How Food Can Change Your Training and Relationship

Over the last few clinics we have been refining how people use food in their training. The clinics have made me reflect a little on food and how we use it in training, why I think it's good and why I think you should use it too. Food is a funny subject in horse training—there are people who use it all the time and only food, there are people who are completely against it. It is a very polarising and charged topic, it is even spoken about on social media like it's a massive welfare issue. In reality, it isn't. For us, we use both positive reinforcement (food, scratches, etc.) and negative reinforcement (pressure and release), and there are good reasons for this approach.

Predominantly there are two main ways we mark and reinforce behaviour when we are training with horses: negative and positive reinforcement.

We use negative reinforcement as the main cueing system for everything we do with horses. We don't avoid using pressure because the world is full of pressure. We want to use our leg and hand to give aids and cues, and it's also more efficient, which matters when working within training timeframes, if horses come to us to train clients are training by the week and in reality that means we need to find the kindest most effective way to train. The only stage of our programme where we don't use food is Stage 1—somatics and relaxation. These are exercises that help horses release tension and regulate their nervous system. We avoid food at this stage because in a state of tension, when the horse is not in a relaxed headspace, we don't want to condition the food to equal tension.

We have found that using pressure and somatics to get the horses regulated, then starting to use food when we are working for psychology, can be really useful.

Here's what we've learned from observing different training methods in action. We have friends who are pure positive reinforcement trainers, and they have encountered real problems when situations go wrong. One was riding a horse that spooked at something, and they used their rope to slow the horse. Because that preparation with pressure wasn't done, the horse felt that pressure and it added to their trigger stack—the accumulation of stressors that can overwhelm a horse's ability to cope. The trainer was injured and the horse had a bad experience.

We don't avoid pressure because it's more about our relationship to pressure, not the horse's. Pressure can be like a dance—it can be conditioned to be a positive experience. Food doesn't equal a complete picture on its own.

When you only use negative reinforcement you can often over school the "drive" element and create too much obedience and not enough desire from the horse, negative reinforcement can when used badly create good robots or fear of consequence!

When you introduce a motivator like food or scratches, it can really help your horses to have a reason to do things beyond just "you told them to." Food activates the seeking and appetitive parts of the brain, which creates motivation and engagement that goes deeper than compliance.

A lot of trainers talk about the release being a reward. It isn't—it's just a mark. The release tells the horse they got the answer right, but food provides actual motivation and creates positive associations with the work.

Often the main problem people report is "my horse is too excited by food" or "they are too muggy." This is not the horse's fault—it's just about the way it's been trained.

Horses seek and rummage to find forage. They are sniffing and rooting around all the time in the field and paddock—that's normal, natural behaviour. If they are rubbing on your pockets, it's because they are being a horse and you haven't shown them how to get the reward.

This happened on a clinic recently where we were using food and the horses started to get frustrated. The issue was a lack of structure and clarity as to how and when the horse got the treat.

The real solution for horses who drag you for grass is that you should give them grass. Not all the time, but set up a system: "Now I am telling you you can eat, now we are working." Otherwise they panic because they think you are never going to let them eat.

If I felt I was never allowed to eat and someone never gave me any clarity on when we could or couldn't eat, I would grab every snack I walked past. It's the same with treats and food training—the horse needs to know how it works.

If however, I was clear—almost like a contract that when you do X and I say a particular word, you receive your £10, then you would have some clarity and relax around the idea that I am going to reward when I say I will. So we need structure.

First, load a word or sound and connect it to the treat. This is the step a lot of people miss. It comes from clicker training, where a click has the same meaning as the food itself. You can use a clicker, but I don't—I don't like having to carry something.

I use the word "Yes." It makes me feel good when I say it, and I tend not to use it at other times around the horses, at least not in the same tone and intention. Be careful when you pick your word though—if it's something you use all the time, you will come unstuck as you need to use this as your marker word.

A marker word simply is the way you say to your horse "I liked that behaviour" and capture it with the word. So my horse walks forwards and I say "yes"—it understands that I liked it and it also knows a treat is coming.

Loading that word involves repeatedly pairing the word with the treat until they become connected in the horse's mind. Start by saying your marker word, then immediately giving a treat. Repeat this 10-15 times until you can see the horse's ears prick or their attention focus when they hear the word, even when they can't see the treat coming.

This process is like Pavlov's dog experiment—you have connected and conditioned the treat to the word. Once the horse understands the word equals treat, you don't have to rush to get the treat there—you have a few seconds to give them the treat, even longer as they become more established with the system.

How you feed the treat matters enormously. You can reward them for where they put their head and teach them to take the treat out of your space, not invade yours to get it. ALL horses can learn this, no matter how muggy. In fact, the muggier the horse, the easier they tend to be to train. Mugginess normally means they are really interested in the food and idea, which gives you something to work with.

Practice offering treats in a way that encourages the horse to keep their head in their own space. Hold the treat slightly away from your body and wait for them to reach for it politely rather than pushing into you.

Then you start to use it to mark and shape behaviour. I find that rewarding at about 6-10 rewards a minute is about the right amount—this works out to roughly one reward every 6-10 seconds when you're actively training. Any less and the horse becomes frustrated as the puzzle of what you are asking is too hard. Any more and it's too easy—they start to not try too hard as things become easy.

You can do it with whatever you are working on. Some examples from my sessions this week - I worked on boundaries with a new horse, I rewarded relaxation on a trot circle with another horse, and with another I was teaching the lie-down and the first steps of the piaffe marking each try rewarding and motivating the next.

Conditioning means you connect the feeling with the experience and the food. So let's imagine whenever I feel sad and cry, I eat a pizza. This is a true fact.

Now imagine the only time I eat pizza is when I cry. No other times. Then someone takes me to Pizza Express. My conditioned response to the pizza—even if I am at a happy pizza party—will be to connect it to the feeling I have put into it, and the Pizza Express trip becomes quite embarrassing.

The rule is that you connect the food to the feeling that the horse is experiencing when you load a treat. So load the treat when the horse feels relaxed and positive, and it needs to be backed up so that when they are with the vet and getting worried, the treat counteracts that feeling and helps them to remember happier times. Then you need to revisit the loading a little bit to help them get good with the treat again. 

This is why I also eat pizza when I am happy—for science.

For horses who are a little on the chunky side, they need low-calorie options. I can recommend nettle low-calorie treats—they tend to work well, or hay or hay cobs. It doesn't need to be anything too special.

In fact, training with treats when horses are on grass or have access to other forage can really show you if the horse is interested more in you or in the other forage and help to find the level of engagement your horse actually has. If your horse ignores your training treats to eat grass, you know you either need higher value treats or to work on your relationship first.

I think sometimes this can be true in certain moments, but most of the time I think it is communication. The horse says, "I don't like this but will do it because it's you, or because you are using more pressure than it's worth pushing back against."

But the food really gave him a reason—it changed his expression dramatically! And as a result, the movement became looser and more engaged. Instead of compliance, we got willing participation.

When this happens, we go back a step, reload the treat, sometimes take the treat away first and go back to somatics to get the horses regulated, and then feed and reassociate the food with relaxation. Sometimes the person needs to break down the structure of the exercise in a better way and make the steps smaller. The key is recognizing that the emotion around food is information about the training, not a character flaw in the horse.

We work in Stage 1 on energy on and off through our somatic exercises. The somatics is the key to stepping out of treat training. My body language shifts to "off," the session has stopped, we hang out and you relax, and we don't need treats.

For some, another way is to build in a cue—say a gesture with your hands that signals you have ended the session and there are no more treats coming after that. This, like a lot of things, is down to personal preference.

For me, it follows what we do with pressure—it's actually no different. Be clear and fair with what you are asking. If the horse doesn't understand, break it down. If it's too easy and they are getting it, then up the ante and keep it interesting. Make sure that you are fair and keep a clear system of rewarding and marking with both positive and negative reinforcement. Then when you finish, make sure your horse feels relaxed and you connect with them and then head home. When the horse understands your body language then your able to close down a session without an external cue, it comes from a feeling.

Sometimes we want to treat because for some of us, food can equal love. Give your love by just rubbing or scratching them and connecting with them. We don't need cake to be shown someone loves us—we just need presence and connection. Horses are no different.