Redo, im sorry I’m tech illiterate: Alright 12 ppl is enough for me so you all get a thread on punishment. I’m going to try to make this clear and concise because I feel like a lot of what I’ve seen today is people misunderstanding each other

A brief introduction to learning/vocab
Conditioning: a long term change in an animals behavior
Operant conditioning: a process by which an animal learns that a voluntary behavior causes a consequence. The key here is voluntary behavior - not reflexes or emotions

To put it simply, there are four quadrants in operant conditioning
1. R+ aka positive reinforcement: something good is given in order to cause the behavior to occur more often
2. R- aka negative reinforcement: something bad is taken away to make a behavior happen more often

3. P- aka negative punishment: something good is taken away in order to make the behavior happen less often
2. P+ aka positive punishment: something bad is added in order to make the behavior happen less often

Examples of each quadrant:
1. Your horse touches a cone and you give him a treat. He learns to touch the cone more often to get treats
2. You put leg on a standing horse. When he takes a step forward you take the leg off. He learns to step forward so that ur leg is on him less

3. Your horse nips at you when you set down his grain. You take his grain away. He nips less to avoid his grain being taken
4. Your horse nips so you smack him on the nose. He learns to nip less to avoid being smacked on the nose

Each operant conditioning quadrant is effective, otherwise it wouldn’t be included. Thus it IS POSSIBLE to reduce an unwanted behavior using positive punishment, aka hitting ur horse. However, for the following reasons, positive punishment is often not the best choice

1. Punishment requires very good timing. You MUST react to the unwanted behavior within appox. 2 seconds of it occurring or the behavior will not decrease. Human reflexes are slow & we often react too late, which is why you see many horses nip no matter how often they’re smacked

2. Punishing a behavior does not remove the underlying cause for a behavior. Animals always have a reason for their actions. If you do not address the cause you may never decrease the behavior no matter how much you punish because the horse wants the other thing more

An example of the above is horses who always snatch grass no matter how often the rider pulls on the reins. The desire to eat is simply higher than the desire to not get pulled on

3. Punishment can have the unwanted effect of removing “warning signs.” I know no one likes having a horse pin it’s ears at them but believe it or not this is a polite warning in horse language. If you smack a horse for pinning his ears you will decrease the ear pinning but...

You decreased the frequency of ear pinning but not of biting. This is how you get horses who bite or kick or rear “out of nowhere.” Which as many of us can agree is far more dangerous than a horse that pins it’s ears well before it bites you

4. Punishment is emotionally negative for your horse. Maybe you want your horse to feel emotionally negative after it bites you, which is an emotionally valid human reaction. However that doesn’t mean that you should act on this instinct

Punishing your horse may do one of several things. It could make the horse feel like it has no other options to make you listen, so it will resort to aggression. It may cause your horse to fear you and avoid you. It may cause learned helplessness and totally shut the horse down

To be clear, these are all states in which the horse is physiologically incapable of learning new things. So if you want to effectively train your horse, it is in your best interest to avoid stressing it out

That’s not to say people punish their horses for no reason. The reason just makes sense for the human, not the horse. We have the same brain reward pathway as a horse, and hitting our horses may make us feel better (reinforcing), which increases the likelihood we’ll do it again

To be clear, an emergency is different than training. In an emergency situation, you may have to use punishment for your own safety. However, this is NOT a training situation. And in the interest of safety, it is best not to put yourself in such a situation again

Punishment is also not ideal for every emergency, as it may cause the horse to act aggressively because it’s prey animal instinct has kicked in, and is telling it that 1. It’s in danger 2. There’s no way to run away 3. It needs to attack the threat to survive

So what would I do in an emergency?
1. Give the horse an option to escape so they don’t escalate to aggression
2. If that’s not possible, I myself would leave the situation to remove the threat
3. If THATS not possible I may use punishment to get to a safe area and then leave

If I know that a horse consistently acts aggressively, the safest and most effective thing to do is to avoid the situation that causes the aggression until you can determine the cause of the aggression and remove it. More often than not, the cause is pain or fear

This thread was not concise, but I hope it was clear. And before I go, a reminder that horses are not capable of acting in spite. A horse always has a reason for its behavior. As the big brain in the relationship it is our job to find the reason for that behavior