66. The Horse Training Advice I Stopped Following: “Don't Let the Horse Win"

One of the biggest mistakes in traditional training is that we think that we need to train the horses when they probably need to train us.

But that's probably gonna be a whole other episode.

I'm not gonna record that today, though.

So you have to wait.

So one of the biggest hurdles in traditional horse training is the assumption that horses know the answer, or they should know the answer.

How should they know? Why should they know? There's a book, it was given to me by Karen Rohlf, called The Four Agreements, and that is one of them.

Don't make assumptions.

Don't assume that your horse knows a thing.

Same thing goes for people, right? Don't make assumptions about other people.

Don't even make assumptions about the universe.

With this assumption, many times our horses are just dysregulated for any number of reasons.

Or maybe it's you that has the problem, and you're just trying to figure out how to work through it with your horse.

Because a horse or a human that is in survival mode is not plotting how to take over the empire.

They are trying to survive.

They're not trying to manipulate.

They're just trying to get by.

Last episode we talked about define a term to use a term.

Understand what punishment really means, and why it might work.

It will only work if a person, if a person ...

See, there I go right away.

I don't even assume that horses are capable of understanding punishment because it only works if the subject understands the question.

It only works if they understand the consequence, and they have enough nervous system regulation to learn from said punishment.

So if any of those things are missing, punishment is not going to work.

Also, punishment in the long term, it's not a long-term solution.

We know that from humans, from rats, probably from some monkey studies too, whatever.