How to handle other people's resistance to your progressive training methods

May 24, 8:19 AMClicker Training ExaminerEve Alexander

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I recently asked readers to tell me about their experiences with prejudice from other horse people about their training methods. This response is from a Parelli clicker trainer in England.

"In the early days I was quite evangelistic about Parelli because of the dramatic changes in my relationship with my horse and naturally enough I wanted to share the miracles I was seeing and the simplicity of it all with other people. I was actually shocked, surprised and dismayed by the extent of resistance to anything apparently new, different or "not invented here" in all forms of equestrian "discipline" as we call it in the UK.

I was also dismayed when I looked deeper at traditional methods of teaching people to ride and train horses that they seemed to have little or no basis in behavioural science or in using animal psychology. Nowhere in any traditional method had I ever heard any explanation of the need to and benefits of teaching a horse to yield to steady or rhythmic pressure.

The first time I even heard of behaviour modification methods such as operant conditioning (the way in which negative and positive reinforcement and punishment function as ways of modifying the behaviour of animals) was when I started to look into clicker training and realised that it is possible to achieve many many things with animals using positive reinforcement alone.

Clicker training led me deeper into the study of animal psychology and operant conditioning and to a far simpler explanation of what works for horse training - and what doesn't - than anything else I had come across so far. It was a revelation for someone who has been around horses for 40 plus years and was discovering all this new stuff!

The first time I really learned about ways to teach horses to overcome their fear or mistrust of humans and the environment we put them in was when I got into Parelli. Until then there seemed to be only two ways on offer from the traditional world to deal with horses that were fearful or concerned about something. One way which I see used often still is to throw the horse in at the deep end - in other words restrain, force, intimidate or pressurise the horse into a situation which it then has to tolerate (which I now know to be a psychological process known as "flooding" which you might also call "sacking out").

The other way is to simply avoid doing anything or to avoid situations where something might happen that could bother the horse. Many people I know have lost confidence in riding, and given up hacking out (trail riding) unless they can do so with a companion. Even today I know many people who won't ride their horses in any situation in which they might meet a plastic bag, motorbike, cyclist, pig, a person with an umbrella or a falling leaf. I know people who spend thousands of pounds a year keeping horses they consider to be no longer trainable or rideable but for reasons which I will never fathom they won't consider spending £20 to buy a single DVD to learn about the basics of horse psychology - even if it could potentially change their life with horses.

These folks know everything about retreat but sadly little or nothing about how to approach helping a horse overcome his fears.

I often hear of or encounter opposition to do with the cost of being involved in Parelli. This is generally from people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. To me, "expensive" is paying to keep a horse you don't feel safe to handle or ride, and paying medical bills for yourself or your horse when either of you is avoidably injured. "Expensive" is having a riding lesson every week with an instructor and doing the same things week in week out and making no measurable progress.

"Expensive" is a life with horses that is filled with fear, frustration, feeling like a failure and no fun. Compared to the life I used to have - which involved all of those things with my horse - what I do now and what I spend on my horsemanship is amazing value for money. So, in summary what I experience most from people in my country is not so much prejudice as total and astonishing ignorance and a rather arrogant "know it already" or complacent "have nothing more to learn" resistance to understanding and learning how to build respect, rapport and a relationship of trust with their otherwise beloved horses.

I pretty soon learned to do my own thing and keep my head down and to try not to advocate that other people look into these new methods unless they specifically asked me questions about what I am doing or if they ask for help. I worked out that the best way to share the benefits and interest others in the use of clicker training and natural horsemanship was to just work on continuously improving myself and to be an exemplar of what Parelli stands for - for horses and humans.

I still have a way to go but it makes me smile every time someone who doesn't know what we do says something nice about how relaxed, calm, trusting and obedient our horses are. These days Parelli is much more well known and I have a wide and international circle of fellow Parelli students and friends. It's a non-competitive and supportive environment where everyone wants everyone else to be successful.

I no longer feel the need for the approval of anyone else and I no longer seek to impress anyone else with what we can do - my horse and his attitude and behaviour when he is with me speak for themselves. The only being on the planet that I want to prove myself to as a leader is my horse."

Maxine Easey

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