FF R+ dog trainers talk a lot about encouraging people to comfort their dog when they’re afraid. Patting and praising them when they’re scared, wont reinforce their fear.
I’m a FF R+ equine trainer and I say the same about horses. If your horse is afraid, giving them food (or patting and praising them), won’t reinforce their fear.
Similarly, there seems to be a lot of equine clicker trainers that are very much focused on trying to reinforce “calm” when they start out.
I’ll admit though, it does sound kind of convincing.
But as long as we focus on trying to train or reinforce something that the horse feels, by withholding food for that elusive emotion, we stray further away from what we should be focusing on instead.
There are many trainers who are waiting and watching for “calm”. They are withholding food because they are waiting for the emotion that they can supposedly reinforce.
It’s not a good idea because we can’t reinforce an emotion, but it’s not telling the horse what *to do* either.
Waiting and withholding is never a good idea. Worse, it causes the horse to try to figure out what they have to do to get the food. It causes the opposite effect. We end up with unwanted behaviours and often with the opposite emotion to what we actually want. We can cause the horse to feel confused, frustrated and tense – the opposite of calm.
What I suggest is always being generous with food, be prompt and catch them doing good stuff and reinforce those behaviours, before the horse starts improvising and throwing behaviours or worse, starting to try to sniff, nudge and take the food from us.
When we train in a way that they’re successful, there’s plenty of food and there’s clarity about what they’re supposed to be doing, then you’ll get calmness.
Remember, we reinforce behaviour and then we can create happy emotions through good generous effective training.