"Horses and ponies do not think the same way people do. They learn by association: they associate (connect) a signal (something they hear, see, or feel) with whatever happens immediately afterward" (Harris 275). Knowing this, it is easily deduced that every move you make that affects the horse is training him. Therefore, "…every time you handle him you are training (or untraining) making things better or worse" (Smith-Thomas 98).

We can break down the horse's learning process through psychological terms. First of all, Operant Conditioning can be defined as the "Learning that occurs as a result of certain positive or negative consequences" (Feldman 166). Horses learn through operant conditioning. For example, if you stand next to a horse and push on the side of his belly, the horse will move away from your hand. The horse is responding to a negative stimulus (the push) and relieves the pressure by moving away from it. Thus the reward will be the absence of the pressure. With repetition, the horse will learn to move in the direction opposite of pressure on his side.

An example of a positive stimulus would be once the horse has done something well; he is rewarded immediately for his action. Such an example would be if he stands still when you want him to, he is rewarded with a pat or a treat.

Horses also learn by habituation which is "A decrease in responding to repeated presentations of the same stimulus" (Feldman 426). For example, a horse might be frightened by a bush rustling or leaves moving along the ground if the horse has never been exposed to such things. However, if this stimulus is repeated, he will not pay attention to them as much or at all (Budianski 157). "In order to learn, a pony must connect the signal, the behavior (what he does), and the reward or correction within a very short time: one to three seconds" (Harris 275). Through understanding the learning process of horses, we know how to more effectively communicate and teach our horses what we want them to learn.