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doggie equivalents. Horses are not humans. And they aren’t dogs. If you treat a horse like a puppy, you will never be his leader. I’m not saying you shouldn’t give your horse a hug or a rub. But a dog will do virtually anything for a hug. A horse will do virtually nothing for a hug. But he will do virtually anything for his respected leader. And he will continually test that leader to see if he or she is still worthy of the title.
    It was in the pasture that I learned all this, and began to understand how to be a horse. I had finally found where I was to begin. I was ecstatic.
    None of the DVDs had said any of this early enough to suit me. And very few effectively embraced the concept of how a horse learns until well into the program. Simply understanding what
reward
is to a horse made so much difference in the way I approached the task of training. But like learning to get out into the pasture, I had to skip ahead in those DVDs to find it.
    Reward for a horse, I finally discovered, true reward, comes from release of pressure.
    And with that reward comes learning. Communication. Understanding.
    It’s as simple as that.
    In the wild, when being chased by a cougar, the horse’s reward is when the cougar turns back.
    Release of the pressure.
    And so it is in the herd. When the matriarch disciplines the foal by sending him away from the herd, and pressures him to stay away, it is the release of that pressure, when the foal submits, that is his reward. As the foal begins to understand what it takes to avoid the pressure, he will submit earlier the next time. And, hopefully, not be a bad boy at all the third time.
    When a dominant leader says,
Move your butt over,
the instant the follower responds, the leader drops the pressure. The lesson:
If I move my butt when she applies pressure, she will release the pressure and I will no longer feel uncomfortable.
    The next time, that same horse will move his butt sooner. And before long, a simple look from the leader will do the job. No swelling up. No pointed movements. Maybe just a drop of the ears. Or a flick of the head.
    And so it is as we teach. It’s not so much what we do, but rather the release of pressure the very instant the horse gives even a hint of the desired response. Then, depending upon the horse, it usually doesn’t take long to reach the conclusion:
Oh, I get it. If I move over when Joe does that, he releases the pressure, so that must be what he wants.
    In effect, this is an extension of the doctrine of choice.
Do I want the pressure or the comfort of no pressure? I think I’ll move over and thereby choose no pressure.
    Maybe Kathleen and I are weird, but we agree that having a thorough understanding of how a horse learns, and how the herd teaches one another, how they receive information and understanding, would provide so much more insight into the training process. And be a richer foundation from which to launch.
    Concept-based learning.
    This all came together for me one day as I was scanning a DVD and stumbled onto a very simple little exercise with an in-depth conceptual analysis of why it worked. The exercise was simply to get the horse to lower his head when asked. No sticks involved. No arenas. No stumbling around trying to rub my belly while patting my head. Just me and Cash. Up close and personal.
    The lesson began with understanding that all horses, by nature, resist pressure. And lean into pressure. When you push on an unschooled horse’s hindquarters, the hindquarters will come toward you. Push on his shoulder and he’ll lean into you. Pull down on an unschooled horse’s halter and he will resist and pull up. That’s because the pressure, to him, is actually at the top of the halter. He feels the top strap pushing down. So he pushes into that pressure by lifting his head. These are genetic traits, embedded for survival. When a wolf sinks his teeth into a horse’s underbelly, the horse’s only chance for survival is to push down, to apply