Bullying?

[Francis Burton]

This is my first post to this forum - hello everyone!

I was going to post to the thread "Parelli - So how does it work?" but it was closed. Actually, this question isn't about Parelli specifically, but was prompted by something I read there:

chev wrote:
"anyone who's been faced with a horse that really isn't co-operating has two choices, whatever method of training they use. First is let the horse walk all over them. Second is bully them."

chev - My initial reaction to your statement was for my jaw to drop. I really couldn't believe you said that. Are those the only choices? It seems like the old "dominate or be dominated" dictum. And then I read your signature line, which expresses very nicely one of the possible other alternatives in dealing with an uncooperative (and perhaps aggressive) horse:

"One should avoid resistances, instead of trying to conquer them. (Aubert)"

Maybe I have misunderstood your original statement. (Or have I misunderstood Aubert??)

It seems that the answer might lie in the definition of "bullying" - hence the thread title.

When I'm faced with an unhandled colt who is bent on not backing down, the last thing I want is confront his challenge with a counter-challenge. If you did this with an aggressive stallion, you could get yourself seriously hurt (or killed). I have worked and continue to work with stallions - young and old, aggressive and docile - so have some experience. Anyway, one rather favourable way out of this "bind" is to allow the horse to see that he doesn't need to out-aggress or dominate you, because you are not a threat to him and you are not competing for anything. The priority is to de-escalate any aggression, not to add your own in the hope that you will "win out" eventually. Of course, it is also about rewarding good behaviour, and avoiding/not rewarding/punishing bad behaviour - though I would avoid any punishers that would evoke an aggressive response. Calm horses learn a lot faster than angry ones; and calm handlers get better (and quicker) results than angry ones. Setting limits is fine, but I don't like imposing arbitrary ones just for the sake of making some point about dominance. Out-bullying a "difficult" horse is liable to lose a lot of trust very quickly, it can be dangerous, and it is completely unnecessary in my opinion (because I know the alternative outlined above does actually work).

So where does that leave us with bullying? Do we need to find a suitable definition which allows a distinction between beneficial bullying and detrimental bullying - because surely it can't all be beneficial??

 

[horsemadmandy]

Hi
Anyone who bullies a horse should be ashamed and infact shot! They may think it works for the short term but that is all it does for them. If I could get my hands on the Female wearing a puffer jacket that has ruined my horses emotional stability then I would have a few words to say. I would like to find her and show her what she has done to this horse and what this horse still carries with him years later. We have not been told his fear it has just shown itself time after time and become the main focus on his rehabilitation long term.

 

[chev]

Absolutely agree that bullying can be terribly detrimental. It really does come down to definition.

Define how join-up works. It's bullying; ok, so it's bullying using the horse's own language, but it's still bullying. It's simple; horse doesn't co-operate, so you send it out on it's own until it re-thinks the situation and agrees to let you take control. That's bullying.

Yes, I've bullied my horses into doing things at times; I had an unhandled colt come at me on his hind legs with teeth bared because he didn't want me near his bucket. And yes, I chased him rigth back off, and kept him away until he gave in. Allowing him to see I wasn't a threat simply wasn't an option at the time; there were two choices - get out of his way and set up further problems, or stand up to him. He's now a very happy, well-adjusted colt who still tries it on at times but is receptive and willing. And I've never had to challenge him like that since.

Each situation has to be dealt with as it happens. I've also worked with stallions, and remedial horses, for a long time. I don't use brutal methods at all - I'm actually a very quiet person around horses generally (ask Monty - she's seen me working through problems with a horse) but there's a big difference between brutality and what I would call bullying.

Will have to come back and clarify this later; have to get kids to school and son to hospital now!

 

[diplomaticandtactful]

well if i didn't stand up to Rosie and impose boundaries on her behaviour she would walk all over me - literally.

she is currently a nice placid happy easy to handle horse, but that's because she learnt - by NH bullying/aggressive techniques - that she is not top horse and she is happier not being so. she is in charge of Molly horse but not me.

we had a choice with her too - let her continue to be unpleasant and be returned - for the fourth time - from a loan home, or persevere with her and turn her into a nice cooperative girl who has a purpose in life and that people enjoy being around. she still has her moments but i never have needed to confront her, or really take her head on, but we are firm with what we expect from her and she knows what she has to do.

with rosie meeting her head to head would be counter productive, but if she refuses to lead properly, she is circled and made to do it = if necessary i will do a quick 5 minute session with the pressure halter just to remind her that we can go back to that every day if she wants, one quick go with that and she remembers it immediately.

 

[Naturally]

Well, you might call join up bullying, but I wouldn't call Parelli Liberty (or any PNH) bullying by any stretch of the imagination.

A bully is someone who picks on another because they feel they are superior and do so with the intention of making the victim feel inferior.

PNH relies on asserting yourself as a leader. My definition of that:
A leader is someone who can assert themselves as the head of a group (herd) and provide direction, confidence, comfort and safety or any other qualities that the group requires to maintain harmony.

Horses are herd animals and all herd animals have/require/rely upon a leader. That's why they live in a herd.

 

[raggydoll]

although my knowledge of working with difficult horses is limited, well ok none existent! I think that like has already been said horses are herd animals and need to have a leader. We establish ourselves as leaders by mimicking the way a horse would do that in the herd and perhaps in human terms that constitutes bullying but in horse terms it is simply communicating to them there and our position in the herd. Backing down would simply lead to them believing that they are in charge and lead to far greater problems in the future. From what i have read the majority of horses are happy to step down and be lead instead of the leader provided they have faith in your abilities as herd leader which may only come once they have challenged that. Due to the nature of horses this may require a pretty extreme reaction from us sometimes. Obviously avoiding the situation in the first place would be ideal but that is not always possible/practical or in fact for the best.

I think it is only bullying in the sense meant here when such behaviour is unnecessary or unnecessarily excessive. I take the bullying that Chev was talking about to mean showing it who is boss rather than bullying in any malicious sence of the word.

 

[Yann]

to hurt or frighten someone who is smaller or less powerful than you, often forcing them to do something they do not want to do:

This is one dictionary definition of bullying, obviously with a horse the smaller and less powerful bit applies mentally rather than physically in most cases.

For me the key words would be 'hurt or frighten'. Using physical or mental pressure on a horse to assert leadership isn't necessarily the same thing as bullying in my book unless it's done to excess and results in a nervous or cowed horse. For example the properly executed join ups I've watched didn't result in either, rather a relaxed one.

Nice to see you here Francis, I always read your posts with interest elsewhere

 

[chev]

To give the whole quote from my post on the Parelli thread...

"It's not confined to NH either - anyone who's been faced with a horse that really isn't co-operating has two choices, whatever method of training they use. First is let the horse walk all over them. Second is bully them. Bullying takes many many forms - it's not just about clouting a horse with the end of a clip while backing him up (I have to say though, that even working with Gelfy, I've never managed to do that - it's not a pre-requisite of the yo-yo game). It can be mental bullying, bullying through choice of tack, all sorts.

Ok, so in an ideal world, we wouldn't need to bully horses into anything. If foals were sympathetically handled from the start, if horses all lived near-natural lives and were happy to co-operate every time we interacted with them, if we all managed to start off with a great working relationship from the start, there'd be no need. But the world is far from ideal, and when I'm faced with an unhandled colt who is bent on not backing down just yet because he doesn't feel I've really stood up to his challenge yet.... then yes, I'll bully him into backing down. I can't afford not to, for both our sakes."

Might clarify what I was saying a little more.

I think the problem is the term 'bully' - if using it to describe someone who deliberately belittles another for nothing more than petty personal gain... then no, it has no place in training or working with horses at all.

But if using it more in the sense that I was; to use coersion, or a degree of force (and I do not mean hit the horse either), to meet a challenge that if ignored would result in undesirable or dangerous behaviour, then yes, I still believe that at times it's warranted.

Mehitabel has an old gelding called Copper, who can be a bit of a bully himself. He has in the past chased someone up a tree. Treating him gently and sidestepping his respect issues doesn't work; standing up to him and making him back down does. He's happy knowing his boundaries, his handlers are happy knowing they have a pony that won't try cornering them.

I had a cob with similar characteristics; he also bullied people and other horses if left to his own devices. I never physically harmed him in any way, I never lost my temper with him; but I did (according to my definitions at least) bully him into treating me with respect.

That kind of approach does not suit all horses. I've had plenty of aggressive horses whose problems arose from fear and insecurity, rather than a tendency to be bolshy. Those horses do respond much better to a gentle, quiet, non-confrontational approach; trying to assert my 'dominance' over them would just feed their fear and result in worse problems.

Perhaps my mistake is in using that particular term. Hopefully that's clarified things a little.

 

[Mehitabel]

Mehitabel has an old gelding called Copper, who can be a bit of a bully himself. He has in the past chased someone up a tree. Treating him gently and sidestepping his respect issues doesn't work; standing up to him and making him back down does. He's happy knowing his boundaries, his handlers are happy knowing they have a pony that won't try cornering them.

I had a cob with similar characteristics; he also bullied people and other horses if left to his own devices. I never physically harmed him in any way, I never lost my temper with him; but I did (according to my definitions at least) bully him into treating me with respect.

yep. i have often bullied my old git, chased him round the field turning the air blue and flinging the headcollar at his backside at intervals. since i got tough with him and insisted that i was the boss, he has been much happier, he has put weight on, stopped fretting, become less tense, become much less aggresive to other horses, and his human aggression has all but stopped. when we were being 'nice' to him - food to come in, not bringing him in only to work, etc, he got worse and worse, and more and more defensive and miserable. he was not a happy person, he dropped weight, he defended his mares from us catching them. as soon as i stepped up and made him back down, he handed over responsibility to me with a sigh of relief.

i have both lost my temper with copper and belted him on occasion. to this day, if he is having a moment, if you're nice to him and offer food, he will run at you and mean it - if you square up, yell 'just try it and see what happens you monster!' and stomp up to him looking as big and intimidating as you can, he is fine. i can stomp up to him waving my arms and flailing the headcollar and yelling, and he sticks his nose in my pocket. if you walk up quietly and tentatively, you get a pair of heels in your face. the bullying i've done has not scared him, it has given him respect.

i wasn't doing it for fun. i don't enjoy yelling at or thumping the horse who is the love of my life. but i will not have him attacking people, and if i have to do it to get a well behaved horse, then so be it. any horse is big enough to injure a person, whatever their intentions, so they must be mannerly. if i need to bully them in the first instance, then i will do so without hesitation. whewn they treat me with respect, they get it back - but it has to be earned on both sides. i'd rather not earn respect by coercion, but sometimes it has to be done.

 

[Yann]

It might have been 'bullying' from the point of view of a casual human observer, but if the end result was a secure contented horse then it wasn't bullying from the horses point of view as far as I can see. There isn't a trainer born however low key (that I've ever come across) that would let a horse barge over them or invade their personal space without reacting in kind and correcting it.

 

[chev]

That's exactly it Yann - if what you're doing results in an unhappy, cowering, frightened horse, then it's wrong. It might be nothing more terrible than shouting that does it either.

But if the horse is not distressed and it results in a happy relationship where both parties know where they are; I don't see how that can be considered detrimental.

Horses for courses. I've known and worked with enough horses now to know that feeling that absolutely everything can be achieved through gentle sidestepping is not realistic. But bullying does not, in my book at least, have to mean abuse. Horses bully each other all the time; but they don't usually abuse each other.

 

[smaggi]

I was at a Parelli clinic and he talked about a student of his that had a horse that would not yield to the porcupine game, but would just push back harder. His answer was that in his hand he had a screwdriver. He started by applying light pressure with his finger gradually increasing pressure. When the horse wouldn't yield to the most pressure he could apply, he added the point of the screwdriver. A lot of people would think that using a screwdriver is bullying, but eventually the horse learned to yield to light pressure.

I think the main objective should be to use as light of pressure as possible, BUT get as strong as necessary.

 

[Yann]

This is where it becomes a grey area for me. It sounds to me like the horse just didn't understand what was being asked of it. Whilst using a screwdriver (pain?) might well have got a result, I'd have looked for a different way to get through to it that didn't involve using a sharp hand tool. How you approach things rolls up in the long term.

 

[chev]

Very grey. For me that's not so much an issue of defining whether using a screwdriver is bullying or not so much as whether or not the horse is likely to be injured before he works out what is being asked. The potential for damage using a screwdriver makes that completely unacceptable in my view.

Bullying (depending on definition) has its place, sad though it might seem. Using something that is likely to harm a horse does not. A horse leaning into pressure like that is not really one that is challenging the handler; more, as Yann says, one that simply doesn't understand what is being asked.

Bullying (for me anyway) is a specific response to specific behaviours; not something that should be used in place of 'explaining' things to the horse. Like my cob, or Mehit's Copper; neither needed it explaining what was required especially; but both needed someone to stand up to them so they could feel safe. I know of several horses (well - usually ponies, to be honest) who need that same response to their challenges in order to feel happy about letting people take charge.

It should never be used as a shortcut or in place of basic sympathetic training. For example, bullying a horse that's awkward to lead because of anxiety will result in an even more anxious horse. Bullying a horse that won't lead because it's last three owners have all been scared of it and let it heave them around is not neccessarily detrimental at all. I had a half Shire filly who learnt very quickly that she could use her size against the woman I sold her to. Woman ended up with a filly that was walking all over her (literally). She had a habit of barging straight past anyone stood in a gateway to get in to her bucket; when they asked me if I could help sort her out she was already pretty dangerous, and getting worse. She was also very big and very heavy; and once a horse that size has learnt to use their size against you it can be difficult to persuade them nicely not to. So I stood in the gateway, and every time she headed down to shove me out the way, I yelled, and waved my arms, and chased her off again. If she kept coming then yes, I belted her across the chest with the end of a rope. She did get a bit of a shock, but she wasn't damaged mentally or physically by any of it. Once she backed down and started to respect my space a bit more, I walked up to her and haltered her with that same rope. No problem. I would still call what I did bullying - but in no way would I call it abuse.

 

[Yann]

You keep using the term bullying, but I don't think it's strictly correct in the context personally

 

[chev]

Maybe not. Maybe that's the problem. So perhaps the answer to the original question is simply that what I'm on about wasn't bullying in the first place....

Any idea for alternative terms?

 

[Naturally]

Well I guess you are "making" the horse, which would at least sound better.

With the negative reinforcement process of Parelli, our aim is for the horse to "want" to do something, the same as they want to do it for the leader in a herd environment.

BTW, I agree the screwdriver thing sounds harsh, but to put it in context, it was an instructor, who I am sure would have enough savvy to stop at discomfort for the horse and not physically harm it. Yes, I agree that the horse did not understand, but if the horse did not understand phase 3 from a herd leader it would probably get a double barrel or a bite. And for the record the only way I have ever seen the porcupine game demonstrated using an impliment is that it pinches the skin, similar effect, but not as harsh as a bite. It is not driven into the flesh of the horse as it sounds above.

 

[angelfben]

I think you can learn a lot from watching horses natural behaviour. For example, Alpi is very definitely dominant over Rusty - he will 'bully' him in that he chases him around the field, won't let him near the hay, chases him off when he doesn't want him near him etc. And yet he is also amazingly tolerant of him, Rusty will stick his head in Alpi's feed bucket and Alpi just pushes his head out the way, if he's feeling generous he even lets him carry on eating it. He will share his hay with Rusty eventually and he is always looking out for Rusty, going off and fetching him if he thinks there might be any danger around etc. And in return Rusty is not at all afraid of Alpi, they will lie down together, play together, groom each other and Rusty will still try and steal Alpi's food and see how long he gets away with it.

Personally, I think it's a matter of finding that fine like between maintaining respect whilst also earning trust. I don't want my horse to do as I ask because he fears the consequences otherwise, but because he respects my decisions and trusts that I will not let any harm come to him.

 

[smaggi]

BTW, I agree the screwdriver thing sounds harsh, but to put it in context, it was an instructor, who I am sure would have enough savvy to stop at discomfort for the horse and not physically harm it.

For the record he was not talking about an instructor. He was talking about himself (Parelli) that used the screwdriver on a very pushy and disrespectful horse. It was my first Parelli clinic and I was very surprised when he used that example.

The wasy that he described it, he did not thrust it into the horses side or anything. He used as light of pressure as possible, but it was a way to increase the pressure after the carrot stick was not enough. The pressure also was realeased immediately after a positive response. He was working with a different VERY pushy horse at the clinic and was trying to explain by bringing up that example that you should ask lightly first, but be willing to up the pressure to get a correct response.

I'm sure that the original horse did not feel as much from the screwdriver as when he gets a kick in the side from a herd leader.

 

[Naturally]

Sorry Smaggi, I thought you were referring to a Parelli Instructor, not the big guy himself.

I have no problem with the explanation, and I would use it or similar myself if and when required. I was just trying to give further explanation to the others whom I thought might have misunderstood.