Driving Lessons

[Sanhestar]

There is a great deal of difference between an animal who is "nerve eating" and one that is simply ignoring you and doing his own thing. I should hope this difference is obvious to anyone attempting to train. Feeding horses to help them calm down in stressful situations such as trailer loading has fallen out of favor with the rise of "horse whisperer" style training, but I think this is a huge mistake. Eating does help a nervous animal calm down. But even a nervous animal should not drag you around or run over top of you to feed his nerves. A goat that does this is merely annoying, but when a horse does this he could seriously injure you! Self-control must be taught so that nerves and instinct don't override safety and good manners. And as a trainer, it is your responsibility to know when your animal is being nervous and when he's just being rude.  

I agree with the underlying statement that we need to TRAIN an animal as to what behaviour is acceptable and what not. I do no longer agree with the label of "rude", disrespectfull, etc.
If I wait for panic to take over I have already missed several crucial steps in the training and then, often, have to resort to harsher methods to get control back. If I wait, in case of a horse, until the level of discomfort is soo high that the horse can only drag a person and no longer responds to other training cues, than I have missed the steps leading up to that dragging.
This can have happened on that day or weeks, months, years in the past. As my English isn't good enough, I would like to share a link about resurgence and regression as viewed by behavioural therapists and researchers.

https://theclickercenterblog.com/2016/12...on-part-2/
Even being "rude" is just (not a small word in that context) a behaviour for which the animal hasn't been shown an alternative.

Example: I have a "rude" horse. Meaning, one, that will push over me to get to someplace else. If I'm a negative reinforcement trainer, I will punish the horse for that pushing against me. And luckily, I will have punished hard enough that the horse will never, ever try to enter my space in that manner again.
But, maybe I will need the horse at one point to move closer into my space because it's narrow or I ask him to load into a trailer where it HAS to come closer to me. It will refuse because the punishment of that first pushing was so severe, it still remembers it and does not want to experience this again.
Now, with the horse - as having been taught by me - refusing to enter my space although I need it to do JUST that I will have a hard time overriding that learned experience, that memory of punishment. Most likely, the horse will be labelled either stupid, stubborn or again disrespectfull and will now be punished for NOT entering my space.
This is a classic "damned if you do - damned if you don't" scenario and we can play this in all variations we like. What happens is that the horse will never again be 100% sure of the rules of the game and often will develop an underlying stress level. Or it will learn to only act then asked, never offer any behaviour on its own (learned helplessness) and be therefore labelled "trained", well behaved, etc.
Or I am that type of trainer that isn't as good as placing punishment as exact as needed and my rules will change a little bit depending on the day I have, the level of distractions, etc.
And the horse will pick up on that changing rules that sometimes make pushing against a behaviour that can be succesfull and sometimes not. As long as there is even one sucess in several failed attempts, animals and people will try the sucessfull behaviour again and again - UNLESS they have an alternative (this is where resurgence and regression come into play).
The spiral of low level punishment, stress, "rude" behaviour will begin.
Or I can teach the horse that staying out of my space is sucessfull, more sucessfull than pushing against me. I teach the "polite" alternative of "keep at arms length". I can then teach also "come closer", "move back a little" and "keep your head away from the food".
My ponies are a native breed and eating is lifeblood for them. Because I can't always prevent them from snatching a bite of hay when I take them out of the paddock - this isn't my barn so I have to work around how the stable owners set up the place and they will place the hay bale directly next to the entrance for easy access - I spent enough time battling with the ponies to move away from the hay so that I can close the paddock gate. This was met with more or less resistance.

I have then last year begun to teach an alternative: I have placed a mat on the ground at a position where the pony can stand and wait for a treat while I close the paddock gate (I also can't ask them to turn around, they have to move straight ahead and then wait because the space is too narrow for them to turn - again, not a setup I would have but I can't change it).
It took a while but out of four ponies three will now walk to the mat, ignoring the hay (and in summer the grass ahead) to wait until I closed the gate, walk up to them and click and treat them for waiting politely. They have an alternative behaviour that eliminates the snatching of hay or pulling ahead to the grass that is always, always, always more sucessfull.
Most interestingly, last summer the fourth pony, who has still problems with this setup because he's the lowest ranking and often still a bit hungry, apparently dashed through the half open gate during mucking out (I wasn't there but was told what happened) and set out straight for the next patch of grass. Without a halter this could have been a "nice" chase around the property to get him back.
But, because the stable owners had just renovated, there was a small pile of rectangular old carpet pieces lying around. The pony already new the task of "standing on a mat", saw the carpet pieces, recognized them as a type of mat and walked straight up and onto them without moving farther to the grass. He there waited to be haltered and brought back.
He already has the concept but needs more sucessfull experience (and more eating time) before he can manage to walk past the hay bale. He isn't rude, he often is hungry. With the setup as it is - and we all have to work with what the environment makes possible, I will see this behaviour pop up once in a while. I have found that it will give me insight into his overall well-being. If he had enough to eat, he will walk by. If he is hungry and can profit from additional food, he will stop to eat (and I can then prepare an additional ration for him to eat without being disturbed). He found a way to tell me "I'm hungry".
We ask a lot of our animals, especially the ones that work for us. If I for myself decide that I go out to work hungry (or cold or grumpy or aching) it is MY choice and my choice alone. When I ask an animal to work for me (this is what I have found to be true for me in the last two years) I have to make sure that I take care of its basic needs BEFORE. Because the animal does not have the choice. It has to go out and work wether it's hungry or not. It will go out because we have ways to make them (often with the underlying threat of punishment). I can ignore the signals and cues it will give during the working period that it feels uncomfortable. Well, I should write, "one can" because I no longer can (I might overlook a signal because I can't place it in context) but as soon as I see it, I will incorporate that information.
This is no more or less than I would myself expect of other people to treat me. That they would listen when I say "I can't do this right now, I have to eat a bite/drink a bit/balance myself/find my bearing first, THEN I can do what you want from me!"
I have become even more aware of how easy it is to ride roughshot over an individual since my mother in law had to  go living in a nursing home. The nurses are nice enough but because her speach is impaired they tend to treat her as a person who doesn't know what she wants. She still knows what she wants but she can't tell them. And she is too polite, to unsure of her herself to become rude. She simply suffers, her face and eyes telling, how miserable she feels in that moment. They ask her for something that she doesn't want to do and she will reply "OK" because she feels she has no way to communicate that she would rather NOT do this. The nurses hear the work, not the inflection and don't see the subtle change in body language that tell ME that she is uncomfortable, even afraid but feels that she has to suffer through it.
And it is not a hugh thing to accomodate her at that moment. A question about what is wrong will in most cases reveal that she hadn't understood the request because she didn't pay attention, it was spoken too fast and after repeating and a short explanation why, she will again answer "OK" but now with her consent in voice and body language.
I start ranting and want to answer to other parts of your post, so I stop with that now :-)