Of all animals, humans are the ultimate calculating opportunists. While pressing the world around us into our service, we have bred and trained a few of the other animals to suit our purposes.

Among these domestic species, we are, I think, most indebted to dogs and horses. The nature of this debt is complicated by deep bonds, some of which appear to be more or less reciprocal. There is, for instance, an argument that our interdependence with dogs has been so great that we may have co-evolved. At the same time, our expectations of dogs and horses and the methods we use to train them are not necessarily based on a real understanding of their biology and telos.

So, we should perhaps be asking where they came from and where we are taking them. It is also worth asking how we might better train ourselves to observe the behaviour of these animals, in the hope of treating them better while we train them.

While dogs have lived in the human domain for perhaps as long as 150,000 years, horses were hunted until about 6,000 years ago. Image Wikimedia Commons.

As a veterinarian and an ethologist (behaviourist), my approach to these questions comes from my training in science. Well aware of the prevalent view that science imposes arid, indeed unfeeling, evaluations of animal behaviour, I am fascinated by the complexity and contradictions of this field.

For instance, ethology has generated many more papers on birds and bees than on domestic species. The paradox here arises because our closeness to dogs and horses can make them much more difficult to study.

Our influence on their rearing, training and management means that every time an apparently significant finding emerges, we have to ask whether it is a purely equine or canine trait or, partially at least, the product of human activity. At the same time, our engagement may allow an empathy that helps us notice what is intrinsic to these animals.

To begin, let’s take a snapshot of our long and sometimes ugly, shared histories.

Dogs have lived in the human domain for perhaps as long as 150,000 years, capitalising at first on our food scraps and also our faeces, and eventually on the shelter and company we offered. Meanwhile, humans have valued them as companions, workers, hauliers, guides, herders and hunters, as well as using them as a source of fur and food. Their use in warfare persists to this day, with dog-cams (pencil cameras strapped to the heads of trained dogs) being used to search buildings as part of anti-terrorist operations.

In early times, horses were hunted but about 6,000 years ago, the first equestrians galloped into view. Horse-riding humans were able to spread (Mongol hordes, for instance) at six times the speed of those on foot. Today, using horses as a means of transport and haulage may continue only in developing countries, and products made from horse hide and hair may have had their day, but Icelandic foal sushi is still exported to Japan, fermented mare’s milk remains a popular beverage for infants in Russia and Canadian pregnant mares’ urine is used in female hormone therapies throughout the Western world.

Something Westerners are said to have more of these days is leisure, and many of us spend this time with horses and dogs.

Leisure riding is booming in the UK, with current horse numbers outstripping those of Victorian times. Meanwhile, dogs are being co-opted into Flyball, a team sport, relying on a spring-loaded box, not unlike the ball-launchers used by avid tennis players. To reach the box, the dog must leap over four hurdles. Once there, he activates the box by hitting a giant pedal that sends a ball flying. The dog then has to catch the ball and return over the hurdles before the next dog in the team takes its turn.

Even more recent is Dancing-with-Dogs, also known as canine freestyle or heelwork-to-music. Here, dog-handler pairs combine traditional dog obedience with elements of equine dressage, musical interpretation, dance and costuming. With an emphasis on non-standard obedience, dog-human pairs are judged on synchronicity, rhythm and flair. 

In Dancing-with-Dogs events, dog-handler pairs combine traditional dog obedience with elements of equine dressage, musical interpretation, dance and costuming. Image Dreamstime.

That we sometimes neglect and abuse dogs as our everyday companions indicates the wide variation in our esteem for them. We are capable of portraying them as man’s best friend and the worthy recipients of bravery awards, or as slavering hell-hounds bent on mauling defenceless old ladies and toddlers.

Despite being more iconic than dogs, horses are, according to the late Duke of Edinburgh, at least, the Great Levellers. It does seem true that horses, unaware of rank or title, treat all humans equally. You’ll notice that I have not used the word ‘respect’. While it is clear that non-human animals do have emotions, there is no necessary correlation between theirs and our own.

Respect, trust and jealousy are all conceptual notions that may be irrelevant to animal responses to us. Even though they provide a shorthand and sometimes an amusing explanation of superficial observations, we might do well to be sceptical of them. For example, any supposed intention of an animal to humiliate its owner (‘he’s misbehaving just to show me up’), is unlikely to have any relevance in horse-horse let alone horse-human relationships.

Horses may appear respectful when they follow rules, trusting when humans apply them with consistency, or submissive and somehow dominated, when they have simply been trained not to assert themselves.

Horses may appear respectful when they follow rules, trusting when humans apply them with consistency, or submissive and somehow dominated, when they have simply been trained not to assert themselves. Image cjonline.com.

There can be profound welfare consequences for imbuing animals with human emotions such as a willingness to please. While many of us have worked with animals who appear to want to please us, by defaulting to this as an assumption we run the risk of creating a problem for those animals who don’t appear to want please us. Indeed, this approach often explains why some trainers feel justified, as a remedial step, in abusing their animals.

Given that we have embarked on a path of bending the will of animals to our own, good trainers suppress unwelcome responses and draw out desirable ones, eventually putting them under stimulus control so that they are offered only on cue. Whether or not they realise it, trainers who get the best out of their horses and dogs are students of animal behaviour. They often unwittingly weave together insights from ethology, which puts an animal’s natural responses into context, and psychology, which explains how behaviour can be modified by experience. This heady blend, occurring outside structured scientific research, intrigues me. I learn a great deal from chatting with people who work with animals, and I hope the reverse is also true.

Science reminds us to look for the simplest explanation, not the most appealing. I believe it can offer a great deal to reveal better training methods. This is at the core of my fascination with the ways we handle and train animals. In a bid to critique each technique from a scientific perspective, I have found myself deconstructing the training programs of sheep dogs, guide dogs and police dogs, as well as dolphins, sea lions, parrots, tigers, leopards and even octopi.

Regardless of the species they work with, there are two qualities that successful trainers share: consistency and timing.

Consistency (and, by implication, clarity) in delivering signals; timing in giving or withdrawing rewards. Beyond these, the most important attribute is an ability to appreciate the origins and biology of the species being trained.

Remembering that the paradox of our very closeness to dogs and horses complicates our ability to distinguish who they are, it is still well worth the attempt. The behavioural repertoires (ethograms) of animals are the most important limitation on what they can be taught.

For example, wild dogs take food back to their dens for pups, so fetching a ball is easier for them to learn than it would be for a horse. Horses move snow away from grass with one foot, so pawing at the ground with one foot is easier for them to learn than it would be for a dog. Dogs do more with their mouths while horses do more with their legs.

This is why dressage, the execution of sophisticated locomotory manoeuvres in a pre-determined order (or test), is often regarded as a pinnacle of horse training. Indeed, the word dressage comes from the French dresser – to train (animals).

Most dogs will work hard for food and company (the chief drivers that brought them into the human domain in the first place). Horses will, too, but when ridden they strive for a different sort of comfort. As a vulnerable prey species, they have an understandable instinct to run first and ask questions later.

Getting out of the way of trouble, real or imagined, is an absolute priority for them and this is when they are at their most dangerous. That said, active, rather than defensive, aggression is extremely rare in horses. Just by removing themselves in a hurry they can cause a great deal of barging, scrambling, treading, leaping, lunging and pulling that can leave handlers with broken legs, crushed toes, smacked heads and rope-burned hands. But all this is purely collateral damage – and these things happen just when horses are being handled by humans on the ground.

Flight responses make horse-riding an even more hazardous activity. While ridden horses who refuse to move may be frustrating, those who will not stop are potentially lethal. Contradictory and inexpert riding makes for confused horses that display their full repertoire of counter-predator responses and in the process become very dangerous.

As a vulnerable prey species, horses have an understandable instinct to run first and ask questions later. Image Dreamstime.

Science is beginning to unpick some of the understated ways in which humans and other species communicate and I happily acknowledge that some of us have relationships with horses that are profound yet so subtle as to resist scientific analysis. That said, I want to take this opportunity to share some of the science that underpins the basic mechanisms of horse-riding. This is not an attempt to undermine the complexity of human-horse relationships but rather to explain what can reasonably be expected of horses and to identify ways in which we may sometimes expect too much.

The cues we give the two species differ greatly. For example, we can readily trigger various behaviours in dogs with verbal commands, whereas with horses we are better off using pressure cues. Pressure on the flanks and in the mouth is undoubtedly the safest way to shape responses in any animal that you ride. Consider the alternative along with an extremely dangerous response that you wish to eliminate. Imagine that the animal you are riding is tearing towards a cliff at full tilt. Would you rather verbalise the command to stop or use pressure in a sensitive spot, such as the mouth, to halt the charge?

To be effective and humane, the training of ridden horses must involve subtle application of pressure and its immediate removal once the animal complies. Unfortunately, a reliance on pressure for signalling responses and pressure-release for rewarding them leaves horses open to a great deal of abuse, chiefly from a lack of subtlety and finesse rather than evil intent. Throughout their lives, they learn to offer responses that result in the reduction of pressure. This is underpinned by the principle of negative reinforcement (i.e., that a response is more likely in the future if it brings about the removal of an aversive stimulus). At this point, it is worth noting that a punisher is a term for any event that makes a particular response less likely in the future. Punishment is not necessarily abusive; it can be extremely mild and involve only the withdrawal of an attractive outcome for the animal – so-called negative punishment or punishment by omission.

To be effective and humane, the training of ridden horses must involve subtle application of pressure and its immediate removal once the animal complies. Image courtesy Equitation Science International.

During their early training, horses learn that pressure from the bit disappears when they stop or slow and that the pressure of the rider’s legs or spurs disappears when they go forward.

As the horse’s training advances, the best riders find they have to use less tension in the reins and lighter pressure from their legs. They even find that they can reliably cue responses by what are called ‘seat aids’ (shifts in the distribution of weight through the saddle).

The horse who is fortunate enough to have a consistent and careful rider can learn to make associations between cues of increasing lightness, even if the rider, unaware of the theory underpinning this process, assumes that the horse is responding to their thoughts.

Distance control of dogs is well established as the most demanding element of an obedience trial. Dogs must stay in a given position for as long as ten minutes with the owner out of sight. But why aren’t there obedience competitions for unridden horses?

Well, the principle of controlling without touching does apply to those rare horses that work ‘at liberty’, and this looks like a completely different sort of training – no reins, headcollars, bits or spurs. 

But then you realise that it is generally conducted within the confines of a pen or at least against a fence of some sort. The core intervention is the application of pressure until the desired response is offered. Here is a radical example.

A leading trainer of trick horses is able to get horses to gallop to her almost wherever she may be. They will even plunge into the surf in dramatic style simply to be close to her. Any reader who has had trouble catching a horse or pony may be puzzled as to how she achieves this.

The trainer’s solution has been to use avoidance training. Each horse wears an electric shock collar around their neck. The trainer fires a cap gun as a warning signal that a shock is coming. Starting in a small paddock, she applies the shock until the horse moves towards her. The horse is shaped to come very close to the trainer to escape or avoid the shock. The sooner the animal comes, the sooner the shock abates. And if the horse comes quickly enough when the gun is fired, no shock is delivered.

The process is then repeated in larger areas, graduating from small paddocks to large fields, until the horse will find the trainer even when she is in the next valley. This technique allows her to travel in the back of a pick-up truck and call the horse, which can then be filmed at full gallop again and again.

If ethology tells us what animals can be trained to do, psychology tells us how training can be applied. Historically, most psychological inquiry emerged after the use of animals in warfare was on the wane. This is important because the leading traditional texts on horse, and dog, training were written for training military mounts and war-dogs.

War has shaped horse and dog use as much as it has any other aspect of civilisation. And the process continues to this day. For instance, the current use of sniffer dogs in US military contexts explains why the US Defense Department is currently funding the world’s most expensive dog-behaviour research projects.

Regimentation is the core training principle for warfare. Creative responses are inappropriate in animals going into battle. Flexibility in the responses of animals used in warfare can threaten human lives and so cannot be encouraged. A famous example of how such responses can backfire occurred during Second World War when some Russians strapped anti-tank explosives to dogs and sent them into the attack. Many of the primed but poorly trained dogs returned to their trainers prematurely, with predictable results.

The US Defense Department is currently funding the world’s most expensive dog-behaviour research projects. Image Dreamstime.

The military background of horse and dog training advocated coercion and dominance to create submission in a one-size-fits-all approach whose effects can still be seen today. Unfortunately, because training traditions were so strongly entrenched, horse and dog training largely missed out on the benefits of so-called learning theory, the set of principles that emerged from psychology studies conducted over the past century.

Many cruel practices have been phased out, but in different ways and at different times for both species.

Dog training has benefited from tremendous advances over the past thirty years. The choke chain (which, as it happens, also relies on negative reinforcement) and the coercion that led to cringing compliance traditionally sought by trainers of dogs in military and police contexts have been replaced by a focus on playful responses and positive reinforcement.

The best trainers these days turn every desirable response they get into a chance for dogs to play or be rewarded. They turn work into a series of opportunities. As the most playful members of the Canidae and as outstanding opportunists, dogs thrive on this sort of interaction.

The scale of opportunism in dogs is akin to that of another species, the rat. This is fortunate because rats have, for more than a century, been the preferred experimental models for research into the psychology of learning. Almost everything we know about animal learning from rat studies can be applied to the dog. Modern dog trainers look to psychology labs for new findings and their dogs seem to feel the immediate benefit.

Horses are less fortunate. There is an expression: ‘You can always tell a horseman; but you can’t tell a horseman anything.’ Such is their love of horselore and tradition, horse trainers have been predictably slow in adopting new approaches. But, in fairness, they could not expect to find the same trove of applicable psychology-based training principles that dog trainers have. As previously discussed, many goals in horse training cannot easily be reward-based. And since you cannot ride a rat, the study of training by negative reinforcement is still in its infancy.

Nevertheless, horse training has also undergone considerable change over the past decade. Many ‘New Age’ ways of training have become popular. Using the same skills as shamans of old, who supposedly had arcane powers to commune with horses in their very souls, horse-whisperers have had a renaissance, sparked in part by the Nicholas Evans book and the Robert Redford movie.

The best trainers these days turn every desirable response they get into a chance for dogs to play or be rewarded. They turn work into a series of opportunities. Image Dreamstime.

But rather than adhering to codes of secrecy and practising quietly in stables behind closed doors – hence the alleged whispering – latter-day practitioners have started to promote their techniques and even pyramid-sell them. The reality is that horse whispering also relies on negative reinforcement.

Yet again, pressure is applied to prompt a response and its release rewards the horse and makes it more likely to offer that response in future. The chief difference is that the pressure applied by whisperers can be so subtle as to be imperceptible. Sometimes it involves only slight movements towards the horse. This is largely why early practitioners were assumed to be only ‘whispering’ to the horses. This has been positive for horses since it has renewed an interest within dressage circles for lightness of touch and has also, in an unlikely sidestep, spawned an emerging line of scientific inquiry into horse-training, now called equitation science.

The principle of release of pressure as the primary reward for horses means that they are harder to reward than dogs.

Dogs can be given titbits, toys and tickles, all of which can be linked to praise that becomes rewarding in itself.

Horses, on the other hand, generally just have the pressure taken off them.

With a dog you can give a massive jackpot reward when it has offered an exceptional performance.

With a horse you can still only take the pressure off.

Potentially, the lot of the ridden horse can be miserable. The need for a makeover has been appreciated even by equitation’s global governing body, the Federation Equestre Internationale, which introduced the concept of the well-ridden, elite performance horse as a ‘Happy Athlete’ and, more recently, a commission to promote horse sports’ social license to operate. Given that the horse is chiefly responding to pressure and its removal, one can see why few horses take part in competitions without a rider aboard, in contrast to some sheep dogs and agility dogs, for instance. Sceptics note that problems arise when we try to measure happiness in horses and to persuade observers that horses in sports are willing participants. They also question whether such media-driven notions have any impact on welfare.

Popular interest in the skills of horse whisperers has sparked demand for more-humane training and handling techniques. And it is here that I believe science can and should step in to measure, analyse and interpret what trainers do. Image Dreamstime.

Popular interest in the skills of horse whisperers has sparked demand for more-humane training and handling techniques. And it is here that I believe science can and should step in to measure, analyse and interpret what trainers do.

If we can quantify what works, what is relevant and what is mere window-dressing, then the good oil can be spread. However, there is resistance to this approach, curiously enough from the social science lobby. One would imagine that people who claim to share strong bonds and understanding with animals would see the benefits of scientific study that could reduce conflict between the species. On the contrary, they deplore any attempt to demystify or deconstruct any relationships, arguing that the bond between a horse or dog and its human companion is wonderful and that that is all we need to know. They are often happy to interpret animal behaviour in human terms and see scientists as being strangely phobic of such anthropomorphism.

After diligent cherry-picking of the evidence, they accuse scientists of being determined to underestimate the emotional intelligence of animals and the profound bonds humans share with them.

Science is sometimes accused of objectifying animals but the emergence of animal welfare science has already created changes in legislation that have greatly improved animal well-being. It has shown us how modern diets may prompt obsessive compulsive disorders; how weaning can affect social relationships among animals; and how the behaviour of a breed can be a product of its shape.

The increased availability of data on animal training is matched by a growing sensitivity to what animals have been telling us for a very long time: that what we think they want and need may not be exactly what they really want and need. It has helped to prompt fresh thinking about the relationship between animals and their trainers.

I would like to see horses and dogs benefit first from these advances. I think we owe it to them.