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Hi! Choosing a reinforcer that works can be super tricky, especially with horses who are food aggressive/anxious. Even chaff varies in how interesting it is to a horse (for example plain oat straw based chaff without herbs or pellets cam be quite boring for most horses, whereas those with pellets or herbs added in can be more exciting and create more frustration), so it might be worth playing around with different foods to see what works best for her- even using hay or haylage might work well as it is still something she might want but not be so excited over. Failing that if it seems as though its more of a behavioural issue it might be worth contacting a behaviourist or trainer for help getting to the bottom of what is going on (I personally offer online services and will be opening up for new clients in the next few weeks) and to help rule out possible pain or management related issues. Hope this helps! :)

@hopeforhorsesbehaviour thank you! She refuses to eat hay and chaff from hands because she ends up dropping it and gets more frustrated but pellets seem too exciting

@@Jesswithponies a bucket might work well in that situation, either to feed her from or to catch what she drops so that she can then eat what's in the bucket if she feels she wants to too

@hopeforhorsesbehaviour we tried her food bucket but she refused it. She's very fussy with what food she likes where

@@Jesswithponies it might be worth working with an alternative reinforcer for a while, such as scratches, if she will until you can figure out what is going on or access coaching as she does sound pretty complex. The worry is that the food issues could become worse through training if she continues to be anxious and frustrated or that the training may become less positive for her if she has those feelings about it, some horses work really well with scratches and find them desirable enough to do some great work which for those that have issues around food that need some time to be addressed can allow you to continue working with them but in a more relaxed, positive and safer way :)

Yeah of course! I am definitely a trainer that is more than open to saying that positive reinforcement isn't perfect, it absolutely has a few cons and one of them is potential frustration over food and withholding food. The aim of positive reinforcement is to face these situations in the least aversive way possible to minimise negative emotions as much as we possibly can and a good trainer would work to minimise frustration in this sort of situation as much as they could whether that be through working with an alternative reinforcer until the animal is more prepared to be better emotionally balanced around food, changing a specific food reinforcer to a more suitable option, raising the rate of reinforcement ect. With negative reinforcement or pressure or release may trainers don't aim to keep the pressure as minimal as possible, and often a lot of things start out being trained with high amounts of pressure and aversives to essentially scare the horse into performing the correct thing more easily so that the pressure can be lessened over time. Positive reinforcement also aims to ignore when the learner does something undesirable and reward them for any approximation towards the goal behaviour. Although positive reinforcement has its downfalls, the main aim of the trainer is to make these as minimally aversive to the learner as possible and to train in a way that lacks aversive contact wherever they can, generally the idea is that even if stress or frustration occurs in R+ training it is either dealt with effectively and quickly in an ethical way to help the learner or that the trainer responds in a way that keeps negative emotions at a minimum, versus negative reinforcement where pressure often escalates or the level of how aversive it feels to the horse often isn't considered and the horse is only told what they are doing wrong and punished, not helped along to get the correct answer and rewarded accordingly. I do also think that pressure and relief, in some cases and when used at a minimal level, can actually be trained with quite well if the trainer understands how to use it properly. Hope this helps :)

Hi Ross, I think the problem here is that you are looking at someone who is starting out with R+ training and you may have looked at others who are similar and you are thinking that all R+ trainers are the same and we are not. As an experienced R+ trainer, I don't train with treats for a start, I train with species appropriate food, such as hay or chaff, with the same food offered freely at their feet or nearby when I train, whilst also understanding that an equine's training history may prevent them leaving a R+ training session to access alternative food, even when it is available. I don't believe at all that frustration or anxiety is a part of R+ training and I train in a way that prevents these unhappy emotions. I train with what is generally referred to as an "errorless mindset" in R+ training. There are some great examples in the R+ dog training world. Unfortunately people starting out with R+ may lack knowledge, skills and experience to set up the environment and train in a way that prevents the frustration and anxiety and trial and error learning you are referring to. On top of that, unfortunately there are some experienced R+ trainers, who you may also have looked at, who teach withholding food or use pressure to elicit behaviour and then add food and that creating frustration and anxiety and letting the horse figure it out, is all part of R+ training and then teach that to others. It's not! and obviously I'm not one of those who teaches this. I think that you looking at one R+ trainer and assuming all R+ trainers are the same, would be like me looking at Clinton Anderson, or Monty Roberts or Warwick Schiller and thinking you train exactly the same as them, since you are all pressure based trainers. :-)

@@whisperinghorsetraining not at all. I have taken an interest in +R since Karen Pryor and Alex Kurland first published their respective books. I have audited clinics of respected leaders in +R. I've watched videos by many practitioners. I have experimented and used +R at times. The common denominator is that the +R guru is hardly aware of the anxiety they create. They lack appreciation of how horses operate or motivated to search for new ideas. They believe as gospel what their guru taught then and they lack an awareness of how pressure/feel can be a comfort to a horse when done well. I am certainly not a newbie and have used +R myself in both an experimental and training scenarios over 20 years. I have to come to the view that there is too much brain washing in the horse industry and not enough critical thinking. Training philosophies of all ilk are no exception. But it is a pet peeve that +R trainers have a reflex response to criticism of accusing the other side of not knowing what they are talking about. I urge people to step away and ask questions instead of resorting to the dogma as an excuse or substitute for rational thought. If you learn to understand a horse's thought process better they will all tell you that +R is NOT a stress-free or gentle method.

@@RossJacobs I do wonder who you have been looking at when you think you are looking at R+ trainers. Alex Kurland is a 'mixed' trainer, she predominantly uses R- in her training, so I personally don't consider her a good example of the more modern and force free R+ training that I and others do. Clinics are also not a good example of R+ training either, I would not conduct a clinic with visiting horses, because it mainly ends up in frightened and stressed horses and constantly putting out 'fires'. So you may not be seeing a true picture there either. I certainly do not follow anyone blindly and unquestioningly and in fact it has made me a bit of an outcast even amongst the R+ training community, because I'll call out something that is NOT R+ or in alignment with the ethos I also embraced, such as not using bits or whips (which Kurland also does use). I also urge people to step away and ask questions instead of trusting gurus and dogma and that goes for (supposedly) R+ trainers as well. But I do disagree with you, done well, R+ training and embracing the overall ethos AND the errorless mindset, does not create stress or anxiety. But you also have to consider the anxiety and stress that was already in the equine before R+ training. That many horses have man made problems such as food anxiety and resource guarding issues, sometimes undiagnosed pain and sometimes an array of behavioural problems that come into the mix when we train with R+ as well. That means sometimes there can be some angst seen, as we work through these problems with the equine. People are not perfect, they make mistakes and R+ training for equines is still in it's infancy, whereas your style of training has been around for long enough that horse people have perfected their application.

@@whisperinghorsetraining I understand Kurland has been a mixed bag of ideas, but she was one of the first to bring +R to the attention of the horse industry and deserves considerable credit for that. I don't see the point of discussing this subject further. All I will add is that when I have had the chance to talk to +R trainers with a horse in front of us I have been able to demonstrate what they are not seeing every single time. Some take it with grace and give it deep thought and some get mad and refuse to engage further. But when I don't have a horse to demonstrate my argument almost every +R trainer just tells me I don't get it. They tell me this without any serious consideration or knowledge of what I do or my experience with +R and -R. Thanks anyway.

It was great fun to teach! A bit chaotic, but worth it 🤣