A question on punishment...

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OpalFruits

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The horse I loan has started pawing the ground and kicking the door whenever it's feed time but because I've been down to the yard doing work with her in her stable whenever it's feed time this week, I've been telling her off for pawing and kicking and then when she stops I tell her she's a good girl... I was just wondering if this is the wrong way to go about it? Would she get confused? Should I just tell her to stop and leave it?

Thanks for reading :)
 
If possible ignore the pawing & don't feed until she stops. If you feed when she's being 'naughty' this acts as a reward for the behaviour & she will continue.
 
If the pawing is to get something eg feed or attention, then the best thing would be to ignore her, and give her what she wants when she stops- this is what I was told to do with my gelding. However he wasn't doing it for attention or feed (tied up with a haynet while I was grooming him he'd start) so I never could reward the good behaviour when he did eventually stop pawing the ground. In the end the only thing that worked was to tell him off. He now knows its not acceptable behaviour and only ever paws the ground once or twice, because he knows he'll get shouted at!
 
The problem here is that she is pawing the ground to get your attention. Even telling her off is giving her that attention.I had a persistent door kicker who drove me mad at feed time. Each time he kicked the door as I got near him, I turned and walked away. Eventually he twigged and hasn't kicked the door since, it did take some time to achieve but worth it in the long run, for the door's sake, his legs and my sanity! I had tried telling him off but it made no difference at all. He learned that if he wanted me to go to him, he had to stand quietly.
 
This punishment thing really does confuse me sometimes haha! I don't want her to get the wrong idea and keep kicking because as you are all right, she's doing it for attention... Thank you all :)
 
I'll leave the punishment and suggestions to those who know more and better. However imo telling a horse to stop doing something is not something that works. Ime horses don't understand our speech unless we train them to respond to specific words etc.
 
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