“The thing is this,” said Merrylegs. “Ginger has a bad habit of biting and snapping; that is why they call her Ginger, and when she was in the loose box she used to snap very much. One day she bit James in the arm and made it bleed, and so Miss Flora and Miss Jessie, who are very fond of me, were afraid to come into the stable. They used to bring me nice things to eat, an apple or a carrot, or a piece of bread, but after Ginger stood in that box they dared not come, and I missed them very much. I hope they will now come again, if you do not bite or snap.”
I told him I never bit anything but grass, hay, and corn, and could not think what pleasure Ginger found it.
“Well, I don’t think she does find pleasure,” says Merrylegs; “it is just a bad habit; she says no one was ever kind to her, and why should she not bite? Of course, it is a very bad habit; but I am sure, if all she says be true, she must have been very ill-used before she came here. John does all he can to please her, and James does all he can, and our master never uses a whip if a horse acts right; so I think she might be good-tempered here.”
Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell (1877).
… horses trained exclusively with negative reinforcement appear to make negative associations with humans, anticipating constraints they can’t control, said Lesimple. Certain training techniques and positions – as well as poor equitation style, especially of novice riders – can lead to chronic pain. Horses with chronic back pain showed more signs of depression, aggression, or learned helplessness (when they seem to “check out” of the environment that they have come to perceive as negative), she said.
“From their very earliest ages, horses develop an ‘appreciation’ of humans which is more or less positive, meaning that their perception of humans is associated with positive or negative emotions, but it is rarely neutral,” [French researcher Dr Clémence] Lesimple said. While the research provides a strong link between poor welfare and negative interactions with humans, there is a positive side to the research, said Lesimple. Improving a horse’s welfare can not only improve a horse’s relationship with humans, but when started from the beginning it can help ensure a lifetime of positive perceptions of humans on the ground, in management settings, and under saddle.
Study: Human Interaction Shapes Horses’ Negative Emotions, by Christa Lesté-Lasserre, The Horse.com, May 2015.
“Killer” horses that appear in my life in need of rehab have usually just taken aversion training principles to their logical extreme and developed an extreme aversion to human beings.