee-line for the correct goal, while

some thoroughbreds decided to give up altogether and leave. To account for the results, some researchers suggested that the amount of food (100 grams oats) for each trial was insufficient to motivate the horse horses. However this can easily be discounted because the same amount of food powerfully motivated the horses in the immediate release trials. What was interesting in those trials, was that over time, the horse’s success rate with the 10 second trials improved. Why? What the horse learned to do was to maintain their vision on the salient feed goal and keep looking until released. So by trial and error (operant conditioning) they learned a strategy. Other researchers found similar effects. So what is now needed are trials where the horse’s vision is occluded as have done with dog versions of this same experiment (dogs do quite well in this because they need planning to out-wit prey). We have begun trials and results again suggest less capacity for holding a vision in their frontal lobes. The experiment reminds us that correct timing in training is essential, that unlike us, there is no stream of consciousness that accompanies instinctive behaviours and that there are differences in short-term memory in horses compared to humans. It means that we must keep training as simple as possible to be sure it is digestible and to be sure our training methods are not so difficult that only a handful of horses succeed. Sometimes the complexity of our training suggests that we are always inclined to over-estimate mental abilities in horses. Observational learning of novel behaviour (copying a novel act) has long been considered to be indicative of some abilities of reasoning. If you think about it, it's not hard to guess why this is so. Observational learning requires an animal to see and remember the behaviour sequence, see themselves perform it in their mind and then perform it. Notice that I say ‘novel act' - that's important because there is a phenomenon in all animals where they are able to copy a behaviour that is already ‘wired' into their brains. This contagious mimicking of instinctive behaviour is adaptive. So when one animal eats, others are compelled to do so, when one lies down others may do also. For social animals synchronising behaviour is sensible. Contagious behaviour is not learned but is more of an instinctive triggering device. Like when you see someone yawn you are inclined to yawn too. Horse people often believe that wind-sucking is copied. As Dr Paul McGreevy points out, this is not correct. Observational learning in horses has been thoroughly researched in horses and all published experimental investigations have yielded negative results. Unlike cooperative predators, horses are also slow to learn ‘rules' that govern where food might be found if food is switched from one place to another. Unlike Chimps, gorillas and dolphins they cannot recognise themselves in a mirror - they only see another horse. They are also poor at seeing a detour to a goal if the opening requires going further away from the goal first. Once they've achieved it though, they are quick to remember the path. Horses are unable to do these things because these abilities were not required in the millions of years of the evolution of their behaviours on the open grasslands. Equine researchers agree that any higher mental processing abilities in the horse are, if present at all, poorly developed. On the other hand, greater reasoning abilities are seen in predators, and are most highly developed in co-operative predators with diverse diets such as chimps and dolphins. Dogs

rate highly, according to some researchers. Even birds that face challenges in food procurement (seed, fruit and carrion eating birds and also fruit bats) might also rate as having some development of higher mental abilities. Such animals have to remember the location and amount of remaining food to save energy on wasted foraging journeys. Of course, if you think about it why would horses need reasoning abilities? You need a great memory to be a grazer but no deductive powers. As Stephen Budiansky points out, grass unlike mice, doesn't hide. Such powers require extra brain tissue which, as Dr T.W. Deacon showed in 1990, is ten times more expensive energy-wise (huge requirements for glucose and oxygen) than any other tissue in the body. What people erroneously consider to be examples of reasoning in their horse generally turn out to be excellent examples of trial and error learning. The pony that fiddles with the gate latch and learns to open it is a typical example. It's clever, but it isn't reasoning. It's the same process by which horses learn equitation. Horses learn to avoid pressure form the reins and legs by giving a correct response that was initially learned by trial and error. Then they learn associated cues such as seat and weight aids. Why do these differences matter? That the horse is not a reasoning creature matters a great deal. Overestimating an animal's mental ability leads to all sorts of assumptions that have bad consequences for horses. That the horse doesn't reason means he is an entirely innocent partner in the training process. The horse cannot be blamed for misdemeanours or poor performance - these are due largely riding or training (or health) problems. When a horse behaves in ways that don't suit us it is wrong to say "He knows what he did wrong" or "He understands". There is no understanding in the horse - he simply reacts to situations, events, aids etc. His behaviour at any one time is a snapshot into the sum total of all his training. If he behaves badly at an event compared to home it means one of two things - either he is not established in his work at home or else his work at home is flawed with at least some confusions. Tension is a good indicator. Does he grind his teeth because he is working hard, really ‘putting in' or because he is a little confused - perhaps there are conflicting aids or too many aids on at once.... We owe it to our horses to consider all these matters. Therefore...... It makes the world of difference to know that our best chance of getting through to horses in training is to keep everything as simple as possible. It is not only possible to train horses to Grand Prix dressage this way, it’s actually far easier. For welfare reasons I believe that principles such I have described in these articles should be taught at every level of instruction, from pony club to the training of coaches throughout the world in all disciplines. If the horse ‘understood' his training then maybe we wouldn't need to be so simplistic, so consistent, so precise. On the other hand if he were so smart as to be able to comprehend training, then perhaps he would not be so rideable. Maybe it would be unethical to ride horses if they were capable of reflection, because then they would be suffering, given that they would rather eat grass and be with friends.... But the horse is unstressed by good habits whether they are under-saddle or wherever. Furthermore I believe

that correct horsemanship is equivalent to behavioural and environmental enrichment, since it is part of the horse's ethogram to experience many more stimuli and environments than he would normally encounter in a small paddock or worse still, a box-stall. However, bad habits, inconsistency and confusion have very negative welfare implications for horses. Mankind's responsibility to horses Because the horse is an innocent partner in equitation, we have a special responsibility there. As time passes and the material needs of the developed world are fewer, more thought is devoted to welfare and ethical issues. Short necks, tension and conflict behaviours can no longer be brushed off as the horse's fault or personality. Tight crank-nosebands are impossible to justify and given that they mask tension and incorrect training of deceleration and outline responses, this equipment is no different to severing the nerves of a horse’s tail to prevent tail swishing. If you use animals for sport, and participants knowingly jeopardise their horse’s welfare, then you cannot justify horse sports, and their days are numbered. So I think the best way forward is for governing bodies such as the FEI to immediately address these issues, educate riders (research shows that only 1% of cruelty is deliberate). The International Society for Equitation Science have developed a taper gauge to provide certainty on the age-old ‘two-finger rule’ for nosebands (nose bands should be only so tight that you can still fit two fingers flat under the noseband on the nasal planum). Initial research at Horse-Trials on 201 horses showed this gauge to yield viable results however the FEI is ambivalent and uncommitted. Judges need to clear and certain about signs of tension. The signs of tension need reviewing and predetermined penalties ought to be issued for the various signs and levels of tension. Judges should recognise that they are ultimately custodians of the performance horse because the rewards they issue give direction to horse sports. They should have clear perceptions about how they might judge a flash moving but tense horse as opposed to a more average moving ‘happy' one. Otherwise the sport of dressage becomes more of a meat market than a competition of training. Our greatest responsibility is never forgetting that the horse's welfare is paramount. Every horse trainer should always have an open mind about possible limitations and confusions in their training. Like all sports and performing arts, egos can get in the way, and ways of understanding can be severely hampered by closed mindsets. But when it comes to doing sports that involve animals, egos should count for nothing. It is a privilege to ride horses and remarkable that nature has evolved the possibility. Not for one moment should that be forgotten.