A recent viral TikTok has sparked outrage by showing Olympic gold medallist Sir Mark Todd repeatedly hitting a horse with a branch to force them into a water jump. Although the outcry against the video is warranted and justified, it has mostly been based on a shortened version of the clip. Watching the whole thing in context gives a much clearer picture of the context of the incident, and raises deeper questions about the role played by punishment in equine training. The original can be found here.
“Punishment” is a word that has an everyday meaning, however it also has a specific technical
meaning in the context of learning theory. Punishment is one side of the quadrant of operant
conditioning described by BF Skinner in the late 1940s as an explanation of how we learn.
Punishment is any kind of aversive stimulus that tends to reduce behaviour, while its counter,
reinforcement, tends to increase a behaviour.
Punishment and reinforcement come in two categories dependent on if something is added or
removed to create the desired effect: together these create the quadrant shown in the diagram. An example of positive reinforcement (often written as +R) would be giving the horse a treat for standing still while being clipped to encourage them to stand still more. Negative punishment (-P) is the opposite: withholding a treat because the horse is not doing the desired behaviour. Negative reinforcement (-R) encourages a behaviour by removing a stimulus, for example, if we apply pressure on an animal, it encourages them to move away from the pressure to relieve it. Finally, positive punishment (+P) is what we see in this video: the use of a negative stimulus to discourage unwanted behaviour. The overall principle of operant conditioning is that we learn through the consequences of our actions.
In the equine world, punishment methods are the most prevalent. Many suggest this is because horses are large animals that could and sometimes do easily kill us. But is that sufficient reason? Zoos are known for using many alternative methods to train their animals so that punishment is avoided and they are often working with predators and animals much larger than horses such as lions or elephants. And increasingly people see the use of punishment for dog training or when teaching children as morally wrong… so why doesn’t this same opinion follow for our horses?
I am perhaps unusual for having a particularly strong view on this. The implementation of punishment in my professional opinion is never warranted unless threat of loss of life is present. This is not just for ethical reasons, although that is reason enough in my view. But it is also because punishment methods are not a very effective way to train an animal.
Punishment aims to discourage one behaviour through discomfort. To do so it must be implemented either as the behaviour occurs, or just after it has occurred. A negative association should then form between the behaviour and the consequence, however this obviously requires repetition. But in fact, punishment has been shown to reduce learning in horses and increase fear responses. The Mark Todd video is a good example of why this occurs. For the initial part of the video (not included in most news articles), Todd was attempting to use negative reinforcement (-R): applying an aversive stimulus to encourage the horse to move away from it and into the water. But when this stimulus did not achieve the desired results quickly enough, that was when Todd moved onto the positive punishment (+P) approach in the last 20 seconds or so. But the only thing that punishment achieved was that the horse now associates fear and pain with water jumps, because the punishment occurred after the horse had stopped moving, and continued even when the horse began to move. There was no direct link between the punishment and the behaviour. When a horse stops because of fear, punishment will only validate the fear more. ‘I was right to feel fear as I felt pain in this situation’.
The biggest problem with the use of punishment is that it does not indicate the desired behaviour. In the Mark Todd video the desired behaviour was for the horse to enter the water, but any movement away from the branch regardless of direction would have reduced the punishment and reinforced the horse’s behaviour. My fellow equine behaviour student Chloe Campbell mentioned this in her presentation of punishment during the 2021 Evening of Equine Behaviour at Writtle University College. Reinforcement tells the animal what the desired behaviour is, punishment only tells them not to do this behaviour.
Unless punishment is out of the hands of a human (e.g. an electric fence, where the horse receives the punishment immediately when they touch the fence, and the intensity is the same no matter how they touch the fence) punishment is often implemented as an emotional outburst. This video (used by Campbell during her presentation) demonstrates how the use of punishment is often linked to the anger and frustration of the rider that they take out on their horse. The behaviour being punished is a refusal and subsequent rearing, however the punishment is not directly linked to the behaviour as it repeats regardless of the behaviour being given. You will notice that the rider whips the horse after they have stopped rearing and have been stood for a few seconds, removing any impact the whip may have had in weakening the behaviour.
Video uploaded by: Anna Faletti, 2021
To quote McGreevy and McLean (2009): “When jumping horses refuse obstacles, it is not uncommon for trainers to use the whip as the horse stands motionless in front of the obstacle after its refusal … When horses do attempt an obstacle after a random act of punishment, it is possible that increased anxiety levels enhance the flight response and if the horse is successfully steered towards the obstacle it may well jump it. At best, this is a haphazard training exercise destined to have low efficiency, if any. At worst, it simply trains the horse to default to a flight response in the presence of jumps.”
Lucy Rees, a renowned equine ethologist, explained during a behaviour seminar held at Writtle University College in 2019 that when we use learning theory it only counts if the horse actually learns from it. For example if you hit a horse for biting you in theory that should stop the behaviour from happening, but if the horse keeps biting you, and you keep hitting them for biting you and the behaviour never reduces, that was never punishment but abuse. This is tenfold if the punishment comes from a place of anger.
When punishment is commonplace to stop behaviour that is undesirable it often results in us
forgetting to consider the cause of the behaviour. Horses are not vindictive, nor are they being nasty or malicious. They are expressing their needs through their behaviour and screaming at us to listen. The grey horse under Mark Todd’s supervision was scared of jumping into the water, and he not only ignored their fear but punished them for feeling it at all.
References:
Kratzer. D.D, Netherland. W.M, Pulse. R.E, and Baker. J.P, (1977) Maze Learning in Quarter Horses Journal of Animal Science 45(4) pp. 896-902 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2527/jas1977.454896x
Lindsay. S.R, (2000) Adaptation and learning in Handbook of Applied Dog Behaviour and Training, Vol. 1, Iowa State University Press: Iowa
McGreevy. P.D, and McLean. A.N, (2009) Punishment in horse-training and the concept of ethical equitation Journal of Veterinary Behaviour 4(5) pp. 193-197 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2008.08.001
McLean. A.N, (2005) The mental processes of the horse and their consequences for training [PhD thesis, University of Melbourne]
Mills. D.S, (1998) Applying learning theory to the management of the horse: The difference between getting it right and getting it wrong Equine Veterinary journal. Supplement 27 pp. 10-13 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2042-3306.1998.tb05145.x
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