It will be much easier to train horses and other animals if you figure out what is motivating your animal. There are four basic drives that motivate horses and other animals to do things. They are fear, aggression, a learned response and instincts. Fear and aggression are often misinterpreted. Did the horse kick because he was fearful or did he kick because he was aggressive or “bad”? Neurologically fear and aggression are different emotions which may result in similar behaviors such as kicking or pinning the ears back. It is important to determine which emotion is motivating kicking because punishing the horse for kicking will make a fear based behavior worse. If kicking occurs during a training exercise, it is likely to be fear based. Fear is also most likely motivated if an animal becomes agitated when it is alone, tied up or held in a squeeze chute. Another factor is genetics. Horses and cattle with a nervous, high-strung temperament are more likely to have fear-motivated behavior than an animal with a calm, placid temperament. It is unfortunate that some breeders are selecting for “hot blooded” draft horses. This is likely to result in more problems with fear-motivated behavior. An animal with a “hot” temperament is more likely to blow up when it is suddenly confronted with a scary novel experience. Many people have said to me “my horse behaves well at home but he goes berserk at shows.” This occurs because there are many scary things at shows that the horse or other animal never sees at home. It is especially important to get a flighty horse accustomed to flags, balloons and fast moving bikes long before he goes to a show. A safe way to introduce a horse to balloons and flags is to put them in a large pasture and allow the horse to explore them. It is dangerous to suddenly confront a horse that has a nervous flighty temperament with a scary object such as a flag when he is in a confined space where he cannot move away. Flags and balloons are scary because they make rapid movements and have bright contrasting colors. Bikes are frightening because they move rapidly and they can silently sneak up on the horse. However, if the horse is allowed to voluntarily approach these objectives they may become attractive.

Eliminating Learned Bad Behavior

There are bad behaviors that animals often learn because people inadvertently reward the behavior. One common problem behavior is a horse pawing and striking his stall door at feeding time. The horse does this because he thinks this will speed up being fed. If feed is given while the horse is striking the stall door, this will reinforce and reward this undesirable behavior. He does this because he associates being fed with pawing the door. To eliminate the behavior, the feed should be dropped in the manger at the precise instant that the horse stops pawing at the door. The timing must be right so that the horse will associate keeping his foot still with getting fed. To stop pawing you reward the horse for keeping his foot still.

True Aggression

True aggressive behavior occurs when an animal views a person as a herd mate that needs to be dominated. This is especially a problem with bulls. Castrating the animal will reduce aggression in adult animals and most eliminate it if it is done at a young age.

In grazing animals, an orphan male that is raised away from its own species may be imprinted to people and will think he is a person. This is cute in a young animal but when the bull becomes fully mature, it can be very dangerous. When it is fully mature, he may turn on his caretakers to prove that he is now the dominant male in the herd. Raising young bull calves in a social group will help prevent aggression towards people. It is important for young bulls, stallions and male camelids to learn they are not people. Orphaned male grazing animals should either be castrated or placed in a social group with their own kind by 6 weeks of age. When they grow up with their own kind they learn who they are and any aggression is more likely to be directed towards their own kind. The male aggression problem is not due to the animal being tame. It is due to mistaken identity. Social behavior is grazing animals has to be learned. Grazing animals also have to learn the normal give and take social behavior. Horses or cattle that are reared alone will often be vicious fighters when they are mixed with other animals. A young stud colt reared alone may constantly fight other horses because he has never learned that once he has become dominant he does not need to keep fighting. Stallions will be easier to manage when they mature if the young colts are reared on a pasture full of other adult horses.

Instinctual Behavior

Instincts or “fixed action patterns” are behavioral patterns that are hard wired into an animal like a computer program. These innate behavioral programs are not dependent on learning. The behavioral “program” runs when it is triggered by certain specific stimuli that animal behavior specialists call “sign stimuli.” Birds have many more instinctual behavioral patterns than mammals. The mating dance of birds is a good example of instinctual behavior. In bulls the flehmen lip curl is an example of an instinct. Smelling a female in estrus will trigger it. Many reproductive behaviors are hard-wired and instinctual. Pressing on a calf’s forehead may trigger butting which will be dangerous when he grows up. Calves should be stroked under the chin or on the withers to encourage them to take a submissive posture. Never play butting games with calves. It may make them dangerous when they grow up.

However an instinctual behavior often interacts with learned behavior. Breeding behavior is instinctual, but who you breed is learned. Ram lambs that are nursed by Nanny goats will attempt to breed goats when they mature. To establish normal breeding behavior, orphan animals should be reared in a pen with their own species. Bottle-feeding a baby for a few weeks will usually not cause cattle to imprint to people if they are penned with their own species.

Understanding the motivating basis of a behavior will make it easier to deal with a behavior and improve an animal’s performance. Punishing fear may make it worse but some force may be required to stop true aggression. It is best to imitate the animal’s natural instinctual behavior patterns to deal with aggression. A bull that is ready to attack will make a broadside display to show how big he is. He will face sideways towards the bull or person he plans to dominate. The broadside threat is an innate instinctual aggressive threat behavior. A bull that displays it towards people can be very dangerous. Some bulls will submit and move away when a person makes an imitation of the broadside threat by making themselves look big. If the bull will not submit and move away, he should be culled before he kills somebody. Any bull that charges people in an open pasture is potentially very dangerous and should be culled. Aggression towards people must be prevented by rearing a bull in a social group.

Smaller animals such as pigs and alpacas that become aggressive can be dominated by using species typical aggressive patterns. However it is best to rear animals in social groups to help avoid problems of mistaken identity. I have successfully exerted dominance on young pigs by shoving on their neck with a board. I did it in the same location where a dominant pig would bite.

Exerting dominance over an animal is NOT beating it into submission. For training, all animals respond to positive reinforcement such as a feed treat, stroking or a kind voice. Trainers should use positive reinforcements to train horses, cattle and other animals to do tasks. A logger's draft horse will often pull better in a pulling contest than a horse that has been motivated to pull by whipping. Positive rewards are a better motivator than fear.