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[RC] The way to train animals - k s swigartMelissa Alexander said: Just want to pop in to say that zebras can be trained. Moose can be trained. Goldfish can be trained. Cockroaches can be trained. I have a friend who has trained animals in 145 different SPECIES for government and commercial work. (You don't train any of them by being "herd leader" though.) I don't train horses by being the "herd leader" either. The way I train horses is the same as they way I train all animals (I was a dog trainer before I was a horse trainer, but I have also worked with cats, rodents and birds) The way to train all animals is to set them up in situations such that the choice that you want is the one that is the most attractive to the animal. What you do to make the choice that you want look the most attractive to the animal you are training depends entirely upon the choice that you want to have selected and understanding the individual animal well enough to know what it finds attractive. Understanding the nature of the species you are dealing with can help you to understand the individuals within that species, but it is important not to get too caught up in stereotyping individuals just because they happen to be of a particular species as it is not uncommon for individuals lie outside the norm. However, you cannot do any of this unless/until you first recognize that the animal has choices. And in my book, no animal is fully trained UNTIL it makes the desired choices from among a myriad of choices. I don't consider my horses to be properly broke until they will choose what I want them to do despite the fact that there are lots of other choices out there that they know they could make....and don't. Until the horse is fully trained in this way, there is a much bigger chance that when such a situation arises that they won't choose the way I want them to. However, since so few horses are what I consider to be fully trained (that would be an understatement for none), I am always prepared for the possibility that a horse I am working with may not make my first choice. I have found this to be the best way to avoid getting hurt by horses. kat Orange County, Calif. p.s. One of the reasons that horses, in general as a species, are fairly easy to train, IMO, has less to do with their inherent herd structure and more to do with the fact that neither their fight instinct, nor their flight instinct is very well developed. And while the lack of these to instincts makes them quite suitable for domesticity, it didn't do much for their ability to survive in the wild. The wild ancestors of our domestic horses are now (and have been for quite some time) extinct. The smart ones chose domesticity, and continue to do so. My own horses spent ten years sharing a broken down fence line (yes, they knew where it was down, they used the gap in the fence to get back IN to their pasture) with the hundreds of thousands of acres of the Cleveland National Forest, yet every day, when I went to visit them they would hear my car coming up the hill and run as much as a half of a mile to leave their forage and be waiting for me at the gate. They have no desire to be "wild" (if they did, I would never have found them in the Santa Ana Mountains). They know full well on which side their bread is buttered. Of course, had I treated them poorly, they might have opted differently. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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