Do you have a horse or donkey that is really “in your face”? For example, are they always first to greet, even hunt you down, sniff, nibble, even push on you? But by the same token, they don’t seem comfortable when you try to touch them, they nip and guard themselves and there’s something about them that makes you feel not quite comfortable or safe?
I’ve got a donkey called Dorothy and at first, she seemed like the most friendly “in your face” asking for scratches type of donkey.
But I’ve learnt otherwise since that first impression.
I’ve learnt that she doesn’t like or trust people and a lot of her behaviour seems to be learnt and reinforced through what I imagine was a lack of choices and control. For example, if she can’t remove herself from people and situations, perhaps her behaviour can make the people go away??
When she first came to me, she seemed reasonably friendly, once she got over her initial fear. She would solicit scratches, but try to touch her outside of her soliciting and it was a big kicky “no!”
I think we need to be careful that we don’t just assume that if a horse or donkey comes to us, that they necessarily like us or want attention or to be touched. I think this concept is similar to the post I did earlier about being able to train a horse to move towards something they don’t want to go near, by using Negative Reinforcement. Moving towards something gives them control or an attempt to control the removal of an aversive stimulus (in this case us). I feel an animal can find ways to make things go away, by moving towards them, pushing, nibbling and generally being aversive and annoying.
The problem is that people think that a horse moving towards them is wanting to be with them and engage with them. I’ve even seen a video of one of those cowboy trainers saying a mouthy horse wants to engage, so we should engage! That’s a pretty big assumption and interpretation of behaviour. But what I saw happen and what supports what I suspect, is that the “engaging” involved smothering the horse’s muzzle and face with touches and rubbing and guess what happened? The horse “engaged” ie. mouthed and tried to bite the human less or stopped altogether, as that was the plan as an antidote for a mouthy horse. But hold on, if a horse wanted to engage and we engaged with them, wouldn’t the behaviour increase ie. be positively reinforced and therefore increase? But it didn’t, it lessened or stopped, therefore the horse’s mouthy, in your face behaviour was punished.
So next time you think a horse wants to engage, is friendly and doesn’t carry any fear, worry, anxiety or distrust of humans, think again. Just because they move towards us, try to interact with us, doesn’t mean they like us, it could well mean they want us to go away and that’s how they try to do it. It most likely works with their equine friends, but us humans tend to think that it’s all about us and our horses always love us and want to be around us and that’s not always the case.
Check out gorgeous Dorothy, she’s very vocal because she loves to train, BUT she still has reservations about a lot of the things I want to do, like trimming her back hooves. I’m giving her the time she needs, because I realise that although she seems joyful, there is an unhappy history to overcome as well.