Often “modern” trainers talk about traditional training with a sense of moral high ground and perhaps a note of superiority creeping into the voice during any comparison of tradition and modern horse training. I think the term traditional is often incorrectly used as a substitute label
Often “modern” trainers talk about traditional training with a sense of moral high ground and perhaps a note of superiority creeping into the voice during any comparison of tradition and modern horse training. I think the term traditional is often incorrectly used as a substitute label for a belief that a method of training is wrong, old fashioned and out dated. So, what is traditional and what is modern? It seems to me that if we are to make any reasonable comparison we should first establish what might be encompassed in these ideologies.
Perhaps we should turn to the dictionary for a more accurate definition?
TRADITIONAL; handing down from generation to generation of opinions and practises; the belief or practise thus passed on.
If we take this meaning of traditional, it encompasses many successful styles of riding and training such as the European Riding Schools, The British Horse Society, Germanic Dressage trainers as well as the Vaqueros to name but a few. Through these methods of training the potential of the horse as an athletic performer has been stretched considerably. These traditional methods have in many cases stood the test of time and have been extremely successful at getting horses to do what trainers wanted them to do. These traditional methods worked and continue to work or they would have been abandoned long ago.
So if the negative classification “traditional” is not due the length of time a method has survived or the success it has enjoyed, it must relate to the content of the training method. Exploring the content of traditional methods we find a common thread through them all. No matter how well concealed or attractively labelled there is a definite content of punishment and force that seem to run through these methods. The use of punishment or avoidance of negative stimulus to motivate horses learning, is perhaps one mark of traditional training. The whip and the spur are the most obvious aids of the traditional methods.
Having identified what we mean through the term traditional it is equally important to consider, what is modern? In the dictionary modern simply refers to; of present or recent times. Again here lies a problem, traditional trainers are improving their skill and updating techniques and are still currently used in the vast majority of training yards around the world, so they must be modern. However, just because a method is currently being used doesn’t make it modern.
When we talk of modern training we are really talking of the methods of motivating the horses’ performance. Many people now consider a method of training to be modern provided it appears to use a minimum amount of force and therefore many Natural Horsemanship methods fall in to this category.
However, I am not sure that we have finished the evolution of horse training just yet. While Natural Horsemanship may be relatively recent is it really modern? If we look at the training of a few other species we find the answer to this question.
In modern marine mammal training the use of the scientific principle of behaviour are the natural choice of trainers. Dog training is evolving into the more common place use of operant conditioning in the form of clicker training. Zoos are happy to use positive reinforcement to train large often potentially dangerous animals to comply with the challenging difficulties of confinement and zoo management.
For me, modern horsemanship is not Natural Horsemanship, which is just a step on the evolution of equine training, but rather modern is the applied science of behaviour. 