After several thousand years of domestication it’s inevitable that a certain degree of anthropomorphism has crept in to the relationship that we have with our domesticated animals. And perhaps, like familiarity, anthropomorphism breeds contempt. Or, if not contempt, then at least a certain degree of complacency. After all, when we only ever view animals with our anthropocentric glasses on they seem like lesser versions of ourselves. They can’t talk, they can’t drive cars, they can’t update their Facebook status. But what an anthropocentric perspective fails to acknowledge is that if the boot was on the other foot (or paw) it would be us who were lesser versions of them. How slowly we run. How blind and deaf we are. How badly we fly.

We really like our bitless bridles and use them for many reasons. They can help improve calmness, jumping technique and self carriage. They are great for riders that can’t stop fiddling with the reins and they teach us a great deal about how each individual horse likes to carry his head in order to have the best vision. But mostly we use our bitless bridles because they provide a training task that is different to everyday and because it’s great fun to ride bitless. Read part one of our going bitless articles here. 
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We use our own design of bitless bridle because they are simple, there is no time delay between the release of the aid and the release of the pressure, and it’s very compatible with the aids that we train during groundwork. Basically, our bridle is a cavesson noseband with reins attached to the side. We have always found it to be simple and the transition from bit to bitless is really quite straightforward. You can purchase a Sustainable Equitation Bitless Bridle here.

Lots of people like the idea of riding bitless but are not completely sure where to begin or if it’s worth the time and effort required – not to mention the extra expense of another piece of gear. However, the transition to bitless riding is not only relatively straight forward it is also a great way to enhance your horse’s training and can help develop calmness, improve self carriage and also fine tune jumping technique.
 
We use a bitless bridle on all of our own horses ­– not all of the time, but usually at least once per week. Any training they can do in a traditional bridle; they can also do in a bitless one. So, they will jump, cross country school, do working equitation obstacles, dressage and general fitness work in their bitless bridles.

It’s pretty hard to set out to train an event horse. In reality what you have to do is pick a nice horse and start training. You might end up with an all-rounder, a pony club horse, an event horse, or anything else in between.
 
I believe that regardless of your discipline, you should aim to improve your horse. Improve him physically and nurture him mentally and whether you end up with an Olympian in your chosen discipline or a fabulously safe all-rounder, you’ve done well.

I was thinking today about the concept of obedience and how, in our society, the word has acquired some negative connotations. Without contemplation I wouldn't want to have been described as obedient, nor would I have felt pride as a parent if my children were described as obedient. I think the term has become synonymous with subservience and submission and that there is an unspoken suggestion that compliance has been achieved through coercion. Yet, I have to say that most of us are obedient when we consider the word in its true sense. We don't slap people who annoy us, we pay for things and we drive on the left side of the road. My children don't steal the lunches of other kids or hit their teachers or kick the dog. Most of us are obedient to the rules that govern the country in which we live. Generally speaking, when people break those rules it's because they are unhappy or disenfranchised or desperate. It may sound disingenuous, but losses of obedience rarely lead to happiness. 
 
This of course does not mean that we cannot question the world in which we live or the way in which it is being run. Obedience should not entail censorship. As adults it's ok if we just don't break the rules. Obedience should not mean that we are controlled by another adult. Or punished. Or threatened. The rules that govern society function to enable everyone to live in relative peace and safety. The kind of bullying that is at work when one person oppresses another, usually functions to maintain an already skewed balance of power. That's the kind of tyranny and oppression is the symptom of a disease that is endemic in our society.

Bob Bailey is a pretty amazing guy. With his wife, Marion Breland, he owned and ran Animal Behaviour Enterprises and together they trained over 15,000 individual animals from 140 different species to do pretty much anything you can think of. I really like Bailey's work, I often turn to it when I can't see the way forward or just want a bit of inspiration. He has a way of stripping off all the anthropomorphism, superstition and emotion and just getting down to the core issues. One of the most profoundly interesting things I have ever read about training and yet one of the simplest is something that he wrote, "You get the behaviour you reinforce, not necessarily the behaviour you want."
 
Bailey takes any responsibility away from the animal being trained and gives it all back to the trainer. I think this a common thread that you see throughout the work of really good training theorists. Own your failures, not just your successes. (Andrew McLean is the master of this approach, though Andrew always gives you the feeling that he sympathizes with and understands your human frailty. Bob Bailey is perhaps more blunt but he's not primarily a coach, he's an animal trainer.)

​Ivan Pavlov was a Russian scientist. In the very first years of the twentieth century  he conducted experiments on the digestive systems of dogs, trying to determine how they worked. Every day, Pavlov's assistant would bring meat into the laboratory and he would feed the dogs and measure the amount of saliva and gastric fluid that they produced.
 
The assistant's trolley had a squeaky wheel and Pavlov began to notice that, after a while, the dogs started to salivate as soon as they heard the trolley squeaking down the hallway. Pavlov was fascinated by this phenomenon and he started to explore the psychology of expectation. He rang a bell before giving the dogs their meat and after a few repetitions dicovered that just the bell on its own would cause the dogs to salivate. What Pavlov had discovered we now know as classical conditioning.
 
Classical conditioning occurs when a previously meaningless stimulus (like a bell) becomes paired with a known response (like salivation). It explains why you feel happy when you smell the perfume of someone that you love, why you duck when you hear a loud noise, why your dog barks when he hears your car coming up the road and why your horse will trot across his paddock towards the sound of a carrot being snapped in half. Classically conditioned cues piggy back onto existing ones and can also piggy back on classically conditioned cues that are, in turn, piggy backing on existing responses. Each and everyone of us is a swirling hodge podge of classically conditioned cues and reponses that psychologists would refer to as antecedents, and this is part of what makes us such complex  and interesting beings.

​Foundation training (or "breaking-in" as it used to be known) is one of the most important parts of a horse's early training. During this phase the horse is trained to stop, go forwards and turn from light signals and habituated to the saddle, the weight of the rider and the different environments that he might have to work in as a riding horse. Along the way he'll also learn to park in cross ties, stand quietly at the mounting block and habituate to running water. It's an awful lot to learn in just four to six weeks, especially for a young horse that might still be finding his own balance and is probably coping with being away from home for the first time.
 
The training method that we use was first demonstrated by Kel Jeffries (in his book The Jeffries Method) and later refined by Andrew McLean. Sophie and I have adapted it a bit because we always work together. It's not a set formula, it's more like a series of guidelines and objectives that we work through. We use this method for both training and retraining and believe that it minimises the stress that can sometimes accompany times of rapid learning.
 
I really believe in this way of training because it's based on touch. I love watching horses running together in a paddock. I love how they rub and bump up against each other. Whether they are playing, fighting, grazing or resting – they do it together. The horse has 55 million years of evolution and in every part of that evolution he lived as part of a herd. So it's little wonder that we've found that when our horses become part of a herd they seem more content and more resilient to other stress. Horses form very strong bonds with each other and they mostly do it through physical contact. If we can't supply a herd of other horses then I think it's really important that we supplement that contact with our training.

​Sometimes it seems as though there's a bit of a disconnect between the study of equitation science and its practice. Looking through some of the research papers it's easy to wonder how this stuff applies to me, giving the fifth lesson of the day and with four horses still to ride. Science is great but practical, real-world solutions are even better. That's why Dr Andrew McLean's work on overshadowing was so amazing – it instantly gave those of us at the coal face something we could work with, something that made our jobs easier and safer. Well, here's another bit of research that is just as useful and just as easy to apply. Dr Andrew McLean and Professor Paul McGreevy have developed ten rules that apply to all good horse training, regardless of discipline. You probably already use them without even knowing it because it doesn't matter what kind of riding you do or what kind of horse you ride, these rules will make your training time more productive and ethical.
 
1) The horse's brain is very different from ours. His memory, senses and way of learning are very different too. Understand these differences and always remember them when training.
 
2) Know how training works. Understand the most important scientific principles, in particular – operant conditioning, habituation, shaping and classical conditioning.