Rewarding Work Part I

Why do you work? 

Most people answer that they primarily work for money.  Money is the reward that motivates the majority of us to continue to punch the clock, write the reports and serve the customer. Without the reward, many people wouldn’t have any motivation to perform.  

Why does your horse work? 

When asked this question, riders answers range from “Because I feed him”, to “Because I tell him to”.  Does either answer really address the question of motivation for the horse?

Directly, neither answer responds to motivational issues, but indirectly both have motivational behaviors at their root.

An animal that “works because he is fed” rarely makes the connection between his meals and work.  To most horses work and feed are two distinct, non-related events, so this response is inaccurate in addressing work.  However, when a food reward is given in a timely manner in direct response to a behavior the animal is in fact working for food.  This food reward is rarely daily sustenance; rather it is used to reinforce desired behaviors outside of an animals normally required ration.  The challenge with food rewards is that it’s rarely convenient to offer an apple when asking for a lead change.  As training progresses, food rewards can be delayed for longer periods of time, making it possible to give the apple after the work is complete.  Too often this delay leads to a horse wanting the activity to end in order to get the reward as soon as possible (who’s left in the office at 4:59 pm on a Friday?).  Quite often rushy and sour horses have a dysfunctional reward system in place based on rewards given when work comes to an end.  The work itself is a meaningless activity simply done to get the reward.  Apply that concept to human employment and you’re better able to understand why physical reward alone is not the best long term system for motivating any animal to work.

What about the animal whose owner claims he works because “he is told to”?  What is the motivation for doing what you are told?  Is the threat of physical consequence backing up the directive?  Or does performance of the task itself provide some kind of reward?  This concept of reward can be divided into two distinct systems:  Motivation due to Fear of reprisal and motivation due to a Willingness to please.

Fear of reprisal is the standard “breaking” system of horse training.  A horse is worn down to the point of giving up or discontinuing the struggle.  Fear and intimidation cause this herd animal to stop “bucking” the system and comply.  The problem here is that compliance may only be short term or based on a level of fear, work, or feed that keeps the animal at a physical or mental level where fighting isn’t an option.  This training can result in a horse that is inconsistent, explosive and untrustworthy.  In addition, simple compliance is rarely a stellar performance.  Going through the motions in order to avoid a punishment does not reward any extra effort or improvement.  Fear based activities are avoidance at best and rarely illicit loyalty or a work ethic.

The polar opposite of fear of reprisal is a willingness to please.  As social animals, horses desire to fit in and be part of a community.  Most horses are followers, few are leaders.  They require and thrive with structure, consistency, guidance and clear/fair boundaries.  In this system, guidelines are communicated to the animal in a language he understands and compliance brings the innate satisfaction of being part of a community where he fulfills a requirement and in turn his needs are met.  This holistic approach is not as simple as it sounds as humans are often “stuck” inadequately fulfilling one or more integral tasks in the system:

1.    Communicating guidelines/expectations in a language the horse understands

2.    Interpretation of compliance, or

3.    Defining the needs of the horse as a species and the needs of the individual animal

Pure communication with the horse is clouded by our lifetime of experiences as humans.  Horses don’t lie or cheat until a dysfunctional system rewards them for doing so.  Finding a way to be honest in your communication is one of the biggest challenges we face.  This directly relates to #2, compliance, as most horses want to complete a task that they understand if they are physically and mentally capable of doing so.  Riders must constantly assess and adapt in order to keep work and expectations appropriate for the individual.  Assuming that non-compliance is intentional, versus a communication breakdown, leads to punishment and fear as well as all of its accompanying “issues”.  Re-assessing appropriately ties into the final task of defining the horses needs.  Obviously there are the primary needs such as food, safety and shelter to consider, but individual animals are so unique that the level of challenge, need for rest, confidence and ability of each animal varies widely.  Being able to rate and adjust the physical and mental complexity of tasks to each horse is what separates the good trainers from the great trainers.

Now ask yourself, why does my horse work?  Address any motivational challenges based on his current system, or reestablish a system rooted in his innate characteristics.  The result should be a better relationship between horse and rider as well as an improved ability to perform.

In Rewarding Work, Part II, we will discuss the steps and challenges in establishing and maintaining a willingness to please.

Rewarding Work Part II

A Willingness To Please

In part one of Rewarding Work the concept of reward was discussed and the reader was asked to assess why his/her horse works.  Most readers would arrive at the conclusion that the result oriented pathway to work is based on a horse’s willingness to please; an innate characteristic closely associated with herd behavior.  A horse wants acceptance into a community where his needs are being met at both a primitive level and at a performance level appropriate to the mental and physical ability of the individual animal.

How can we use this knowledge to establish a work ethic and improve performance while keeping stress minimal?  The answer is a multi-step approach with general guidelines specifically tailored to each animal as an individual.

Begin by using a simple teaching/rewarding model.  Mine has always been: 

APPLY PRESSURE

GET A RESPONSE

GIVE A REWARD

Where this general approach becomes specific to each animal is in the amount of pressure, the expected response and the intensity of the reward. 

Amount of Pressure

I may ask a young Arabian gelding to move away from pressure by walking toward him and clucking.  This amount of pressure, although not directly physical, may be enough to elicit the response I want.  However, in moving a draft horse the same distance I may have to cluck and physically tap the animal’s body in order to get the same response.  In these cases, the handler must assess, act and react in order to use the appropriate amount of pressure for that animal for the desired response.  Using too much pressure can instill fear and anxiety while not using enough can create confusion and/or encourage mediocrity.

If a second request is needed due to the horse’s lack of compliance (NOT due to a failure of the handler to communicate the request properly or the horse’s inability to perform) the request is never made with the same amount or type of pressure.  This means that the expectation remains that the horse respond in one low-pressure request, with subsequent requests being different and less pleasant than the initial.  THIS ENCOURAGES RESPONSE WITH THE FIRST REQUEST. If the amount of pressure were to remain the same or be administered exactly as it had been initially, we have just taught the animal that it is acceptable for us to ask twice before a response is expected.  This is one of the most common bad habits of horse and rider teams.  Once a horse knows that he will be asked again in exactly the same manner he will disregard the request knowing that the next request will be similar and without consequence.  His response may depend on his mood, external distractions or what he had for breakfast!  This leads to an unpredictable horse with inconsistent performance.  It also leads to setting yourself and your horse up for a punishment situation as eventually you are forced to draw a line, versus having the horse buy into an initial low-stress, low-pressure request to work.  Never starting this cycle of “multi-requests” prevents a myriad of behavior problems from ever occurring.

Expected Response

Continuing with our Arabian and Draft horse examples, we move on to what we expect as a response to our pressure. 

Few (if any) Draft horses compete in reining.  This is due to the specificity of body type to task at hand.  I may apply the same pressure to both breeds of horses with greatly differing results.  This is not to say that a Draft horse cannot complete a reining turn-around, but to expect the Draft to spin at a speed and accuracy comparable to the Arabian is generally not realistic.  Therefore, expected response is based on breed, bloodlines, body type, age, conformation, training, soundness, physical/mental ability, past experience, energy level, fitness, etc…..  Knowing how much to expect (looking for the effort) is the measure of a good trainer.  Knowing how to elicit and identify the best try is the measure of a great trainer.

Intensity Of Reward

In beginning training, or challenging retraining, intensity and frequency of reward is critical in establishing a work ethic and keeping a horse interested.  This is the plan to get a horse to “buy in” to the rewards of being part of our “community”.  Our goal is to make his performing on our terms not only the path of least resistance but a pathway to pleasant and need-meeting interactions with his human handlers.

Frequency of reward can be reduced as training progresses and as horses participate in the process but I warn handlers not to get stuck into a reward routine as rewards should be sought but not expected.  This does not mean that rewards ever go away, but through association doing the task itself can become the reward. For example, in my beginning groundwork the horse is taught to stop immediately and stand when he hears the verbal “whoa”.  When compliant, the horse is scratched and hears the words “good boy”.  Eventually, the phrase “good boy” has as much behavioral/emotional value as the scratching itself. With continued training, the word “whoa” is so closely related with a “good” behavior that the animal willingly performs it knowing that he has done something worth rewarding, regardless of actually receiving any reward.  Some animals require more reward to maintain motivation, while others willingly work and stay interested.  Again, age, breed, bloodlines and other factors help determine a horse’s eagerness to continue to work and perform.  Keeping a horse interested and preventing mental fatigue and stress is a bigger challenge than reaching and maintaining optimal physical fitness.  

The bottom line:

You train your horse every time you handle him.  Be aware of what behaviors you reward (whether overtly or by omission) and seek to reinforce desired behaviors and minimize (not punish) unwanted behaviors.  Creating a work ethic and achieving optimum performance is the result of a consistent method of reinforcement established in rewarding work!