Dog Training vs Horse Training

I have now been training dogs professionally for a little over a year. I trained horses professionally for 12 years. I have found dog owners to be entirely unlike horse owners in how they approach training as well in how they approach their own responsibilities as animal owners.

Here is a brief outline of the differences that I have found in the general lay-owner for each species.

1. The learning process.

Horses have little innate need to be trained. No one will ever state that an untrained horse is in some way missing out. Horses have no intrinsic need to please their owners. No one ever asked me how to motivate their horse to learn. Horse owners train horses and horses learn whether they wish to or not.

An interesting counterpoint to this is that in spite of a dog's innate desire to please, and overall better mental health when they are trained - horse owners are far more likely to believe that training their animal is absolutely mandatory. Dog owners are much more willing to put up with issues stemming from an untrained dog.

Dogs actually must have some level of training both to live within the family structure and to fulfill intrinsic psycho-social needs - horses can get by with only basic handling skills.

Few horse owners would attempt to DIY train their horse - almost all dog owners will.

2. Problem behaviors:

Almost all horse owners will see their horse's problem behaviors as a training issue - whether they lay the blame at their horse's feet or their own, behavior is related to training.

Dog owners see many problem behaviors as intrinsic to the dog and therefore fixed, or due to boredom.

Horse owners will try to train their way past problem behaviors. Do owners will try to buy toys, special collars, harnesses or decorate the house in puppy pads in an effort to address problem behaviors.

3: Training philosophy:

Horse owners have a saying, "you are always training", which they use to illustrate the need to be endlessly vigilant about how they interact with their horse. They also understand training to be a long term - usually many months, and in most cases many years to decades - activity. Horses are rarely 'trained', they tend to always be 'in training'.

Many horses start training after a previous career has ended - an ex-barrel horse becomes a kid's 4-H mount, an ex-racehorse starts again as a jumper, an ex-trotter starts life anew as a police horse.

Dog owners think that training is a fixed experience. They 'train' for x number of minutes a day. It is also a very short-term exercise. Most dogs are 'trained' in a few weeks. Many people believe that if their dog reaches a certain age and doesn't know something she never will.

Most people train puppies and that's all. Adult dogs either know it all, or are incapable of learning more.

Training errors:

Communication with an animal can be frustrating for people and in the case of both dog and equine owners, often the fault for misunderstanding is placed on the animal instead of on the human.

In the case of horses, owners will resort to 'louder' hands and more aggressive cueing. They may move to different mechanical means to 'fix' what they have failed to train, compounding errors and needlessly causing suffering.

Dog owners over use their voice. Some 'chatter' at their dogs or 'explain', others repeat cues or get louder. When these fail, they too move to equipment to solve the problem, this leads to the same needless suffering that it does in horses.

Interestingly, horsemen are more educated about the tools that they use than dog owners. A horse owner, switching out a plain snaffle for a double-twisted-wire to put more 'brakes ' on their horse, knows that the reason that this may work is that the new bit hurts more.

Dog owners believe nothing of the sort, they will change to a harness or collar designed to stop pulling and will never ask how this miracle gets done.

Training styles:

Horse owners tend to see training as methodical. Halter training is done from birth, a lot of thought is put into method and style of training and it begins as soon as it can. Then comes longing and long-lining and then slowly at year two or three under saddle work.

Dog owners tend to slap a collar on the dog and expect the dog to 'get it'. Owners rarely think of how the environment affects their dog, and are shocked when their dogs make a hash of walking on a leash in a new environment.

As stated above, no horse owner wonders how to motivate a horse to learn. This is partly because training in horses is a one-way contract; the trainer trains, the horse absorbs. The horse does not get a say in how he feels about training. A good trainer will adjust to learning style and speed as well as physical limitations, but will never expect the horse to eagerly engage in the learning process. That is not to say that horses may not enjoy being trained, or that some horses do not actively participate in their training, it is merely to observe that neither of these is a prerequisite.

Dogs are expected to engage in the process. Partly because it makes training easier for us, and partly because we feel better as trainers if we see that the dog too gets something from the interaction. Dogs who are 'shut down', 'dull' or 'flat' are more difficult to train than dogs who are eager and involved. We expect the dog to engage in the process, and if they do not they are generally considered to be at fault.

Obviously these are generalizations, and they are based on the experiences of one person, but overall it appears that the general populations of people owning these two species both expect their animals to perform certain actions reliably; horse people have largely seen the method to attain this as training, whereas it appears that many dog owners think that these expectations can be achieved through osmosis.

Bad Dog!

That's what my husband said when he saw this:

(In case you can't tell what you're looking at, that black thing at their feet is the chewed up corpse of an ATV seat - seat number three, in fact (and don't think the dog on the left (Dice) looks guilty, he always looks like that when asked to do anything. He smooshes his ears and gets all happy and silly - it just photographs as guilt.))

But you can't be a bad dog if you don't know that you are doing something wrong, and of course, there's the problem.

I had failed this dog.

I work hard to ensure that my dogs never make mistakes inside the house. They are never permitted even a second without supervision until I have instilled every house rule to them over and over again, and they have proven to me time and again that they can be entrusted to make only good decisions. I watch them likes hawks.

And my dogs are fantastic inside.

Outside is a different matter.

Outside there is almost nothing that they can destroy, so they destroy nothing; there are few places in my yard where they can dig that would bother me, so they don't dig inappropriately. There are endless sticks to chew and lizards to chase, so they never get bored and chew or chase things that they should not. 

Until they do. Until a mouse runs into an ATV and the dog chases it there and tries to get it out by any means necessary. Until that same dog discovers that it isn't one mouse, but mice, and they are hiding in all the ATVs and in the engine compartment of my car and my truck. Until then.

Then they, in this case, he, is a bad dog.

Of course this destruction cannot continue. A problem that begins explosively within a period of several weeks and progresses to this level cannot be ignored.

So, what to do?

This is how dogs end up homeless.

That is the easy, and to some, sensible, solution. There are likely thousands of homes where a dog like this will not ever again have the opportunity to destroy property to capture rodents; he is well-trained, loving, beautiful, and friendly. He would find a home, a normal home where there is no opportunity to chase rodents into cars.

But, is it fair for the dog to have to deal with the disruption and confusion of a new home when it is I and not he who has failed? When it is I who am the bad owner, not he who is the bad dog?  After all, he doesn't know that his actions are criminal.

But, and this is an important but, is it fair to have to live with a dog that destroys hundreds of dollars of ATV seats in the space of a few days? Is it fair that he has done thousands of dollars of damage to two vehicles, one brand new? 

Whenever we look at a dog's behavior, as much as we want to place all of the blame on the owners (which, in most cases is accurate) we also have to admit that there are behaviors that many people would deem inappropriate enough that they cannot continue to have it at all. That's where we are with this dog. There can be no more destroyed vehicles, no more chewed up seats. We have reached the land of zero tolerance.

And, of course, none of this took place when we were watching, so as furious as my husband is at the dog, we have no recourse. Unlike a child we cannot explain to him what he is being punished for and ground him for eternity or take away his internet. The deed was done, and adding to the frustration is the fact that there will never be justice. The dog will never 'pay' for his criminal behavior.

So, the only way to go is forward. I immediately begin to rack my brain for solutions. Solutions that will serve to help the dog understand that murdering vehicles to get to rodents is illegal, while ensuring that in the interim he doesn't cause still more mayhem. It takes work, and now, it takes supervision outside as well as in. It means that his outdoor life is now as circumscribed as his indoor life. It means working on impulse control, and more training, and keeping him away from the vehicles for as long as it takes. And it will take a long time.

Most of all it will take work, diligence, and effort. There can be no quick fix for this. I cannot stint on the commitment to both my vehicles' resale value, and my dog's ability to continue living here. Both are important. I am not one of those people who is capable of living with any behavior a dog may throw at me, there are absolutely situations that I would find untenable - this is actually quite close - but since his actions threaten no lives (except - presumably - mice), I am willing to deal with the changes necessary to help this dog succeed at my house.

I bring this whole thing up to illustrate several points: 1) If we don't teach the dog that something is wrong, then it is ok. 2) If we do not see something happen, then there is no 'explaining' the situation to the dog and punishing the dog retroactively. 3) Depending on the act, this can cause extreme anger and frustration in the human, and it will take effort to keep that from spilling over into the relationship with the dog. 4) Complex behaviors, especially those we were unable to nip in the bud, or we have a low probability of witnessing in person (such as a mouse sprinting into the guts of an ATV with a dog in hot pursuit) are time consuming to solve. 5) no one has to live with a behavior they do not like, but the alternative is not neutral to the dog. Some dogs take disruption and rehoming in stride, believing all strangers are their best friends - these dogs rehome well. Sensitive, wary, and weird dogs, like Dice, do not rehome well - it took me about 6 months of daily work to connect with this dog. 6) working through issues takes time, and work, and commitment, and failure to do so will end in failure and frustration.

Cody thought the ATV seat on the floor was a piece of agility equipment and kept climbing onto it looking for a treat.