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Post by rideanotherday on Mar 17, 2016 11:14:23 GMT
One of the buzzwords in the equine industry right now is "desensitization". In psychology, desensitization is defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. For horses, we are looking for a "null" or zero response to particular stimuli. Popular methods are approach and retreat and flooding.
Approach and retreat is a methodical finding of an "ok" spot for a horse. Take for instance the head shy horse. Find a spot where he finds it acceptable to be touched, then slowly move towards the head and away from it and gradually increase the acceptable spot for him to be touched until he's finally ok with being touched on his head etc.
Flooding is probably my least favorite method. You present the horse with the "thing" that you want a null response to and leave it in place until the horse no longer cares. I feel this makes a horse dull and shuts down their willingness to learn.
Personally, I like putting a horse to work. Let's say the horse is bothered by a new barrel in the arena...I would make him work really hard where he showed me he felt comfortable and then let him rest near the barrel he found bothersome. It's forming positive associations with things that cause a negative response.
At what point does desensitization go too far? Can it be taken too far?
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Post by horseguy on Mar 17, 2016 13:51:22 GMT
Desensitization is getting a horse used to things that typically would trigger the flight response. This is accomplished by replacing the flight response with a different response. In the military and in today's police mounted units the replacement response is usually work ethic. A police horse must do his job, which is why many horses do not make the cut into that line of work. At what point does desensitization go too far? My answer would be that "too far" is a judgment tied to values. In military or police work the value is to protect and serve. That includes the horses. These pictures show how police horses are trained and some of what they must deal with in their work. I rode with an instructor for the Philadelphia Mounted units many years ago who told me of competitions where horses he had trained competed where a horse and rider would stand on one of those thick steel plates they put over open trenches in streets so cars can drive over them, and someone with a jack hammer would vibrate the steel plate with the jack hammer. Pretty loud and scary. Most of the police horses in that trial stayed on the steel plate. Another test was to stand mounted on your horse next to a big front end loader with the bucket up as high as it could go filled with gravel. The bucket was tipped fast and the gravel dropped at the horse's feet. This goes on day to day but it does not get a lot of publicity because the animal rights people, who have different values, oppose the use of dogs and horses by police. Usually I am an advocate for training horses over sorting horses, but in this kind of work sorting is primary. Many horses just cannot adjust to the extreme invasive kinds of experiences that police work demands. But many can. We should, I think, be thankful for the horses that do this work and for the riders, trainers and officers who work with horses in this way.
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Post by rideanotherday on Mar 17, 2016 14:23:16 GMT
Interesting take. When I think about taking desensitization too far, I have seen some horses become dull to the point where riding them is like riding a caricature of a horse, reducing their response to even normal cues.
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Post by horseguy on Mar 17, 2016 14:39:00 GMT
Interesting take. When I think about taking desensitization too far, I have seen some horses become dull to the point where riding them is like riding a caricature of a horse, reducing their response to even normal cues. Today it is an "interesting take" but when I was a kid, it was what we all dreamed about and pretended as kids when we rode. Boys will be boys, but when encouraged by a former soldier who asked questions in riding lessons like, "Why do we lean forward in a slide?" and the correct answer was, "Because we make a smaller target, Sir." we saw ourselves as horse soldiers.
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Post by jimmy on Mar 17, 2016 14:58:02 GMT
To answer your question, "when does it go too far?" My response is, imprint training.
I also worked with mounted police for a two year stint. I usually sum up the experience with the question. "Ever try to tell a cop anything they don't want to hear?"
My take on the over sensitization of horses, is that it does not come from the stand point of the short comings of people in understanding horses and their behavior. The person does not have to make the adjustment, the horse does.
That being said, I get by horse used to things, so that he is reliable, on an as needed basis. Nothing more irritating than a horse constantly spooking. If I need to ride a horse in a riot, then I need a particular kind of horse. The police horses are carefully selected, and most rejected as unfit for the job.
I see these clinics with tarps and pool noodles and all kinds of things, and some of the contest are set up to see where the horse will fail. So the emphasis of these contest is on how numb to the world he has been made. I don't think it is a demonstration of courage on the horse part. No courage involved. He doesn't care anymore.
I think a better test of horsemanship would be to put people on very flighty, spooky horses, and demonstrate how they deal with it, and get the confidence in the horse.
When I am on a young horse, I practically look for things he is spooky of. I can teach so much in those moments.
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Post by horseguy on Mar 18, 2016 15:27:51 GMT
To answer your question, "when does it go too far?" My response is, imprint training... I see these clinics with tarps and pool noodles and all kinds of things, and some of the contest are set up to see where the horse will fail. So the emphasis of these contest is on how numb to the world he has been made. I don't think it is a demonstration of courage on the horse part. No courage involved. He doesn't care anymore. I think a better test of horsemanship would be to put people on very flighty, spooky horses, and demonstrate how they deal with it, and get the confidence in the horse. When I am on a young horse, I practically look for things he is spooky of. I can teach so much in those moments. I think the difference between desensitizing with the result of a dull horse and desensitizing with the result of an alert horse is the preservation of curiosity. In those moments of spooky response to a stimulus, as Jimmy says, we do not want to numb the horse to the stimulus, but rather to get the horse to understand that it is not a threat. Once understood, the threat becomes a source of confidence for the horse. How do we do this? We face the horse to the fearful object, sound, whatever and we wait. We allow the horse to evaluate the thing that spooks him until it becomes a curiosity. Typically this transition from fear to curiosity is demonstrated with the horse's desire to smell it. We can urge them on toward it when they show early curiosity, but not to the point of pressure. In most cases the horse will eventually move up to the stimulus close enough to smell it. A that point the work is pretty much done, although flowing confidence building incidents might be required. Don' kill curiosity with numbness generated by over stimulation. Hoses cannot understand overstimulation (which by the way can be a useful training tool in other circumstances).
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