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- Beyond Condition-Response
- This article chronicles the training of problem horses, a zorse, and a zebra. The focus is on developing a proper relationship with the unique animal you are working with.
 Read More... (Added: 5-Feb-2001 Hits: 1230 Rating: 9.67 Votes: 6) Rate It
- How Horses Learn - Part 1
- We are proud to introduce a three part series written by horse behaviour expert and trainer, Andrew McLean - we believe that these articles are essential reading for any intelligent horse owner...
Read More... (Added: 28-Aug-2000 Hits: 2710 Rating: 8.54 Votes: 13) Rate It
- How Horses Learn - Part 2
- In this article, I will describe the three forms of learning appropriate to horse training. It is interesting to note that dog trainers in particular, and animal trainers in general, understand in theory, and practice these learning strategies, and use them to make training quick, clear and un-ambiguous.
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- How Horses Learn - Part 3
- The instinct to gallop off instantly from perceived threat is one of the most essential instincts of a prey-species such as the horse, which has spent most of its evolved history as food for other animals. True enough, sometimes the horse may turn and fight, depending on the nature of the threat, but generally the only time a horse will fight is when he is hopelessly cornered, (including under saddle) or when he has learned through reinforcement that attacking is an effective dominating mechanism; he has profited through the use of this behaviour. At any rate, fear and anger are very closely related; most anger is unresolved fear. The flight response is the outcome of fear, and goes hand in glove with the simultaneous production of adrenalin. It poses the greatest problems for riders and when we talk of fear in the horse we must include the affects of adrenalin at all levels from mild tension ranging to outright panic and bolting. It's not that the bolting horse won't stop, it's largely that he doesn't register. Adrenalin, in sufficient doses, switches off all other systems and responses including the trained responses. It is plain survival, and everything is switched off except "GO".
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- NASD: Safe Ground Handling of Horses
- Horses survive in the wild because of their instinct to flee from danger. This is called the "flight instinct." Therefore, horses may react to unfamiliar objects and circumstances by spooking, or fleeing, from the object of fear. Horses detect danger through their vision, sense of smell and keen sense of hearing. Remember that when a horse spooks at "nothing," it may be reacting to something it can hear that you cannot.
Read More... (Added: 11-Dec-2000 Hits: 1006 Rating: 9.67 Votes: 3) Rate It
- Submission Under Saddle
- For centuries, masters of equestrian technique have recognised the importance of submission in the riding horse, to enable him to perform his trained movements to the best of his ability, unencumbered by attention loss and bodily resistance.
They noticed that it is only in this relaxed frame, when the horse has 'let go', that the horse is 100% pliant to his rider's cues, unable to be distracted by the battle, (so to speak) and able to perform with fluid ease... he is truly forward.
Submission is the sanguine obedience of the horse and the undivided attention he gives to his rider without fear, through clear, quiet and consistent training.
It is not achieved through punishment. As a peck-order animal he needs to know clearly who is in charge, and once established, the structure gives him security and calmness, and providing he has no chronic neuroses, he is hardly compelled to test the system.
Read More... (Added: 28-Aug-2000 Hits: 932 Rating: 8.50 Votes: 2) Rate It
- Submissive gestures
- I am particularly interested in the use and context of snapping (also known as
champing, mouthing etc), 'licking and chewing' and head-lowering. Snapping is
commonly believed to be a submissive gesture, but work by Crowell-Davis shows
that foals and yearlings, snapping to older mares and stallions, often did not stop
aggression, or sometimes provoked it. (horse-sense mailing list archives)
Read More... (Added: 20-Jul-2000 Hits: 1093 Rating: 9.00 Votes: 2) Rate It
- The Biological Basis of Submission
- 'Sunshine' as luck would have it, is loaded with personality. No sooner had he stepped, or rather pelted off that tailgate, than he spun nearly a complete 360 degrees, at which point his quick thinking, and quite practised, owner ducked to allow Sunshine's head to swing over, unimpeded by the mere cranium of the hapless owner.
Read More... (Added: 28-Aug-2000 Hits: 664 Rating: 9.75 Votes: 4) Rate It
- The biological basis of submission by Andrew McLean
- To fully understand submission, you must first realise its reason for being. In living things, every structure and behaviour has a purpose, and living together in social groups has many cost benefit advantages, over being solitary. Group living allows more animals to eat more grass more efficiently. Living in groups, however, poses a number of problems for animals in terms of competition for limited resources such as food and mating partners, so the dominance hierarchy or pecking order has evolved, where aggressive behaviour is thwarted through evolved mechanisms of threat and display. In natural dominance hierarchies, animals occupy their various levels in the hierarchy; it is a relatively harmonious existence, and if the leader is strong and consistent, then harmony reigns beneath.
Read More... (Added: 28-Aug-2000 Hits: 572 Rating: 7.00 Votes: 2) Rate It
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