Habituation, Conditioning, Shaping and Pressure Release

Habituation means becoming used to something scary. There are six ways of desensitising the horse to something scary: systematic desensitization, counter conditioning, overshadowing, approach conditioning, stimulus blending and response prevention. Dr McLean goes through all of these in the video. 

The important thing to remember is that habituation must be done gradually and progressively. When the horse is forced to do something, it is called Flooding, and it can make the horse even more scared. 

Classical conditioning means learning to predict what will happen. For example if you have trained the horse to stop by pulling on the lead rope, you can also add a voice cue, which then can be used alone. 

Shaping means gradually building behaviors over time, taking it in small steps and rewarding improvement.