21/06/2025
I keep animals because I love to watch them, interact with them, train them and, with horses, ride them.
I don't really advocate keeping horses and "letting them be free" as most horses I have seen kept that way have a limited range, very poor care, including hoof and health care. Untrained horses make basic care difficult and dangerous, especially for our vets and hoof care professionals.
Keeping horses is expensive and requires a lot of commitment and not many of us are selfless enough to spend all our wages on someone else's lifestyle with nothing but a snuffle or 2 in return.
There is a line somewhere where their welfare and our pleasure can find a compromise. I am still working to find that balance, I've only had a few years of this approach, which is quite different from a lot of what I had been taught 20 years when I last had horses. I have recently started Sparkles under saddle using R+ and we are exploring where we go from here. The photo is from our local ag show fancy dress class last year with Chloe in the dragon suit.
This is where I find using added reinforcement (R+) is actually quite a handy welfare check tool.
Firstly, I cannot stand training a really hungry animal. They are too eager, offer huge approximations, or throw out previously learned behaviours, they are sloppy in their haste to get to the treats. They also easily get frustrated which can slip to despondency or aggression. Whether it is a parrot, a sheep, a dog or anything in between it is not fun!
Second, if your animal is not starving and desperate to get a handful of chaff, they will stop engaging/doing the thing when what you are asking them is particularly aversive to them. This could range from avoiding you when you hold up the spray bottle, to wandering off when you try to load them on the float alone. You can't escalate your R+ very much, unless you go back in time to create a more hungry animal before training. I train at liberty at home, so if my horses want to say no they can just leave.
The key is, you have to take this behaviour as feedback, information, not disobedience, it makes you think about whether the impact of what you are asking is beneficial to the horse, whether it is detrimental to their welfare and what steps need to be taken for them to be truly okay with what you are asking, or if they even can be....
If the horse is suffering from bug bites, it is time to break down that spray bottle into smaller steps and build trust so fly spray can be applied.
If it is an objection to being loaded into the float, leaving their herd behind and travelling alone in such an unnatural contraption, this is where I need to adjust my expectations. Is it realistic to expect my horse, who doesn't understand her privileged position, to switch off her innate instincts? Does travelling cause my horse pain? Bracing themselves for travel can aggravate muscular-skeletal pain issues that are already there.
If a horse suddenly wants to avoid something that they have previously been comfortable with, we serve them best by assuming it is pain related and checking with the horse's health care team to diagnose it.
For my ponies, going for a float trip requires a friend to come with them. That is a non negotiable for them, the shaky teleportation box needs an emotional support pony for company.
How they take the food is information, it tells us a lot about their emotional state. Snatching, using teeth, pulling head away quickly or reluctance to take the food is a pretty obvious warning that they are not at their ease. As cute as nickering in training is, it is a sign that the horse is not calm and relaxed. These are pretty overt signs that we need to step back, slow down and reassess our training plans and maybe even our goals. There are no shortcuts and no way of avoiding noticing the horses' responses to what we ask of them. We are capable of adjusting our expectations, without significant pain.
There are a lot more nuances we can look for by using R+ and taking in the feedback, allowing us to make a judgement of whether we are making a demand on our horses that is too far from their comfort levels, or natural behaviour to be worth a bit of chaff and therefore a potential welfare flag.
Disclaimer: I am not an Olympic level rider and I don't wish to be one if I have to dig spurs into my horses' ribs every stride to maintain a trot, cause my horses mouth to bleed or for their tongue to lose feeling and turn blue because of my rein aids, ignore basic signs of discomfort and pain in horses, or if I need to whip them at all, let alone repeatedly. If that is the standard of an Olympian or high level rider in other events I think the standards need to be revised!
