Horse Charming

05/05/2026

Words matter!

15/10/2025

"According to the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, a theory is a well- substantiated explanation of a phenomenon. A theory is the end point of science—it is what scientists know to be true when observations have been confirmed by repeated experimentation (National Academy of Sciences, 1998)."

If you read work from a qualified Psychologist - someone with a degree or doctorate, that relates to learning and behaviour, you can rely on it because these people are qualified to talk about these laws or established theories.

And if you see someone refer to a theory or law of behaviour or learning, they will do so using the terms you can use to go and check it out for yourself. That is why they do so, because then those reading have access to the vocabulary of the original work.

We don't use the terms of the laws of behaviour and learning to be deliberately exclusive and because we like jargon.

We use them so that you can go and find out for yourself what they mean using any search engine.

For instance, the correct scientific term for the psychological state of being shut down, apathetic, unresponsive and depressed due to repeated exposure to inescapable aversive events or stimuli is Learned Helplessness, and the theory was developed by Martin Seligman who is still alive and talking.

If I use the term "shut down", and you google that to find out for yourself, you won't necessarily find out anything about psychology.

If I use the word "pressure" you won't necessarily find out that it is a euphemism for aversive.

If I talk about animals knowing what happens before what happens happens, it is funny, memorable and true, but you won't necessarily know or understand that this describes classical conditioning, first defined by Ivan Pavlov, and that the reason an animal notices what happens before what happens, when what happens is aversive, is called avoidance learning.

It happens when he learns to anticipate that what happens after what happens happens is aversive and he should pay attention with both ears and eyes to the source, so he doesn't miss the warning, (correct term "Safety signal") so as to act before the onset of the aversive, and avoid being "touched". Euphemism for "hurt".

Look up another scientist called Milgram. This is why you might obey an authority figure and do something to an animal that you think you would never do because you love the animal. Because someone authoritative in a white coat (or hat) instructs you to.

And that - classical conditioning - learning what happens before what happens happens - would be how a neutral stimulus comes to be a conditioned aversive with the conditioned emotional response of fear. Aka fear conditioning.

Which, for ways of training animals that purport to be based on love, is something that you really do not want to know.

There is a good reason why some trainers never use the correct scientific terms. It is not because they think you are too stupid to learn them. After all, they invented a whole vocabulary and set of principles and sayings they expect you to be able to repeat off by heart.

It is because they have had what they do explained to them, by people who do know, and they definitely do not want you to google it.

I know methods of training whose promoters use a lot of aversives in training both to form and reinforce behaviour and to attempt (and regularly fail) to desensitise horses to them. A horse subjected to attempted flood desensitisation in a state of learned helplessness has not habituated. That is another term you can google - google Habituation Revisited and read the second part of characteristic #5 to find out why flooding may never work. Thank messrs Groves and Thompson and friends.

But they definitely don't want you to know it is flooding and learned helplessness because if you did know those terms you might google them. And find the research that explains the process, the risks, the fallout and the consequences, and the failure, even if it is done by someone really good and with the best of intentions.

You would not believe how easy it is to find out the names and the titles of the works of the scientists that developed these well established, peer reviewed and accepted laws if you know the language.

This past week, seeing some absolutely appalling video of horse abuse, not to mention the most awful description of the horse and its demonisation by the so called trainer, I and others versed in how animals learn and familiar with the techniques being used commented to describe the protocol being deployed by the trainer and the risks of doing so.

You cannot read anything we said because it is gone. They don't want people knowing what it is called and are in denial of what it involves.

There is no love, and frankly horrendous judgmental language directed at an animal whose behaviour was probably caused by the very things being used now, in an attempt to now show him he needs to "toe a line".

This is not training, it is medieval claptrap.

Don't be fooled by those who hide behind metaphor, euphemism and who perpetuate this cultural fog (a great term used by Psychology professor Dr Susan Friedman to describe the pseudoscience of dominance training and associated highly aversive practices) that horses respect people who s***k and yank on them and that doing so will make them better. It might, if what you wanted was a relationship with a traumatised robot.

That fog is the steam rising from the horsemansh*t.

These so called trainers can delete everything that we write in our efforts to educate their deceived followers.

The horse has evolved not to scream and cry out in pain for fear of attracting predators if he is injured. We are going to keep speaking up for him, everywhere.

16/08/2025

This study strongly supports the value of freedom of choice for horses when it comes to provision of access to shelter.

It's time to shatter the notion that stabling horses overnight or in winter is what they would want for themselves.

Livery yard owners please take note - you are compromising horse welfare if you insist on horses being routinely stabled. Look into Equiculture if you haven't already. It's a system of keeping horses that meets their needs while recognising the need to keep them sustainably when it comes to land management.

The Abstract reads

"Stabling is a common lifestyle for horses, yet numerous studies show that it negatively impacts their welfare, leading to behavioural and health issues. In this study, we aimed to determine how much time horses choose to spend inside their stalls when given the option to be inside (in shelters/stalls) or outside at pasture. Using permanently installed night-vision cameras inside the stalls, we recorded 53 horses across 20 sites in temperate climates (France, Belgium) over a full year. We analyzed their stall presence and activity (lying down, observe, stand at rest, eat, etc.) for 72 consecutive hours each month over 12 months. The results show that, on average, horses spend only 3 h per day inside, and not consecutively (entering 2.5 times per day). There is a strong seasonal effect: horses spend twice as much time in their stalls in summer than in winter. This finding is notable as it contrasts with the usual advice of stabling horses in winter and turning them out to pasture in summer. In winter, horses predominantly return to their stalls late at night (00:00–06:00) to eat and lie down, while in summer, they return in the afternoon (12:00–18:00) to rest standing. Contrary to expectations, presumably rustic breeds (ponies) spent more time inside, and age had no effect on this, indicating that stalls are essential for all types of horses. Additionally, the larger the shelter (in sq m per horse), the more it is used. Stalls fully enclosed with a single access door are also associated with higher usage in summer, winter, and autumn, compared to an open shelter. The use of blankets in winter or fly masks in summer is not associated with a reduction of the time spent in the stalls, suggesting that these accessories do not substitute for shelter. There is also significant inter-individual variability among horses: the ideal is to allow them the freedom to come and go as they please in order to best respect their agency and individual needs."

23/03/2024

If your horse struggles with being stabled then know that this is normal for horses. It is often associated with trauma that happens with abrupt and forced weaning and then the start of "breaking". The word is "breaking" is apt.

"Individual stabling induces social isolation and confinement, and is a source of particularly stressful events for the young horse alongside the breaking-in process. These experiences can lead to behavioural disorders in individual stalls and dangerous defensive behaviours in human-horse interactions."

Have a read of this to learn more about the effects of individual stabling on young horses.

29/02/2024

I wish more people would see it as a personal failing if they can’t use food rewards without creating horses who bite instead of blaming R+ as a methodology for their incorrect application of it.

There’s such an interesting double standard where there’s always an excuse for why the behaviour of stressed horses who are traditionally trained is just a quirk, excitement or some other reason that doesn’t attribute the problem to the trainer or methods used.

Meanwhile, if you use R+, even if there’s no demonstrable evidence of your horses biting, people project this belief.

Teaching any animal to bite when using food rewards is the fault of the trainer.

If we can train dogs, who are predators and actually eat meat, to safely accept food without biting, a horse, a herbivorous flight animal, should be easier.

But instead, there’s this narrative that horses cannot be trained to accept food safely, which is ridiculous.

It is the personal failing of the person teaching the behaviour if a horse learns to bite.

If you cannot hand feed your horse without them learning to bite, it’s time to reflect on where you’re going wrong in your training and/or management and how you’re contributing to creating these behaviours.

Frankly, I find it super embarrassing to read the amount of horse people who think horses are some special exception to food rewards and too dangerous to teach to take food safely when it’s the reinforcer of choice for most zoo animals and in most industries where much more dangerous and undomesticated animals are being trained.

Don’t use food rewards if you don’t want to, but don’t project your incompetence or lack of desire to learn how to use them competently onto those who can and do want to learn.

Incorrect application always falls to the fault of the trainer and all of the people I’ve seen peddling this mindset appear to have a very poor understanding of operant conditioning as a whole and it’s a shame their narrative is such a common one in the industry.

10/11/2023

Add ”A victim of aversive training”

04/05/2023

Trigger Warning

Abuse and imprisonment of an innocent.

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A letter from Robyn.

I'm not sure how long they have been keeping me here. It feels like the longest time.

I'm trapped, there is no way out.

The minutes feel like hours and the hours feel like days.

With nothing to do but think, every sensation in my body is magnified. There is no distraction from pain or hunger.

They come to me once a day, sometimes twice. Sometimes they treat me nicely.

Sometimes they hurt and frighten me.

I never know which it's going to be.

They say it's for my own good that they do it.

The locks are unlocked but it's not freedom that waits. I'm anxious, what's next?

I long to get out of here and be free, to move, to run to play.

They say I'm spoilt, they say I'm special.

If this is what special feels like, I'd rather just be ordinary. The ordinary me.

I don't know what I did to deserve this life.

It is not a life I would ever choose.

Such restrictions, such confinement, such loneliness.

If you were me, you wouldn't want it either. You would want to be free too.

I dream of the day when they will let me go, let me be me.

Maybe it will come, maybe it won't. Maybe this is all there is for me now.

Being kept here.

If there is anything you can do to help me get out, please try.

Please do your best. Thank you for reading this letter and for thinking of me.

Love Robyn x
(A stabled horse)

21/03/2023

Some excellent points made here by Milestone Equestrian!

The horse world sincerely needs to unpack why a huge portion of its participants have a visceral reaction to the idea of use of food rewards in training, to the point where they feel compelled to put others down for doing so entirely unprovoked, but do not maintain that same attitude at all towards harmful training in the horse world.

Far too many equestrians view it as more defensible to use harsh equipment and harsh bits as a means of maintaining control over a horse who is stressed, overwhelmed or otherwise reactive than they do to use food in training.

If we have more of an industry wide distaste towards methods of training that at their core are about making training fun and enjoyable for the horse than we do about methods of training or equipment use that are about using pain as a means of leverage to make horses more controllable for us, there is a problem.

There is no scientific literature suggesting positive reinforcement makes horses more mouthy, dangerous or dependent on treats.

There is a lot of scientific literature linking our use of certain training gadgets, bits and other high pressure methods to stress and pain responses on horses.

The fact that there is an almost unanimously less accepting attitude to the former, the use of food, than there is to methods that actually have relevant concerns in terms of the criticism being applied, is mind boggling to me.

I can’t post a video of me practicing mounting block work with my youngster using food even when he is perfectly calm, showing absolutely no signs of biting without people posting snarky comments picking apart the fact that I use food and for whatever reason, this bothers them to see even with a horse they’ll never be asked to handle

Meanwhile, it is viewed as a complete injustice for people to remark on the prevalence of pain faces in ridden horses and the normalized use of harsh equipment (twisted wire bits, leverage bits, draw reins, flashes…) that has no purpose other than to create more pressure, more leverage, more discomfort to make it easier for a human to ride their horse.

It’s viewed as wrong to do this even in generalized posts. People will get mad and attack you if you so much as suggest the fact that PERHAPS we shouldn’t have hundreds of harsh bits on the market that cannot be comfortable in the mouth even at rest, much less when pressure is applied…

This is what is wrong with the horse world.

There is a problem when people find more comfort in use of definitively harsher, more stress inducing methods than they do with the idea of giving their horse something that the horse likes in exchange for work output.

Using force and pain to get what we want is currently far more accepted than using food and it is extremely disturbing to watch, especially when criticism of said harshness is also less accepted than use of food.

I think everyone should pause for a moment and ask why that is and if that’s really how we want the horse world to be represented because I really think it reflects poorly on everyone in an industry where we claim the horse comes first until we’re blue in the face.

The horse does not come first if we are willing to cherry-pick the research we listen to and deliberately ignore the scientific validity of alternative methods whilst simultaneously ignoring any criticism of chosen methods.

The horse does not come first if the idea of providing an appetitive reward bothers us more than the idea of slapping a gag bit in their mouth.

The horse does not come first if we aren’t willing to modernize on behalf of the welfare of the horse.

At the bare minimum, the industry needs to grow up and start being more accepting of alternative methods that have proven success and ethicality, even if people choose not to use such methods.

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