Q: Does punishing horses work to deter them from certain behaviors, and when is punishment appropriate for a horse?

A: Punishment is doing some action with the goal of decreasing the likelihood of a behavior reoccurring. This is opposed to positive and negative reinforcement, which are techniques meant to increase the likelihood of a desired behavior reoccurring.

Punishment come in two forms: positive and negative. Positive punishment is adding something, such as a physical correction. Negative punishment is taking something away, like holding back a reward. Here, I want to discuss positive punishment, because that’s mostly what we think of when we talk about punishing horses. A simple example is hitting a horse when he bites you.

Punishment as a method of behavior modification is very difficult to do correctly. When I say correctly, I mean that it must be appropriate in type and intensity to the undesired behavior, and it must be very precisely timed. The timing is absolutely critical (generally it’s said within 1-2 seconds of the behavior occurring) because the punishment must be close enough in time to the misbehavior for the horse to make the correct association