Recent scientific studies have revealed that horses, even after a short time, can remember places where they had positive or negative experiences. Horses show different emotions when they are able to visit the place they experienced a negative or positive experience.
You should not force your horse into a place that you know he has negative feelings or is worried about.
Experience is an important factor to consider when training horses. You can’t accept when you train your horse that your preparation will have no effect on the horses. Horses have no impact on them. The effect of the effect may be quite significant.
When you return to that location, you’ll see how the experience has affected the horse. If he had a positive experience in that location, his behavior will be more flexible and adaptable to the task. If he encountered a stressful or negative experience, he may be less able to adapt and more rigid with his training.
Researchers tested cognitive flexible–the ability of adapting learning to new and evolving situations- by allowing the 35 mares to experience positive, negative, and neutral experiences in specific boxstalls. Each stall was easily distinguished (by its sights and sounds) from the others. The negative events were water suddenly spraying into the stable, a football being thrown, or sound played. Each group was then instructed to return the associated stall and go through a new training session. In the new learning session, they taught each mare to find hidden food under the traffic cone that a handler pointed out. They then taught the mares to search for the hidden food that was under the cone.
When the feed ended, the horses in this group who had a positive experience stopped picking the cones much quicker than their counterparts from other groups. They were quick to acknowledge the change in circumstances and that picking cones was not a motivation anymore.
The horses who were trained in an unsatisfactory stall continued to pick up the cone.
Equine learning in a positive environment makes them more flexible. They can adapt their behavior better.
Horse owners need to remember that in order to get the best results and welfare for their horses, they should train them in places they are familiar with.
