Tag: desensitisation

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Counter Conditioning

Counter conditioning alongside systematic desensitisation is very powerful. If we do slow desensitisation we can get horses accepting of aversive stimuli, but if we pair that with an appetitive – food or scratches or anything the horse values and wants more of – then we can change how they feel about the aversive. It can even become something they want, rather than something they just tolerate.
Too often we halter horses and spray them, clip them  etc, without thinking about how the horse feels, horses sometimes provide a lot of feedback in the form of pulling away, fidgeting or even being openly petrified, but often they just shut down as they feel they can’t say “no”. So what do some people do in those scenarios were they acknowledge the horse has a problem? They may hold them tighter, tell them off and even sedated them to be clipped.
How much better is it to take time to desensitise and counter condition? Well Mojo was petrified of fly spray, the first time I sprayed him was in his stable and he nearly squashed me against the wall he spooked so much.
What did I do about it? Well I started systematic desensitisation and counter conditioning. Starting at a distance with the spray so he noticed but did not react, all at liberty – then they can flee if necessary.  I used my verbal bridge signal “good” and rewarded him – sometimes with a scratch, sometimes with a treat.
Gradually over the last few weeks he will stand next to me and not flinch when the water is sprayed, (I used water to conserve the fly spray – but need to counter condition the smell of the fly spray once he is OK being sprayed.)
Today I did this in the field and he stayed and stood still whilst I sprayed water high in the air so the droplets actually fell on him, a few weeks ago he would have startled big time and run off.
I can now spray his legs from about a metre away but if I get too close he looks aways – so there is still some conflict present.
We must be very mindful of avoiding conflict – he wants the treats or scratches but is still unsure about the spray – this is why slow progress is better than force.
Clipping will be next but as he was sedated last time it may take much longer to overcome that fear.
He is still a little touch sensitive on his head, but getting better, he was targeting my hand today with his cheek – that is a new behaviour and not solid yet.

His feathers are still a sensitive area, but I can brush them and put cream on the sore bits if I run my hand down his legs, he gets a big butt scratch for that.

I have had Mojo for just over 2 months now so he has come a long way. He is very quick to learn new things and very eager to participate in the shaping programs.

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Flood Desensitising

Learning theory is fascinating as is equine behaviour analysis. Learning to look analytically at horse behaviour and the interaction between horse and humans is a sometimes distressing process, seeing videos of flood desensitisation and realising that at some point in the past you have done a similar type of training is very upsetting.

Flooding is a form of habituation and is classical conditioning, designed to stop a horse reacting to a stimulus. Horses are neophobic so are innately afraid of any new stimulus.

Even done well with animals it may never work, we have better ways to desensitise and habituate horses to novel stimuli.

Flooding entails applying an aversive (remember this is anything the horse perceives as a threat) stimulus at full intensity for as long as it takes the horse to habituate. Take note of the word perceives – it is the horse, not us, who decides what is aversive.

Inadvertant flooding can be as simple as clipping a horse whilst restrained – if he calms down during the process he may habituate or he may be worse the next time you try to clip. Many sedate to clip but the fear is still there, this happened to a horse I know – he had been twitched by a previous owner to be clipped, he is now so sensitive to the sight and sound of the clippers it is going to take a long time to regain his trust.

More extreme examples are putting a saddle on a horse whilst it is still anxious about the process and sending him round an arena – so he can buck if he feels the need to get the aversive stimulus off his back.

When watching horses see if they do that to each other and the answer is no – a horse may move another horse from a resource he wants but the pressure is not unrelenting – horses are gentle creatures and really just want to survive with out us chasing them round.

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Habituation in Horses

Just starting the third module on Jo Hughes Learning Theory course, I think courses like this are a must for all animal trainers, owners and those who have any interest in ethical treatment of animals. Along with the ethology of the species with which you intereact.
This module looks at habituation, desensitisation and the fine lines between this and, flooding and sensitisation.
I know I have been guilty of flooding a horse – e.g trying to desensitise Benny to wormers did not go well when I first got him, made him a lot worse.

If you put a saddle on a horse for the first time and allow it to buck it out or run until he accepts the saddle – with no means of escape – waiting until he is calm and has given in – that is flooding. That may seem obvious but there are much more subtle examples of flooding and some of it goes badly wrong.

Liz admits she flooded Smoke trying to clip him the year before last – it has taken a while to undo. Failed flooding usually ends up with a horse even more sensitised to the fearful stimulus.

Horses are neophobic so any new stimuls invokes the startle/fear respones. They do need to habituate and be desensitised to our envirnoment for them to be and feel safe. Desensitisation is a form of habituation in a controlled manner – stimulus at very low levels and gradually increased so as not to trigger a flight respone.
Flooding triggers a flight response with stimulus at full strength, with no means of escape, until the horse habituates – which may be never!

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Thoughts on Desensitisation.

As I am doing a course with Jo Hughes of The Academy of Positive Horsemanship I am reading Dr. Jenifer Ziligs book How to Train Animals 101. The more I learn the more there is to be considered when training horses. Everything we do with them is teaching them something.

Although the course hasn’t got to desensitisation yet I have been seeing more and more videos of people flood desensitising horses.

Some ways to desensitise:
Habituation – exposure over time, also called passive desensitisation. A horse over time habituates to his environment and the weaker the stimulus the more rapid and persistent is the habituation.
This process can be very slow and if we wish horses to habituate to aversive stumuli e.g for possible medical intervention then counter-conditioning with systematic desensitisation is useful.

Counter-conditioning – this is classical conditioning using a reward to change the horses perception of a stimulus. “associating stimuli of opposite value, the combination of which acts to nullify the value towards neutral” (Dr. J. Zeligs – Animal Training 101)

Also 2 ways to approach stimulus exposure:

Systematic desensitisation – using small approximations of the stimulus, can be used with counter conditioning.

Flooding – unrelenting exposure to the stimulus – this is not a recommended technique.

More on flooding by Helen Spence – Flooding and Learned Helplessness

Also from Dr.Sue McDonnell about “sacking out” often used as a euphemism for flooding.
“Unpredictable Fear”

Recently I read this statement:

“Sometimes a horse will put up the greatest resistance just before he comes through. I call it ‘the darkest hour before the dawn’. When the horse has tried all the avenues of his natural instinct of self-preservation and puts up its greatest resistance; is when people will usually give-up or get mad. If they would just be patient, the horse is about to come around.'” – Tom Dorrance.

I would like to deconstruct this statement and ask why the horse feels he needs to take flight or to fight.

The horse has 4 reactions to a fearful situation: first they may freeze – look at the threat, then they may try to flee, if flight isn’t successful – as in a confined space – they may try to fight the threat.
If the threatening predator is still present after all these attempts the horse may give in and freeze or try appeasement behaviours to look less of a threat to the predator.
Then they appear submissive but can actually be in a state of learned helplessness.

In the above scenario the human is the predator – so what happened to the natural horsemanship principle that we should not act like a predator?

The above is a classic way to flood desensitise a horse – don’t give up until the horse gives in – as we all know flooding done incompletely may make the horse put up an even bigger fight next time. The problem is that flooding may never work even if done to the point of the horse giving in.

Why put a sensitive animal like a horse through such a process? If this was done to a deer or other prey animal it would be called cruelty.

So next time you go to a clinic or watch a video of horses being trained try to analyse what is actually happening not what the trainer says is happening.

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Connection Training Clinic Day 1

A few thoughts about the recent clinic in Essex.

We gathered in the stable block and talked about the areas we wanted to work on either at the clinic (for those with horses there ) or at home for the auditors.

There were a variety of issues discussed:

gaining trust
getting more whoa
getting more go
desensitisation to nasal spray
bridling a slightly head shy horse
a competition horse who went over threshold at a dressage event due to horses round the arena approaching from the right side
a horse not interested in treats or training in hand in general
even the venues owners own horse who didn’t like the arena

Getting motivation was quite a key topic, making it worthwhile for the horse to want to target objects or to stand at stationary targets. Not to be stingy with the reward!

The first session was working on getting the horse to calmly target the target stick – all the participants had a history of using reward based training. It was therefore building on and refining what they were already doing.

The session on getting more whoa was interesting as the horse seemed very calm and most unlikely to be a “bolter”. I put bolt in brackets as true bolters I think are in an extreme state of fear and not just enthusiastic and strong out hacking. Sometimes we inadvertently cause them to get over aroused – excited, especially in the company of other horses.

Shawna worked on using the target to get the horse to move and then stopping and targeting – click and treat for the stop – then add rein cues to the process. The horse got a bit confused when the rider clicked as he was still looking to Shawna as the person with the treats.
At the end of the session the rein cue had begun to mean stop.
This same horse needed to be given a nasal spray, so the process of desensitisation was discussed and he got used to having his nostrils touched but there was more work to be done on another day.

The horse with bridling issues was the one with going forwards in the school issues. Shawna worked with the horse in the stable with the owner using a leather head collar at first, gradually introducing the noseband over the nose. Desensitising to the whole process, still more sessions needed to get it solid but the horse seemed less anxious about the bridle in the end.
horse being bridledtraining a horse to be bridled

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next into the arena with the same cob – the problem was the rider wanted more forward motion with out escalating pressure. Shawna had the horse moving towards a target pole and the rider clicked and treated for the slightest forward movement.

The horse with the anxiety issues when horses or people approached from a particular side was interesting. The owner said eyes had been checked but a few people thought there may have been a more physical issue than a purely behavioural one.
Shawna had the owner with the horse online on the good side to start taking him to the side of the arena were the audience was. Several people stood up and moved as the horse went by, not much reaction on the supposed good side Changed the rein and did the same thing – a bigger reaction on that side but not overly spooked.
Clicked and treated for any calmness as he passed people. The one person went outside the arena and stood on a chair, as the horse went by she waved her arms – and the horse did a major spook and looked quite panicky. He was rewarded for being calm – he did calm down quite quickly. A few more circuits with less extreme movement from the person the other side of the hedge, gradually resulting in the horse being calmer and calmer. This too was a form of desensitisation.

Then the resident horse who seems to dislike the arena. The target was used to get him calmly walking round the arena. Gradually getting him closer and closer to the scary corner!

Shawna seemed like a magnet for the horses and sometimes the owners had difficulty getting their horses attention back to them. Shawna did move from the horse area to the spectator area a few times, with lots of breaks for the horse in between chunks of training.

What I learned from day 1 – take things at the horses pace, don’t be a greedy trainer and ask too much or too soon. Give the horses time to process and calm down after a short session. Don’t be stingy with the rewards either, jackpot after a session and leave the horse with a good feeling. Timing is everything, click/bridge for the behaviour your want at exactly the time the behaviour occurs.

A few photos from the day are on Facebook – the rest are in a Photobox gallery.

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