 Bear IT Design & Photography
Dryhead Ranch 2011 - The Experience
Introduction
I really didn’t know much about horses, nor did I want to, until I started photographing wild horses in Idaho and Oregon about four years ago. My good friend, Sam Mattise, worked for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) during the last years of his career managing the wild horse program in Idaho. He directed me to several mustang herds in the area that I might be able to photograph. I’ve shot wildlife mainly for many years, but decided that wild horses were basically a wild animal and might make good subjects for large prints. In addition to mustangs, I’d been photographing rodeos and ranch work, so mustangs fit right in with my latest interests.
I also photographed mustangs and a mustang trainer at a couple of BLM mustang adoptions at their corrals in Boise. This led me to visit the trainer, Mario Johnson, at his ranch in Georgetown, Idaho. He took me on a trail ride into the mountains the first day, then showed me how he trains horses, mustangs in particular. He let me ride Regal on that trail ride, a mustang he trained for an Extreme Mustang Makeover competition which he won. I learned a lot about horses and horse training from Mario in the short time I was with him. He had a way of working with horses that I found logical and comfortable. He said that whatever he was trying to get the horse to do, he “wanted the horse to think it was his idea.”
Now photographing mustangs from the ground using a long lens and a tripod is one thing, but photographing from the top of a horse is another, and something I wanted to learn to do. I attended a session on photographing from a horse at Shooting the West, a photo workshop in Winnemucca, Nevada a couple of years ago, thinking I would gain some good techniques. As it turned out, the presenter, a rancher from California, used his tiny point and shoot camera to take photos when he moved his cattle during spring and fall. I saw some decent images, but not of the type and quality that I needed. I shoot with a Nikon D300 with 70-200 lens attached, a much heavier and larger and more durable camera than a point and shoot. Thus, the session didn’t quite cater to my specific needs.
With such a large camera, I needed a way to carry and use it on the horse, and be able to ride the horse. With this in mind, I started asking folks I knew who had horses to teach me about them, including how to ride. I had a few say they’d help, but for one reason or another, they weren’t able to. I still wasn’t finding the answer that I was looking for. Then, coincidently, I met Teri at an art festival in Eagle, who just happened to own and operate stables not far from where I lived. She and I were trying to sell our art and started talking about horses. Eventually I asked her if she would help me learn about horses and riding and she agreed. In fact, she said she had a 3-year-old mare that had had some training but needed more. And, if I wanted to train it, I was welcome to and she would help when needed. I quickly agreed.
So, nearly a year ago, I started learning about horses, and Pepper, in particular. Before this, I’d ridden a horse maybe once a million years ago. When we first attempted to put a halter on Pepper, the two of us had to corner her in her paddock. We led her out so she could be groomed, but I didn’t even know how to tie her up, or much of anything else for that matter. She didn’t mind being brushed, but when it came time to pick up her feet for cleaning, no way! She and I struggled with this for a couple of weeks, with her stepping on my foot, a very unpleasant experience. I howled like a wolf and was foot sore for days.
As I continued to work with Pepper, using the techniques Teri taught me, I read several books and articles on horse training. I also thought about my time spent with Mario, the mustang trainer, at his ranch and how he approached horse training. I tried to put these folk’s methods and beliefs about animal training in perspective along with my own training in animal behavior that I’d received during my graduate training in wildlife ecology and animal behavior. Having been introduced to naturalists’ versus animal psychologists’ points of view on animal behavior, gave me a lot to think about when it came to digesting and applying all the information presented to me about horse training.
Most of my experience with animal behavior has been with carnivores, which behave much differently than herbivores. Herbivores, such as horses, have a flight or fight response to threatening stimuli. The difference in training these two types of animals comes down to using positive reinforcement and punishment with carnivores, e.g. dogs, and negative reinforcement and punishment with horses.
If one doesn’t know the psychological lingo, it can be difficult discussing training methods. In short, positive reinforcement is doing something to the animal after it behaves in a certain way that will increase the probability of the behavior occurring again. Punishment is the opposite. Negative reinforcement is doing something to the animal that it doesn’t like and taking it away when the animal behaves in a certain way. This is the primary way horses are trained and it’s called “release”. Most horse trainers that I’ve read about or talked with, use negative reinforcement and punishment mostly, and positive reinforcement seldom.
A couple of examples might be useful to understand the difference. If you want a horse to back up while riding, you would pull backwards on the bit with an alternating left-right pull on the reins until it backs up, then you release the pressure on the bit. Pulling back on the bit is uncomfortable for the horse, so when you release the pressure after it backs up, you are reinforcing the horse and increasing the probability that it will back up next time when you pull back on the reins. If you pull back on the reins, let go when it backs up, then rubbed the horse’s neck, and the horse liked the neck rub, then you would be using both negative and positive reinforcement to train the horse to back up.
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