29/02/2024
I wish more people would see it as a personal failing if they can’t use food rewards without creating horses who bite instead of blaming R+ as a methodology for their incorrect application of it.
There’s such an interesting double standard where there’s always an excuse for why the behaviour of stressed horses who are traditionally trained is just a quirk, excitement or some other reason that doesn’t attribute the problem to the trainer or methods used.
Meanwhile, if you use R+, even if there’s no demonstrable evidence of your horses biting, people project this belief.
Teaching any animal to bite when using food rewards is the fault of the trainer.
If we can train dogs, who are predators and actually eat meat, to safely accept food without biting, a horse, a herbivorous flight animal, should be easier.
But instead, there’s this narrative that horses cannot be trained to accept food safely, which is ridiculous.
It is the personal failing of the person teaching the behaviour if a horse learns to bite.
If you cannot hand feed your horse without them learning to bite, it’s time to reflect on where you’re going wrong in your training and/or management and how you’re contributing to creating these behaviours.
Frankly, I find it super embarrassing to read the amount of horse people who think horses are some special exception to food rewards and too dangerous to teach to take food safely when it’s the reinforcer of choice for most zoo animals and in most industries where much more dangerous and undomesticated animals are being trained.
Don’t use food rewards if you don’t want to, but don’t project your incompetence or lack of desire to learn how to use them competently onto those who can and do want to learn.
Incorrect application always falls to the fault of the trainer and all of the people I’ve seen peddling this mindset appear to have a very poor understanding of operant conditioning as a whole and it’s a shame their narrative is such a common one in the industry.
