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Teaching a horse to stand at the mounting block, pick up a trot transition, or run a barrel pattern are all relatively straightforward. However, most of the horse riding, training, and showing involves complex, multi-step behaviors. You don't just want your horse to trot, you want that to pick up the passage while staying in an outline and maintaining cadence and elevation. You don't just want your horse to run barrels, you want them to turn right in the pocket, get their legs under them, and fly out of the turn.
Even relatively simple tricks like the Spanish walk or lying down cannot be taught all at once. Horses do not understand our goals or motivations as humans. They don't know we want them to run faster, jump the whole course, or give a passage. These complex skills are things that need to be taught over time and in small pieces in a process called shaping.
What is Shaping
Shaping is a highly effective tool r+ horse trainers can put in their toolboxes. In practice, shaping is the process of rewarding successive approximations until the desired criteria is met. The process forces trainers to break down complex behaviors into easily understood pieces. This can help avoid the frustration (in both parties) that comes with misunderstandings between horses and their trainers.
Shaping works like this:
Pretend for a moment you are a grade-schooler that does not yet understand complex mathematical formulas. You are given this equation to solve:
The desired behavior is you coming up with the number 20 as the correct solution to the problem. However, you do not know what all the strange symbols mean, so your teacher has to shape your understanding of the equation. The steps to shape this problem might look like this:
First, the teacher you that anything in parenthesis has to be solved first
Then you are shown how to add 6 + 4 to get 10
Next, you are taught how to multiply 4 x 10 to get 40
Finally, that teacher teaches you how to divide 40 by 2 to get the desired answer of 20
At first, the problems may have appeared impossible to grade school you, but when the teacher took the time to break down the equation into digestible pieces the answer, over time, became easy to determine.
Shaping in R+ Horse Training
This same idea can be used in r+ horse training to teach complex behaviors. Currently, I am teaching my standardbred how to do the Spanish walk- a movement where the horse stretches their front legs out at the walk. To shape the behavior, I started small and slowly built up the criteria until he was doing the Spanish walk. My shaping plan for the Spanish walk looked like this:
1. First, I taught him that when I tapped his front
leg he was supposed to lift it up.
2. Then, I practiced having him pick up his opposite front leg when I tapped it.
3. Slowly, I began rewarding higher leg lifts.
4. Then, I asked him to lift one leg and then the other to obtain rewards.
5. Over time, I increase the amount of leg lifts back
and forth he had to do.
6. Then, I asked him to lift one leg at a time while
walking.
7. Once that was mastered, I moved on to asking for
one leg to lift and then the other at the walk. Finally, we had a crude Spanish walk.
8. The last step is to continually refine the movement
to perfection.
How to Use Shaping
Even though it can sound complex at first, once you get the hang of it, breaking down and shaping behaviors will come naturally. Following a few procedures can help trainers achieve success in their first steps into learning shaping.
1. Plan your criteria ahead of time
Always start by determining what you want as a final behavior. Write it down if you have to so you have a crystal-clear image of what behavior you are working towards.
2. Brake it down into small steps
Whether it is 2 or 20, break your desired behavior into as many small steps as possible for maximum clarity. Write out each step so you have a clear image in your mind so you know what you are rewarding at each step and when to move on.
3. Advance slowly
Move on to the next step slowly and only after your horse has mastered the basics. After moving on stop rewarding previous steps but always feel free to move backward if your horse gets confused or frustrated.
Once you have mastered shaping, you can teach your horse any number of complex behaviors. Before getting started, learn more about the 6 principles of effective shaping to set yourself and your horse up for success.