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Writer's pictureHannah Parrett

The difference between training/learning and control.

When we see animals with people, they can seem to be one of two things - compliant and engaged with their person, or the opposite. Their handler can be either talking to their body, their mind, or talking to their mind through their body, and various levels of in betweens.


Often when we look at people who have spent years accruing a very in-depth skill set for communicating with animals, particularly with adult animals who have been labelled as difficult, or who have learned to behave in a way that doesn't sit comfortably in human society, in the beginning we will see control.

An animal that has been controlled, won't necessarily have learned the behaviours he is displaying. He may be displaying them because he currently has no choice not to.

The control will turn into learning for the animal if the person wishes it to, or the animal can remain in a state of 'having to be controlled'.

This relates back to the previous post about the beauty of flexible learning, but involves noticing the difference in an animal that has learned behaviours and an animal that has been controlled. The two are very similar premises, but control explains how a very skilled rider or experienced dog handler can ask for and receive what look to be pretty advanced skills from very acutely communicated control. Every door was shut except the one specifically desired.

When we, as lay people or enthusiastic amateurs, go home and try these things with other animals, we can run into trouble because we are not aware of the very concise rules the control follows, or the boundaries within which we must operate, or the behaviours we must disallow for effective control.

The absolute skill I believe, comes from a desire to rehabilitate an animal's behaviour beyond the level of control and into the echelons of learning, self confidence and conversational communication.


This is, I think, where the term dominance is often misused. Control can appear to be domination. A dog that is controlling whether another dog has access to food isn't really dominating the other dog, but they are using controlling behaviour.


The beauty of raising most young animals, particularly dogs as they are fairly weak and inoffensive (from birth to ten weeks anyway), is that you don't need anything like as much control. They aren't a danger to society so the physical control can be so much less. We must remember that the only reason we need to control the animal is because we wish them to function in a specific way. If they were released into their wild environment, we would need no control, so we ought to respect them as animals we are asking something of, not as animals who are asking for something.


The safest way to rehabilitate a dangerous adult animal that has to function in human society, is first to ensure control. Once you have that, you can establish the ground rules for learning, teaching and communication. A skilled animalist will communicate the new boundaries with subtle tools or cues that cause minimal fear and no pain, using what the animal wants or needs as a motivator alone.


This is why you can't fake it 'til you make it with animals - they know when you know, and they know when you don't. If you leave a door open to 'dysfunctional' behaviour and the animal finds it, it will be hard (for you at least) to close it again, simply because it was you that didn't see it and left it open in the first place.


Thank you Ray Hunt, The Dorrances, the Parellis, Jonathon Field, Warwick Schiller.


Further reading:


The image below is a stock image offered up by the wix software when you enter the search horse. You can see that the tools of control have gone beyond any control, into just pain. There's even a tie around the animals lower jaw, ahead of the chifney and snaffle combination of the Dexter Ring Bit. This is either to prevent/enhance rearing, or to attempt an element of stopping control. These tools are trying to prevent the body from doing those things without the time invested to teach the brain to ask the body to do them.

This is probably due to the time pressures inherent to producing commercial animals. Pressure that generates a need for quick control over slower learning.


I dread to think how that particular horse feels once his blood pressure increases at gallop. At best, Not Comfortable!



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