Discriminitory Dilemma
I was reading Equitation Science again for a project, I love that it scientifically approaches the study of horse training as it was. Traditional, NH, all the different disciplines, and studies How horses are/were trained, from a behavioral science perspective (though it is just behavioral it doesn't take into account modern neuroscience and ethology is limited in it). It also takes into account the science of how tack and tools work, from the factual, non-objective details. In reading this book, (which is NOT a proponent of R+) it makes me more and more comfortable in my decision to be as aversive-free as I can be.
They describe a phenomenon which has always boggled my mind watching (non-R+) horse training. The quote from the book, "In essence, all pressure-based training places the horse in a discriminatory dilemma. It has to respond to some pressures while habituating to others. When the pressure to which it must habituate are too great, the horse receiving them may be at risk of learned helplessness" pg. 181
Honestly it blows my mind how horses have ever come to understand what we want. There are a number of things in the horse's life we actively teach them to tolerate, even things most horses find mildly aversive. We want them to habituate to saddles, pads, halters, bridles, nosebands, martingales, bits, boots, shoes, grooming, and so on. These things might be benign or mildly aversive to the horse but they learn to tolerate them, to habituate to them as just there. The horse's behavior does not make these tools get added or removed. They can't relieve the "thing" by doing a behavior.
Then we have a variety of things we want them to respond to behaviorally to earn relief from it. We want them to respond to the gentlest, most light version of the aid. We do this through R-, applying it, maintaining or escalating it, then when the horse does the ideal behavior, we relieve it. The horse needs to learn THESE stimuli are under their behavioral control, while those other things are not.
Then we have tools that do both. We want them to habituate to Contact on the bit, but then to respond to the lightest aid on the bit. So pressure "0-2" is unavoidable and not controllable by behavior, ducking under the bit, gaping the mouth, changing gaits, changing tempo, doesn't relieve this, this is maintained contact. But then pressure "2-5" means respond behaviorally in a specific way. And we want them to differentiate that to the degree that we only think the behavior and they feel that subtle change and respond appropriately. We are literally teaching our horses 2 contradictory things. Which only, inevitably, results in us needing to use stronger aversives, stronger aids, so the horse FEELS the difference.
It's always confounded me when we teach horses to habituate to a whip flapping all around them, then minutes later we want them to move away from the whip, in a specific way, at a specific speed of response. We habituate them to the very thing we want to sensitize them to, which is so contradictory by nature.
R+ makes more sense to me, because we habituate them to mild aversives that are unavoidable, vet care, husbandry tools, tack that protects them and keeps them comfortable with the tasks we're asking. Then we teach behaviors where the motivation is to EARN something, not work to relieve something. So we aren't teaching contradicting things. Each behavior has a clear and unique, trained cue, not just a response to avoid an aversive. The cue can be tactile, but the behavior is trained and the cue is added, sensitized to have a meaning, not habituated to be meaningless.
Sometimes I wonder how horses ever understood us - but it just goes to show how exceptional these animals are and could be if given the chance to do so with clarity and understanding.
