Does training with positive reinforcement mask pain?

As someone who used to train heavily with negative reinforcement who now trains primarily with positive reinforcement I wanted to offer my thoughts and perspective on this.

As with anything, just because someone says they’re using positive reinforcement doesn’t mean they’re doing it well. Really good, ethical trainers are skilled at reading even the most subtle body language and communication from the horse so a scenario where they are training the horse through any significant level of pain just isn’t happening.

I find the comparison bizarre when social media is filled with videos from “problem horse” trainers showing horses screaming a very loud no, to a quieter no, until the no doesn’t come anymore and the horse gives up, through persistently tapping the horse with a stick/flag/legs/whatever until they comply.

I think one of the biggest frustrations I have with the industry is we equate people being good at making horses comply with having good behavioural knowledge. This then translates into the positive reinforcement sphere with people thinking it is just taking away the stick and adding food instead to reinforce the horse “doing the thing”.

Ethical, skilled trainers are not doing this. We are constantly observing and information gathering. Of course I may have a goal in mind of behaviour or movement I’d like to shape, but I’m always ready to re-assess whether that is an appropriate ask depending on the feedback from the horse.

To give an example my older horse Lenny has several physical issues that we manage, I haven’t sat on his back in a decade and we keep him comfortable by doing gentle movement to influence healthier posture for him. I do this all with positive reinforcement. Yesterday we were simply walking some squares together, normally he is really happy to walk either side of me, but when I asked him to go to my left he kept putting himself back on my right. I asked him 3 times and every time he re-positioned himself back on my right. If I tried to put myself on his right while he was stood still he showed subtle stress behaviours. So I stopped asking, this isn’t a training issue, he knows how to walk on my left, for some reason he felt uncomfortable doing that today, so I listened and I will investigate further if he doesn’t go back to normal.

I genuinely think that if I’d still been using my old negative reinforcement training here he would’ve complied despite feeling uncomfortable about it. And it wouldn’t have been the end of the world as we were just walking a bit together, but you can see how this spirals if we aren’t listening or the horse doesn’t feel they can express their feelings.

If you’re worried you may be masking your horse’s real feelings when training with positive reinforcement here are a few things I think about.

🐴 Use the lowest value food you can and have other food available.

🐴 Make sure we are really giving the horse a choice and not coercing them into a situation just to add food on top.

🐴 Do not try to train facial expressions, I have seen people only reward a horse for “happy ears”. I really, really don’t want to be messing around with their line of communication with me. What they do with their face and ears is their business.

🐴 Get really good at observing, filming yourself and watching it back is great. If you see a behaviour and you’re not sure what it means, research it.

It always feels like people are looking for a “gotcha” around training with food and its really frustrating when the industry is already so backwards in terms of ethics.

Training with positive reinforcement well is challenging and humbling, I’m still learning every single day. Coercing horses is easy. It would be so much easier to look at horses like mathematical equations, do x until you get y and ignore anything that doesn’t fit, but when we train like that we miss and ignore the horse’s attempts to communicate.

More and more we are realising that many horses are really not okay, often in pain and the work we are asking them to do is inappropriate for where their bodies are at. I truly believe training with positive reinforcement gives us a much clearer line of communication, especially when horses have a history of being trained with heavy negative reinforcement where no hasn’t been an option on the table. 🐴