Release versus Reward - What's the difference?
Release versus Reward… What’s the difference and why is it important to our horses?
Let’s put it in human terms to help us understand how our horses feel in similar circumstances of release versus reward.
Example A
If you were put in jail (for a reason that you didn’t understand) and then let out of jail:
1. Would you feel like you had been punished by the experience of being held against your will away from your family and friends?
2. Would you feel like being let out was a reward or simply something you deserved in the first place?
3. How would you feel about the person who put you in jail?
4. Would you be likely to trust this person to be responsible for your well-being in the future?
Example B:
If someone held your hand to a hot burner and forced you to keep it there until it was uncomfortable or even painful, for any reason at all, when they released your hand from the burner:
1. Would you feel like you were being punished when your hand was on the burner?
2. Would you feel like being allowed to take your hand off the burner or being released from the burner was a reward?
3. How would you feel about the person who forced your hand on the burner?
4. Would you be likely to trust this person to be responsible for your well-being in the future?
Maybe you think these examples are extreme as release and reward relate to our horses. But, I don’t think we always realize how easy it is to induce fear in a horse and cause them to feel like they are going to die in a given situation that we force upon them.
One example is separation anxiety. How often have you heard someone say that they can’t believe how their horse is acting when it has been forced to separate from another horse it’s attached to or the herd? I’ve seen people get angry, call horses stupid and even punish them in these circumstances. Yet, instinctually, the horse is hard wired to understand that separation from the herd means certain death.
Same thing goes for the trailer. No horse in its right mind would naturally think that a trailer would be somewhere it would go to thrive. Horses simply didn’t survive through history by jumping onto or into noisy, rocking, dark, confining spaces. If they did, these horses didn’t live to procreate. Put these two things together, separation from the herd and getting in a trailer without proper conditioning, and it can be an emotionally and physically traumatic experience for a horse that can cause permanent or long standing aversion to trailers – never mind destroy a horse's trust in humans.
We want to provide rewarding experiences for our horses and opportunities for them to move toward things that bring them comfort and pleasure rather than experiences that force them to acquiesce to our requests for fear of consequences of coercion or punishment.
The compassionate equestrian is mindful to always consider how the horse might be feeling in any given circumstance. This means doing our best educate and train ourselves in methods that reward horses for the behaviors that we would like to see more of and leave coercion, punishment and fear based training methods behind to the degree possible, while keeping everyone safe and healthy. In this way, we can transform the lives of horses and the people who love them each and every day.
Friends, I thank you for taking a moment to consider what I have shared, and I encourage and support your efforts to practice reward based training and Enjoy your horse like never before!
