Yeah right! I hear you say, for a start I don’t have a superstar Quarter Horse like Doc’s Fancy Roy in my paddock (that’s a weak excuse), and I certainly don’t have Warren Backhouse’s talent! (sorry that’s life).

But is it talent or is it training? Ok, I admit it’s both. Talent helps, but surely you would agree that however talented, even Warren Backhouse did not pick this horse unbroken from the paddock, slapped a saddle, got on, galloped off into the distance and rode a sliding stop without a bridle.

These guys have been training! What’s more, the training has worked! And the reason it has worked is because whatever the method, the training was compatible with learning theory and the horse’s learning and physical abilities.

So how do you train a bridleless sliding stop? Learning theory tells you that you can do so using negative reinforcement, shaping, and classical conditioning. Negative what? It can’t have been negative surely! The horse looks so calm and “willing”!

Negative reinforcement is not punishment. It may be unfortunate that some American scientist experimenting on animal behaviour gave it this name some 70 years ago, but there it is, lets just learn what it means, and get on with it, because if you ride and train horses, you are already using negative reinforcement.

Negative reinforcement is the removal or substraction (that’s where negative came from) of an aversive stimulus to reward the desired response.

An aversive what?

Ok, stay with me… you just do something the horse doesn’t like and stop doing it when he does what you wanted him to do. The release of pressure rewards the response. You could just call it pressure/release but for now lets live with the term negative reinforcement, and maybe soon we will all accept it without thinking negatively about it.

Back to horse training. All horses hate pressure, however light it is, or to be precise “they find it aversive”. It makes them uncomfortable and motivates them to do something to get rid of it. This is an example of how negative reinforcement works in a training situation where you want the naïve horse to learn ‘stop’:

1. The young horse is walking and you apply the ‘aversive stimulus’, say increased rein pressure.
2. The horse feels uncomfortable and would like the pressure to go away. He starts to react and he will do so according to the list of behavioural responses that his parents gave him – first on the list could be “put head up”, second “put head down”, third “twist head”, fourth “call a friend”, etc. It doesn’t matter, the trick is that the pressure remains until he tries the desired response.
3. Eventually (some take longer than others) he will get down the list of possible responses to one that says “slow down feet” – Great! You immediately RELEASE the pressure to reward the try.
4. You repeat the process, and you find that the horse tends to give the correct stop response sooner. EUREKA! The horse is learning that the way to switch off the pressure on his mouth is to stop!

That’s negative reinforcement. The key is to remember it’s the release that trains, not the pressure. The pressure just motivates the horse to try a response, and the horse always learns that the correct answer is the one he gave just before the release.

This is why timing a clear release to the correct response is so important. Some people are better at timing than others and can make training clearer and therefore faster.

Don’t despair, with practice and specific training goals, we can all improve our timing.

You can off course apply different amounts of pressure, and how much pressure you use when, is another aspect that talented trainers find easy, they don’t really think about it, whereby other mere mortals (like me) make mistakes and have to keep apologizing to our horses and practice endlessly. You can imagine that if you don’t apply enough you might not get any response, and if you apply too much, you might scare the horse. The correct way to use your pressures correctly is to always give the lightest version of the pressure first (this will become your light aid), then if you need to motivate the horse more, try a vibration rather than go directly to a stronger pressure. You must however get a result, otherwise the horse will habituate to stronger pressure and he won’t respond.

You are aiming for this: light pressure – motivating pressure – release. And if you repeat this accurately and achieve the same correct response consistently, soon you will get this: light aid – release. This is what we are aiming for: the horse has learned that the easiest way to avoid a stronger pressure is to “switch it off” by responding to the light aid or cue immediately. The more consistent and precise you are in your application, and the quicker you achieve the same response to a light aid each time, the faster the horse will learn the task.

Negative reinforcement is good! Because when used correctly, it allows us to train cues or aids that are very light, so light that they can be almost invisible. The lighter the aids the calmer the horse will get, once again provided the light aid always achieves the same correct response.

Training progresses in stages by trainers ‘Shaping’ the responses. You can’t just set off to train the sliding stop from canter. First you have to reward a slowing of the legs from walk, then a stop, then you add other bits like straightness, head position etc… by waiting for those aspects to be added to the response before you release (waiting for the head to come down as he stops before you release for example). Each step must simple enough and clearly trained before you add the next.

Now lets explain the Classical Conditioning part. Classical Conditioning is the process where (either consciously or subconsciously) the rider/trainer adds another cue to get the response. A good example is where the horse learns that before you pull lightly on the reins to stop you always lean back, and so he begins to stop when you lean back and before you touch the reins. Horses seem to learn this very easily, probably because they feel they can control your use of pressure and avoid it.

If you break it down this way, it is easier to understand how you can train a horse to do a “bridleless” sliding stop. The sliding stop was gradually shaped from a basic stop where the horse first learnt to stop from the reins with: light aid – stronger aid – release. He learnt to avoid the stronger aid by stopping to a light aid, and because he noticed that the rein aid was consistently preceded by a shift in the rider’s position, he learnt to avoid the rein aid altogether by responding to the rider’s position, and then BINGO - take the bridle off and invite professional photographer Tania Hobbs to immortalize the moment in the best possible light!

So where does talent come in? Well, talent or natural ability just makes it really easy for some people to do the following:

1. They can time the pressure and release to perfection and know the minimum pressure needed to motivate the horse – they are masters in the correct application of Negative Reinforcement.
2. They get a good result each time, and they do so very soon after applying the initial cue or light pressure – Their training is consistent, clear and error free.
3. They know how to break down the tasks into steps or stages of learning that are simple enough for the horse to understand and physically cope with – Shaping
4. They have excellent body position control and are accurate in the application of the aids to the extent they can add precise posture cues just before the pressures, which then become cues in themselves - Classical conditioning

Whether you find it easy or difficult to do the above, all successful training techniques can be explained using learning theory, and a clear understanding of how the horse learns, will help you to apply them just as successfully as the most experienced and talented trainers.