Using a whip is not horse abuse, it’s communication

“What is that whip for?” was a comment I received when I shared my post about when to start training young horses. Yesterday on a Facebook page, a member posted about her decision to use a whip with her mare, and got some comments implying that if she needed a whip, her relationship with her horse was lacking something. NOT TRUE. Using a whip is NOT horse abuse. On the contrary, it is enhanced communication.

Table of contents

What is that whip for?
What constitutes a whip?
What about other things used to communicate (ropes)?
How the horse feels about the whip
The horse’s emotion response
Anger and aggression
Punishment and conditioning
When punishment is necessary
Horses with a history of abuse
Desensitization
On petting
Peaceful coexistence, the pecking order, and whips

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The anti-whip brigade

I used to believe that people who thought using a whip with horses was abuse were people who’d never worked with horses. At all. But lately I’ve come to realize they include horse people… or at least people lurking on horse fora.

Just this morning I saw another anti-whip post: “Why is it illegal to whip dogs but legal to whip horses?” A page member had shared it from the “World Bitless Association” page. (That kind of tells you everything… not that I am against bitless solutions, but there is nothing special about not using a bit. See my post on Bits, bosals, hackamores, and sidepulls.)

There is so much wrong with that appeal to emotions. I will ignore most of it, to say that if you are “whipping a horse” (in the way it is illegal to whip dogs… beat them up) you are not using the whip correctly.

The post went on to list various things about whip use that were potentially unacceptable. There seemed to be two main objections. First, that whips can be used as punishment and punishment is bad. I’ll address punishment later, but yes, it’s better to avoid it as much as possible. Second, that because we don’t know “how the horse FEELS” about the whip we shouldn’t use it.

If you don’t know how the horse feels about the whip at any given time, you aren’t listening to your horse.

What is that whip for?

The primary purpose of the whip is communication. Horses don’t speak human and humans don’t speak horse. Over time, horses and humans learn to communicate in a sort of physical-aural polyglot. We come to understand horse body language (ears, tension, movement, etc.) and horses very quickly learn to read our body language. Body language can go a long way, sometimes too far. Rider nervousness is communicated far too fast to the horse. Horses immediately pick up on fear and aggression in humans.

But body language does not suffice to communicate everything, especially when you are on the ground. In the saddle, you have all of your weight to transmit your intent via hips, legs, balance, and so forth. From the ground, it’s all visual, plus voice. This isn’t enough, especially for horses that have been around humans all their lives. These are desensitized to the presence and vagaries of humans (whereas an untouched horse off the range will react to the slightest movement or sound). For these horses especially, a whip means “Hey, I am talking to you!”

Whip as physical manifestation of intent

A whip serves as an intention amplifier. When we were speculating on what exactly a whip was in the horse-human partnership, my boyfriend came up with this definition: The whip is a physical manifestation of intent. Because our intentions for horses happen inside our minds, and we cannot explain them in words, we need ways to communicate. A whip is one of many different tools we have to aid in expressing intent.

Of course this intent is not necessarily kind or good. Whips can be used to abuse a horse. Horses can tell when a whip is raised in anger (they are reading the entire body, not just the little stick at the end of the arm). If you’ve never abused your horse, it might not react even to your angrily held whip. If your horse is reacting with fear to a whip used calmly (see the part on emotions below), then it may be interpreting the whip as a real threat, whether from previous abuse or because you aren’t communicating well.

Eitan Beth-Halachmy, founder of Cowboy Dressage and with whom I had the privilege of working to write this book, uses whips almost exclusively to encourage forward motion. Spurs are for cuing, he claims. That’s true, and for the most part, I agree. I tend to use whips primarily to encourage forward motion. But they can and sometimes must be used to cue behavior.

In some situations, whips are vital.

For example, many “trick” horses are cued visually with whips out of necessity: the trainer has to be outside the camera frame. Whips are also used to get a horse to put their ears forward for in-hand or halter classes, or for the camera.

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Similarly, whips can be essential for driving horses. The driver cannot touch the horse otherwise, except by slapping the reins on the back. Slapping the reins is not a very good way of communicating, since the horse feels it in the mouth too. True, the driver can rely on voice and reins. Good driving horses are very forward, and a whip might not be needed. However, it’s still good to carry one, and for some disciplines (e.g., carriage driving) it is required for competitions.

Riders with short legs relative to the horse may be in as much need of a whip as drivers. A lazy horse is quick to notice that a child has few resources available for enforcing forward motion. Insisting that the child rely on legs alone can result in loss of position and thumping of the horse’s sides. Ironically, the more a horse is kicked, the less sensitive it will become.

What constitutes a whip?

The post I mentioned above (poorly) defines whip as “a strip of leather or length of cord fastened to a handle, used for flogging or beating a person or for urging on an animal.”

**Their purpose is clearly to vilify whips… I mean, why even mention flogging people? Nowadays, how many people are whipped outside of consensual S&M? Not saying it doesn’t happen, of course it does. (And the boundaries for BDSM are not clear.) But it’s not something that the people reading that post are likely to have seen in their day-to-day lives. So the mention of people being whipped is manipulative.

Horse people tend to use a narrow definition of riding whips (flexible, with a tassel at the end, e.g., dressage whip) to distinguish them from crops. Crops or “bats” are stiffer, and have a “popper” at the end. There are also long lunge whips and driving whips. Most disciplines have rules about the length and nature of whips (especially racing: jockey bats are subject to many regulations).

Many things can be considered “whips”

For the purposes of this post, I will include anything stick-like used to communicate with the horse. “Flags,” or sticks of variable flexibility with a small flag attached to the end, have become increasing popular tools. Bull whips could also be included, although I have never used one. I rode for a trainer in Spain who would terrify us all into obedience by picking one up… By “us” I mean the riders. Yes, he would use it on the horses (or at least snap it), but it was us humans that were scared. The “CRACK” would cause all the colts to jump.***

***No, I am not advocating this! It did work though, without any horse or human getting injured. Mainly. Sometimes people fell off.

What about other things used to communicate, such as ropes?

A bull whip is more like the long ropes some people use to drive horses around them in round pens. (See the video below of John Lyons expertly using a rope in this fashion.) Should we count ropes in our treatment of whips? After all, they are used in the same way: to communicate and urge the horse to move forward. The anti-whip brigade could protest that we don’t KNOW how the horse FEELS about that rope. Or at least they should do, by their own logic.

The purpose of this blog post is to address the mistaken perception that using a whip with horses is abuse, but ropes can be thought of in the same way. Anyone who claims that using a whip to urge a horse forward is abuse must–or should–believe the same about ropes. Otherwise the argument falls apart.

But aren’t whips fundamentally different from ropes?

Nope, not for the horse. Just in case you haven’t realized it, ropes can be used to hit things. If anything, ropes have the potential to do more damage than whips. They can be used to tie horses up or otherwise restrain them. Restraint is far more terrifying to a prey animal than momentary pain or fright. Think: fight or flight. A horse’s instinct is to flee. If it can get away from the stressor, it will soon forget about it and cease feeling stress. Using a whip (or rope) to encourage forward motion does not cause lasting stress, and it is not “unnatural” for the horse.

Of course we know how the horse FEELS about it.

Unless we are restraining the horse, how it feels is going to be very obvious. Even if we are restraining the horse, we should have a pretty good idea… If you cannot tell what the horse is feeling, you need more training, or at least more experience with horses.

Hint: Horses are not humans. If you believe they are experiencing emotions you cannot readily read, chances are you are attributing complex emotions. Even in humans it is a matter of debate that there are more than six basic emotions: Happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, and surprise. (Ekman)

The only one of those that I cannot readily recognize in a horse is disgust. Of course, I cannot know that the horse is feeling the human equivalent of any of those. But I can understand the equine analog of each of those emotions. I would love to say I can recognize disgust (in fact, I have claimed that my horse was “disgusted,” but that was probably anthropomorphizing.)

Which emotions can I expect when using a whip?

None, really. The whip is for communication, and that should take place without obvious emotional response. The horse should react to the whip calmly, once it understands its purpose.

Fear. You should not cause fear, but! With an untouched and/or fearful horse, you might cause fear at first, but that’s okay, as long as you give the horse space to move away. Remember, the horse moving away is part of communication. The horse will learn that it doesn’t need to be afraid…provided that you aren’t using the whip to beat it. I don’t think the people who beat their horses are going to be reading this blog post.

Surprise. You might cause surprise, and that’s okay. I use surprise frequently to get a horse’s attention. Sometimes that is what is needed to get a horse’s feet moving. Controlling where a horse puts its feet is essential to maintaining your alpha status. The first step to controlling WHERE a horse puts its feet is getting the horse to MOVE its feet. Sometimes startling (surprising) a horse is the best way to do this. You’re probably not going to be able to PUSH 1000 pounds if it really doesn’t want to move.

What about anger or aggression?

Anger. You should not cause anger, or aggressive behavior****, and with most horses, you never will. [Caveat: I am not entirely comfortable with using “anger” to describe aggressive behavior. I will do so anyway to maintain the horse/human emotion analogy.) Some horses will react to true abuse with anger. A previously abused horse might react with anger to good treatment (topic for another post).]

Far fewer horses will get “angry” or aggressive when asked to do something reasonable, and only if they are unsure of their status. If they believe they are alpha in the horse-human partnership, they might get aggressive. Or a beta horse might decide to test you. This is a reason to use the whip as punishment! Under no circumstances should the horse be allowed to take a dominant position. However, the idea of punishment is to move the horse’s feet, NOT beat the horse.

****Aggression in horses includes crowding, pushing, leaning, and expressions of intent (ears back) as well as biting, kicking, and striking.

The emotions you probably won’t really see in reaction to a whip…

Happiness and sadness. Unless you condition your horse to associate the whip with something good (a treat, grooming) or bad (the vet, being locked in a stall, worming), you probably won’t see the equivalent of “happy” or “sad.” Don’t get me wrong. A lot of horses love being ridden, and they could be classically conditioned to associate the sight of the whip with fun rides. But the whip itself should be neutrally valenced.

Note that if a horse reacts to the sight of a whip with fear, it has also been classically conditioned. There is nothing inherent about a whip that says anything at all to a horse. Again, the whip is an extension of the arm.

Disgust. As much as I would like to think that the look on my horse’s face when I accidentally drop the whip, or use it when I don’t need to, is disgust, I am probably wrong. But maybe horses do feel some analog of disgust, what do you think?

What about “Go ahead, BEAT ME, I don’t care!”

I don’t know what emotion that is, but I’ve definitely had horses tell me that loud and clear. And no, really beating the horse won’t help. You do need to find some way to (re)restablish your position as alpha when this happens. That’s all about moving the feet, which is why the surprise element is so important. I believe this is the root of the flag movement: horses that scoff at a whip will respond to a flag.

Probably the place where I’ve most seen this attitude (and a corresponding correction when a SURPRISING object is used) is in trailer loading. Especially with horses that know perfectly well what you want, having been trailered many many times, a whip can be useless. This is when a big rake or broom comes in handy. Of course, an ignorant do-good bystander might misinterpret, but if they give it a few minutes, they will realize that the rake is not used to HIT the horse.

But isn’t instilling fear also abuse? Well…

The horse is not being “scared” into submission. At least, not the ones I’ve seen this done with. My mother had a stallion whose trainer told her, when she brought the horse home after a successful career full of shipping all over the country, that they had to wave a big plastic rake at him to get him to load.

That horse was spoiled rotten and afraid of NOTHING. I imagine the rake was the way he said, “Hey!! You’d better go the extra mile if you want me to comply.”

We loaded him without a rake with no trouble at all.

And “Anything you can do, I can do better“?

I used to have a Thoroughbred filly whose response to the lightest touch of a whip was a squeal and a strike. Or a rear. Or whirl. Often squeal, strike, whirl, rear. That was Malena’s reaction to pretty much anything she interpreted as a command to do something she’d rather not do. She wasn’t trying to hurt you (although before I had her she had thrown all the lads at her stable). She was just expressing her opinion. (The opinion being that no human was going to force her to do anything.)

Getting in a take-that match (smack with whip from me, squeal, strike rear from Malena) never did any good, but it happened. I was in my early 20s and I had a temper. So did she. Was it stupid of me? Yes. Was it horse abuse? 1000 pounds of 16.3h running machine vs. 105 pounds of 5’2″ human? No. And no she wasn’t afraid or emotionally traumatized. But I still remember how stupid I felt after losing those battles. She’d probably forgotten them by the time we were back at the shed row.

Horses do express emotions…

And they do tell you how they feel about the whip. Some–like Malena–overstate their feelings. Others are more subtle. Stoic horses can be particularly challenging to read. It’s important to listen to those emotions. You do not want your horse to fear the whip. Fear inhibits learning.

On punishment (and operant conditioning in general)

Fear is usually associated with punishment.

What the anti-whip brigade has right is that punishment is not generally a productive tool in horse training. Punishment decreases behavior by applying a negative stimulus (e.g., whip if misused) or by taking away a positive stimulus (e.g., food, peace and tranquility). Most of horse training is about increasing behavior. You want your horse to pick up the left lead on a given cue every time. You want your horse to bend around your leg every time.

Reinforcement, which increases the likelihood of a given behavior by presenting a positive stimulus (such as a treat or a pet) or taking away a negative stimulus (such as the pressure of your leg or a spur), is a much better tool. Most of horseback riding is about negative reinforcement. We apply pressure then take it away when we get the response we desire.

But sometimes punishment is ABSOLUTELY necessary

There are horse behaviors that need to be decreased ASAP if they happen; biting, kicking, pushing, anything aggressive or dominant. You should use whatever it takes to get the point across that you are alpha and you will not tolerate that behavior. Sometimes what it takes is a smack with a whip. But!!

The take-home from the Malena example is that you cannot force a horse into submission with a whip. At least, not all horses. Some, like Malena, react to whips by upping the ante. All horses are pretty quick to realize that the whip is just an extension of the human. The ones that don’t respect the human wielding it aren’t going to respect the whip. Some horses might respect the human, but only under circumstances of mutual respect and trust. These will interpret (even accidental) misuse of a whip as a challenge and opportunity to upset the hierarchy.

Horses with a history of abuse (or what they interpret as abuse) are unlikely to respond well to a whip. If they don’t fight it, they will just ignore it. With these horses (and any alpha horse), you can still use a whip, but you need to make sure the horse understands that its purpose is communication, not challenge.

What about horses with a history of abuse?

And what if you’ve done it yourself? (We all make mistakes, and I am talking broadly here.)

Let’s be very clear here. It is possible to teach a horse to accept “abuse,” defined as unnecessary corporal punishment, whether it be applied with a whip, a rope, a stick, or an open hand. Sometimes this is “true” abuse, that is painful to the horse, other times it’s just something the horse doesn’t like (sacking with a plastic bag, for example). A horse that grunts and flinches but doesn’t move its feet when hit or threatened is a horse that has been “desensitized” to some degree of physical or mental pain.

On desensitization…

Some would argue that this is not a bad thing. Clearly, a horse has to be prepared for its work… a police horse must permit people running around, plastic flying, etc. One way or another, it has to learn to accept certain adverse stimuli without undue response. But it just depends. With some horses, achieving acceptance of a blow of any sort results in a loss of trust that will take you months or even years to regain.

For me, that’s just not worth it. I want to be able to kill a fly on its body with a smack. I do not want my horse to have to control the urge to move away from my raised hand. It’s possible to have a horse do this who has never been “beat” or otherwise scared… some just do. And some horses are drama queens. But if the horse trusts you, it might grunt and complain if you raise your voice or give a light smack… but it won’t flinch every single time.

My horse is acting like that after I did x….

What if you accidentally cause fear? And no, this isn’t about whips… you can do it by jumping and shouting, or by tying your horse somewhere and having some sort of unforeseeable scary thing happen. But it can also happen from misuse of a whip.

We all make mistakes. Just go back several steps and work on building confidence again.

See! That’s the problem with whips!! Why can’t I use positive reinforcement?

By positive reinforcement, people usually mean treats (sometimes combined with clickers, but clickers are just conditioned to the treat). I don’t train with treats, but if it works for you, and your horse… Note that some horses turn into pushy monsters when given treats. But the main challenge of using treats is giving them at the appropriate time(s). Too often people reinforce an undesired behavior by presenting the treat at the wrong time(s).

Petting?

As for petting… If your horse likes it, and it doesn’t interfere with your training, fine. But you can’t stop and pet in the middle of (most) work, just like you cannot stop and give a treat any old time time. (And you risk having the horse decide to stop and beg at inopportune moments.) In traditional dressage and working equitation, petting is prohibited. (but it is encouraged in Cowboy Dressage!).

What is more, some horses don’t like petting. In my experience, this is especially true of mares, particularly when they are working. To be clear, I am not a big petter. I prefer to pet horses when they are loose in their pasture or stall, or standing tied with nothing being asked of them. I don’t like petting during riding or other work/handling. The only exception I make is when it is to the benefit of handlers. Stallions and colts especially respond well to petting when you want to distract or calm them for vets or farriers.

Most of my mares have been the sort to wonder what you’re up to if you suddenly start petting.

*Note. That said, one of the very few horses I’ve ridden that truly benefited from petting while riding was a mare–well, a two-year-old filly. The only way to keep her relaxed during trotting and galloping was reaching down to stroke her neck–frequently! Needless to say, I didn’t get along with her as well as riders who like to pet while riding.

In short, petting is fine, but most of the time it’s for the handler, not the horse. Of course, what’s good for the handler is good for the horse. As a jockey once told me, a pat on the neck calms the rider as much as it calms the horse, and both win. But that’s just reassurance. Beyond relaxation, a horse is unlikely to change its behavior in exchange for a pat on the neck.

The benefits of prioritizing peaceful co-existence, with the aid of a whip if needed.

The main thing that horses want is to be left alone. No really. Even your horse that truly looks forward to riding enjoys the “down times” of attention. What I mean is that stopping and resting–simply sitting there and letting the horse digest what you’ve just asked it to do–is possibly the most effective learning technique. That boils down to taking away the physical and/or metaphorical whip (whatever you use to encourage forward motion) after having employed it.

Horses are social animals, bred to work with humans. They do enjoy being with people, if they’ve been treated well. Most horses love grooming. When you find them the “right job,” they love their work.

As social animals, horses live in herds, with established pecking orders. A happy horse is one that knows its place in the pecking order, wherever that is. Horses establish and maintain herd hierarchies with far more violence (or the threat of violence) than a human with a whip could ever do. A happy herd is one where every horse knows its place, and no one is challenging anyone. Every horse is being left in peace. Because humans don’t have hooves and large teeth, the whip helps clarify that the human is alpha. That makes for happy horses.