Trailer Loading Tales: Part One (I'm Too Abusive)

Ok, so, back to "Beth"...

She approached me at a CTR at the beginning of the year to tell me about her new horse. I was surprised to see her because she basically dropped off the planet after the 2011 ride season. From what I've heard since, that's because she suddenly changed her views on everything horse related and has turned into one of those people who doesn't ride because it's too mean. But I didn't know that at the time.  I told her to email me about the horse when she got home because I couldn't focus on evaluating a new client while doing an endurance ride. (Horses are my job, but I do still try to separate work from play.)

A couple weeks later, the email appeared. I was going to c/p it here, but the grammar and lack of capitalization hurt me just scanning through it, so I'll spare you.

The horse, who we'll call "Nope" (his real name is just as ridiculous) was a coming five year-old OTTB.



I do have to go off on a tangent here. Whenever people contact me about trailer loading problems with an off-track horse, I groan. Guys, racehorses have a lot of challenges when it comes to starting new careers as pleasure horses. They are certainly not for everyone (even though I personally love them). One thing that they are really, really used to, however, is getting in a trailer, going to an unfamiliar place, getting off the trailer, doing their job (running), and getting back in the trailer to go home. If I meet a horse that actually raced (not just one that lived at the track) there are certain things that I expect to come with the package. Trailer loading is one of them. Almost every single time I've met a former racehorse with a trailer loading issue, someone has done something to cause it. I worked at the track (standardbred) for a long time, and there is no tolerance for horses who don't get in the trailer.

Anyway.

The email...

Beth started off by telling me point blank that the horse was unsound. Apparently he had a diagnosed hock injury. The vet recommended corrective shoeing, injections, and a gradual reentry into work. The prognosis was good, given that treatment plan. Sounds good.

Beth then writes, "Instead...I stuck with barefoot... I opted not to have him injected until after I did some ground work and started him a bit. Which I did in the fall, only winter got in my way, so that's where we left off (no injection yet)."

Now, I'm all about barefoot trimming and time off for injuries, but I am not a fan of outright ignoring veterinary advice, especially regarding chronic lameness. Looking back, I also see that she's making excuses about why she hasn't done anything with a horse she's had for a year.

She then wrote out a big, long list of things that Nope was good at. It was a pretty comprehensive list, and if it was accurate, it would have been pretty impressive. It sounded like she had been very thorough with his ground work, and at that point, I had no reason to doubt her. Beth then included a list of things that she'd like Nope to work on.

"Stuff he needs more work at:
everything (hahaha)
more exposure (I did some trail walks with him, he was pretty good about it)
giving to bit/steering
loading in trailer (he loads half way)  trot in hand"

She finished the email by talking about what a sweet horse and quick learner Nope was. She outlined her plan for his training, which included me doing an evaluation before taking him on for full training. The eventual goal was to get him sound and broke enough to trail ride and then find him a forever home. She asked for a ballpark price and finished with, "I'd like to give him a chance, and I trust you to take care of him."

Oh yes, and a picture of the horse in question (sort of):

I wrote back a brief, but professional response with a breakdown of my pricing and a few possible plans of attack.

After that, it was radio silence for five months. I figured my price scared her off and dropped it. I am not in the habit of chasing down clients.

Then, in September, out of the blue, I got another lengthy email.

"Hi Dom,
I'm so sorry I didn't reply sooner. I keep going back and forth about what to do with this horse, esp since I have 2 others I can ride. On the one hand after a hock injection and daily prevacoxib [sic], he is still lame at the walk. On the other hand he and [other horse] gallop the turnout track every single morning. Either it's a mechanical lameness and I should just put him into training, or...he's destroying his hock joint and he'll never be sound so I should just keep him a paddock pet. I know I should just haul him to NJ Equine for a full workup, except...I don't want to spend that kind of $$ on a horse that I think will be walk/trot at best. And they'll give me shit for keeping him barefoot (even though it doesn't seem to make a difference one way or the other).
Anyway... that is my dilemma. But he does need to learn to trailer load in case I ever have to haul him somewhere. So I'd like to hire you to do it if you have the time. ... And while you are here, you can give me your opinion on what to do with [him].
Let me know if this is workable, it can be during the week or weekends. I don't think it will take more than 1 or 2 sessions to get him loaded, although the first one might be lengthy. "

At this point, I sort of got the idea that this was a dead end training wise, but figured it would hurt to at least get the horse loading. Even a lame horse needs to know how to get in a trailer. I ignored the part where she still hadn't bothered to address the horse's lameness issues and just sent her an email with my availability. 

It was mid October by the time we were actually able to get on the same page. By that point, she'd had the horse for almost two years and he'd gone from "loading halfway" (by her own admission) to not loading at all.  

I arrived at Beth's house, which I'd been to on several occasions previously. (Oh yeah, did I mention that I rode her other "crazy" OTTB? Notice I say rode, not trained. There was nothing wrong with the horse.)

We walked up to the barn and I asked her if she had a long cotton lead rope, a rope halter, and a dressage whip. She provided all three. Perfect. Then we went to meet Nope. There was a minor glitch here. We opened the gate to the paddock by the barn and Beth's draft mare charged right over top of both of us, shoved through the gate, and ran loose through the yard. I watched as Beth grabbed a grain bucket, bribed the horse back into the paddock, and then let her have the rest of the grain. Talk about rewarding bad behavior. 

We haltered Nope and I did a little bit of ground work with him. I found him reasonably responsive, and good to handle over all. He was about average as far as ground manners go and definitely had a sweet personality. By the end of the session, I would find a horse who wanted to please and was relieved to have someone clearly tell him what the answer was. He'd clearly been living in a state of near constant confusion for the better part of two years. Spoiling horses isn't just counterproductive, it's actually inhumane, as far as I'm concerned.

We approached the trailer and Nope didn't seem particularly concerned. When we reached the bottom of the ramp, however, he firmly planted his feet and would not take a single step. I tapped him and he ignored me. We walked away from the trailer and I explained that tapping on the shoulder should result in forward motion. It took about thirty seconds, and I rewarded him with a cookie, which his owner had also provided.

Back to the trailer.

It took about two minutes to get Nope in the trailer the first time. Beth was blown away. 

As I said, this was two years ago, and it was back when I was worried about people getting their money's worth. This is something I no longer give a damn about. My prices are what they are. The sessions take as long as they take (anywhere from five minutes to two hours). If you don't like it, find someone else to deal with your crazy. -_-

And here, I admit I made a mistake. I should have just said, "Tada!" and taken her money and gone home. It would have been the easiest paycheck of all time. Instead, I decided to go for the next step (self-loading). I knew the horse was ready, though it would probably take a little more pressure on my part.

It took about ten minutes for Nope to figure out how to self load. In the process, he balked a little at first, tried really hard for a few minutes, then tried to get out of work by offering a "rear" of protest.

\

About as high as he reared. Photo source.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, I just ignored this behavior and kept tapping his shoulder until he went forward. I used a medium amount of pressure since Beth had conditioned Nope to ignore her mild requests for two years. I wasn't hitting him but the whip did make a smacking noise as I tapped. About the same as the first video I posted in my last entry. 

After the first time he self loaded, Nope really grasped the concept. I unloaded and reloaded him two or three more times to make sure the answer really stuck. He did break into a mild sweat over his shoulders in the process, but it was unseasonably warm since we were experiencing our annual bout of Indian Summer.

About twenty minutes into this trailer loading session, Nope was standing quietly in the trailer, munching hay. The butt bar was down and he had all the freedom to leave, but he chose not to (because he knew I'd probably annoy him again). He had a foot cocked and wasn't winded or upset. 

I turned to his owner to announce that the session was over, and found her visibly quivering with tears in her eyes.

Well fuck. 

Something had clearly gone very, very wrong.

"Beth, what's wrong?"

She burst into tears and wailed, "This is not how I wanted this to go at all!!!" 

I was in shock. I glanced over my shoulder at the horse, who was still stuffing his face in the trailer. I'd never had someone get upset when my method worked before. "Wha-- what do you mean?" I stammered.

"Well, I never wanted to see him upset like that. He was so terrified. That was way too much pressure. I, I can't believe you hit him like that. I expected better from you..."

The next hour of my life consisted of me getting lectured on learning theory and force free training. As some of you may have gathered from my intro to this series, I have a pretty good grasp of learning theory. It was covered both as part of my major and as an entire psychology course that I took in college. Also, I literally use learning theory every single day of my life. 

Finally, I couldn't take any more and asked Beth (I just had to know) what her approach to trailer loading would have been. "I mean, when I asked you if you had a whip, what did you think I was going to use it for?"

As it turns out, since the last time I had ridden with Beth, she had decided that she was pursuing pure positive, pressure-free training. Essentially, she wanted to clicker train the horse to trailer load. In her defense, that is absolutely possible! It would probably take much longer to do it that way, but it is absolutely a viable method of training. Except, Beth took it a step further. She wants to be completely pressure-free. As in, pulling on the lead rope is too much pressure. No pressure. Ever. I resisted the urge to ask her why she even has halters for her horses.

The theory is that you wait until the horse does something resembling what you want him to do and then reward him. To actually perform completely pressure free, pure positive training in this situation, Beth would have to sit outside all day and watch Nope. Every time he looked towards or approached the trailer, she would have to click (and potentially treat in the beginning). 

At the end of my patience, I asked her to demonstrate.

Beth took Nope's lead rope (I thought lead ropes were cheating?) and stood on the ramp to the trailer. To her credit, the rope was completely slack. Because I had just spent twenty minutes fixing the horse, Nope put a foot on the ramp.

"See you don't need any pressure!" Beth exclaimed, clearly surprised that the horse was actually thinking about the trailer. Then, "Oops, I forgot to click."

Here's the thing. Clicker training only works if you have timing and feel. Whether you are rewarding a horse with a release of pressure or a click, you still have to time the reward correctly. Again, this is why I get paid. I actually face-palmed.

Then it was my turn to lecture Beth. I told her that it is her job to be her horse's advocate. "Why didn't you say something?" I demanded. "If you really thought my method was abusive, why didn't you speak up for your horse? You are going to disagree with plenty of people, but the thing about this being your horse is that it's up to you to step in if you disagree with something! How was I supposed to know that you didn't approve of how I was handling him?"

The take away from this experience for me was that I now give a spiel before I start with any client in any situation, even if I've known them for years. I start by explaining the theory behind pressure-release. I then define pressure. Then I tell people that if at any point they are uncomfortable or confused with what I am doing, they should feel free to step in and interrupt me. "At the end of the day, this is your horse and you have to be comfortable with how he is handled." This lecture is almost always completely unnecessary and people look at me funny (probably because I'm not actually a horse-abusing monster, but whatever) but I include it in every single evaluation.

The conversation continued, much to my chagrin. Beth basically told me that she never would have let me touch her horse if she knew how harsh I would be.

Finally, I said (rather firmly), "You can talk about theory and the ideal world all you want, Beth, but the reality is that you have to be able to get your horse on a trailer reliably in case of emergency. What if he was colicking and had to go to the hospital? You live in the Pine Barrens. What if the forest was on fire and you had to evacuate? Would you let me load him then?"

"No, I still wouldn't let you touch him."

"Really, you'd let him burn to death before you'd let me touch him with the whip for two minutes?"

"Well, no, I would just sedate him and load him myself."

Yup. Drugging your horse is better than letting me touch him. Because, you know, sedation always works for trailer loading. Ugh.

I apologized for the miscommunication (yup), took my money, and wished her the best of luck with her horse before going home.

But it wasn't over.

I came home to the following email:

"Hi Dom,
As promised, here are a few links to get you started on learning theory as it applies to horse training. It's really a whole area of scientific study, so tough to condense into a few sentence but these are some good resources.
[links]
All horses get anxious at some point during training and have to learn to work through it. That does NOT mean you should FORCE them to work through it by increasing the pressure and subsequently punishing them when they blow up (a big red flag that the horse was pushed too far). It's the trainer's job (just like any teacher) to set up the situation so that the horse can learn at his own pace. If you make the mistake of pushing a horse too far, punishing him is NOT the way to fix it.
Think of it this way: If I asked you to solve a complicated math problem, how likely are you to arrive at the correct answer if after you give a few wrong guesses, I start pressuring you to come up with the right answer, then yell at you for getting upset when you can't? Versus working within your comfort zone and building on what you already know. To horses, loading in a trailer is like a complicated math problem.
Many horse people believe that if a horse blows up when you're working with him, you should never back down or else you are teaching him he can win a fight. While it's true that he'll stop fighting you if you whip him long or hard enough, he doesn't learn to deal with his anxiety, he learns to suppress it. Not the same thing. At. All.
As crazy as this sounds....stopping and taking a different approach to better help the horse learn the task will ALSO teach him to handle his anxiety. It takes his brain out of reactive/fight-or-flight mode and back into learning mode, so he can focus on the task and earn a reward (release of pressure, a treat, or being stroked/scratched)--and THAT makes the anxiety go away. What a great learning experience for the horse! He'll learn faster, he'll be more cooperative and LESS likely to blow up again. Punishing him when he's already upset WILL NOT allow him to do that, it just pushes him further into a reactive state of mind.
What will keep you as the handler safe is keeping him calm while helping him learn and gradually expanding his comfort zone. Eventually he'll learn to trust you to guide him through a scary situation. Every time you punish a horse for getting upset, you erode that trust.
I hope that clears up any misunderstanding. Punishment has become a short cut for people who don't want to take their time. I know you are better than that.
-liz
“If you are trying to do something with –or to—your horse that he finds unfamiliar, aversive, unpleasant, or scary, he may indeed try to escape the situation. If a horse is trying to flee a training situation, fight against the trainer, or freezes, it is a good indicator that training is happening too quickly, with too much physical or mental pressure for the horse. If this happens, slow down, back off and change your approach. Lessons learned in fear are not the ones you want to stick. Compliant horses aren’t necessarily confident horses—they are often just doing what they’re told, because they’ve learned that any resistance is futile, painful, or scary.”
– Lauren Fraser, equine behavioral consultant"

I never replied, but several things came to mind. For starters, "DID YOU EVEN READ ANY OF THOSE LINKS?!?!?! They agree with me!!" (More on that in a minute.)

To be perfectly clear, I never actually punished Nope. I did increase pressure and continue tapping through his escalated behavior. I never got after him or reprimanded him. 

But back to the math analogy. I really wanted to reply:

"Actually, it's more like this: I give you a simple math problem and show you how to work through it. Then I ask you to work through a few similar math problems until you're getting them all right. Then I give you a harder math problem. and repeat until you've gotten all the way through the text book.
And I wouldn't punish your horse for getting the math problem wrong. I would punish him for pulling out a gun when I asked him to try again."

So back to the links she sent me (many of which are no longer online, but I Googled them for thoroughness.) They are good links and if you want to do more reading, I highly recommend. Unfortunately, you have to have a brain to actually understand them.

1. Learning Theory in Equitation

-Compared to humans, horses’ prefrontal cortex is relatively small, so they may not experience events as we do. They excel at memorising and recognising stimuli that trigger certain responses, particularly those that keep them safe. 

-Sensitisation is when the responses made by an individual increase, i.e. become more intense. If an individual experiences a series of arousing attractive or aversive stimuli, sensitisation describes the likelihood that it will respond more quickly or with more intensity to these stimuli in the future. 

-Negative reinforcement is the removal of something the horse wants to avoid to increase the occurrence of a desired behaviour. Negative reinforcement in horse training often relies on the use of pressure and it should ultimately be very subtle.Pressure motivates horses but the release of that pressure is what trains them. 

I think this is so important. Motivation is so important in the training process. Yes, you can reward desirable behavior all you want. But that only works for behaviors the horse offers. If you're trying to get a behavior that is not naturally occurring (trailer loading, carrying a rider, etc.) there has to be some form of pressure. What would motivate the horse to go on the trailer on his own? Leading him to the trailer (pressure) gets him thinking about the task at hand. As I've mentioned, bribery rarely works in horses (and especially if they are fearful... fear trumps hunger or the desire to be petted every time). So how do you motivate a horse to try unnatural behaviors without pressure?

 -Not using clear and separate signals can lead to confusion and stress and consequently horse responses that compromise performance and rider safety.

 -Inconsistent training can lead to dull responses that compromise understanding and clarity and therefore result in stress and confusion and/or lead the rider to use stronger rather than lighter cues.

2. Aversive Stimuli in Horse Training
I think she sent me this article to prove that aversive stimuli should never be used. And yet, here are some points the article makes:

-Negative reinforcement is critical for training the appropriate responses to rider/driver/handler rein and leg signals in equitation (McGreevy and McLean, 2007). It has yet to be demonstrated that horses can be safely ridden in challenging environments without adequate training in negative reinforcement of rein and rider’s leg pressures. While ethical equitation demands that horses should be trained to respond to minimal pressures the need for human and horse welfare demands that equitation is safe. 

-Negative reinforcement should involve the use of minimal force. Aversive stimuli used to provoke a response should be used appropriately and minimally so that habituation and stress are avoided.

-Appropriate timing and release should be adhered to in all training. 

 Basically, the article says that beating your horse is counterproductive, but some level of pressure-release is necessary for everyone to stay safe.

3. Two Ross Jacobs (Good Horsemanship) articles.
Sadly, these articles are no longer online, but they talk about natural horsemanship and the definition of horse training. As you can probably tell from my Ross Jacobs quote in my last post, he definitely isn't pure-positive and pressure-free.

4. Learning Theory on THE HORSE
Basically reiterates everything I've been saying and uses the same sources at the articles above. This article is focused on riding and is watered down for the average reader, but still:

-Make sure your aids are clear and significantly different from one another when asking a horse to perform maneuvers such as gait transitions, going faster or slower, shortening or lengthening the stride, turning, and head and neck flexion. “Blurred and ambivalent signals can lead to confusion, distress, and responses that compromise performance and rider safety

Yes. Standing there and waiting for your horse to accidentally stumble onto the right answer with no guidance is totally more humane than putting any kind of pressure on him.

I have not heard from Beth in two years and I hope to keep it that way. I still drive past her house on occasion, and I don't think she is doing anything with the horses. I have heard from a few mutual friends that she basically went off the deep end and then fell off the grid. Nobody has talked to her recently. I don't know what became of Nope. Being left in a field to his own devices is certainly not the worst thing that can happen to a broken down racehorse, but it's sad that he didn't have a chance at any kind of clarity or leadership in his day-to-day handling.

Having people question your abilities and methods is part of being a horse trainer. I am used to getting criticism, especially online. However, this was the first and only time that an actual client implied that I was abusive. There have been horses that I've had to be pretty firm with, and I would understand if their owners were concerned. Nope was not one of them! It just goes to show you that there are some people that you just can't please (at least, not if want to actually make progress).

I left Beth with the following parting words:
"I suggest you find a pure positive trainer that specializes in clicker training horses."
With a sob, she replied, "That's what I thought you were!"

For the record: I am not a pure-positive, force-free, clicker trainer. In case you were wondering.