Trainer Tip: Discourage Stall Banging

If you want to discourage stall banging, become aware of its association with food.

If you want to discourage stall banging without yelling or punishing, become aware of its association with food. Never deliver food while the horse is banging, or you’ve just reinforced the behavior.

First, understand how and why an unwanted behavior like this developed. Most horses know exactly when food is likely to arrive, and of course they’re impatient to get it. They may move about and paw in excitement. If they happen to hit the stall wall or door, making a noise, and just at that moment the door opens and the food is delivered—well, from the horse’s point of view, they got the door to open with their hoof! When the same thing happens again next time—they get excited, hit the door and the food comes—that’s clear to them! Banging works! So keep doing it and food keeps coming. Very logical, if you’re a horse.

At Via Nova, we use a little mental trick: If the horse bangs the door as we approach with food, we pretend it’s the horse training us. We say to ourselves, “Oh, when you bang, it means you want me to go away!” and we turn and walk away the moment the banging starts. We don’t go back until the banging stops.

The first few times you try this, the banging may get worse as the horse tries harder to make it “work.” This is called an “Extinction Burst.” Eventually, they’ll realize that banging is no longer the success they thought it was. If you are clearly responding to their banging by walking away (taking the food away with you), they usually change their behavior within a few days.

But beware, if the horse bangs and you sometimes bring food and sometimes don’t, you’re creating what behavioral science calls an Intermittent Reinforcement Schedule, which is the hardest kind of reinforcement history to extinguish! So be disciplined in how you react to stall banging. Make sure that you thoroughly disassociate the banging itself from the arrival of any food or attention by a long enough length of time.