One of the most common reasons people think training with positive reinforcement isn't reliable is: "The treats in your pocket will never compete with every distraction and trigger in the real world!"

It's an understandable concern. We've all seen, and perhaps tried, waving a carrot or bucket of feed under a horse's nose to lure them into a float (trailer), or to coax an escapee back into the paddock - and seen that fail about as often as it succeeds.

It all comes down to a huge misunderstanding about how positive reinforcement (R+) works. It's not the treat in your pocket competing with everything the horse might find distracting, tempting or worrying - it's the reinforcement history and the positive association (positive conditioned emotional response / CER+) the horse has developed to your cues as a *result* of all the treats you've previously given, strengthening and maintaining the behaviours you need.

That history is exponentially more powerful than the value of any particular treat you might offer in the moment. This is why positive reinforcement is not only used for pets and tricks (as is often claimed), but also to train animals doing a huge variety of important, serious and often life-saving work, who must do long sequences of trained behaviour, in highly distracting and sometimes frightening or dangerous environments, with little to no reinforcement until they've completed the whole task. R+ training has proven to be extremely reliable with dogs, birds, dolphins (in the open ocean), the Apopo landmine detection rats and various others. This really does work with horses too - the principles of learning apply to all animals.

Like any training, it has to be done properly to be as effective as possible. But that doesn't mean you need to be an amazingly skilled trainer with years of experience to start achieving brilliant results with your own animals. It means you need a solid foundation in the basic (most important!) knowledge and skills, and to get in there and actually practice and do the training.

Every single time something "hasn't worked" with my own animals, it's been down to me being a lazy trainer and not having actually DONE enough training. Not a failure of R+ itself.

There are many more times R+ has come through, and shocked even me with just how effective it is.

One of many times I discovered exactly how powerful force free, R+ training can be was the day I discovered four of my horses had escaped their paddock. I found them way down the road, munching away happily on an abundance of lush green grass.

They came to me as soon as I called them, thanks to recall training and practice training on grass.

I had no halters or lead ropes with me, and no decent treats. All I had was half a pocket of fairly boring pellets.

My preference would have been to have something higher value, and a lot of it. Not to lure them along, but to reinforce such amazing behaviour in a situation where they had so many temptations and so much freedom, and still chose to do as I asked.

All four, without hesitation, followed me away from the open paddock full of delicious grass and along the road. All for the occasional bland pellet, which I was very stingy with, trying to ensure I didn't run out. Not because they'd stop following if I did - but because it was important to reinforce actually going back into their paddock at the end.

Two of them walked along calmly, while the other two had some fun jumping up and down the banks at the side of the road, just like dogs enjoying an off lead walk. But they stayed with me and came to target my hand when I needed them to stick close while we went around a bend in the road.

This happened thanks to lots of practice "leading" - first with no equipment, and then with the halter and lead on but never used to apply pressure as negative reinforcement or positive punishment. For a R+ trained horse the behaviour should be the same and they should follow cues regardless of equipment, because the equipment isn't there or needed for control.

I do understand the naysayers. Many people have trouble with horses even using the aversive methods humans have been "perfecting" for centuries. How could force free training alone possibly be reliable and safe? The scientific evidence about how and why positive reinforcement works with all species, in combination with the real world experience of those of us who use it, shows that it absolutely does.

Written by Kate Shaw and the PPGA Equine Sub-Committee