Consequences drive behaviour (videos)
Buckwheat, Picture by Peggy Hogan
While on Peggy Hogan’s clinic with amazing, educated horses she reminded me of a very important distinction. It’s not what we do that makes the behaviour happen. Consequences drive behaviour.
I was working with Buckwheat on movement. He is an educated horse and knows many cues and behaviours already. Our task was to shape forward movement. And just because horse already knows it, it doesn’t mean he will respond to you. And I struggled with it. It was a lot easier to see back up from him than forward. And I was looking for causes in my body language and in my cues. I was thinking of how I wasn’t clear to him. But Peggy reminded me of this beautiful sentence “consequences drive behaviour”. He was heavily reinforced for back up. This will be the behaviour to go-to for him. I needed to build the forward movement from scratch and provide positive consequences for it. It’s not what I do before that makes the behaviour happen. It's what comes after that matters.
And how do you go about it? You reinforce every small movement forward. And you reinforce it heavily. And then you see the progression. From just a lean forward, you get a step forward that you "click and treat". The more positive consequences animal gets for the behaviour you work on, the more likely it is to happen in the future. And when he gave me back-up again, that's ok too! It's his auto behaviour that we want from him. That's what Peggy horses do to get reinforcement. They move back. And then you don't see any mugging. All you see is the animal voluntarily back-up. We will reinforce that! :) It's about me working harder on forward, to make it worthwhile for him to do. Even the smallest approximation, if that's your starting point. And consequences will drive behaviour :)