06/16/2025
🍭 From Treats to Trust: How Positive Reinforcement Grows Beyond the Transaction
When people first encounter positive reinforcement (R+) training, it often looks and feels very mechanical: click, treat, repeat.
There may be a sense of disconnect—a feeling that the relationship is reduced to a transaction. People worry that the horse is "just doing it for the food."
But here’s the truth: all training starts off as a kind of transaction. Whether you're using positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement (pressure and release training), the early stages involve a straightforward exchange. The horse performs a behavior, and something happens in return.
In R+ training, that "something" is typically a reward like a click followed by a treat. Do your work and get a paycheck.
In R- training, it's the removal of some sort of pressure. Do your work or else.
🧰👩🔧Why It Feels Mechanical at First
In the beginning, positive reinforcement relies heavily on clear, repeatable patterns. The horse learns, through consistent pairing, that a specific behavior results in a reward.
Initially we can only use rewards that are inherently enjoyable to the horse, things like food or sometimes scratches, to reinforce our training.
Yes, it can look robotic at first. But this phase is important because it builds understanding and trust. The horse starts to recognize that their choices influence their environment in a reliable, safe way.
In addition to shaping behaviors, this pairing with food is classically conditioning the trained behaviors every step of the way. The consistent pairing of a behavior with a reward starts to change pathways in the brain.
The behavior starts to feel enjoyable in and of itself and the happy chemicals in the brain get released before the reinforcer even arrives.
💃🦄From Extrinsic to Intrinsic: A Natural Shift
With time and thoughtful application, that external motivator (the treat, the scratch, the praise) starts to give way to internal motivation. The horse becomes more confident, engaged, and even enthusiastic. Why?
Because the training itself becomes enjoyable. The predictability, clarity, and choice embedded in R+ create a safe space for learning. The horse begins to seek out the interaction not just for the treat, but because the process is empowering and enriching.
✨Trust replaces tension✨
You may notice your horse offering behaviors freely, showing curiosity, and participating with softness rather than resistance.
That’s intrinsic motivation blossoming.
This is also where the Premack Principle comes in: more probable behaviors (behaviors with a strong history of pairing with things the horse loves, like food) can reinforce less probable behaviors (newer things with a lower history of reinforcement).
This principle is key to building motivation and decreasing the long-term reliance on food.
This isn’t to suggest that we ever “get rid of the food.” But the premack principle explains how we can start to use behaviors with a strong reinforcement history to reinforce new behaviors, instead of having to use food at every step.
🤔What About R- Training? Isn't That Natural Too?
Negative reinforcement also starts off as a transaction. The horse moves away from pressure, and the pressure is released. Done well, it can be subtle and fair. But it still relies on an initial aversive (however mild) to produce the behavior.
Novice R- trainers also look and feel quite robotic as well as they navigate the phases of escalating pressure.
Over time, cues become more fluid and subtle and a horse may respond with precision and speed, but it is rooted in the avoidance of something unpleasant and comes from a place of compliance rather than engagement.
This doesn’t mean R- can’t be ethical or skillfully applied. Many experienced trainers use R- with care. But it’s important to acknowledge that R- remains primarily extrinsic in motivation. The horse performs the behavior to avoid or escape something, rather than to pursue something pleasurable.
💕🥰Positive Reinforcement: A Foundation for Relationship
What makes R+ special is not just the treats. It’s the way it invites the horse to be an active participant. As the training matures, so does the relationship. Your horse begins to look forward to your sessions, not because they have to, but because they want to.
And that shift—from "what's in it for me?" to "I'm here because I know this is going to be fun"—is where the magic happens.
So, if you're feeling a bit mechanical at the start of your R+ journey, don’t stress. You're not doing it wrong. You're building the scaffolding.
With consistency, kindness, and clarity, those simple transactions evolve into a richer, deeper connection.
🩵🦄And that’s something worth every click🦄🩵
