Understanding animal’s behaviour is essential prior to making of recommendations about their management, construction of facilities for holding them, their transport, and discrete operations on the animals such as branding, and tattooing. Horses own unique and fascinating behavioural traits, which enhances their, survival, development and builds an effective intimacy with people; horse keepers. They possess many attributes making them suitable species of choice for service and companion to human beings. Relating with horses, however, can be dangerous without knowledge of their behaviour. Instinct and experience are both the by-products of behaviour. All horses to some extent have a similar behaviour. However, this behaviour can be modified through successful training, which is based on trainers understanding of these traits and how to use cues (stimuli) to change behaviour (Kate 2005). Memory, flight or resistance to response, response to dominance, and understanding of and reaction to stimuli are the primary behavioural characteristics used in training of horses.
Constant exposure of horses to certain behaviour makes it a practice, therefore, making it a moral despite the fact that it was not designed to be a lesson. Human intentions, therefore, is not entirely responsible for behavioural learning, but how horses are handled, and the environment is equally significant. Horses respond to danger, mostly by fleeing away from it. This is based on experiences, which invoked fear, and something the horses are unfamiliar with. During horse training when it is young, they are allowed to escape to an acceptable training cue response. A hip rope is often used on foals during instruction on how to lead. Horses have a standard way of responding to pressure by fleeing away from the pressure. Pressure on the hip rope applied to encourage them to move forward. If they respond by moving in the reverse direction, an additional pressure is applied to make them move forward. Horses are trained to learn to fly away from pressure, and upon moving in the right direction, the pressure is released.
Training of young horses can be difficult as they are usually aggressive to the handler. Horses feel insecure when confined or handled and can cause security problems. Young horses, particularly, panics making them respond by running over fences, handlers and other obstacles. Proper training of young horses lessens this instinct to escape. Horses have pleasant memories, but do not have a substantial reasoning ability (Jennie 2003). They are trained by use repetition. Smooth and slow response cues are used when training young horses. Advanced training results from young horses can be obtained using step-wise training procedures. This adds intricacy and speed to responses previously learned by young horses.
Horses rely on initial recognition of threat and response for survival. This can be both beneficial and inconvenience when training young horses. Horses are remarkably perceptive and can react instantaneously to sounds, movement, touch, smells and sights. In order to show horses to respond to cues, trainers usually capitalize on their sensitivity to voice (McBane 2009). However, to achieve desired training outputs, programs on horse training should desensitize the horses to unfamiliar stimuli. Young horses are easy to train, since they can easily learn about the authoritative nature of humans. A junior horse develops confidence on his or her instructor, as they learn to feel secure about the actions of humans. They develop confidence when human actions are reliable and recognisable form past interactions under similar conditions. To achieve desired training outcomes of young horses, there is a need to build on horse’s respect of superiority based on trust.
Reinforcement should be provided to simplify understanding of young horses. Reinforcements can be modified to be positive, burdensome or negative. Positive reinforcements are often learned behavioural characteristics. An example is when horse is given a gentle pat on the neck as a reward associated with simultaneous release form training. Positive reinforcement encourages the horse to repeat the performance in future. Positive reinforcements are, however, not practical for regular training situations. Punishing may also be administered as a form of reinforcement in order to discourage certain behaviour. However, a verbal scolding is generally recommended, but at times, physical discipline, such as a loud clap on the horses shoulder is significant, so as to instil a lasting impression on the horse.
Negative reinforcement is where a juvenile horse, which is being trained, is made to undergo an unpleasant experience, thus, making it work and avoid the aversive. The stronger the determination of the horse, means that a more aggressive aversive is required to make the horse work to avoid the aversive rather than fighting against its trainer. Negative reinforcement can also be referred to as breaking a horse. It uses the concept of escape and avoidance. After exposure to negative reinforcement, the horse will learn to accept future negative reinforcement with no fight or evasiveness (Natalie 2007).
The negative reinforcement principle used in training young horses uses behavioural traits, which are inherent in horses. For example, when pressure is applied by a direct pull; a move to the direction of the pull enables the horse to escape the pressure inserted. Negative reinforcement also uses avoidance. In this case, a young horse learns to avoid constant reinforcement through adequate response to initial cues. This is where the young horse learns to avoid an example is when young horses being trained are applied pressure on the leg to make it walk away from it, if the response is acceptable, it be reinforced by release of leg pressure. Ignorance of the cue by the horse, reinforcement by use of a more powerful kick will probably make the cue acceptable. Repetition makes the horse associate with constant reinforcements, thereby, being obedient to initial cues, which are less forceful.
During performance career of a horse, cues should be reinforced regularly. Young horses require reinforcement continually in training. Older well trained should respond with less negative reinforcement. Young horse training aims at making horses respond to cues appropriately, without being reinforced. Nevertheless, well-trained horse may require reinforcement to maintain its level training.
Horses respond quickly to stimuli. Effectiveness in reinforcement should occur immediately after the horse has responded. This makes the horse learn to identify the reinforcement with the preceding cue. Consistent reinforcement quickens the ability of the horses to learn to respond to cues, as it enables the horses to realise minor changes in cue application. Thus, this enables execution of complex manoeuvres and stimuli, which are more advanced.
Varieties of horses are capable of building physical and psychological barriers, thereby, enabling them to ignore constant stimulus. Horse fatigue easily so cues must be short. Constant and prolonged stimulus makes the horse ignore it and try to escape by fighting the pressure. Length of horse training sessions is limited to fatigue. Young horses are not wells adapted for long training sessions, thus; they should be trained using short training sessions. As the horses get used to training, the length of the sessions can be increased (Fraser 2007). Varying the work types and giving time the horse to relax during training sessions can help in preventing fatigue.
Training of young horses call for constant exercise of psychology, since horses strength is no match to that of humans. Trainers usually try to foresee horse’s behaviour in varied conditions, and design favourable conditions, which encourage horses to respond correctly to what they have been trained on. Horses started on training at a young age develop into more dependable horses throughout their lifetime. Negative reinforcement is the most preferred mode of training young horses as it ensures learning of a desired behaviour, in which lack of it can lead to subjection to undesired experiences such as leg pressure. Breaking down training lessons to small components, enhances ability of the young horse to learn and train faster. Its mandatory to be consistent while training young horses, you do not proceed to the next step until the young horse has mastered the previous skill.
Reference list
Fraser, A. F., 2007. The behaviour and welfare of the horse. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Jennie, L., 2003. The young horse: breaking and training. London: Kenilworth press ltd.
Kate, G., 2005. Training the young horse: Schooling for success. London: Transworld
publishers.
McBane, S., 2009. 100 ways to improve your horse’s behaviour. Canada: Wadsworth.
Natalie, W., 2007. The welfare of horses. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
