Eliminating Static

One of the metaphors that I always used to use while teaching was the idea of static in the communication between horse and rider. As time went on and my students were born later and later, it became harder to use that reference because kids these days literally don't know what static sounds like. Phones seem to just cut out, I haven't heard that noise in a while.

Anyway, one of the things I've been doing with my own riding recently, and in the last three or so years, is working to eliminate the static in my communication with horses. I'm reading (slowly now that I'm not on vacation anymore) Academic Horsemanship, and this book is brilliant. 

One of the major things I'm taking away is that horses learn in a much simpler way than we think they do. Like most animals, they simply exhibit behaviors, for better or for worse, that have at one point been reinforced in some way. Whether that reinforcement is a pet near the withers or food (primary reinforcers- positive reinforcement) or escape from pain (primary reinforcer- negative reinforcement). Most of the time when a horse is acting up, they are confused or in pain.

One obvious example is TC's bolting. I have for the most part eliminated that response in him. I mean he still scoots off, but that downshift galloping across the arena is gone. Why? Well, lots of factors including his living situation, his level of training, and the weather. But also ME. Since he doesn't go bolting around his paddock. 

Horses don't act up because they are inherently mean. They act up because at one point they were rewarded for doing so. And TC has been rewarded for bolting in the past. One way I think this happened is this: I would be nervous, thinking he might bolt so would essentially aid him to bolt by being a bit tense in the tack. He would do so and it wouldn't be as bad as my brain thought it was, so I'd actually be more relaxed after the bolt. What a really good way to teach a horse that if they feel tension on their back (an aid that I didn't know I was giving = static), they can just gallop wildly away and get their rider to relax. 

Oops.

So now when I add tension to my seat, he does get a little zippy, which has been nice, except when he was already amped the other day and I went to add a bit of tension to add energy to his canter and... well, enlightenment at speed. 

That's an obvious example though, of an accidental stimulus-response chain being created when I really didn't mean to do it. It'd be easy to bit him up, throw him in draw reins, call him a dangerous horse (all of those things were suggested to me) rather than looking at it as a behavioral analyst and not treating the symptom, but treating the cause.

Needs a better rider, not draw reins

But this happens all the fucking time. Horses pick up on the littlest things. It's how they learn, they really struggle with generalization. Case in point when I went to work on TC's flying changes the other day. 

I'm doing them at the same point in the same arena every single time, which is a good way to get consistency (and prevent random changes over time since I do still need to show at Training, First, and Second before I want him doing them in the show ring). But I also didn't realize that I was setting them up the same exact way. 

Soon TC had a little routine that had a bunch of stuff in it that I didn't necessarily want. Pick up the canter in the corner, spook at a tree, get behind my leg slightly in a half halt to turn across the diagonal, change, counter flex slightly to stare at another tree, walk transition in the corner. Because at one point all that happened and he got praised. He doesn't understand that he ONLY got praised for the change. He thought that the whole routine lead to praise.

So how do horses differentiate between a rider's half halt and an accidental jerk on the rein? How do horses differentiate between a canter transition and nagging? How do horses differentiate between shifting weight because you have an itch and shifting weight because you are asking them to respond? They don't. 

Static on my right rein and tipped shoulders

Sitting still and ONLY aiding when I mean to is REALLY hard for me. Especially now that I've lost muscle from not going to the gym anymore, it's really easy to glance down and be like wtf that hand is not supposed to do that. TC has no idea that my wandering left hand isn't an aid, and he's really good at going the way that I'm asking him to. Take our problems to the left for example. My unintended, static aid is my left hand coming back. 

That aid shifts his weight to the outside front leg, which my right side is not good at sending forward (and it really can't when I'm sending his right front so far out). So he pops his shoulder and we don't turn. It gets to the point where in order to turn to avoid me tapping him with the whip on the shoulder, he's learned to get up and down in the gait and come off the bit.  He isn't "trying to get away with" anything when he does these things, he's performing a behavior that I am a) aiding for and b) has brought him a reinforcement in the past.


Nagging is my go to example of static in communication with the horses. TC hasn't had a rider who nags at him for more than a ride or two, so hasn't become habituated to the leg aid in the same way Rico did. With Rico, I would nag at him whether he delivered the response I was looking for (go forward) or not. To him, the aid became something that he could both respond to with no reward (ceasing of the nagging and praise) or ignore with no penalty (since I'd just keep nagging).

It's like if someone asked you a question "what is my favorite color?" and you guess "blue?" and they just ask again, "what is my favorite color?" "uh well since you're asking again it's probably not blue, how about green?" and again and again until you're just like FUCK YOU JUST TELL ME ALREADY WHAT YOUR FAVORITE COLOR IS. Or maybe you're just like "man that person likes saying those words in that order, nothing I do will make them stop, so I'll just ignore them." The latter is more like what horses do. You become habituated to the question so you stop responding.

The king of habituation. More like, poor innocent
horse owned by rider who nags.

So to work on eliminating static, I'm putting pressure on myself to both a) require ONE aid for ONE response and b) keep my aids neutral when not in use. Let me break that down because I find it really interesting.

Horses are kind of superstitious. They paw when they know the feed truck is coming not because they're being impatient or any human emotions, but because at one point they tried pawing and it magically made the feed truck come to them and give them food. Rewarding the pawing behavior. If Rico knows that I'm going to ask him to go forward seven times (nagging) before I finally get frustrated and hit him, I have taught him that the aid to go is for me to nag at him seven times. He will let me get through my aid and then he will go forward.

With TC, since I didn't want to create a horse that I had to nag at, he's really good about the one aid one response thing. If I ask him to go forward from the leg, it takes one response, if I ask him to slow down, one response. So that first point isn't as relevant on him. I've been very careful to not accidentally add static that way, but keeping all other aids neutral has been harder than it sounds.

Neutral position

I've always maintained that doing NOTHING on the back of a horse is a thousand times harder than doing SOMETHING. Sitting still and being patient is tough. But the nice thing about TC is that the more neutral my entire body becomes, and I'm talking about light forward thinking hands that do not shift laterally or backward EVER, a neutral seat that stays with him no matter what he does, and a light leg on him for support but not at all driving or wiggling (hardest in sitting trot, damn), the better he goes. The more out of his way I get, leaving the pathway that I want him to go on completely free and open, the more expressive and happily he works. 

But it's SO HARD. I get left behind the motion in exuberant transitions sometimes, my left hand likes to come back as I sit while posting, my legs want to get too far back or too far forward or sometimes one goes forward and the other sticks out, my seat wants to get uneven and tip off my right seat bone. To TC, those bad habits aren't things he should realize are unintentional and that he should ignore, they're no different than aids. And if I keep doing them without reinforcing behavior that follows, he will become habituated to them and it will cause static when I actually do want to use them as aids. OR he will develop superstitious behaviors as I accidentally reinforce things that he's offering because of those aids (such as popping his shoulder). 

The more I learn about how much influence I have over my horse, for better or for worse (mostly for worse), the more I really reject the notion of the "effective but not pretty" rider. A rider needs to be in a neutral position EXCEPT for the aids that are going through to the horse in order to be completely effective and provide the clearest communication to the horse. It doesn't mean that pretty riders are all effective, it just means that you can't be a truly, fully effective rider without sitting properly in the tack, and more importantly, keeping the utmost control of all aids so they don't go aiding for shit you don't realize like mine do. 

Tipping forward and bringing my leg up = static

Even the most sensitive snowflakes of horses will habituate to static in the aids (I mean if your horse wears any clothes, they are capable of habituating to things). Even a position that feels like it gets out of the way of the horse could still be throwing things way off. The more still I become with my aids the further I feel like I have to go to truly get into a neutral position. And it's ALL ON ME. My horse only does what I tell him to do and what has been reinforced in the past.

My slight backward motion with my left hand in the down swing of my post throws my horse off enough where he is crooked on that side. Or I could blame it on him not "wanting" to use himself properly or that he needs to be "more respectful" of me. I let go of my abs the other day at the canter because I totally mistook what I was doing half-halt wise and TC dropped immediately into trot. Or he got "lazy" and thought he could "get away with" breaking from the canter.

Not to say that horses don't take the path of least resistance. I mean that is exactly what I am saying. TC won't connect on that side when I'm in his way because I'm blocking that path. He wouldn't hold his canter when I didn't keep my abs engaged because I'm blocking that path.

And this also doesn't mean that these responses don't deserve to be corrected. TC should keep cantering even if I fuck up. He should go on the bit even if I'm struggling with my posting. But these aren't high level responses here, they aren't him sneakily thinking that he can get away with not working because I'm dropping my core. 

He is a lot of things but lazy isn't one of them, unless I teach
him to be "lazy"

My goal now is to eliminate the static that could be blocking other paths that I don't even realize. Get myself into a neutral position and give him the freedom he needs to perform. And he is so enjoying his work now that I'm focusing on this. It doesn't mean that I'm not riding him, I'm just riding him more deliberately. Every aid is given for a reason. Every tiny movement of my body is calculated. 

My brain hurts, and I don't really feel like a particularly good rider, but the other day I got a collected canter like Rico had at Third or Fourth level, and he was light and he was maneuverable with the smallest aid. I softened my hand and he came rounder, I carefully pulled my seat back and he nearly went on the spot. Because there's less static now and he can hear my aids whisper now. And the reinforcers are easier to deliver for me and easier for him to hear. And that's SUPER cool. Kind of completely terrifying when a small movement can elicit a huge response, but mostly cool.

Controlling that huge response is another thing...

Before finishing this post I do have to shout out to Kate who both introduced me to this book that is completely changing the way that I train horses AND for endlessly talking to me about it. Plus, hopefully she'll find the time between summer camps and teaching to write about the clicker training clinic she held at her barn. I couldn't be there because I was in Michigan, but she asked the woman about TC's bolting for me, and she told Kate who told me that at ONE POINT, my horse was rewarded for bolting. Simple as that. And now after he did it directly following my seat getting tense a few days ago, I FINALLY understand why he's doing it and so many other things.