Training the Prey Animal Brain - Dr. Janet Jones

Typically for the podcast I have the guests tell us who they are and what it is they do. Hi, I’m Janet Jones. I’m a neuroscientist and a horse trainer, a kind of an odd combination. I have a PhD from UCLA in cognitive science and taught human neuroscience for 23 years and I also grew up riding, training and competing horses and have worked at various times at very large stables. And then I also had a training business of my own for many years in a in a smaller location but definitely kept me busy.

So I’ve worked with about 1000 horses in my career, and many of them green or difficult, and I ride and still train in both the English and Western disciplines. The book that you probably know me for is called Horse Brain, Human Brain, which looks at the interaction between horses and riders and applies neuroscience to horsemanship. And then I have another book coming out in just a few months called A Horse’s World, which is intended not only for horse people, also for anybody who, you know, thinks horses are pretty but might never have touched one or been up close to one. I’m excited about that. And I’m really excited to answer the questions today and to talk with all of you at the Elevated Equestrian.

Awesome. Well, I’ve been looking forward to this podcast for quite some time now. I know we put it on the books quite a while ago. And so I’m, I’m happy that you we were able to make this happen. And one of the ideas behind this podcast is this idea of can we ethically take horses to the top sport, particularly I do eventing.

But I think it can be said for any discipline, can we work with the horses and the talents and and whatnot to bring them to top sport versus kind of some of the more traditional ways of training. So I thought you were kind of the perfect person to talk about this idea of horses and what’s going on in the horses brain at the high performance level. So one of the things that I wanted to get into was at the sort of top level, the margin between winning and losing comes down to sort of what is happening under pressure and in a pressurized environment. And sometimes you can watch a dressage test until a horse is tense or you can see a show jump and the horse’s back is tight or what not. What is actually happening in the horse’s brain in these environments, in these moments?

Neurologically, what’s happening is fear. We see this as anxiety, nervousness, tension. Maybe we view it as a lack of familiarity, which it is in the sense that many horses have not. No horses have been in that environment until we introduce them to it. And we don’t always introduce them as gently and gradually as we should.

But at the root, all of this is fear. A force’s prey brain is driven primarily by fear. It’s designed to do that. And in a prey brain, fear means life or death. And I think we as humans forget how critical to survival the sense of fear is to a force.

It’s not something that we humans should be shrugging off. It’s not something that we have the right to say, oh, she shouldn’t be afraid of that, so let’s just ignore it or he’ll get used to it or any of those kinds of things that we tend to either say aloud or at least think quietly. That feeling of being scared is ratcheted upward dramatically in a high pressure environment, and at those times the horse’s brain and body are being flooded with stress hormones. The horse’s sympathetic nervous system is working overtime. Blood is rushing away from all of his organs, so it’s rushing away from his brain and away from his heart to the limbs so that he will be able to run.

His heart is beating fast, his breathing speeds up, and equine brains, unlike human brains, are hard wired to command a force to run, to get away. That’s how they survived for 56,000,000 years. And with that kind of background, we are going to change that with a few years of training. We’re going to have to accommodate it. We’re going to have to deal with it and find a way to manage it.

One way I think to help horses manage that fear is of course, through slow, steady exposure to high pressure environments. Gradual exposure will help the horse learn what is expected of him or her in that kind of situation. And this, these need, this needs to be gradual exposure in which the experiences are calm and positive. And so we don’t want anything too scary happening if it does. We’re only teaching the horse that this is what you can expect when we take you to a horse show.

So, and we don’t want to do that. A really calm, older equine buddy helps a lot. And so that’s something that you can certainly kind of put in your arsenal that even if you’re only planning to introduce one horse to this horse show environment, you might have decide to take along a buddy that that horse knows and looks up to because that’s herd animals. They’re going to be watching the other horses to see what is expected here. What should I do?

A second way to accommodate all this is to think about not so much managing the horse, but managing the environment. Couple ways to do that. I think we all need to begin to insist that show managers protect horses from moose dogs. Loud, sudden noises, heavy traffic, fireworks at night, all of those kinds of things. We need to educate the general public about how these things affect horses and how frightening something like that really is.

Do a horse who then is in a situation where he cannot really get away from that, even though that’s what his brain is telling him. A third way is to allow the force to follow her grains orders to move rather than trying to make her stand still. So I see a lot of people bringing a new horse or a young horse or green to for showing environment and trying to get the horse to stand very calmly and relax. The horse cannot do that. That’s really hard.

That’s like we’re asking the horse to do the most difficult. But if, on the other hand, we were to put some slack in the lead rope, lunge the horse a little bit, turn the horse loose in a small paddock near, you know, on the horseshoe grounds where it’s possible for her to just look around and see what the other horses are doing. When we’re riding a horse who’s having a lot of difficulty with this, less tack is better than more. A gentler bit is going to relax that horse more than a harsh bit. A softer, lighter hand is what you need there, not a heavier, harder hand.

And so I think that, you know, in a way, this all comes down to instead of thinking about our own safety and nervousness in an environment like that, we need to recognize that we are the humans. We’ve made the decision to bring the horse to this location and it is now our responsibility to make the force more comfortable, even if that means that, yeah, using a gentler bit might not be as safe for the rider, but it will be better for the horse. Confinement in general only makes a prey brain more friend. So it really helps to avoid confinement and help with some of these other problems. Given that we know that the horse’s brain is completely flooded with stress hormones and his body and brain are telling him run right now, it’s.

The only way to stay alive. Yeah, It, that’s been one of the biggest mental shifts I’ve made sort of in the last year is I’ve been dealing with a lot of green young, sometimes slightly soured horses. And I had this one horse a few months ago who was getting really spooky in the barn. And when we would leave the barn, she would, she’d actually walk fine out of the barn. And then once the barn was behind her, she was like, I’m getting the heck out of here.

And normally what I would do in that situation is maybe not try to make them stand still, but like we would repeat leaving the entering the barn, leaving the barn, entering the barn, leaving the barn. And what I’ve actually started to do is as long as they’re not running, I kind of let them get away. And then usually it actually resolves the problem. Once they realize, oh, I can get away, they’re like, oh, OK, cool. That’s absolutely what I’m talking about and it works really, really well with horses to just give them allow them a little bit more movement.

That’s what they want and that’s what their brains are telling them to do. That’s what they’re built for. So I I would heartily encourage exactly that kind of thing. And even when you said, you know, sometimes you have the horse go in the barn, out of the barn back and forth a few times, that’s really helpful too, because you’re giving the horse a task. She has something to do rather than just stand there and be scared out of her wits and be told by a human, oh, no, no, you can’t move your feet.

You have to stand right here. And that’s just not really fair. Yeah, yeah. It’s like when we’re arguing with someone and they tell us to calm down. That typically doesn’t put the buyer out.

No, it doesn’t have the desired effect, definitely. So that kind of brings me to the next question was horses A really good, you know, you look at a dressage test, right? And there are so many complex tasks that happen within that 6 minute test or, or whatever. So they’re clearly good at learning, but if you apply too much pressure, they can shut down learning. And if you don’t apply enough pressure, they don’t learn.

So how I guess in my head the question is like how do you get a horse in flow state? I’m getting ready to study flow state physiologically in horses and riders. Oh, OK. So that’s. Very interesting and concept to bring it to.

I think what I have two answers to that one answer. The first thing that comes to my mind is I think that most people, horse people who have spent their whole lives working with horses would be very, very surprised to discover how little pressure is necessary to encourage a horse to learn. Horses do a lot of that on their own. And I’ll, I’ll talk about that a little bit later too. But one thing that I have found that is very, very helpful is to use only the amount of pressure that the force absolutely needs.

And when I began to do that in my own training, I discovered that the horses needed far less pressure. We always think of more. If there’s a problem, let’s do more. Let’s work on what’s harder, Let’s be stronger. But really, I think what most prey animals need is less.

They need less, let’s be lighter, let’s be weaker. Let’s think a little bit about how we can accommodate this animal rather than applying more pressure. So that’s kind of the one part of my answer to this. And one, the other part is, you ask, you know, how do you build a horse that can stay in that state of learning and performing? And the answer to and by the way I should, those are very different things.

Learning versus performing mentally in a horses brain are two very different kinds of things. But if you want the horse to learn and perform, you need to do it by building trust. Horses and humans create teams. It’s one of the strongest cross species pairs that we know of that works together in collaboration to achieve some very amazing manoeuvres and tasks. So building trust within that team is really important and it has to be two way trust.

We humans, we have predator brains, we can afford to be trusting. Prey animals don’t have that privilege. They can’t afford to be trusting and their brains are not going to allow them to afford to be trusting. And so we have to recognize it’s not only about our trust in the horse, it’s about horses trust in us. That takes a lot longer time and effort to build.

How do we build trust? By being consistent in everything we do with a horse. And that consistency will teach the force that your actions and reactions are predictable. And predictability reduces stress, whether it’s stress that comes from the learning environment or from upper high pressure in the environment. For performance, this does take a lot of time.

A lot of people I talked to think that a brand new horse has bonded with them in a month or two. In fact, it takes at least a year of daily an interaction before a horse would begin to trust you and bond with you. And I think we just need to be realistic about that. We need to tell people, don’t expect this to happen really soon. You’re working with a prey animal whose brain is telling him that you are dangerous.

And even if you don’t do anything dangerous, just being a human being with frontal basing on it makes you dangerous to a horse. And the horse can identify that right away. So we really have to earn the trust of a prey animal and. What? You might not have an answer for this, but what does trust look like on the horse’s end?

Like how do we actually know our horse trusts us? I think there are a lot of different ways to know that a horse trusts us. I think for one thing, the horse will want to be around you. So the horse, this horse is going to be trainable in the sense that he will learn to come to you when you call. He will learn to come to you even when he knows you are going to, that there’s work.

He’s going to come to you when he has to leave a whole big pasture of thick green grass full of his friends, his best friends. So those are ways to determine whether the horse is beginning to bond with you and trust you. Another thing that you’ll notice and I’ll I’ll talk a little bit more about this later, is that you can build internal motivation in a horse with certain training methods that will allow that horse to want to perform whatever you want him to perform. In other words, he will literally seek certain behaviors in an effort to get some kind of a reward, whether it’s edible or non edible, and he will try his best for you to do the things that you want. Also, he will learn more quickly if you trust you and there will be far less problematic kinds of behavior.

So you’ll have less shying, less what we would call misbehavior. Even though personally I usually call those misunderstanding because I think that’s exactly what they are. So there are a lot of ways that you can identify trust in a horse. Yeah. So all the things that we kind of equate with a trusting relationship.

I was just wondering if there was maybe something I didn’t know. But yeah, it’s pretty standard if the horse wants to be sort of near you and they’ve kind of accepted you. Yeah, if you’re paying attention to the horse, you’ll be able to see or learn how to see whether that horse is calm. Or nervous, relaxed or scared, willing or unwilling. All of those kinds of things.

So you kind of mentioned it a little earlier of this difference between learning and performing in the horse’s brain. What are those differences? Like what does a horse learning look like versus a horse performing? I think that we have to really recognize this difference because during the learning process a force has to be given the opportunity to make mistakes and not be punished for them. He has to be given the opportunity to learn step by step and very gradually in tiny little baby steps.

We should not be expecting horses to learn at horse shows or tests or competitive environments. The horse should already know very well, he should already have learned at home the tasks that he’s going to be asked to do in a high pressure performance environment because it’s hard for all of us. All mammals, all mammalian brains have trouble learning in high pressure situations. It’s much easier and much faster to learn when we are relaxed and calm and able to concentrate on what we’re doing. But you throw it, any of us, whether it’s a force or a human, into a very high pressure environment and that it’s a very, very difficult environment for learning.

There we should be performing what we already know how to do. So this has actually been something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately as I have a lot of young horses that are now going to start competing. And it’s this idea of, so I grew up in a very traditional sort of not lesson program, but like show program type barn. And it was kind of just mandatory that you had weekly lessons on top of the showing, on top of whatever. And now as I’m a professional, one of the things that I’ve been thinking is having sort of training blocks throughout the year where there’s really no showing.

And then once you’ve kind of confirmed those things, you go and prove it or gauge it at the horse show in a time where there’s probably not going to be, it’s more about maintaining versus growing unless you have higher goals at the end of the season or whatnot. But would you suggest constantly training throughout the year? Obviously, of course, you don’t just like not practice the things that you’re going to be doing. But in terms of actually like teaching new, new skills, Would you say to hold that off to a point in the season when you’re not competing as much in horse shows? Or would you say, and throughout the year, it’s good for the horse to continue learning new things until they’re at their top level or, or whatever?

First of all, I really like the fact that you are thinking carefully about how to plan your show schedule and travel schedule and your training schedule because I think that’s something that too many people don’t do and it’s really important to allow that. I think also if you were talking about blocks of time, I think every course needs blocks of time where they’re not performing at all, OK? And I in every year and I think that horses also need periods of time when they’re not really having to learn a whole lot of brand new maneuvers. OK. So I would do kind of what what you were talking about a minute ago in terms of planning your your whole program.

I would advise that you limit the amount that you were expecting a horse to learn at home to certain tasks and certain things that you are not yet going to be testing that horse on during performance. OK. And then I would also set aside times when you are reviewing and practicing the things that the horse already knows how to do that she will be asked to do in performance. And then along with that, put a nice block of rest period, like a big block a couple months every year, consecutive couple months where the horse is just not having to do anything except be a horse. And then I would also put smaller blocks in of rest periods so, you know, make sure that the horse is not being expected to work hard at mental tasks like learning on a daily basis.

So one thing that I do frequently is if I am training a young horse or a green horse, let’s say, two or three days a week on specific things that that horse needs to learn, you know, specific lessons that the horse needs to learn. Then the other two or three days a week I’m going to try to do other things. I want to take that horse out for a long, easy walk on the trail. I want to maybe do whatever is different from that horse’s normal life. Like for example, I have a Dutch warm blood who primarily does his work mostly in hire a jumper kind of sports.

But I’ve taught him to sort cows and we every, you know, now and then plot the western saddle on and we go out and we follow cows around the pasture. And this kind of just unusual. I’m not saying everybody has to go follow the house, but I am saying that I think whatever the horses major specialization is, I think every single week you need to give that horse opportunities to do things with you that have nothing to do with that preoccupation. Let the horse’s mind think about other things, do other things. Maybe it’s going to be, you know, go hop some small jumps on a horse that doesn’t jump very often.

Or go for, you know, easy trail rides and the easy stuff. I’m not. I live in the Rocky Mountains. So OK, trail ride, I have to immediately define. What I’m disclaimer you talking?

About climbing a 14,000 foot peak on this horse, but just something really. Yeah, that’s one of the things I love about eventing, is there’s so much versatility in the sport that the horses are kind of always doing something different. And I actually, because I’ve ranched into other disciplines and the dressage horses are the ones that I find I have to be the most regimented about getting them out of the arena because it’s so easy to just be in the arena doing the things that they’re good at when it’s like, OK, at some point they’re going to get sick of this and sick of me. And, you know, making it at least a little fun or interesting seems to help them stay in the game a little longer. It really does.

It helps them. Variety helps a lot and rest helps a lot. And it’s not only mentally staying in the game, but you get a lot fewer repetition injuries if you are switching disciplines on a fairly regular basis rather than trying to strengthen a horse by doing the same type of repetitive activity on a regular basis. To the point that then you have Hawks that are breaking down and you know, other kinds of problems that are occurring in the horse’s Physiology. So variety really helps both physically and mentally.

I ride all my horses, Western English, bareback. We do, I do as many different things with each horse as I possibly can. I’m just, I think it’s really healthy for them and I think it’s good for us to remember that. We too often we ask, you know, what kind of riding do you do? Oh, I do dressage, I do jumping, I do ranch riding, I do roping.

I do, you know, whatever it is, I think that all of us really need to begin to remember what we ride is horses. Yeah, Yeah. No, that’s a really good point. And I know especially going from the switch to from kind of young rider to professional, the last five years have been about reminding myself that, oh, you were once just like a little girl who loved horses. Like, who cares about the ribbons?

Who cares about like, because it’s so easy to put so much pressure on ourselves, which, you know, doesn’t help horse training at all. It we turn around and put more pressure on the horses because we put more pressure on ourselves. And and then it gets really not fun. And so I think for all of us remembering that, oh, no, at one point we were just kids or adults who just loved horses. And that’s why we do this work.

With them, yeah. In my own life, I find that the most important thing I try to think about whether a force is in training or not is just the relationship between the force and the and the person. And you can get a lot of really tremendous performance earned improved communication just by focusing primarily on the relationship. Yeah, that’s what I think is hopefully one of the byproducts of this podcast and I think a few other podcasts that are out there that people are really starting to prioritize the actual relationship they had with their forces. I see more of that now too, and in fact, my new book that’s coming out gets at that very, very directly that connection and the importance of that connection not only for us but for the horses too.

Should I? I see the same thing you do. I do think that people are moving in a very positive direction toward really thinking more about the connection. And we don’t have to think a whole newly about the connection if we can still go ahead and compete in our various sports and do the different things that we enjoy doing upon horses. But the connection I think has to be a part of it.

So earlier we started talking about and we just touched on it briefly, but horses who really sort of know their job and are we would say like confirmed in their job. Yes. What does that look like in the brain of does your horse actually know the things that they know or are they just better at reading us or how? Because sometimes you get on a horse and you go, I just thought of that lead change and it happened. It like becomes so seamless.

What does that look like in the horse’s brain? In neuroscience, we would say that their brains have formed neural connections that are strong enough to withstand emotion like fear or lack of practice, and we can create those connections by using several different methods of training that boost the force’s ability, his knowledge, and the force’s motivation to do those things. So if you just look at it, if we just consider it at the most basic level for a moment, when we teach a horse something but say that we want to teach the force, that the word woe means stop, OK. Which, by the way, human beings violate all the time. I’m sure that you’ve been around enough of riders and trainers who want a force to slow down.

So what do they say? Whoa, whoa, OK, and you just violated your own breath right there. If what means stop, then it doesn’t mean slow down, right? So we have to be really specific and careful about what we’re teaching because neurons are very specific and precise. So we have to know exactly what the goal is.

And then at that point, we need to present 2 items in proximity to each other so that they can be associated, like the action of stopping and the word whoa, OK, and the horse will begin. The horse’s brain is going to begin to, by the timing, pick up the notion that, huh, that’s interesting. The woe and the action went together. And so maybe there’s some kind of connection in meaning there. I’m not suggesting courses think of bits consciously.

They don’t. People don’t either usually, but that’s what their brains are doing. We can then boost this associative timing in a number of different ways. We can add dopamine to make the connection stronger between neurons by offering the horse a reward when he stops at the word whoa rather than at whatever else he might have learned in the past. And it does not have to be an edible reward.

In fact, I do a lot of training and a lot of speaking about training horses with non edible reward, which from a neuroscientific point of view is much more effective in the long run than training with food. Well, we can then add the precision of timing. So we know that when a force performs an action that we want, we have about 5 seconds maximum. You reward that behavior, and one of the reasons for that is that we have to reward the force before he performs his next behavior. Now horses are wiggling, they’re in movement all the time.

They’re in motion. They don’t just complete a maneuver and then stand still and wait to see what happens. So you have to reward quickly after that desired behavior before the next behavior occurs. And then the other thing you have to do, and this is where food sometimes becomes a problem, is that you, if you want to get the biggest neuroscientific benefit, you have to make the rewards surprising. Surprise has a huge effect on the equine brain.

And so each of these different items has neuroscientific activity behind it that helps the brain to strengthen and create these connections. Once they have been created, we practice to strengthen the connection. There’s a big difference between practicing and drilling. One big difference is that practicing works and drilling doesn’t. Yes, but but another one just to kind of define this for people so that you all know how I would define that difference.

Let’s just say for example that we are teaching a horse flying changes, OK? And this is the first time the horse has ever done by the changes. All right. So we do this a few times. We we get some successful changes and we reward divorce for those with good timing.

Now we want to use practice to strengthen that connection and to get it to the point of what you would call confirmed, and I would call that solid same kind of thing. Well, if you really want to do that, you don’t want to drill. Drilling would mean that you do 100 flying changes one after another. No, no other activity between all in the same session. We don’t ever want to do that.

It begs for repetition, injuries. It’s a rare horse that can stand doing that over and over and over again as a new maneuver without getting some sore tendons or some puffiness in his legs or something that we are going to want. But another thing is just the mental aspect of it. The horse is going to become bored, exhausted. He’s going to become stressed out because he’s going to be thinking what we keep doing this and doing this and doing this is am I doing something wrong?

Is there what is this rider want? And drilling makes it very hard for a horse to know. Now if we were going to practice flying changes, we might be the same number of them. Let’s say we do 100 flying changes, but we are going to mix them again, all sorts of other activities with rest periods. We’re going to do it over a period of many weeks, not all in one day.

We’re going to ask for these flying changes at unanticipated moments and in unanticipated locations. All of that is what is going to solidify the knowledge inside the horse’s brain. That is what I think we’re really talking about, isn’t it? Firming or solid? The horse’s motivation to try new behaviors and to seek the behaviors you want will show you whether your training is confirmed or whether you have just suppressed equine resistance for the moment.

A horse who is solid in his knowledge will seek to perform actions. That bring desired rewards. He will want to do this and again, they don’t have to be edible. Rewards and automation be edible. Once a force is solid in a given behavior, she will be attentive, she will attempt to communicate with you.

She will offer behaviors in hopes that you might want one of them and will reward her for doing one of those things. And if you think about it in that context, against that background, resistance is really easy to feel. You’ll know your force is resisting. It should really just kind of feel that don’t really want to do this. Why do we have to do this?

Do we really have to do this? Yeah. Yeah, I know I had a horse a few years ago and we this was my first real experience with a drilling a horse and I had she was a pretty solid jumper, but her dressage phase is still a forever work in progress and I but she’s a really nice mover. So like, you know, you really want the best out of her because you go, I know there’s so much in there and I did like a 2 month like a dressage boot camp. And by the end of that, my marriage just like didn’t even talk to me anymore.

I was like. And I was like, crap. So now she does dressage once every two weeks and does a much happier with that. But she really got very stressed out. I couldn’t, I would get the Pasafino trot like in the dressage arena.

And I’m like, Oh my God, I’m like giving the reins to her. And she just is like so tense. And I was like, God, I, I can’t believe I did this, you know, and but it’s easy to get into that, that mindset of like, I’m going to make this better. Yes, it is very easy and I think everyone at one time or another has had an experience like that. And I your first, the first has happened with for you.

That’s not at all unusual. That is the typical response to that kind of that’s high pressure learning, that’s learning or else that is exactly what we don’t want because it destroys the horses desire to learn. She doesn’t want to work with you anymore. She probably then wouldn’t even want to be around you and at that point you have completely destroyed trust. So I think we all have to remember it takes years to build a force’s trust, but it only takes a moment to break it.

Yeah, no. And and then, you know, I think actually before we get too off topic, I wanted to circle back to this idea of surprising the horses with rewards. What does that mean? There is, there’s some really good neuroscientific research that has been done. It’s very solid, well confirmed, and it shows that surprise has a strong effect on learning because brains, both human brains and equine brains, animal brains in general, predict what kind of reward a given behavior is going to produce.

So when we ask a horse to do 1 particular task, that horse based on hope, her past knowledge and her past training is going to predict. OK, again, not consciously, but if I do that, what is the likely outcome? What am I going to get in return? Am I going to get punished? Am I going to get something good?

Am I going to get stroked on my neck? Am I going to get put away into my nice comfy stall? Or is something bad going to happen? So we all when we when we use these neural connections, our neurons actually create what we call reward prediction in and whenever the prediction is wrong, we learn the lesson much more strongly. Interesting.

If we do something and we get a big, unexpectedly wonderful reward for it, that has a huge effect on his right, We immediately think, whoa, that was really good, I’m going to do that again. That was an amazing reward. And the same thing happens if we do something where we expect a major reward and it doesn’t come. So you’ll imagine the horse now performs this brand new task with the prediction that something really good is going to happen and the rider does nothing. Worse yet, suppose that the rider punishes or becomes nervous or you know, something negative begins to happen.

The horse is going to learn a lot from that also. So what this means is that be kind of the holder old fashioned method of kind of R Plus training by positive reinforcement. We’re constantly, you know, we’re wearing a little pouch and we’re handing the horse food treats all the time. Totally destroys the effect of surprise. It is a surprise.

The horse knows that the food is right there. The force knows that you’re going to give food for behavior that you want, etcetera. It just becomes a a way of training that is so predictable that it doesn’t have that strong effect of the unexpected reward often enough. So that’s why I really rely on non edible rewards. That’s one of the reasons.

But that’s one of the reasons I try to rely on non edible rewards. They work beautifully and I don’t rule out edible rewards every now and then. I feel that a horse needs a wonderful edible treat in connection with a very difficult task that maybe we’ve been learning for a long, long time. The horse has had a lot of trouble with it, or maybe it’s just really hard for any horse to do. But it’s I really do have to think about that effective problems in training.

Yeah, it’s I’ve this I always tell people like horses have love languages the same way we do, except their love language is the way they like to be reported. And like for some horses, food is obviously really motivating. For some horses, they love snuggles and scratches at the Withers. Some horses love just like actually just quietness. Like they do the thing and you just literally stop and let them stand there on the buckle or you just get off like, and but one of the things I do with the horses who like treats is specifically when I’m riding, if they know they’re going to get the reward and they reach around to get it, I give it on the other side and I can always feel it in their head, like in their body.

They go, Oh my God, this is great. It’s over here. And so I just imagine that’s kind of the same idea as like, oh, OK, maybe it’s not a treat, but I got a really nice ride at the weather or, you know, you have these things like in rotation to reward and then it’s always keeping the horse guessing a little bit. Yeah, you definitely do want to keep the horse guessing a little bit in terms of reward prediction. You just don’t want to do things that become so predictable.

I mean, in certain ways, predictability is important. We talked about that a little while ago. But when it comes to training by reward, you don’t want your rewards to become so predictable that the horse knows what they’re going to be and expects them at, you know, every, every particular interval. So I really try to move away from that kind of thing. Yeah, and it’s interesting too, because I had Doctor Andrew McLean on the podcast a few months ago, and one of the things he had mentioned was that horses only trained in one modality of learning theory actually show more pain signs on their face than horses who are trained with both, like positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement.

You know, that’s something that I talked to that play a bit. Many horse people assume that you have to choose one and only one method of training and they’re trained all by negative reinforcement. Or I’m going to train all by food reward R Plus or I’m going to train all by non edible reward. That is absolutely not true and it’s not helpful to enforce his brain. It really is perfectly acceptable to use different methods depending on the horse, depending on the rider depend, you know, different riders need different things from our horses depending on the situation that the horse is in on a particular day.

So by all means we we can kind of mix and match these different methods of training. So I guess kind of on the topic of predictability, is this idea of like we can we talk about seal and riders feeling their horse and but what about horses feeling the rider and being able to sort of tune into the rider? And because it’s almost, I heard this quote a couple years ago that was horses go the way they’re ridden. And at first you might be like, Oh yeah, if I put my leg on and whatever the horse goes or but I think going back to me drilling that horse, I was riding her in a very pressurized environment a lot. And then she went like a horse always under pressure.

Even though I’m a relaxed, pretty relaxed person, she wasn’t going relaxed. So because I wasn’t riding her mentally that way, so do is there something that happens in the horses brains when they’re tuned in with the rider? Yes, definitely. I mean, I’m sorry, I was just trained at. I have no better trouble following where you’re going with that election.

That’s OK. It’s my fault, not yours. Definitely horses. OK, the two strongest senses who are understanding the world in a horse are that first of all the sense of smell and second of all the sense of touch. A force has incredible sensitivity to pressure and weight distribution and touch on their skin.

Most people have no idea that there is neurological research showing that a force in skin is even more sensitive to touch than human skin. If you feel it, she definitely feel it. And this is true even at when you compare certain locations on a horse, like the horses Withers, which are quite sensitive to very light pressure. If you compare sensitivity to touch on a horse’s Withers to a human fingertip, the horse’s Withers are more sensitive. Wow, Yeah, wow.

So I think that’s something we all really need to recognize. If a horse does not respond to a rider’s aids, it’s not because the horse can’t feel them. It’s because the horse either doesn’t understand what they mean or because he has learned, he has basically been taught that it’s OK to ignore them. So I think those are really important things for people to remember that your force has a sense of touch that is even more precise and sensitive than yours. To give you an example to just kind of put this into maybe something that’s a little bit easier to understand.

A horse can feel the pressure of equivalent to five dandelion seeds on her skin. A human fingertip cannot do that. Rub my fingertips with five dandelion seeds all day long. And if I was blindfolded, I would never know it. I wouldn’t know a thing.

So horses are very, very good that at that. And I think you know, using using that touch and recognizing that feel is absolutely important and that yes, it’s not just us feeling our horses. The real fact is that horses are more sensitive in terms of feeling our aids and we are in feeling bears. Yeah, it’s not surprising when, like before a family that lands on a horse, a horse knows there’s a family there, you know, like they are so sensitive. Yeah.

And when? A family does land on a horse. If you do some a little bit of math, the average horse weighs 50 million times more than the average fly, and yet he can identify instantly where that fly is on his skin. Yeah, no, it’s, it’s definitely remarkable. And I, you know, you kind of made a, a comment earlier, I forget which part of the podcast we were in, but mentioning that if you have a horse that’s maybe showing some undesirable behavior or something, actually taking tack off and using less tack is better.

And is that because I have personally been very overstimulated by things at times, the dogs barking, someone’s vacuuming, the TV’s on, there’s too much going on. Is that the same idea when you have a horse that’s maybe either shut down or like the opposite of shut down where they’re like just only explosive, Is that kind of similar to that over stimulation? And then by removing these things like the saddle in the saddle pad and the boots and the martingale and the whatever else, you’re actually just taking some of that static background noise away. Or is there another? I think it goes back to that prey animals sense that confinement is always dangerous, that you never want to be confined or tied up or, you know, prevented from getting away if something bad happens that your brain tells you you need to get away from.

And I think that this business about tech is definitely a, a, a type of confinement that you don’t really think about often enough. I do exactly what you’re talking about. In much of my training. I keep tap to a minimum. If I have a force who is having trouble or feeling confined, I remove more of the tack and I allow the horse to move more to do that.

I think this also really gets her into some of the issues about tight tack. No spans that are cranked too tight, throat latches that are tight, boots that have been put on, you know, with like an iron hand on the Velcro. I see that constantly. And one of the very first things I do when I’m giving new riders lessons is I look at the tack that they put on the horse. And I would say I’m just guessing here, but I would say that maybe 80 to 85% of the time I loosen their nose bands, I take the flash off.

I don’t use flash nose bands. I loosen the throat latch and I loosen the boots, which tells us that the majority of riders who are coming to trainers for professional assistance are using very tight tack. And there is this notion that, you know, you have to really crank that stuff down so that it stays on. But there’s very little understanding that. For example, if you really look at the way a bridle sits on a horse’s head, a tight throat latch is not going to help that out of scary on.

No stand is not going to help it stay on because the force is. The top of the force’s head is much wider than the bottom of the horse’s head. So even our mix don’t really stand up to scrutiny very well when it comes to that stuff. And I do find when I loosen those areas of tap a little bit, the forces are vastly more comfortable. They relax, they stop, they become less nervous, more calm.

They take a breath. They, you know, they, they listen a little bit because they are not being remember with the degree of sensitivity that are forced hands to touch if something like a nose band is too tight, that thing is just how and down on his nose the entire time. And not just the nose, but down around the chin under down here where there’s all of these very important nerves and blood vessels. The trigeminal nerve inside of the horse’s face is also all of those things are being blocked by tight tap. And so we can do a lot, you know, even before we get on the force, just by loosening up a little bit.

Yeah, no, I know when I go and take lessons my poor trainer has to deal with. OK, well, this one’s not wearing a nose band right now, and this one’s in a head stall because it’s 4 heads too wide. And this one’s, yeah, you can fit a fist in between my girth, but this one doesn’t really bug so. But yeah. I, I since you brought up the girth, I have to tell everyone that is an exception for the riders safety.

I do not use loose girth. So I do believe that yes, the girth needs to be secure at all times. I doesn’t need to be cranked to complete tightness, but it does need to be secure. But a throw latch, definitely, yeah, a hind cinch on a Western horse does not need to be tight. Many of them nowadays are too tight.

I don’t even ride in. I don’t use hind censions when I ride Western. And it used to be, you know, years ago, none of us used hind cinches. So it’s like I say, just laughing some more sometimes. Yeah, it’s funny.

I had a client who their horse got really sour and I went and I watched them sort of tack up or I got to the barn early before they had even kind of tacked up and their horses on the cross ties just like pinning his ears and doing all of this stuff. And I was like, Oh my God, like I wouldn’t even get on this horse. This horse isn’t even ready. He needs like total re. I don’t even know he, he needs to learn that this isn’t a bad place.

And because this is where your anxiety and this is where all of these negative things that are happening out here are starting is and and yeah, she, she really tightened her girth and I was like, her horse is also very, very round. So it’s one of those things where it doesn’t quite matter how tight the girth is, the saddle still shakes and I go, let’s just loosen your girth 1 hole. And we did. And the horse just, he was hitting reverse on trails and he did not do it again. Literally just with 1 hole looser of the girth and and it was still, it’s still plenty tight, but, but I think not enough people read the Pony Club D manual to know that it should you should be able to slide 2 fingers and or 4 fingers or whatever the pony club rule is of girth tightness.

But so as we wrap this podcast up, do you have any advice for riders who are trying to better their relationship with their horse? Yeah, I have a lot of advice on them. I I would again recommend either one or both of the books that I have now about courses because they both of them do talk about that in great detail and at length. But for right now, I think the if I had to, you know, boil it all down and give a competitive writer an idea of what brain science would tell them to do. I think the one most important thing that everyone can do and should slow down.

And I mean that in several different ways. One way is we need to work more slowly around our forces when we are catching them, grooming them, tacking them up. They’re forces. They do not have brains that are anything like human brains. Your brains operate totally different from ours, and we really need to accommodate that.

And one way of doing it is simply slow down when you’re approaching or catching a horse, when you’re grooming, when you’re tacking up, when you’re mounting and dismounting, all of that kind of stuff. Another example of slowing down would be what you and I talked about a few minutes ago. Slow your schedule of progress. If you plan to teach a horse a series of behaviors that you think are should take about one month, give your horse three months. Allow three months in your schedule for that.

If your horse goes faster, great, but if she doesn’t, then you’re still OK with your progress schedule. Drive more slowly. When you trailer horses, load and unload them slowly. We have lots of research that shows that even the forces who are seasoned travelers show, forces that travel all over the place show and who seem completely calm on the surface, actually have physiological symptoms of stress if you measure them. So if you just look at the horse and you say it’s the source, nervous people would say no, look at me.

He’s just standing there. He’s been trailered lots of times, it’s no problem. But if you come in there with a stethoscope and measure his heart rate, measure his breathing rate, measure his cortisol levels, they will all be elevated and they remain elevated throughout the entire period of travel. So those are the kinds of things that just slow down with all of that, because this is hard on our horses. We are expecting tremendous accomplishments from these horses given the prey animals that they are, and we need to accommodate their needs.

Teach a given action middle by middle over several weeks, rather than all at once in two or three days. Understand that a force can learn a behavior quickly, but that doesn’t mean that he can offer it every time you ask or under every circumstance. You have to give him more time to strengthen all of those neural connections and consolidate them into a way that that will be much more reliable when you ask for that task. I would say also slow your show schedule. Give young persons more time and practice before expecting good behavior at a show.

Build your trust slowly. Realize that human predator brains can afford to take a, you know, blind leap into a trusting bond, but prey brains cannot afford to do that. Prey brains might die if they do that, and that’s how a horse’s brain is operating. Once your horse does begin to bond with you, use that bond to develop mutual communication. People often tell me they wish their horses could talk.

Horses talk to us constantly with their bodies. They’re talking to us all the time when we are around them. We just have to take the time to learn how to interpret their body language. And then we have to get our own egos out of the way long enough to see that body language and understand what it means. And nobody can do that if they are hurrying.

It’s impossible to learn equine body language if you’re hurrying around your horse all the time. It requires a person who can stand and lean against the fence for an hour and watch and really learn. So I think if I, you know, horse brings are super different from human brains. And I think one of the best ways that we can accommodate that is simply to slow down. Yeah, that’s great advice.

And actually it’s funny because it’s the similar advice to what a racehorse trainer gave what the horses. She’s like everyone just needs to slow down, which is funny because she trains race horses and you do neuroscience. But yeah, no, I think taking time to just read who you’re working with and then even us have time to just not instead of a ride that day, we just go and watch them in the paddock or whatever. It’s not going to, it’s actually probably going to be a positive for the training and not a negative. So it’s a.

Great positive for training because it teaches the force that you are not always there just to impose your demands. You are sometimes there just to hang out in the pasture. The horses all notice this. They’ll see you there and they’ll come over and sniff. I do this all the time and horses will come over and I work in the pastures.

I literally write books and articles at times when I am in the pasture with the horses. They come over, they sniff, they investigate, they watch, and pretty quickly then they just go on about their own business and grades and every out and then they look over at the, I need to make sure that I’m still doing whatever it is I should be doing. But it really does. I think doing different things with your horses, different activities with your horses is very, very helpful. And some of those activities should be easy for the horse so that you’re just hanging around.

It’s the same way we built connections with our best friends. Sometimes we have to just hang out. Yeah, yeah. No, that’s great advice and this was a great conversation. Thank you for joining me.

How do people find you? Follow along. I know you did some plugs in the beginning, but go ahead and and share all of your stuff with the people again. OK, first of all, thank you so much Samantha for inviting me to do this and for having all these good questions. And if you anyone out there, if you want to tell more about my work, you can go to my website which is janethyphenjones.com and you will find their interviews, book reviews, biographical information, lots of descriptions of my various books including the new one.

The new one is A Horse’s World. It is available for pre-order now and it will come out in physical form in June of this year. And it is described in quite a bit of detail on the website. The table of contents is there and a description of what I have been attempting to do with that book. And then I write several blogs.

I have an online column at Psychology Today Magazine. I have a column at Force Network, a number of different things like that, so, but all of them are on the website if you want to go in there and just kind of hunt around and see what’s available. So awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you so much.

Goodbye everybody.