Breaking Down the Key Aspects of Hand Feeding Safely with Positive Reinforcement: Part 1
Positive reinforcement is introducing a desirable reward to encourage certain behavior. At Via Nova, using Priority to Positive®, we are exploring this from every aspect of horsemanship. As simple as it sounds, there is a right way to bridge and reinforce when practising Positive Reinforcement (R+) with your horse. And a lot of nuances! So let’s break down all the aspects of Hand Feeding Safely to get you and your horse off to a good start.
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Practicing Hand-Feeding Your Horse Safely Ensures Two Valuable Things
Clarity for the question we ask, preventing confusion for the horse
Safety for the trainer (you)
If you hand feed correctly, it will deter the mugging behavior and ultimately teach your horse how to have good manners. At Via Nova, we refer to this as ‘Calm, Head Away’. Check out our breakdown of the 7 Steps to Success with Hand Feeding Safely in the video below when you introduce R+ training such as clicker training to your horse.
Let’s start with keywords
Manners, Bridge Signal, and Body Language are important terms that are essential in understanding how to deliver food by hand to your horse during training. In details, these are:
The Horse’s Body Language: ‘Manners’ (the behavior of standing calmly with head away from the trainer’s body or food) is a core aspect. Your horse knows you have food, and naturally assumes it will get the food by going for it! You want to teach your horse that the reward will come, not by excited mugging or pushing, but by waiting quietly while keeping their head away from the human and the food. The key is you are delivering the food to the horse, they are not coming to you to get it.
The Trainer’s (Your) Body Language: You want to remain calm, cool and collected. While it can be quite exciting for the horse in the beginning of R+ training, we want to ‘shape’ mental and physical relaxation to become an important part of the behavior.
Bridge signal: A signal that indicates to the horse when a behavior is correct. It serves to bridge the time between the correct behavior and the delivery of positive reinforcement, which is the reward of food from your hand.
Common Questions We Encounter When We Talk About Positive Reinforcement (R+) Training with Horses
Why do we CLICK when using positive reinforcement?
It serves as the ‘bridge signal’ – which not only identifies the moment of ‘yes that’s it’ but bridges the time between ‘yes’ and delivering the reward. Once they learn this, the horse will associate that the click means ‘good job’ (positive) and a reward (reinforcement) will follow.
Although the bridge signal can be a whistle, the word “good” or a bell, we find that the ‘click’ sound is easily recognizable, consistent and compact.
What about aggression? My horse wants the reward and isn’t calm…
When a horse turns their head towards you, invading your personal space, and sometimes pushing or nudging you – gently, or not so gently. Mugging such as that can (and often will) happen. Food-aggressive horses have learned that showing aggression gets them what they want.
TIP: Waiting for the perfect ‘Calm, Head Away’ from your horse can create anxiety and aggression. The calm aspect may take time. Accept small steps towards the goal when bridging and rewarding.
Remember, anytime you feed you are reinforcing a behavior. Reinforce and reward the calm demeanor and hand deliver the food away from your body. You should also be ready to reinforce and reward the steps to ‘Calm, Head Away’. But mugging does happen, so what should you do? Watch the video below for how to deal with mugging behavior and how you can handle it.
