Conditioned response is the fundamental tool of the trainer. A psychological term, it names the result of the process of associating a natural behavior (say, a halt) with an artificial cue (say, pressure on the lead rope). A natural behavior is something that the horse can and will do. For example, it's a rare horse who will free-jump a 6' fence, so we don't start there when we set out to teach jumping; we start with a ground pole. To make it easier on the horse and yourself, start with something you can easily set him up to do. Thus, we start by working with the natural behaviors of moving forward and stopping.
What do we mean by an artificial cue? Well, let's look at a natural cue first. Say a dog goes rustling through the hedge nearby, startling your horse, who shies and moves away. The rustling noise is a natural cue -- no one had to teach your horse to respond in this way. It's just the nature of a horse, as a prey species, to get away from possible danger. However, put a halter on a horse who isn't yet halter-broke, and put pressure on the lead rope, and you are as likely to get a head toss or attempt to break away as forward motion. Thus, the tug on the lead rope is not a natural cue -- it is artificial. We want to create a conditioned response in the horse that when he feels pressure on the halter, he moves in the direction of that pressure.
How do we do it? We associate the artificial cue with the natural cue, and then reward the response. To teach a horse to go forward, we kiss while urging the horse to go forward. Depending on the horse's level of emotional responsiveness, that urging may range from the wave of a hand or hat, to the toss of a lariat towards the horse's rear, or the tap of a whip on his butt. When the horse responds, we reward by stopping the cues, taking the pressure off. Similarly, to teach the halt, we pick up on the lead rope and set the horse up to stop (say, by walking in front of his path--most horses would rather not run you over, and will halt, at least momentarily while changing directions). Again, when we get even a hint of the feet stopping, we let up on the pressure. This is how we say YES! that was right! to our horses.
Because going forward is more natural to a horse than stopping (especially if the horse is emotionally "high", as they will usually be in a strange situation), teaching and refining the halt cue takes a little more work than teaching the go forward cue. Still, it's a rare horse who doesn't have the whole thing down in an hour if the trainer is consistent.
Rewarding is extremely important to this system. The behavior you reward is the behavior you'll get. If you let up on the pressure before the horse has actually stopped his feet, or even slowed down, then that's the behavior you're more likely to get next time. By the same token, if the horse stops his feet and you don't let up on the rope -- he doesn't know he's done what you wanted, and you've missed an opportunity to reward the behavior you want. Set the horse up to win, and you are setting yourself up to have a happy, thinking horse.
To find out more about Charles Wilhelm, read the HQ Journal article A Day in the Life of... For more information about Charles Wilhelm, training or clinic schedules, please visit the C.W.Training Center website www.cwtraining.com You may e-mail Charles Wilhelm at cwtraining@home.com