Horses: learning and training

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Learning

Learning is defined as ‘changing behaviour as a result of experience’. The purpose of learning is survival in a changing environment.

Habituation: loss of sensitivity to unimportant stimuli
Habituation stops animals from wasting time or energy reacting to the stimulus e.g. when you first enter a room with a ticking clock you hear every tick, but after a while your brain filters it out so that is no longer heard. Habituation is probably the simplest form of learning.

Classical conditioning: many animals can learn to associate one stimulus with another.
Pavlov, a famous early physiologist, fed meat to dogs, causing them to salivate. Just before the feeding he exposed the dogs to a ringing bell. After a while, the dogs salivated readily in response to the sound alone, which they had learned to associate with the normal stimulus.

Operant conditioning: also called trial and error learning. The animal learns to associate one of its own behaviours with a reward or punishment; the animal then tends to repeat or avoid that behaviour.
Operant conditioning is the basis of most of the animal training done by humans, in which the trainer typically induces a particular behaviour first by rewarding the animal.


Training

Much of the early training of young horses involves habituation – getting the horse used to things, for instance cars.
More advanced training typically follows operant conditioning through negative reinforcement. A correct response to an unpleasant stimulus (relaxing the jaw and backing up in response to pressure from the bit) is rewarded by removal of the stimulus (loosening the reins).
A great deal can be accomplished in training simply by ignoring incorrect responses. A response to a stimulus that is neither rewarded nor punished tends to disappear of its own accord – this is known as extinction.

It is easier to teach a horse to respond to a command when the desired behaviour comes naturally and instinctively – animals may show a ‘biological preparedness’ for learning certain things. At the famous Spanish Riding School of Vienna, stallions are trained to execute airs above the ground. The particular air for which a stallion is trained is the result of observing the young horses at play to see which movements come most naturally to each.

Reinforcement
Appetitive reinforcers increase the likelihood of a behaviour being performed - they are forms of reward. Appetitive reinforcers may act through either positive or negative reinforcement.
Aversive reinforcers, or punishments, have the opposite effect reducing the likelihood of a behaviour being performed.

Note that negative reinforcement is NOT the same as punishment – negative reinforcement comes BEFORE the desired behaviour, punishment comes AFTER it.

Rewards MUST be provided within about half a second of the horse performing the requested behaviour, in order for it to associate the reward with the behaviour.
Consistency of reward is also very important.

Effects of punishment
When punishment is used in training systems, animals may become neurotic.
In other words, they learn faster but are more worried about getting the right answer.

Punishment perceived as reward
Rewards and punishments are defined by their effect not by their intended action. Not uncommonly a handler may end up rewarding a behaviour that they are intending to punish e.g. a horse that kicks the door of it’s stable is often ‘punished’ by being shouted at or having a hand flicked at it. To the horse, however, these bits of attention are more likely to be seen as a reward – if the horse is bored, any attention is better than none.

Lack of focus
Punishment does not help to tell the horse what it should be doing. There are many more ways to get something wrong than to get it right, so one undesired behaviour may be exchanged for another if the appropriate behaviour is not specifically encouraged by reward. There is also the risk of discouraging a behaviour that in later training will be required.

Depending on the method employed, punishment is also potentially an abuse of the animal.

Possible undesirable outcomes of punishment are:
- aversion: the horse becomes fearful of whatever it associates the punishment with – the trainer, the place in which it is trained or some other aspect of the situation.
- habituation: the horse learns to ignore the punishment
- aggression/ learned helplessness: the horse becomes aggressive towards the trainer, or, more damagingly, it ‘gives up’, learning that whatever it does results in punishment so it may as well not try to improve the situation.
- increased timidity: the horse becomes less willing to try anything out of the normal routine.

General guidelines to training new behaviours
Seek opportunities for reward, as these direct the animal’s behaviour towards a precise training goal
Don’t overuse a reward - the horse may become habituated to it and stop responding to it.
Choose an appropriate schedule for the training programme.
Be selective about which behaviours are to be rewarded. This helps you to apply rewards appropriately.
The choice of reward should be as relevant as possible in order to take advantage of the biological biases within the horse. A break from work is often a very good reward.
Be careful of timing of actions - rewards must be given as quickly as possible after the desired behaviour has been performed otherwise the reward may be associates with something totally unrelated to the behaviour.
If an animal is punished when is stops misbehaving, it is being punished for stopping the behaviour NOT for performing the unwanted behaviour, and next time is likely to carry on with the behaviour for longer.
Secondary rewards, including verbal praise and retort, must be classically conditioned to an appetitive or aversive reinforcer before they have any effect on the behaviour. This means that they must be first associated with something the horse likes or doesn’t like, for instance a food snack or a loud noise, before they can have a good effect on their own. This type of classical conditioning is the basis for clicker training – the clicker provides a very recognisable and consistent sound that can be associated with a pleasurable experience.

The vast majority of training can be carried out by rewarding the good and ignoring the bad – done in this way, training is enjoyable for both the horse and the human.

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Vice - or self-help?

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Stress is defined as 'mental, emotional or physical strain or tension'.
In response to chronic (long-term) stress, the body secretes a family of steroid hormones called corticosteroids. These have undesirable effects on the tissues that are responsible for producing white blood cells, which make up part of the body’s defence system. The number of white blood cells produced is reduced, resulting in an increased susceptibility to infection and disease. This is why people who are stressed are more likely to suffer illnesses such as irritable bowel syndrome, as well as more minor ailments such as colds. Similarly, horses which are subject to excessive stress are likely to develop stomach ulcers and/or be generally unthrifty.

Antidotes to stress

Endorphins are the brains own opiates - they are similar in structure to chemicals such as morphine and heroin. Endorphins are released in response to stress, and appear to have similar calming effects to those of opioid drugs
Certain activities appear to boost or prolong release of endorphins from the brain i.e. they can give an opiate 'hit'. Some repeated, relatively invariant sequences of movements which outwardly appear to have no purpose seem to be both stimulated by the release of endorphins and also prolong that release. These types of movements are known as 'stereotypies'. They are a means by which animals can give themselves the equivalent of a Valium.

Examples of stereotypies in horses are actions such as weaving, box-walking, cribbing and windsucking. Most people are more familiar with the term 'vices' to describe these types of behaviour, however this word is misleading in that it implies that horses are making moral decisions to act in an evil manner. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth - the behaviours are simply the horses response to whatever stressful situation it has been placed in.
Horses are by no means the only animals which exhibit stereotypies in stressful situations - other examples of stereotypies include rocking movements and repetitive vocalisations in institutionalised humans, bar chewing in stalled sows, head swinging in zoo-housed bears and elephants, pacing in captive fennec foxes, eye rolling in veal calves and jumping in caged bank voles.

Why do some horses develop stereotypies while others do not?
There is a strong belief among people who own or care for horses that normal horses will copy the stereotypies of afflicted stable-mates. It is much more likely that a horse who appears to imitate a stereotypy was experiencing the same stressors as the animal it appears to have copied, and so reacted in a similar way. Horses in a yard are likely to be under similar management routines and therefore subject to the same stressors. Equally, a horse which already has a well-developed stereotypy will pose no threat if it is introduced to a yard with a horse-friendly management system.

There is also no evidence to show that stereotypies are inherited. ALL behaviours are the result of the effects of the genes of an individual combined with the effects of their environment, which act in different proportions in different situations. Thus there is probably a small amount of genetic predisposition for horses to perform stereotypies - this would explain why certain horses develop stereotypies though other horses kept in the same environment and managed identically do not. This can be seen in humans too - some individuals are better able to cope with stress than others.

What are the stressors which lead to the development of stereotypies?
Horses have spent the past six million years evolving to suit a particular lifestyle. They are built to spend around 16 hours every day moving around slowly while chewing on fibrous vegitation, and to live in family groups in large, open spaces.
Any factors which remove the horse from its natural environment will cause it stress. These include spending large amounts of time in the stable, not having access to ad lib forage and being deprived of companionship.
Conversely, allowing horses to perform as much of their evolved behavioural repertoire as possible will reduce the risk of the development of stereotypies and may also reduce the amount they are performed in horses which already have established stereotypies.

Development of stereotypies.
Stereotypies tend to develop from the main frustration that the animal faces, for instance a horse which is deprived of the behaviour it would perform in the wild to find food is likely to develop some sort of oral stereotypy such as windsucking.
Feeding-related stereotypies are further explained by evidence which shows that grain-based (‘high sugar’) feeds actually stimulate endorphin release, resulting in enhancement of stereotypic behaviour patterns. Decreasing the amount of grain fed to stereotypic horses, therefore, may reduce the rate of stereotypy performance. A diet based on high quality hay rations may reduce stereotypy directly by minimising endorphin release, as well as indirectly through leading to more time being spent chewing and eating.
Recent evidence suggests a further cause of windsucking and cribbing stereotypies. These types of stereotypy are peculiar to horses - many other animals show weaving or pacing behaviour but no others are known to perform anything resembling cribbing or windsucking. This could be connected with the horses unusual digestive system, which is designed to cope with large amounts of fibrous material and huge volumes of digestive secretions. Horses which are fed mainly on small volumes of concentrate feed may have problems digesting the high levels of sugar which are present in these feeds, which can lead to the digestive tract becoming acidic. In these horses it is thought that cribbing and windsucking may be a means by which they can increase the levels of secretion of digestive fluids and so help dilute the acidity of the lower digestive tract.

Once fully developed, stereotypies will usually be performed in any stressful situation, i.e. they become independent of their original eliciting stimulus. Fully developed stereotypies may not show the current state of the horse, but reflect a past challenge severe enough to have traumatic effects on the central nervous system. This is why horses which have developed a stereotypy will often carry on performing it even when their environment has been improved.

So if stereotypies are actually beneficial to animals, why do we want to treat them?
The moral argument that stereotypies are simply a symptom of stress, and subjecting animals to stress is ethically wrong comes top of the list. Successful treatment of stereotypy involves the removal of the stressor which caused the behaviour in the first place. A secondary factor is that some stereotypies can be damaging to the animal in themselves, for instance cribbing results in damage to the incisor teeth; weaving can result in concussion injuries to the front limbs.
As already discussed, treatment involves returning the animal to as natural an environment as possible i.e. with access to ad lib forage, space and companionship. In cases of weaving and box-walking this alone should be enough to eliminate stereotypy.
In cases of cribbing and windsucking, however, the stereotypy tends to be more persistent, the animal is in effect addicted to its Valium. It is possible that these animals are suffering from chronic low-grade pain from which the stereotypic behaviour may provide relief. This area is currently receiving research interest.

In conclusion, it is evident that stereotypies are much more complex than their common name, vices, would suggest. Stereotypic behaviour gives us an indication that all is not well with particular individuals, and lead us to consider horses which are subject to many stressors but which do not develop stereotypies - are they coping better with the situation or are they simply not coping at all?

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Worms and worming - new thinking

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Should horses be wormed?

The answer for most of us, having been told many times that parasitic worms are bad for horses, causing ill-thrift, dull coats, weight loss and in the worst cases colic, is a resounding YES. But new research is showing that trying to completely eradicate worms may not be the best course of action for maintaining horse health.

The development and promotion of effective chemical wormers for horses has lead to a culture among horseowners of blanket prophylactic use of these chemicals – owners worm indiscriminately without knowing what worm burden their horses are carrying. This type of usage is slowly declining however for many years the strong message was ‘worm every 6 – 8 weeks, and change your wormer each time’, and the industry is taking time to adjust to more subtle methods of parasite control.
The strategy of worming frequently has had a positive effect on arguably the most dangerous species of equine parasite, the large redworm. This type of worm has been virtually eradicated – a good thing, as its more severe effects were to block blood vessels supplying the gut, causing the most serious form of colic.
The strategy has, however, had a less beneficial effect on numbers of the most common of the horse parasites, the small redworm.
In any population of animals, there is variation – think about humans who all look, speak, act and function differently. Parasitic worms are no exception – although distinguishing George from Fred is slightly more difficult that in humans, aspects of how each worm functions are slightly different. The differences are due to the genetic ‘shuffling’ that takes place each time a sperm and an egg join to produce a new baby worm. In a large population of worms, there will be many many different combinations of genes, some of which will confer the ability to survive particular environmental circumstances. This means that in a large group of small redworms, a small number will be able to survive a dose of chemical wormer.
If after a dose of wormer, a lady worm and a gentleman worm survive, they are likely to pass on their ability to survive the wormer to the baby worms they produce. This phenomenon is known as ‘resistance’ – the worms are resistant to the wormer. Resistance is already common to some types of wormer – those containing benzimidazole or related chemicals have the highest associated resistance, and resistance to all active ingredients will eventually happen.

The message to ‘change your wormer each time’ was intended to lessen problems with resistance. The idea was that at each worming, a tiny number of worms that were able to withstand that particular wormer would survive. These worms would then multiply into a whole population that were resistant to that wormer. Changing the active ingredient of the wormer for the next round of worming would then wipe out the worms resistant to the initial wormer. Unfortunately, in a large population of worms that are resistant to, for example, benzimidazole, there will be a tiny number that are also resistant to pyrantel or ivermectin. By rotating wormers frequently, it is possible to select for those worms that are resistant to more than one chemical, and produce a population of superworms that have multiple resistance.


The best way to avoid the development of resistance is to reduce the use of chemical wormers and make use of other worm control techniques.
The most effective of these is removal of dung from pasture. Most parasitic worms of horses, and certainly the redworm, lay egg in the horses gut which are then excreted with faeces. Removing faeces removes worm eggs and so prevents re-infection of horses on the pasture.
Additional control measures include rotation of pasture and mixed grazing with ruminant animals.
Faecal worm egg counts should be used to assess the efficacy of the worm reduction programme that is used. Egg counts give an estimate of the worm burden of the horse. The exception to this is tapeworm. Tapeworm eggs are not reliably detected by the standard worm egg count test. Tapeworm burden can be accurately determined by a blood test, however this must be done by a vet!

It has always been accepted that the best result from a worm egg count was for the horse to have no worms at all. This, however, is also under debate.
There is evidence other animals that a parasite burden can be beneficial to the animal. There is a small amount of evidence of this in horses also – there appears to be a greater tendancy for horses that carry no worms to develop RAO (COPD).

There is also an argument for maintaining a population of non-resistant worms in any horse herd. This is termed ‘refugia’ – a refuge is provided for worms. Horses are maintained at around 500 eggs per gram (many horses will never carry this level of worm burden due to their own innate resistance to worms). This population of worms provides competition to any resistant worms that may be produced – if resistant worms appear, they do not have an empty environment to colonise – they have competition for resources and so do not multiply exponentially. The population can be maintained by using chemical wormers and not collecting faeces, especially just after worming, or by using pasture management and minimising use of chemical wormers.

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Pain and Behaviour

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Pain or the memory of pain can influence ridden behaviour HUGELY. The most common sources of pain in the ridden horse are from the teeth, from the tack and from the feet.

Teeth
Horse teeth wear away as they grind huge amounts of forage, and so they have to continuously 'grow' from the jaw throughout the horses life. Virtually all riding horses have a top jaw that is wider than their bottom jaw which means that they don't wear evenly - sharp edges tend to appear on the outside of the top teeth and the inside of the bottom teeth. Problems with teeth often manifest as avoidance of the bit - opening the mouth, twisting the head. The bridle can compound tooth pain, especially if a tight noseband is used as this squashes the cheeks and tongue onto the sharp teeth. The pain from the teeth can also interfere with eating. The solution is to have your horses teeth checked once or twice per year by a qualified equine dentist or a horse vet.

Tack
Check that your bridle fits comfortably, especially the browband. Many horses seem to be squeezed into a browband thats too small and squashes their ears - not comfortable. The bit is also important, with some horses being far more comfortable in a bitless bridle. The saddle, however, is more often the cause of poor performance. I'm not going to go into it here, but check out http://www.balanceinternational.com/ and http://www.enlightenedequitation.com/index.html for really useful info on saddles and saddle fitting.

Feet
Correct foot balance is vital for your horses comfort. A shod horse should be checked every six weeks by the farrier to avoid hoof growth unbalancing the limbs. A barefoot horse is less likely to suffer problems with foot balance as some wear to the foot will be happening, but barefeet should still be checked regularly. One check you can do yourself is to look at the hoof/pastern axis - looking from the side, the front line of the hoof should be parallel to the line that runs through the middle of the long and short pasterns. The most common fault is that the foot will slope more than the pastern line - this is known as 'broken-back' and puts lots of strain on the back part of the hoof and in particular the navicular bone. Memory of pain If a horse has suffered pain or discomfort in the past, it won't necessarily realise straight away that the pain has gone. Time and patience will often be needed to let the horse realise that it is comfortable, for instance if the horse has been ridden for a while in an uncomfortable saddle, its way of going will have become adapted to avoiding as much discomfort as possible and it may take some skillful handling to persuade the horse to try going in a more 'normal' way.

For further reading on these issues, try
'No Foot No Horse' by Gail Williams and Martin Deacon
'For the Good of the Horse' by Mary Wanlass

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