Kellie and Dr Rosales reasearch demonstrated that you can treat aggression
with operant procedures.
Previous studies Jesus and his students have done demonstrated that fear can
be treated operantly. This is very new stuff and not "out
there" generally in the training of horses world yet. Horse trainers tend to
do a lot of desensitizing. desensitizing can work. But, often the
horse is thrown over a threshold to "get over it" and some just never will.

In operant processes the consequence "causes" the behavior.

Operant behavior is behavior that happens because in the past a reinforcing
consequence has followed that behavior. The driver turns the key in the
ignition and the car starts. If the car never starts when the key is turned
in the ignition, the driver will not continue to turn the key in the
ignition (perhaps after an extinction burst) until he has done something to
change the car's condition so that turning the key makes it start. The
starting is what maintains the key-turning behavior.

It's hard work hard to become the dispassionate observer. But, to use CAT
effectively, this is exactly what we must do. All thoughts of conditioning a
response must be left behind. The learner, in this case the horse, has to
figure out what gets him what he wants.

I think some people and some horses don't really know that they can choose
not to freak out. Freaking out has probably been reinforced by escape from
stressful situations for them. Kellie wrote about when she first moved to
New Orleans "I saw the first New Orleans Sized cockroach I'd ever seen as we
were unpacking. I was on the toilet, and reached into a box for a roll of
toilet paper and the thing FLEW at me. I screamed bloody murder. I was
about 13. My Mom came running. When I told her I'd seen a roach, she said,
"Kellie, you have a choice. You don't have to react that way." Believe it
or not, that was a revelation. (Mom had not yet seen a 3" long flying
cockroach... a couple of days later she screamed, but fortunately my lesson
was already learned!)

It's the learning that he doesn't really have to react that way that causes
a change in the horse. All his DNA is telling him that he must. We will show
him that he does not. We'll do that by showing him that that behavior will
simply not start the car. Try something else.

When we c/t a horse with deep seated fear we acknowledge it. The horse wants
to play the game of c/t so he buries his fear or whatever behavior that we
want to eliminate. We have covered it up with new behaviors but in another
environment with another stimulus, it will reappear.

With CAT we are eliminating a behavior.
Dolores Arste
www.zenhorsemanship.com
Author:
Conversations with Cadbury

To read more
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