I caught the tail end of a popular 90s pop song on the radio yesterday. Just the closing refrain.
‘Ooh ah, just a little bit.
Ooh ah, a little bit more.’
The song itself is not something I’d hold up as a model of anything. Gina G’s Eurovision song isn’t on my playlist, but the sentiment in those lines feels familiar. It sums up a pattern I often see. The human appetite for more. The belief that the next one will be the best one. The one that makes sense of all the other duds. The one that proves something. Maybe proves we’re not such a rubbish trainer after all.
But those extra reps rarely fix things. We were failing well before the ‘just a little bit more’ moment. The extras just make us fail harder.
It shows up in teaching all the time. Yes, if you’re asking, it has shown up many times in my own.
The horse offers what they think is right. Only it isn’t right by our calculation. It’s wrong because we didn’t make it clear. The old ‘horses are our mirror’ line is never more true than when teaching.
The horse offers what they think is right. Yes, I repeated that line. Errors are only the difference between what we think we’re teaching and what the horse is learning.
Still, we ask again. Then again. We keep pushing, convinced that progress is always the next step rather than admitting there might be something in our setup that isn’t working.
And this is where we should be looking. Because over asking is not only about the repetitions. There might be many reasons our learner cannot offer a behaviour we believe is possible for them. Sometimes a horse is telling us they are not physically or mentally in the right place. We tell ourselves we will address it later. One more session won’t hurt.
We know our horse lacks the right conspecific company, but we settle for what is available. We know the environment lacks choice, movement, or stimulation. Needs are not truly met. We still carry on. It is extraordinary how far humans will go to protect the idea of progress. A little bit more. Just a little bit.
Learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Reality is far messier. Horses, like us, feel discomfort both physically and mentally. They live inside social structures that nourish or deplete them. They live inside environments that shape their behaviour long before we step in with our own ideas.
When we ask for more (and more) without checking the world they are navigating, we are not really teaching in that moment. We are choosing our reinforcement over theirs.
The trouble is that the horse feels the cost long before we see it in the training fallout. They will have tried and kept trying despite ALL the things.
The truth might be that ‘over asking’ isn’t just about trainer ambition but also about habit. Humans have been trained to take the next step. We have become accustomed to ignoring the obvious. Often because the rest of the equine world has ignored it for years.
What if we paid attention instead. What if teaching was not just about getting the most out of a horse but noticing when the horse has given more than they should. What if the real skill was recognising when to stop and when not to even begin.
‘Ooh ah, just a little bit more’ might make for a catchy chorus, but it is a poor guide in learning situations. The best moments are often the ones where we choose less. Where we allow the horse to stay inside their comfort and their capability.
