Use of a bit as positive punishment

[MrA]

I'm quickly establishing that one of my uni lecturers is not a fan at all of the practice of keeping and riding horses.

That aside she raised another interesting point today when including biting horses on a slide that was supposed to represent things that others would see as a negative aspect of caring for an animal.

For example another of the pictures was of a fence with carrier bags tied to that stops cows running through it but also scares the cows. So is tying the bags to the fence actually having a negative impact? It's seen as a positive punishment because you add bags to the fence to remove the behaviour of running through the fence.

So a bit in a horses mouth causes pressure. She said pain which I strongly disagree with. Considering where the bit lies and the fact that it can also be seen as a positive punishment because you add pressure to contain movement does this mean it can also be classed as a negative thing.

I'm sorry if that makes no sense at all, I'm only just getting my head around it!

Basically I think what she was getting at is that pressure outside the body to encourage movement is natural as that's partly how horses communicate with each other. Pressure inside the mouth to contain or alter movement...?

Another of the pictures was racing whips and cribease so feel free to share any thoughts.

 

[Jessey]

I'd argue the carrier bags are not to scare the cows (they wouldn't be once accustomed to seeing them) but simply as a visual aid to improve visability of the wire fence. Re the horses bit, you want/expect a horse to seek contact, it's ideally like holding a child's hand to reassure them they are doing right and gently steer them, but can be used to prevent wrong action if there is serious risk, that's when it could become negative.
Your instructor is teaching positive and negative punishment, do they also show the opposites of those (encouragement, stimulation or something), or are they using punishment interchangeably with +/- reinforcement?

 

[carthorse]

I can't help thinking your university should be providing a less biased lecturer.

Yes a bit can be used as positive punishment, but I don't think that always means it's used that way - if it is the rider needs educating. What does she propose as an alternative? Does she actually understand how a bit is correctly fitted and correctly used?

The example of cattle is also a poor one in my opinion. The fact is they need to be kept in fields for their own safety, but arguably anything that keeps them in does so by using a negative deterrent to leaving. Are bags any scarier than high voltage electric fence, or worse than barbed wire that may injure them? Like horses cattle are soon going to get used to seeing them and nothing bad happening, so natural caution will soon be overridden

 

[Skib]

I think it useful for riders to have these discussions - We had them at a course I went on with Mark rashid in the States.
But not good if your Lecturer is aggressive over it.
As for bits - John Lyons gave up using a bit and then returned to it. Rashid has not been bitless (to my knowledge anyway).

The reason is that the fingers are the most sensitive part of the body to feel and the nose and mouth of the horse are the most sensitive part of the horse to feel and touch. So communication between human hand and horse's mouth is delicate and can be finely tuned.
When i hack on my own I think about this a lot. But today I rode with YM. She is young and I reckon that when doing fast in trot or in canter with another rider, I dont think so much about how little touch is needed on the rein. It is forward, forward all the way. If she shakes her head, it is to take the whole rein length to get her head down to eat.

If the bit were a source of pain to the horse, she would not take it into her mouth? I am very slow putting on bridles etc and both my shares have helped me by lowering their heads and taking the bit in their mouths.

The answer I give to your lecturer Ale would be that the original wild horses repeatedly died out and the current so called wild horses are domestic live stock become ferral. Horses survived because of domestication - for milk, meat and as pack animals and later for driving and riding as a weapon of war. That we have found a new recreational use for them benefits the horse (they get fed) and the humans who ride them (it is exercise). It may also be a sport.

As a historian I like to see the preservation of old steam locomotives and horses are the same. They have been bred for years to work for humans and for no other life. The preservation of these skills and the animal human reationship is precious on both sides.

 

[MrA]

I'd argue the carrier bags are not to scare the cows (they wouldn't be once accustomed to seeing them) but simply as a visual aid to improve visability of the wire fence. Re the horses bit, you want/expect a horse to seek contact, it's ideally like holding a child's hand to reassure them they are doing right and gently steer them, but can be used to prevent wrong action if there is serious risk, that's when it could become negative.
Your instructor is teaching positive and negative punishment, do they also show the opposites of those (encouragement, stimulation or something), or are they using punishment interchangeably with +/- reinforcement?

According to the teaching we have received they don't go near the bags are they are wary of them. Don't know if this is true as not tried myself and I too would of thought it was more about visibility.

She explained that negative punishment means that the pressure is released when they show the correct behaviour. In the same way positive reinforcement means they are given something for doing the correct behaviour.

We are learning about positive and negative reinforcement as well as positive and negative punishment.

 

[MrA]

I can't help thinking your university should be providing a less biased lecturer.

Yes a bit can be used as positive punishment, but I don't think that always means it's used that way - if it is the rider needs educating. What does she propose as an alternative? Does she actually understand how a bit is correctly fitted and correctly used?

The example of cattle is also a poor one in my opinion. The fact is they need to be kept in fields for their own safety, but arguably anything that keeps them in does so by using a negative deterrent to leaving. Are bags any scarier than high voltage electric fence, or worse than barbed wire that may injure them? Like horses cattle are soon going to get used to seeing them and nothing bad happening, so natural caution will soon be overridden

I think what she is trying to get at is that we need to think carefully about our actions and the impact they have beyond right and wrong. Electric fencing is a really good one, I never really thought that anyone would see it as a bad thing, but looking at it from the other perspective it is classed as punishment.

 

[MrA]

I think it useful for riders to have these discussions - We had them at a course I went on with Mark rashid in the States.
But not good if your Lecturer is aggressive over it.
As for bits - John Lyons gave up using a bit and then returned to it. Rashid has not been bitless (to my knowledge anyway).

The reason is that the fingers are the most sensitive part of the body to feel and the nose and mouth of the horse are the most sensitive part of the horse to feel and touch. So communication between human hand and horse's mouth is delicate and can be finely tuned.
When i hack on my own I think about this a lot. But today I rode with YM. She is young and I reckon that when doing fast in trot or in canter with another rider, I dont think so much about how little touch is needed on the rein. It is forward, forward all the way. If she shakes her head, it is to take the whole rein length to get her head down to eat.

If the bit were a source of pain to the horse, she would not take it into her mouth? I am very slow putting on bridles etc and both my shares have helped me by lowering their heads and taking the bit in their mouths.

The answer I give to your lecturer Ale would be that the original wild horses repeatedly died out and the current so called wild horses are domestic live stock become ferral. Horses survived because of domestication - for milk, meat and as pack animals and later for driving and riding as a weapon of war. That we have found a new recreational use for them benefits the horse (they get fed) and the humans who ride them (it is exercise). It may also be a sport.

As a historian I like to see the preservation of old steam locomotives and horses are the same. They have been bred for years to work for humans and for no other life. The preservation of these skills and the animal human reationship is precious on both sides.

I agree it is interesting to talk about and I particularly like your point about how we are communicating via sensitive points to get the best results. It's just interesting to think about things from a different perspective too

 

[Skib]

She explained that negative punishment means that the pressure is released when they show the correct behaviour. In the same way positive reinforcement means they are given something for doing the correct behaviour.
We are learning about positive and negative reinforcement as well as positive and negative punishment.

It seems to me Ale that there is a confusion over the language here, with your teacher using emotionally loaded language.
There has been a long on-going debate on NR and on other horse forums about positive and negative reinforcement.

But every cue we give when riding puts pressure on the horse, and is removed (reward) when the horse performs the movement requested.
That initial pressure in the cue is not punishment. It is an ask.

Punishment means rebuke for some unwanted behaviour coming from the horse. Like for example if the mare tries to put her head down to snatch grass when I am leading her back to her box, I raise my hand with the lead rope to stop her doing that. Her negative behaviour triggers my own negative response.

Since asking a horse to provide energy always goes against the horse's instinct to conserve energy, every cue to transition up can be viewed as negative. Regardless of the physical touch on the horse? So if we are in walk and I use the word "Trot" that could be seen as a negative? But only in theory since I havent set my leg against the horse.

We do use the bit to put negative pressure -e.g. closing our fingers to compact the horse for an upwards transition or to shorten the stride. But communication is not to be confused with punishment, I think.

 

[Skib]

I agree it is interesting to talk about and I particularly like your point about how we are communicating via sensitive points to get the best results. It's just interesting to think about things from a different perspective too

Ale, you are not the only one to come up against this argument. When I went to USA to a Mark Rashid course, he and I were the only people who saw our taking out and riding them as a negative for the horses!

For your teacher I guess that it will never be right to ride a horse. Tolstoy was vegetarian and he questioned whether it was right to to ride his horse round his estate. He contiued to ride because he said that both he and the horse were by now so old that it didnt make sense to stop.

 

[newforest]

If you are solely relying on a bit to contain the movement you are doing something wrong. I wouldn't think your tutor understands the horse at all.

Racing whips are actually heavy and do not hurt like our whips do. They make more of a sound than inflict pain.
I use a schooling whip to give mine a reminder to listen to my leg. This is simply due to timing.
A fly irritates her, so the schooling whip in my hand probably does the same.

Cows are not actually scared of bags. They eat any darn thing that blows into the field. I would see the bags as a visual to inadequate fencing truth be told. Around here it's solid post and rail for the cattle and sheep wire with barb on top for the sheep- not against public roads.
So it's not a negative to my mind, it's a positive warning them off the fence that wouldn't know will cut them, unless already been injured.

I do remember with the horsemanship stuff I did it was about making the right thing easy and wrong thing hard. So the right thing was positive reinforcement as it was easy and the wrong thing negative as harder?

If you want to load a horse that won't load some people try and scare the horse on. Staying off the trailer is worse than getting on it. The right thing, loading is then easy?

 

[MrA]

If you want to load a horse that won't load some people try and scare the horse on. Staying off the trailer is worse than getting on it. The right thing, loading is then easy?

This example is very good and exactly what she was trying to get across I think. I believe this would be described at positive punishment. Positive reinforcement would be using food to encourage the horse on. How many people wouldn't think twice about using a lunge line behind a horse? But there are other ways of going about things that encourage the horse through positive reinforcement.

 

[MrA]

It seems to me Ale that there is a confusion over the language here, with your teacher using emotionally loaded language.
There has been a long on-going debate on NR and on other horse forums about positive and negative reinforcement.

But every cue we give when riding puts pressure on the horse, and is removed (reward) when the horse performs the movement requested.
That initial pressure in the cue is not punishment. It is an ask.

Punishment means rebuke for some unwanted behaviour coming from the horse. Like for example if the mare tries to put her head down to snatch grass when I am leading her back to her box, I raise my hand with the lead rope to stop her doing that. Her negative behaviour triggers my own negative response.

Since asking a horse to provide energy always goes against the horse's instinct to conserve energy, every cue to transition up can be viewed as negative. Regardless of the physical touch on the horse? So if we are in walk and I use the word "Trot" that could be seen as a negative? But only in theory since I havent set my leg against the horse.

We do use the bit to put negative pressure -e.g. closing our fingers to compact the horse for an upwards transition or to shorten the stride. But communication is not to be confused with punishment, I think.

Yes I haven't been very clear about what we were being taught. Let me explain a little more.

I'm sure most of us know of positive reinforcement. Clicker training for example. You give them something nice to encourage desired behaviour.

We then learnt about positive punishment. This would be a bit in a horses mouth, the pressure is undesirable for them and so to avoid it means a decrease in undesirable behaviour

Then there is negative reinforcement, for example removing something special when an animal misbehaves to encourage desired behaviour.

And lastly negative punishment. Where you take something away to decrease undesirable behaviour, for example taking their friend away to stop them playing too roughly.

 

[MrA]

So her idea of riding horses would be to only use positive reinforcement, but I'm not sure how that would work!

 

[MrA]

I suppose the racing whips would also be classed as positive punishment because you are adding noise and pressure to stop them slowing down.

She said stabling could fall under the last one.

Anyway just interesting and a different way of looking at it for me.

 

[carthorse]

I'd like to know how she would explain her comment about the bit in light of horses that are correctly taught to seek and take forward a contact, would she really say that they're seeking punishment? I can see it if I give my lad a tug on the rein as he tries to step in front of a car rather than wait at a junction, but that isn't the only use of a bit and if she thinks it is then we're back to a very narrow and prejudiced view of riding.

Stabling as negative punishment? Hmmm, send her to a lot of yards in the winter! Many horses I know are obviously lovers of punishment then because given horrid weather they make it very clear they'd prefer to be in a dry stable with plenty of easily available food, and plenty of them have no intention of sharing that space and food supply.

I think she's over simplifying her examples while at the same time trying to over complicate training.

 

[newforest]

There are people who don't understand the concept of positive/ negative and moving on.
Correct or ignore the behaviour you don't want and forget about it.
I have heard people say they didn't feed the horse as they were naughty. They won't link the two together.

As for stabling you would say it's positive if you needed to monitor the diet etc.

 

[MrA]

It's all about how you correct it though, which of the 4 options (or others!) do you choose...?

 

[carthorse]

Surely if you correct it in an effective way so that the horse learns without being distressed then it doesn't really matter what name you give it? I'd say it's more important to understand your animal so you can tailor training and correction to the individual, if we were really good at that then little correction would be needed anyway. The part of me that wants to roll my eyes at people like your tutor longs to explain to her that by the time various forms of correction have been considered and then chosen the moment for correction is so far past that any actionn is inappropriate, but then I'm a fairly old fashioned type of rider and handler and as long as we get along I'm not bothered about analysing the reasons to death.

 

[carthorse]

By the way that's not meant to belittle what you're doing!

 

[newforest]

The one that works.
I don't mean that flippantly either, but like the above poster said I don't over analyze although I am enjoying having a chat.

The horse reacts or responds to what we do or don't do. They are not thinking about whether something is positive or negative.

As example yesterday I got a lot of tail swishes, she's in season. I know she can get a bit iffy with her belly and pulls faces.
But - she lunged at me with her mouth open, she's going to bite. My self preservation instinct firmly tapped her on the snout with a verbal no! Negative punishment then. I carried on what I was doing.
Today she looked round as if she was going to nip and I only needed to hold my hand up and say ah no. She looked away and I gave her an itch, positive reinforcement for not taking my hand off!