Blogs

#14: The Target - From Worried to Relaxed

We like the target for so many reasons. It is a tool to create behavior. Here you can see Santino reaching for it in his under saddle work. We like this for two reasons.

Like a lot of horses, Santino tends to want to brace in his lower neck at times. Reaching for the target as he’s doing here at this 28” height, puts him in better posture. It’s not perfect but it’s facilitating change in the right direction and that’s always where we need to start.

(As an aside, never be afraid of not getting it just right the first several tries. That’s ok! We take an approximation toward the wanted behavior and celebrate it. The next time perhaps we can raise criteria just a little to take a step toward the end goal. Key point… go back and take the lesser/easier criteria as well even well after you think they’ve learned it. This is how confidence is built!)

Back to the target. The other important thing that the target is helping with here is bringing his adrenaline back down. In this moment, Santino was struggling with worry he had about something in the tree line. There have been coyotes coming close to the barn lately as they tend to do in the fall and the whole herd has been on guard— so it had him slightly on edge during this ride.

When horses are worried, we have two choices to make. We can bend them away from the worrisome location and push them toward it in a traditional sense. Or we can allow them to look, take it in, and when they’re ready to let it go, click and reinforce the decision to relax/focus back on us.

We have found that the first way often tends to bring more resistance and tension into the picture and since that’s what we are hoping to avoid in the long run, we choose the other approach.

We have targets in cones placed around the ring especially for young or green horses so they can go to them when they feel a bit uneasy. Pretty soon, that spooky corner of the arena takes on a new meaning… one that is a classically conditioned association with the target at first, and later, the corner as well. Our reaction to their worry also becomes classically conditioned and they soon recognize their human has their back.

When we direct them to something familiar and safe, this can help to let go of tension and resets their emotional state. This is how we teach them find their way back to being settled. This practice soon becomes automatic with or without a target.

Of course we do not rely on the target for long. We fade them pretty quickly from each behavior or thing we are using it for. It is to be a tool, not a crutch! Of course, no horse wants to stay in a tense or worried state. With these simple exercises, pretty soon our horses can become adept at self-regulation.