We had a busy day planned so we left early to start. About 45 minutes into the trip, my peripheral vision detected a change in the rearview mirror. I looked into the rear view mirror to fully appreciate the image; There was a lot of thick black smoke filling the space behind my car and other road users were pulling out of the way. Thick black smoke was coming from my car!

I immediately took my foot off the gas, there was no need to worry about the hazard lights, everyone around me was aware that there was a danger on the road and I began to swerve the car onto the shoulder.

My mind was racing over what was happening, the worst case scenario was that the car was on fire so fast, but it required calm thinking. The change in momentum of the car had woken up my sleeping passenger and they asked me if we were at our first stop. We were, and it was also our last stop of the day.

When my passenger woke up, I gave him very clear instructions; “When the car stops on the shoulder, you will get out and walk north. Don’t stop until I tell you.” That was all I said. My passenger was excellent, he followed instructions to the letter, and most importantly, he wasted no time asking questions.

It was after we were both safely out of the car and about a mile upwind against the smoke that I felt like I should apologize for having ‘barked’ instructions at my passenger. It turned out that my passenger did not think he had barked instructions at all. What they said was that I was very calm and my tone of voice made it clear that this was not negotiable and this was not the time to ask questions. But at no point did I raise my voice. What exactly was the message that should be conveyed in that situation. There was no time for “please …” and “would you be so kind as to …”. The car was potentially on fire!

If I hadn’t had a strong relationship with the passenger in my car, would they have understood the underlying intent of the message? Would they have been offended by my non-negotiable request? Would they have done what I asked? That is something to keep in mind when training horses. What kind of relationship do we have with them? Is it one they can trust us, or should we build on that before we can ask them more difficult questions in potentially scary situations?

The horse must be able to trust the handler so that he can confidently and willingly offer behavior that he believes is the correct response in response to a request. That trusting relationship must be built over time. It is important that there is a relationship of trust when we ask horses to manage their emotions. We cannot just go directly to a horse and ask it to lower its head (asking for calm) if we have not first established a relationship of trust. If we have not earned the trust of the horses, they may comply with our request to lower their heads, but they will not be able to relax and allow their emotional state to change with behavior; We have not given them sufficient reasons to trust us with their emotions.

I’m sure we’ve all experienced the stranger telling us “cheer up, it may never happen.” If it was just that we were deep in thought, then we could laugh at it. That stranger couldn’t read us well enough to know that we weren’t being miserable, we were just too focused. But what if we had a really bad day and something terrible had happened? The stranger didn’t know us well enough to tell the difference, he had nothing to do with him to tell the difference.

Relationships matter. We cannot ask horses to do things that involve trusting us with emotional changes unless we have an established relationship where we can read well to each other.

When we decide that we would like to teach horses to lower their heads, we must first verify that relationship. If the relationship is not in the right place for a given behavior, that behavior will not be available when we request it. If the behavior is not readily offered, we have nothing to reinforce (we have nothing to train).

This does not mean that the horse already has to be regularly offering the desired behavior as part of its repertoire (although capturing is an option to train a behavior in the right circumstances), what it means is that when we guide the horse by our requests it does first approximations of the behavior are not showing up, so we cannot train that behavior. The horse is not physically and / or emotionally ready to offer that option. It is not on the table. If we try to force it, we may be training emotions that we don’t want as part of our training.

If the first approximations of behavior are not easily offered, then we must rethink the training plan. It may be that the relationship is not established enough or that the horse needs other behaviors to act as the basis for the behavior we want. If we want the horse to learn a behavior, we have to ensure that optimal learning conditions are provided to prepare them for success. Optimal learning conditions include, among others, ensuring;

• our relationship with the horse is in a place where they can read us and trust us to be able to offer the desired answer
• The correct foundations (knowledge and behavior precursors) for the new behavior have been established.
• we are dividing teaching into small enough steps
• we have the right balance between the correct answer being sufficiently clear versus being delivered on a plate
• the level of distractions in the environment is conducive, not disruptive, to learning
• we are using the right balance between guided and self-directed learning

Relationships matter. It is necessary to establish the correct level of relationship with a horse to be able to ask for certain behaviors. Something as simple as targeting can be used to start building the foundation of a relationship. A stronger relationship of trust needs to be established from a history of reinforcement before asking a horse for behaviors such as lowering its head when we ask it to trust us to change its emotional state.