Well… no.
A recent research study, which was featured on theHorse.com, found that when the horses in the study were given a choice, they would rather not work. The article concludes that horses would rather hang out in the pasture with their buddies, than be ridden by a person. (You can read the article here.) Now, I have some major issues with this article, which I’ll touch on below.
Most people and animals don’t like “work.” That’s why it’s up to the trainer to find ways to make training fun and enjoyable for the animal.
Clicker training and positive reinforcement based training methods give trainers tools and methods to help make training a pleasant experience for the animal. I know plenty of equine clicker trainers who have horses and donkeys that run to the gate to greet them and that are disappointed to have to go back to the pasture at the end of a training session. These equines enjoy interacting with people and actually like training and riding time.
I would love to see this study repeated with a wider range of horses and a wider range of training tasks. I suspect that the researchers might have come to a very different conclusion if they had used a herd of clicker trained horses!
I found this article disappointing, as well, from a reporting standpoint. The researchers found that the group of warmblood horses used in the study did not like the riding task that the researcher used. However, the author of the article on the Horse.com seems to generalize these conclusions to all horses and all riding tasks.
This is completely inappropriate, since in the horse world there is such a wide range of training techniques and training activities. Unfortunately, media writers, when reporting on scientific research, often draw conclusions that are broader than what is warranted, to make the story more interesting. (Note: I have not yet been able to read the original research article.)
What do you think? Does your horse (or other animal) enjoy training sessions?
How would you design a simple study to see if an animal enjoyed training?
I don’t think I need to do a study to know if my horses like to be with me. As you say, they come running from out in the field, leaving the herd and their hay when I call them. When I am not paying attention to them, they demonstrate the things we have worked on, as if to notice them. I think the only explanation for that is that they enjoy it.
But we are still doing ground work, so I don’t know if they will like to be trained for being ridden. I have wanted to figure out a way for them to tell me if they enjoy that or not. I would be interested in doing that a study like that if I could figure out how to do it. Since they offer the things they know, what if I CTed for standing by the mounting block, progressing to me standing on it by them, me leaning on them, sitting on them, on to riding. If I always only get on them from a particular place, if they offer by going to that place and waiting for me, do you think I could assume that they enjoyed it, or at least didn’t dislike it?
Or, maybe you could teach them what “time to ride” means, in a situation where they are entirely free to leave if they want to. Then say it and see if they go to the mounting block or leave. I always give mine the choice whether to work with me or not. They know they don’t have to, and rarely, something will catch their attention for a while and they do go check that out instead of stayinjg with me. So they know they don’t have to stay if they don’t want to.
I don’t think that what applies to horses in a paddock with other horses, is a really applicable to ‘horses’ i general.
A lone horse in a paddock is usually there at the fence seeking attention for anyone who passes by. Even two horses together seem to be easily bored with each other and seek attantion.
I see i,t too, with the cows here 🙂 A large group of cows in a large paddock see humans as interlopers and tend to move away (unless they have been hand fed) but a lone cow in a small paddock seeks out anybody she can entice to talk to her.
I suspect that our neighbours’ poor lonely thing would LOVE to be ridden. She calls at our fence for the dogs to come up and have a bark fest 😉 She just looks at them of course 🙂
Great points, Jenny.
“Preference” and what a horse (or other animal) likes or wants to do, always has to be taken in context. What is the setting? What are the alternatives available to the animal?
cheers,
Mary
Mine are out in a big field with about 15 other horses. If I walk out there, all they horses approach me, and will follow mine as they follow me. I try
not to be known as the treat lady, but I think I’ve been going out there
long enough without “doing anything” to any of them that they don’t see me as a threat (even some that were really spooky at first), and I admit I have
given a few treats here and there, so they are always happy to see me. But they don’t swarm me anymore like they did when I first started going out there.
Hi Ro,
I’ve found that horses who like ground work with clicker training / positive training, also enjoy riding with clicker training. The only different thing about riding, of course, is that you are on the horse, but all of the same principles and strategies can still apply. (The exception, of course, is perhaps horses who have physical issues that make riding painful or difficult.)
I bet your equines will enjoy riding, when you reach that point. 🙂
The mounting block ideas you suggest are good ideas and are ones that other people have tried variations of. I’ve heard of clicker trainers who have taught the horse a cue to go to the mounting block. Then, on days when the horse does not follow the cue or seems hesitant, they can tell that the horse doesn’t want to go for a ride that day. Ultimately, I find most animals are much happier and much more willing when we give them choices and give them the power to say “no.”
cheers,
Mary
I hope so. 🙂
When my horse was recovering from a broken leg (he was allowed out in a small paddock), he would come up to me and stand there, looking like I was supposed to do SOMETHING. I can’t say he really enjoyed being ridden (later), but always wants to be doing some activity. Now that he is retired, I get the same reaction from him. I have taken a clicker and large ball out to the barn and plan to start working with him playing with the ball. I think he is just bored – and he does have another horse he adores and 2 mini-donkeys to hang out with.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. 🙂
It sounds like you have a good plan for how to help relieve some of your horse’s boredom. I’ve found a lot of horses really enjoy playing with large balls. I would love to hear how it goes!
cheers,
Mary
Mary I was thinking this. You would have to know that your horse would feel free to leave if it doesn’t want you to do whatever you are doing with it. Recently somewhere you were talking about the term “avoidance” (I think it was), when the animal becomes trained by avoiding unpleasant consequences. So I think a horse might come to a person even if it doesn’t really like the activity, to avoid being chased around.
I know my horse will leave if he doesn’t like what we are doing; 99% of the time he stays with me, but every once in, he doesn’t. I always know why he leaves when it happens; he doesn’t want to be tied, or something like that. That’s fine, because if I’m tying him it’s to keep him from interfering with something else, so him leaving works too. The mule on the other hand has this way of going completely still when I am doing things to him like putting on his harness, etc. He was previously trained and was in an abusive situaton, so I worry that at those times he has gone into some kind of learned helplessness state. On the other hand, he won’t back up, and still pushes me around sometimes, and will stare me right in the eye from an inch away and not budge, so he’s not that scared of me lol. But does that mean he can’t go into learned helplesness at other times? I don’t know.
I should probably read the original study. Things like that always seem so lacking in real understanding of animals that I don’t usually bother. It’s good that there are now some people like you getting into the field, who seem to be so much more in tune and connected and don’t miss big huge things that so many animal behaviorists seem to not take into account. So many studies done seem so bogus. Do you remember that on that was supposed to show that dogs feel jealousy? Of course everybody who has had dogs know that dogs act as if they feel jealousy. The study was something like they fed some dogs bread and some dogs meat as a reward, and the dogs who got the bread quit working. So the researchers concluded they were jealous. How is that any more evidence for the emotion of jealousy than any other observation of dogs acting as if they are jealous? You can’t even know for sure what another human is feeling, all we can ever go by is their actions, which with a person would also include what they say they are feeling of course, but still, it’s always going to be subjective from another person’s POV. (I just bring up this one because it was on the news.)
Unless of course there is some kind of neurological test for emotions. But they didn’t do that in this study.
My old horse (sadly gone now) absolutely enjoyed being ridden. How do I know? I would hold out the bridle and she would either put it on herself or turn her head away. I always respected her choice (i.e. didn’t ride her) if she said ‘no’ and she probably said ‘no’ one time in 20.
That’s great, Jackie, that she enjoyed being ridden. And very awesome too that she had a choice and that you respecter her choice. Sadly, I think many horses don’t get that option.
Well given the choice, do you want to exercise for an hour or sit on the couch and eat potato chips? You might prefer a life of leisure, but in the long run, you’ll do better if you do a little exercise now and then. Horses have the capacity, and the necessity in their wild state to travel up to 20 miles a day. That’s what they are built for, and that is what will keep them healthy. Now that the days of animal labour are over, many horses sit idle, and it takes dedication to provide them with the exercise they need. Rising rates of horse obesity, equine metabolic syndrome, and laminitis all point to the detrimental effects of denying horses the chance to work. I would consider it animal abuse to keep a horse, feed it a rich diet, and neglect to take the time to exercise the animal. Left to their own devices, horses will exhibit problematic behaviours, weight gain, and worse. It’s irresponsible to tell horse owners that, just because the horse would rather stay in the paddock and eat grass, that we should indulge these behaviours, simply bevause they show a short term preference for leisure over a healthy lifestyle. There are already too many horses kept as “pets”, who end up in all sorts of trouble due to their sedentary lifestyles.
I certainly agree with you – if we are going to keep horses (or other animals) in captive environments, it is up to us to make sure we provide a lifestyle that will keep them physically healthy.
What I think it super cool is that we can use positive reinforcement training techniques to make sure that the exercise and “work” that our horses do is fun for them. In this way, they participate willingly and it doesn’t actually seem like work.