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Cooperative Care: It’s Not Just for Dogs! Alex Walker and Jayme Lee explain how they trained a Haflinger horse to stand for voluntary nebulizer treatments using positive reinforcement
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t’s a common misconception that positive reinforcement training works on some animals but not others. Take the world of dog train ing, for example. Many of us may have had misinformed trainers tell us that positive reinforcement training will work for only specific breeds of dogs or for “easy” behaviors, but that others need a “heavier hand” in training or “all of the tools in the toolbox” if you will. Of course, we know that this is the furthest thing from fact and that positive reinforce ment training works regardless of breed or species. In fact, positive reinforcement training and protected contact train ing received one of its first big pushes thanks to the zoological commu nity. Despite this, the misconception about a speciesspecific style of training remains strong and one of the species that is often on the re ceiving end of this is the horse. As such, traditional horsemanship will often portray the human trainer or rider in a struggle for dominance with his or her horse. This rider might make use of negative reinforce ment, the act of removing an unpleasant or aversive stimulus (e.g. the pressure of a bit) to increase the likelihood of a behavior. Horses, as a species, are prey animals. They are often space con scious and uniquely aware of their surroundings and sensitive to the el ements within them. Physically large and robust animals, horses easily dwarf their trainers or handlers and are incredibly strong. Although these are important traits for livestock animals, their size and strength can result in a “heavyhanded” approach being taken to physically ma nipulate and coerce them into a specific behavior or position. This approach still pervades all aspects of traditional horsemanship and even extends to routine medical care or lifesaving husbandry be haviors. In this article, we are going to discuss how positive reinforce ment can be used to not only teach an important medically relevant behavior (administering medication through a nebulizer) but that this style of training can also build strong, steady and complex behaviors.
© Alex Walker
Coauthor Jayme Lee with 9yearold Haflinger, Lady, who was initially exposed to aversive training methods prior to being switched over to forcefree training
What: In 2016, trainers and zookeeping staff at the facility where Lady
The Student Let’s take a look at our learner:
Who: Lady, a 9yearold Haflinger horse. Note: Lady is what we would consider a “crossover” pony, i.e. an animal that originally was exposed to traditional aversive horsemanship methods before being switched over to an entirely forcefree, positive reinforcement based training ap proach.
It’s a common misconception that positive reinforcement training works on some animals but not others. Take the world of dog training, for example. Many of us may have had misinformed trainers tell us that positive reinforcement training will work for only specific breeds of dogs or for “easy” behaviors, but that others need a “heavier hand” in training.
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BARKS from the Guild/January 2020
resided began to notice a nasal discharge from Lady’s left nostril. This discharge was treated but seemed to recur seasonally before resolving temporarily. By 2018, it had progressed to the point that previous treat ments showed little improvement and it became a chronic issue. The decision was thus made to anesthetize Lady and scope her sinus cavity and guttural pouch to determine the source of the discharge.
Why: Leading up to this procedure, zoo personal and vet staff consid ered all avenues of diagnosis and treatment. Pending the results of ad ditional diagnostics, one treatment option was the use of medication that Lady would breathe in via a nebulizer to treat the affected area. This is the specific treatment plan that we will now expand upon. Before starting our nebulizer training it was important that we first identify and document our goal behavior. Like any good training plan, we broke down behaviors into small approximations and adjusted as needed based on the information we gained from our learner’s behavior. While our initial training plan was quite extensive, for the purposes of this article we have presented an updated and amended version. Timing and duration guidelines were determined by vet staff and based on the medication that would be administered.