Horse Training/Crossing Water, Blanco #25

Setting a strong relational foundation one brick at a time. A foundation called trust.

* Feel free to ff in the places where we are not in the camera frame. There are a couple of interesting moments so don't miss them. Sometimes surprising things can happen when working with horses, and it is how we react to the surprise that is most important in the horse's mind.

** Like down at Sand Creek in Episode #18, it became necessary to change my focus from the original objective of the day to focus more on Blanco's behavior. In episode # 18 at Sand Creek, Blanco started stomping his front hoof in an angry manner. What i did then was to put the objective of crossing the creek aside and focus instead on his stomping the ground. Since his behavior was one of anger, a behavior that helps no one, i waited for the moment when he stopped stomping and i immediately released that better behavior of not a stomping, which was the correct answer so to speak. i immediately turned him away from the creek and walk a little up the path. When he came back, he was calmer and that is when he actually walked into the creek ahead of me.

So, here in this arena, i am doing the same thing. This time i am focusing on his biting behavior, and conscious of his ever swishing tail. On his back there is no real way to release pressure for biting, that is, when he is not biting. So it becomes tricky trying to "explain" to him what i would like for him to do, which is to stop trying to bite me. The only way to explain to him in this situation is to use "positive reinforcement" rather than the negative reinforcement (release of pressure) i have been using. There are two positive reinforcement acts we can use, one is to hit him and the other is make our displeasure known without hitting. I have chosen to use the hissing sound. He caught me by surprise one time and i spontaneously vocalized to him to knock it off.

*** It has been my experience that there are some horses that when they are young and you are trying to discourage them from biting that "popping" them on the snout or muzzle will stop this behavior. But there are other young horses that when you do this it only stimulates a fighting kind of behavior. Eventually, if people continue to hit them they might finally stop, but in the back of their mind the behavior has not been fully extinguished. The biting (fighting) behavior usually surfaces again when they are under stress for whatever reason. If trailer loading is difficult for them, then they can have a tendency to bite. If the process of saddling and cinching up the girth is difficult for them, then they will bite as a defense, etc.

What i have found with horses that are "fighters" and use biting to defend themselves is that if you change their mind about the perceived stress they are under then the biting has a greater change of extinguishing on its own, in most cases permanently. What has usually happened with a young horse that bites is that they have been "overexposed" to things. That is, new things have been introduced to them in ways they cannot handle the stress. Another way a young horse can develop into a biter is if they are fed treats on a regular bases and have not been taught how to take a treat properly. Blanco has had both of these experiences in his background.

One way to stop the food aggression is to stop giving treats. But the drawback to this is that the horse will always have that food aggression in the back of their mind. So it is my opinion that it is best then to explain to a horse how to ask and take a treat respectfully. i had begun to do this with Blanco when it became evident he was a biter while i was riding him. I knew he was aggressive with treats because i remember being told he bit a young girl that was trying to feed him a treat one day about 6 months ago. But without going into detail here about what i am doing to change his mind about how to ask and take a treat respectfully, i will make a video in the near future on how i have incorporated both positive and negative reinforcement regarding his treats.

So while riding him the key is to have him understand first that i have space and he has space and he cannot come into my space with his mouth. That is the swishing of my hand that i do between his face and my body part he wants to bite. The swishing backed up with the emphatic hissing sound is what establishes the invisible barrier. It is not in this video so much, but in the next video that you will see he is beginning to understand that when i begin to bring my hand up in the swishing motion, making an invisible barrier, he pulls away quicker without coming in closer. Eventually, all i will have to do is the hissing and he will associate this with the barrier.

And finally, as he begins to change his mind about the fact that riding isn't as stressful as he had been lead to learn, the biting will hopefully be permanently extinguished.