I do!!

You don’t have to understand learning theory to train horses…. but it helps!

I trained my first animal when I was a child. We grew up with dogs in the house, and I loved playing around with them. My Grandpa had gun dogs so the idea that an animal could be trained was very much a familiar one in our house. It was the 80s/ 90s and we used a mixture of the carrot and the stick.

I knew nothing about learning theory, but I was still able to train my dog to sit, heel, find toys, retrieve….

We all have an instinctive understanding of reward and punishment, after all,  humans learn that way too.

When I got my first horse on loan as a teenager, I couldn’t wait to have a go at training her.

Luckily for me, I had fairly good natural timing, I was observant, and she was pretty easy going and tolerant. So I had a fair degree of success.

But that isn’t always the case. So even though we might have that instinctive understanding, we don’t all always get the results we would like, because not all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are there.

This is where the conscious, explicit understanding of learning theory comes in. I first formally studied learning theory when doing my Psychology degree. Having that clear, scientific understanding opened so many doors for me. I began to understand what was happening when training ‘failed’  or ‘went wrong’, when the animal learned something completely different to what the trainer had intended.

Of course, key to that was not just my academic understanding of learning theory, it was my wider knowledge of Psychology: of motivation, emotion, stress, the nervous system. Alongside that was my developing knowledge of horse behaviour and welfare. When I looked at learning theory in this wider context, I felt like I had the key that unlocked so many doors. I could understand how and why horses did what they did,  when it was appropriate to use training to change this, when it was important to look at the other aspects in terms of management and handling and how these impacted on well being.

I’ve gone in to teach this in a wide variety of contexts, from stable yards to universities, from every day owner through Pony Club to Post Graduate level.

I do very much believe that having a grounding in learning theory in context is of value to anyone involved with horses, because, even though we feel like we only train when we intend to, in actual fact, the horses are always learning. Having that knowledge and understanding helps us to see and understand why they act the way they do.

This Monday evening 16th March is the 4th session in my live Evening Behaviour Series, in person, in Hillsborough Village Centre. We have already studied behaviour, motivation and body language/ expression/ communication. If you’ve missed those classes, there will be an opportunity to catch up, just let me know what you’re interested in. On Monday we will be exploring learning theory. There are just three spaces still available, I’d love to see you there!

In order to get more information and to book on, just click on the link and scroll down to the book here button.

Workshops, Courses and Classes 2026