
This is about daffodils. A beautiful, vibrant sign that spring is coming, they appear in a landscape that’s still trying to shed the heavy layers of winter. We’re not really expecting to see them, they weren’t there last week, and they lift our heart as we imagine that the cold wind, the overnight frosts and the ever present threat of late snow may soon be behind us.
We’re riding along, and in fact we only see the daffodils for the briefest flash of yellow because no sooner have we noticed them than our horse shoots sideways, snorts and, if we’re still on top, does a 180 degree turn and heads back the way we came. Most riders are moved to ask themselves “what ON EARTH is frightening about a daffodil?” It leads to jokey exchanges along the lines of “what is the most stupid thing your horse has ever spooked at?”.
I mean, there are daffodils all along the verge outside the fence of your horse’s field! She grazes along there with her nose brushing the petals every. single. day.
Although, it’s not just daffodils. It’s also cats. There you are, leading your horse in from the field one evening and a cat pops their head up from the long grass. Your horse shoots to the end of the lead rope, yanking your arm uncomfortably, and you just about manage to hang on. If it didn’t hurt, it would be funny, because that’s the same cat that jumped out of the rafters of the barn on to your horse’s back last week. And the horse didn’t even turn their head to look.
Actually, come to think of it, it’s not just cats and daffodils. Your horse spooked violently at a plastic feed bag that was sitting outside the stable door yesterday. It was the same plastic feed bag that they had their nose in yesterday in case there was a single pony nut left in the bottom.
Hold on, though, there seems to be a trend emerging! Your horse spooks at all kinds of stupid things, so I think we can reach the conclusion that you actually have a very spooky horse. Except for the times when he’s not spooky at all, which is odd and makes things awkward, because if you could only predict when he was spooky, that would at least be closer to having a non-spooky horse!
It’s all about glue, and honey. Bear with me here, I’m going to talk about psychology for a minute. You knew you’d get some of that, reading a blog by a psychologist, didn’t you? Most of us know a bit about how animals, including horses and humans, learn. It’s pressure and release, isn’t it? That’s how horses teach each other! So that’s the way we teach them too. If you imagine a map of the country where you live, that’s the bit in the top left hand corner, there are a few big cities and it’s well populated. There’s a whole load of unexplored countryside around though, and that makes up more than three quarters of the country. Let’s take a tour and get to know it a bit better. Horses (and humans) learn through either consciously or unconsciously detecting the associations between things that surround them. So when we look at pressure and release, the horse learns that something they don’t like happens, and that something they did made it stop or go away. So they now add the thing they did to their repertoire of “things to do when something I don’t like happens”. We can use this in training by manipulating the world. We add the something the horse dislikes and set things up so that the thing they do to stop it is something we want. Lift a rein until the horse feels something moving on their face – they move to get away from that sensation and they have learned to move in the direction of an opening rein.
There’s a flip side to this, as we move out of the busy city on our map, into the unexplored countryside. Horses (and people) also learn through observing what gets them something they DO like. They learn this from the first hour of their life (“shove nose under here, yummy milk flows into my mouth!”. They go on to learn things like “this place is where the tasty bucket of feed appears” and “if I go down on one knee I can twist my neck enough to reach under this fence and get long grass!”. All these this are now more likely to happen again. Both these examples and the example where the horse acts to stop something they don’t like are examples of a type of learning called operant conditioning. It’s the way animals learn about how they can change their world to meet their needs. Dislike something? Here’s behaviours that have worked to stop or escape it. Like something? Here’s behaviours that have worked to get more of it!
But horses and humans also need to learn about the meaning of the world, because that’s how we stay out of danger, or find our way to the food store, or work out who’s a friend. Animals do this through learning about things that happen together that make them feel a particular way. It’s about an emotional response to the world. Let’s go back to the opening rein. You added something to the horse’s world that they disliked enough to want it to stop. They learned the behaviour that got it to stop, but that didn’t change how they felt about the opening rein. It was something they disliked. Things animals dislike come complete with invisible sticky glue. You can’t see it, but it’s on them. It’s called “classical conditioning”. You add something the horse doesn’t like, and the horse’s entire nervous system and brain now detect everything around coated in sticky glue. What was around when the thing I didn’t like happened? That bridle! The human on top! That yellow and white pole! Ewww!
Classical conditioning also works for the good things. I think of it like honey. You do something, and suddenly, a lovely thing happens! You stand next to the gate, and wow! a human brings a bucket full of delicious food! That bucket is now honey covered. So is the human. The gate is too!
Each experience, a little bit of the emotional impact of the thing that happens coats everything around it. Some things have a bit of glue and a bit of honey. It’s difficult to say whether the bridle that you’re wearing is a honey or glue coated object, because yesterday, there was annoying pressure but today, the human fed a treat when the bridle was put on.
That bucket, though, is universally lovely. Whenever you see it, you get a warm glow. It’s just a bucket, but it’s all honey covered loveliness.
Everything in our life has meaning, and the meaning has come from years of accumulated associations. The things that give you a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach – years of associations. The things that make you feel wonderful – years of associations. The things that make you feel a bit conflicted – years of associations.
Now let’s go back to the spooking horse and the daffodil. How does this apply to a daffodil? What could a daffodil POSSIBLY have done to a horse to cause this kind of reaction? Remember, when you use something the horse dislikes in your training or interaction, the feeling the horse gets attaches, like glue, to you, your tack, the situation, the place you did it… And it lasts. It might be invisible to you, but it’s there, colouring the emotions the horse feels at any given moment in time. Let’s think about the back story. You got your horse in from their field and tacked up for a lovely spring ride. You put on the bridle. The horse’s associations with the bridle are “get to go outside the field with no grass” and “uncomfortable mouth pressure”. You add the saddle. The horse’s association with the saddle are “weight on back, sometimes hurts” and “person sitting on me, sometimes unbalanced”. You bring the horse to the mounting block, get your gloves, hat and whip, and mount up. The horse’s associations are “sometimes get treats here if I stand still”, “that stick sometimes hurts me”, “if the human’s wearing a hat, they will sit on me”. But they don’t do anything abnormal.
You get to the gate out on to the road, but your horse stops and won’t move. You pick up the reins more firmly and give a confident tap with your heels. the horse feels pressure on their mouth that they want to stop, and feels an uncomfortable sensation on their sides, but they are feeling a bit worried about leaving their friends, so they still stand. You increase the force of the kick and the horse steps back a bit. You’ve heard that it’s bad to keep kicking, so you give the horse a sharp tap with the whip. They move forward, so you release the pressure as you’ve been taught, and all is well. Except that you’re now covered from head to toe in glue. You can’t see it, but the horse can.
When they spook at the daffodil 5 minutes later, you have absolutely no idea at all why a horse would be so stupid as to spook at a flower. And you can’t see that glue that would tell you about the horse’s emotional state. You don’t have any clue that the things you did were what caused the spook. You remove every single layer in the situation and you realise that the common factor is you. The horse isn’t in the least bit worried about the daffodils growing along the side of the field – because you (and your glue) are not there. They ARE worried about the daffodil on the side of the road not because it’s a daffodil, but because you ARE there. Along with your bridle, and your tapping heels, and your whip, that you used 5 minutes ago and then forgot about.
You can honey coat too. You can make inanimate objects into things that are lovely – you can make a plastic bucket so powerful that a horse will run the length of the field to get to it. You can make a bristly brush so great that horses will walk over when they see it. You can make a headcollar into a horse magnet – hold it up and three horses will compete to see who can put it on. Instead, though, we most often choose the glue, and when we can’t see it, we blame the horse for being spooky.
But in the mathematical equation, everything in the horse’s life goes back to normal when we remove the one key part of it… us. Daffodils aren’t scary. Trailers are for exploring. Tarps are great fun. Whips are for biting and throwing around. Horses aren’t (in general) afraid of things. They’re afraid of US, and us being there makes them afraid of the things.
There’s an object lesson in this for us. You can desensitise your horse to every single thing you can think of, but you forget that you’re the common denominator. You’re there in every situation, and you forgot that you needed honey, not glue.
When we train our horses, our choice of training method affects more than just the horse’s learning of specific behaviours. Pressure and release (or negative reinforcement) training is effective at teaching behaviours, and we choose it because it’s practical, quick and the horse learns. What we forget is that even what seems like a completely innocuous (to us) pressure adds a layer of invisible sticky stuff to the cue we use, to us, to the situation, the place we train, the equipment we use. So when people say “my horse isn’t afraid of the whip! She bites it and throws it around!”, we’re right. She’s not afraid of it, she’s afraid of a whip held by a human. A bucket is still a bucket when it’s empty and a horse knows the difference.
Understanding this should help us understand more about the wider effect of the training process we use and about how our horses act. When they do things that seem incomprehensibly stupid to us, we need to stop and think : “would the horse have done this if they were with other horses without me there?”. If the answer is no, we need to say to our horse “it’s not you, it’s me”, and mean it so that it guides how we train in future. The glue does wear off over time if you don’t keep replenishing it. Think of ways you can replace it with honey, and you’ll see fewer spooks, fewer moments when your horse says “NO!” for no reason you can work out, fewer rope burns, fewer sweaty anxious horses. And more horses coming over when they see tack, when they see trailers, when they see grooming kits, hats and gloves… If you’re unsure about how to work with honey, ask! There’s a load of people (and horses) who would love to help demonstrate.