When tricks “out-trick” fear.

I had the most interesting experience today. I have a little horse, McKee, who has learned to do some scent work. It is a limited behavior in that the scent is on a mat, placed among other mats. He searches each mat until he smells the lavender scent (daubed on the mat on the underside) and then he stops and paws the mat.

It’s a fun behavior to watch, and even more fun because I can put that trick on the shelf for months at a time and yet he will still perform the behavior as soon as he sees the mats and gets the signal from me to start.

So today we had an interesting event. McKee had started to search for the mat for the third time; we had moved the mat to a new location and re-set the area. Just as he moved towards the mats my friend’s tabby cat went streaking by McKee, up the small path and climbed the tree. This startled the heck out of McKee who bolted off down the footpath about 50 feet.

Then he did something interesting. He skidded to a stop, turned around with tail flagged and trotted back to finish his task of finding the mat and indicating on it. We were pleased and bit surprised at his speedy recovery from that scary event. I hadn’t even had the time to call out “McKee” before he had rebounded.

I have clicker trained my horses since the late nineties. Time and again they’ve shown just how resilient they become once we start them on clicker training. I have all sorts of hypotheses as to why this occurs but the top of my list is because a behavior that’s built with positive reinforcement is very potent. As I see it, the hundreds of performances of a behavior creates a high likelihood of it being repeated. But it also overrides a fear response and the need to run away.

That’s the beauty. With McKee I didn’t do a thing in that moment. I didn’t analyze him to decide if he was afraid and then try to train him to be calm. The history with the behavior, the history of the all of our positively reinforced behaviors and the existing conditions combined to make the scary event fade quickly.

These kinds of events truly do reaffirm the many reasons why I train this way.

Here’s a video from several years ago, when he was just learning the behavior.

https://youtu.be/IgmCXkoZzJ0

I so wish

Every week I am presented with the lovely opportunity to work with four horses, two Friesians, and two minis. They live in the same location and I have more fun working with these horses.

The numbers of clicker trained behaviors in place are extensive; the training process is comfortable and the communication is easy and focused. They are all different, yet a joy to work with.

By contrast, I watch the next door neighbor work with two horses. Several months after the acquisition of the second horse the owner is still in the paddock driving the horse away in a round-pen manner in hopes of having the horse come back to her so that she can put a halter on it.

She has seen the profound results of how clicker training made catching and haltering easy for my friend’s horse. She has seen how many behaviors are being offered at liberty. We’ve chatted about clicker training and what it has done for the four I work with.

Still, she won’t bring herself down to the level of using food in her training. It makes my heart hurt.

My friend who owns the four horses I work with can toss a treat to this same horse who can’t be caught and does so maybe 3 times a day. The horse now walks up to within 10 feet of her.

But the owner won’t budge, after months of little result from chasing the horse around. Like I said, it makes my heart hurt. I so wish I could find a way to help people see the joyful possibilities of clicker training. I so wish this.

The Wildfire Diaries – Emergency recalls.

I haven’t shared this story yet because I’m still trying to grapple with how profoundly this experience affected me.

This event occurred Friday the 23rd. I had just brought four of the minis back to their home. My friend and I were in the process of releasing them into the pasture where they spend their days. We had let three of them go and the fourth was still on a lead. I already posted some fun video of three of the horses romping around the pasture in total celebration of their freedom and being home. I posted this on FB.

What I didn’t post because again, I was still in shock that it happened and I wanted to share it when I could make it a teaching lesson,  was that at the end of the video as I’m panning across the pasture, suddenly I noticed that three little horses were no longer in the pasture but running up the mountain side to a Destination Unknown.

Apparently the fireman had opened up the gate at the far end of the pasture, something none of us would have even thought to check. So I stood there filming with complete joy and profound relief only to watch these horses take off on a wild goose chase in unknown and unprotected areas, including a runaway that leads to a street. That’s about as much shock and I think I’ve ever experienced.

But here is the good part. It’s quite amazing and very profound as well. I started running down the street trying to keep track of where these horses were going but I knew I had one Ace in the Hole. I have trained my horses an emergency recall. This is a very specialized sound that I use only in a training scenario that lets the horses know I want them to come to me NOW.

I must admit they did not return to me on the 1st recall attempt. There are a couple reasons why in my mind. 1) There was one horse in the herd of three running around that has not been trained a recall. He’s my friend’s horse and we’ve been slowly starting to build it, but it was not in place. 2) These horses are outdoor horses and they had been locked in a stall for 2 weeks with very little exercise compared to what they’re used to. I can laugh about it now but they were acting like little crazy horses, just so glad to be loose and free to run around. Returning to me at that moment was certainly being overshadowed by the joy of movement.

While still in a personal state of panic I managed to stay with the horses and on the third attempt of my emergency whistle McKee turned around and ran right straight back to me. One down, two to go.

I whistled again and Handsome ran halfway to me, tossed to his head and chased off after his buddy again. I do think in that moment, after having spent two weeks in the stall with this buddy, my recall was temporarily overshadowed by the other horse, who did not have a recall. Another lesson learned: sometimes the horse will respond to a recall because of the motion of another horse, so the recalls needs to be taught individually, then proofed in a herd.

Normally when I practice the the recalls in our pasture usually all three horses come running up, but conditions made this too difficult and the individual recall wasn’t strong enough for that situation. So I will practice the individual recalls again.

The good news is that the third time I offered my recall whistle Handsome turned and cantered right up to me in his normal fashion. I had a lead rope in my hand and McKee was with me, so I was able to put the lead rope around Handsome’s neck and go in search of the third horse.

We watched the third horse, Magnifico, disappear around behind the neighbor’s house and in reality what stopped that horse was a combination of fatigue and some nice green grass, LOL. Still, I’m pleased he was able to be caught because when I first met him he would run away from anyone while in the pasture, not wanting to be caught at all. So I know some of our recall work was helping in that moment.

I guess the most obvious moral of the story is check your fencing if you’ve been away. Truly, that was the last thing either my friend or I expected and we couldn’t see the open gate from our position. But more important is that had I not developed and practiced a recall with these horses I’m not sure what the results would have been and there certainly was a possibility that horses could have been injured.

I’ve included a link to a video I made awhile back on recalls. Below that is the video I took JUST before Magnifico saw the open gate and led them on their merry chase.

 

Please go out and teach your horse a recall, you never know when you’ll need it.

https://youtu.be/Um4QZYaJH94

 

The Wildfire diaries – when the conditions change the horses change.

 

Number 2 lesson – When the conditions change the horses change.

So far I’ve had to evacuate twice for the same fire. I even had to keep horses in two different locations at the same time, 4 were in one location, 4 were in another. I have learned that it’s important to assess the evacuation areas in your community. We moved twice and the horses behaved entirely differently in those two locations. I will be a bit better prepared for this experience.

In the first location, some of my horses were in outdoor paddocks with a metal roof. There were maybe 10 paddocks in a row and there were two rows. My two full-sized horses and two bigger minis were at this location (SB Polo and racquet club).

There were definitely some “not-so-fun” moments watching the horses meet and greet their new paddock neighbors. Even pipe corral doesn’t deter horses who want to fence fight. My horses were settling in part because I flanked my mare, Nikki, with familiar horses on two sides and in front of her. She has always used her hind legs to back other horses off when they get too close. She is truly one of the sweetest mares I’ve ever met unless she’s in a paddock next to another horse bugging her. Since she has not been exposed to a “new” horse in 10+ years this wasn’t an issue. During this evacuation, it was a behavior the re-emerged. So this was a challenge to set things up for success. I was very fortunate to have those paddocks for those horses and was able to at least arrange the horses to meet the needs of my mare.

Some of what I did to alleviate the situation was to strategically place where I fed her and where I fed my other horses. If you find yourself faced with horse interaction situations, strategic placement of the food and water can help you ease tensions in the beginning.

I also went out of my way to ask for easy familiar behaviors with a high rate of reinforcement. I did this in areas that directed the horse’s attention away from their new neighbors. That demanded some intense, quick-paced training for all horses involved, yet that was what helped us settle into the first location better.
There was one very scary situation that happened where my big horses were staying. There were two very big horses in an adjacent paddock, one was a big warmblood the other a massive draft horse. I heard later that they were familiar paddock buddies, but the change in location frayed those ties. The warmblood was clearly distressed as he aggressively moved towards each horse surrounding him.

At one point the big draft horse had had enough and grabbed the warm blood by the edge of his horse blanket and shook him back and forth like a rag doll. The pipe corral between them looked like it was going to collapse under the weight of this draft horse. Fortunately, they looked like neither was hurt when they separated. But at that point, I moved to find the caretakers or intervene and separate them.
One of the helpers from the facility came in to move the warmblood, who promptly turned his butt to the helper. Not a good sign. After some “Good boys” and “Ahh, Ahh” depending on what the horse did, it was clear that the butt was the chosen body part this horse was going to present. So I finally spoke up. 
Because I know that the use of food in the horse world is still considered ridiculous by many, I hesitated, but I had to try to help this horse. I grabbed a few low-calorie pellets and approached this horse carefully. I had observed this horse before and felt I could approach it and hand feed. The horse was very comfortable taking the food from my hands. 
We needed to get a halter on this horse and I thought we stood a good chance of accomplishing this goal if we used the little bit of food wisely. 

After offering him the pellets, I decided to try a different flavored treat called Apple smacks. They are their slightly sweeter and generally horses love them. I brought them back and offered them to the warmblood but clearly, as I saw the Apple smacks fall back out of his mouth; I had offered him something he did not like at all. The moral of that story is: make sure you have something in the refrigerator that is desirable to your guest 😉
So I went back to the pellets and slowly but surely began to move so that the horse would follow me to get the pellets. This is all it took; it was so simple to just allow the horse the opportunity to be in control of something it wanted. I gave him a chance to get the pellets comfortably and easily without moving quickly towards him. We got the halter on the horse, he calmed down and they were able to move it to a different paddock. Choice, control and a good reinforcer. Yep.

As I said, I had horses housed in two different places at this point, my other four minis were at Seaside Gardens. This is also the location where the deaf mini and her buddy stays. Nick Sebastian and the https://m.facebook.com/seasidewellnessgardens/ welcomed my pint-sized crew into the facility. What a blessing. By the way, Seaside is another great charity organization and we would love support. They generously welcomed me and my minis with open arms and I am very, very grateful.

The adjustment for the other minis, McKee, Handsome, PeeWee and Magnifico was a little easier as they were all turned out together in a large paddock. They were used to being together because they all stay in a pasture together daily. The little mares at Seaside were quite curious, and being young, they were quite interested in the “boys.”

The horses adapted to the new location quickly but I do have some input I’d like to offer later about working with multiple horses during feeding times. That whole issue of resource guarding is very important. Once again the safe behaviors that I had established in our home environment needed to be quickly reviewed and reshaped in a new environment because it was, well, a new environment. I expected that, but I still had to be careful and had a few moments where I was worried about my kneecaps because of the interaction of the minis in the new environment. Again this is a topic worth discussing completely in a separate thread and I’d love to do so. It’s also a topic I’ve covered in ongoing online courses because it takes some depth of understanding of clicker training principles.

In the meantime, I hope these training logs are helpful. Thank you again for your continued support.

https://www.youcaring.com/peggyhogan-1042834

The Wildfire Diaries – horse training lessons learned from a crisis

I’ve decided it’s important to reach out to anybody and everybody who will listen to and learn from some of the experiences I’ve had recently with my horses. All of this experience was thrust upon me because of a wildfire situation where I had to evacuate 10 horses. I hope this information will spare you some of the angst I experienced because while all of my horses are currently fine and we escaped the fire (as of this moment) it was so extremely stressful. I hope you can learn from my experience.

Now I’m one of those kinds of people who will avoid watching videos or bypass reading certain stories that I know are tragic, simply because it’s too painful to bear. What I’m presenting is not a tragedy, the animals in my stories are safe. So far I have been blessed, while there have been problems, all of the horses are okay, so I urge you to read the information here you so you can learn.

Number 1 lesson. Train your horse to Trailer Load.

I don’t care how long it takes. I don’t care about why it’s hard. If you start small and work a little daily (5 minutes) on the tasks and components you need to trailer load you will be prepared for an emergency. Trailer loading is not about making horse go in the trailer. Think of trailer loading as training a gazillion little components that will lead up to one long behavior chain. Most of the training can be done away from the trailer.

Don’t have a trailer? You don’t need one for the daily buildup of learning games that can prepare your horse for riding in a trailer. Break the components into small tasks and work them for 5 minutes a day.

Using the stuff in your yard shape your horse to negotiate obstacles by backing over around and on top of them. Have your horse back towards platforms, planks or anything you can create. You can build small enclosed areas and practice in those. Practice backing into your stall if you have one; just spend a little time working with something that will help your horse get accustomed to moving all four feet with precision around obstacles. Please.

Once backing is easy it’s pretty simple to teach the horse to move forward on the platforms and items that you’ve already been using for backing. It’s about training a horse that food reinforcers happen when they move their feet.  Front or back feet, it doesn’t matter it’s just about being reinforced for moving the feet. The trailer really just becomes another obstacle after you’ve done your homework with these other easy items. 5 minutes a day will get you there.

Please, I’m starting with this lesson because it’s the most critical. On the plus side, when we were evacuated from the second location someone actually haltered my full sized horses, loaded them and took them with the rest of the horses at that barn to the new site. Thankfully my full sized horses are easy loaders. 

On the down side, I know in some situations horses were left behind to suffer whatever fate awaited them because they hadn’t been trained to load in a trailer. Don’t be caught by this heartbreaking trap.
I’m looking forward to sharing some of the other lessons and training situations I’ve learned through this process. Thanks for reading.

A QUICK GUIDE TO: Positive Reinforcement

Defined simply, when you ADD a positive reinforcer to a training situation, you look to see if the behavior INCREASES, at which point you can say the thing you added was reinforcing.

However, don’t be fooled. You are training your horse all the time, even if you don’t think you are. Many things can be reinforcing behavior in your horse’s life, so we need to look at many levels when analyzing behavior.

Positive reinforcers vary, depending on the species.

Dogs love food

Dogs love play (usually)

Horses love food

Horses love food

Horses love scratching (sometimes)

Horses love food

Food is often used because it’s quick, easily delivered, and considered a Primary reinforcer.

You can “condition” a reinforcer. Scratching can be made into a stronger reinforcer by pairing it with food. ANYTHING can be made stronger by pairing it with food. Even applause. This trick is knowing how to condition it.

Since reinforcement is in the eye of the recipient, you can train with anything the horse wants, but I caution you to see if the behavior is strengthened or is repeating with your reinforcer. If not, you might need to re-considered what you’re using as reinforcement. You also might want to re-read that sentence, it’s important.

Here’s another way to look at it. If an animal does something in an effort to get what he wants, and is successful, then chances are he’ll have learned from his experience and try it again. That is an inherent learning process built into all species.
Here are some other thoughts on reinforcers.

AUDITION YOUR FOOD REINFORCERS BEFORE USING THEM WITH A CLICK.

Sounds self-evident, but some people try to start training with a food they haven’t tested to see if it is something the horse likes. In contrast, some people actually place many different types of food reinforcers in front of a horse to see what the horse chooses first!

MYTHS

1. ONCE I TRAIN A BEHAVIOR USING POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT I CAN FADE OUT THE TREATS.
As trainers we rely on the fact that behavior is strengthened by what follows it.

In order to maintain a behavior, a primary reinforcer is required at least once in awhile. It depends on the horse and what behavior you’re maintaining. If you’re maintaining the behavior of being groomed, you may not need to reinforce much. If it’s a medical procedure, you might need a really high rate of reinforcement.

There is a complete and thorough way to vary your reinforcers if you want to take the time to learn the process. If you are at all new to the process, if you want to train a horse with a positive reinforcement, many advocate continuing with the food reinforcers.

2. USING TREATS AROUND MY HORSE WILL MAKE HIM BITE.

Wrong.

Using food without training food handling protocols may increase biting. That can happen even if the only time you feed the horse is once or twice a day.

Food reinforcers are effective. People are using them in a huge variety of circumstances including zoos, marine mammal shows and advanced dog training. Using food for training a horse is a newer technique and I will forever be grateful to the pioneers of this technique. However, people need to learn how to use this tool just like they need to learn ANY tool.

Food is a resource a horse will fight to control. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to see this; just look at a herd in the paddock and watch. If you add food as a training tool you need to learn how to use it EFFECTIVELY.

The good news is horses can learn safe and easy behaviors to work around food. It DOES take some knowledge to make that happen. If you are new to the process, LEARN from other people and research how to achieve a good working relationship with your horse around food.

3. THE ONLY THING MY HORSE WILL WORK FOR IS FOOD.

Wrong again.

It takes skill to learn to train with naturally occurring reinforcers. Hey, it takes skill to learn to successfully train with FOOD! However, if you start to explore the science behind the training you will learn tools that make this technology even MORE exciting.

The Beginning

I thoroughly love starting a new horse with clicker training. It is the beginning of a grand adventure; I am confident the experience will be positive for the horse.

All of my background of valuable horse clicker training experience recently came into play with a deaf 2 year old horse. At the time I started the horse, I did NOT know she was deaf, nobody did. But the process of discovering she was deaf has been quite validating for many reasons.

I was called to work with this horse (and her stall mate) because she was young, mostly untrained and needed to be taught the many skill sets required of a horse living in a human world.

I started in protected contact, to give her time to get used to me as well as to train the food delivery process I use. I like to use a sequence of “back of hand/flip/feed” when training horses, especially horses new to hand feeding. (For more you can download this Clicker Tip). Follow the site to the “Instant download training plans” tab.

We worked it out so my hand feeding was comfortable to both of us, then I began to add the criteria of touching the target. I started clicking at this point. With our close proximity, it was very easy to get into a training rhythm and it was clear the horse was learning because she was repeating the task reliably and accurately. So far, so good and there was no reason to suspect she was deaf.

I moved on to basic head forward and again because I quickly delivered the food after I clicked and the food delivery happened quickly while the behavior occurred (the reinforcer was contiguous with the behavior) I continued to see rapid progress and nicely repeated behaviors. So far, so good again.

I followed with halter targeting. During this phase, I would “chuck food,” meaning, once the horse had put her nose near the halter, I would continue to give her a small amount of food while maintaining that position of the nose in the halter.  Again the reinforcer was contingent AND contiguous. I did not repeatedly click because she wasn’t doing a specific behavior that needed to be marked; she was just staying basically still as I fed her while her nose was in the noseband (more in keeping with classical conditioning).

All of these behaviors I had started developed nicely. I was very pleased with the halter training because she was somewhat afraid of the halter when we started and she showed improvement quickly. During this time I also used scratching as a reinforcer for standing during the stationary sessions.

Next, I added touching her legs in preparation for foot care. I “chucked food” (as Bob Bailey would say) when my hand was on her leg. I would click for the leg lift, again, the proximity to her mouth made the delivery of the reinforcer quick, so there was no reason to doubt the process.

There is an entire protocol which has been sometimes labeled as “manding” that I, along with Eva Bertilsson and Emelie Johnson Vegh have been lecturing about. We have also used the label of a “Start Button” to describe how we can train an animal to participate, have choice and control in a procedure. This is especially effective when training a potentially aversive procedure.

While I won’t get into the specific details of the Start Button within this blog, I do encourage you to check out the process. Much of my training with this horse included developing signals that the horse gave ME that she was ready to continue with the current training process. You can see a video on Start Buttons here.

So how does this fit in with clicker training the deaf horse? While I was making a LOT of progress in all avenues of behaviors being trained, I began to get a sense that I didn’t have quite the precision I’ve grown to expect, especially when I was slightly farther away from the horse’s head. Of course being further from the horse’s head meant it took slightly longer to deliver the food.

I also wasn’t seeing the telltale physiological manifestations I’m used to seeing once the horse begins to understand the purpose of the click. Usually, there is an ear flick, a flash of the eye, a slight head move or SOME change when the horse hears the click.

Probably one of the most noticeable manifestations people notice when a horse begins to learn about clicker training is the telltale turning of the head towards the person after it hears the click. Having the head turn a lot towards the person is something I tend to avoid in the beginning because for newbie horses it can lead to mugging behaviors. So I very carefully deliver the food in a position that helps the horse keeps its head forward to eat. However, I am still used to seeing a least a little bit of a head motion that shows me the horse clearly recognized the click.

Another factor began to emerge; when we are in the beginning stages of teaching a horse an intricate training system like clicker training, I usually expect that the horse needs to learn several behaviors before it really begins to understand the system. But we had passed that introductory phase, and I just wasn’t seeing the telltale signs common to clicker trained animals.

Because the horse wasn’t noticeably responding to the sound of the click I began to wonder if the horse was hearing impaired. I DID have previous experience with a horse I got when he was 16 years old. Within a few years, I realized he was gradually having problems hearing, so I went to a tactile bridge signal. But with Buck, I SAW the changes in him as he became deaf. His whole demeanor changed as he struggled to deal with this issue. The tactile bridge and the process of training with positive reinforcement were helpful to my old gelding and I was glad I could make his life more comfortable by adding a new bridge signal.

With this two-year-old, she seemed quite calm and relatively easy going for a young horse. No one who had met her suspected that she was deaf.

I did some quick empirical tests. I put the clicker behind her head so she couldn’t see it. Nothing. No motion or recognition. On one occasion she was sleeping when I arrived and she did not wake, even when I made some very loud banging noises on the gate. I talked to my vet, Steve Goss, who is a great vet and an outstanding individual. He had some creative ways of testing and sure enough, the tests were pretty conclusive. She was for all intents and purposes, deaf.

So where does that leave us? How was I going to add the precision I normally experienced with the click? The first thing I started to do was condition a tactile bridge signal. Three quick taps on her back signaled that the behavior had met criteria and food was on its way. That process has been started and we are well on our way to revisiting our early behaviors and introducing new behaviors with our new bridge signal.

It is an exciting journey for me, and I’m seeing some clarity in our training already. She is showing the typical signs of a horse who knows what a click means. We’re even beginning to have breakthroughs on some behaviors that were more difficult for her.

I’m hoping you’ll check in on my blog, for the process is quite informative and we’re well on our way in this grand adventure of building a reliable form of communication between this little horse and her surrounding caregivers.

Peggy Hogan will be speaking at Clicker Expo 2018
and has been a speaker at Clicker Expo since 2013.
There’s always more to learn at Clicker Expo!

Reflections on the Stamford Expo.

Sitting here in the Denver airport with a looooong layover before the last leg of my trip home. Spent the last few days working and lecturing at the Stamford Clicker Expo.

It was such a joy to see so many more people who are working to expand other people’s awareness and use of clicker training principles with their horses. One of the reasons I like to see horse people at Clicker Expo is because I’m confident they are getting information that is “vetted” by the scientific community. Vetting our information is important for me because I was misled in my Natural Horsemanship days with so much information that “sounded” right and “seemed logical” but was really just based on many ideas that someone thought of, but were untested and unsubstantiated. That experience was a big wake-up call for me.

I  would like to think we in the clicker training community could avoid this pitfall but I think it will take work. There are many innovative trainers who are experimenting and sharing, but can we all share and still remain open to the light that might be shed on our methods once someone is able to test our ideas? Do we have the integrity to say “Oops, I might need to re-think that?”

Trust me, like many others I am always trying to improve my training and expand my ability, I want my horses to experience our contact as clear, concise and easy to understand.

I also know that I cannot practically speaking, have absolute confirmation of my horse’s experience when I’m training (well, OK, short of having some sort of electrode to his brain that confirms what he’s feeling.) HOWEVER, I do know I can learn to read the external responses of the individual’s behavior to the best of my ability, and based on the collection of this array of data, I can begin to create some overall signals that help me read my horse better and hopefully improve that individual’s life with me.

At the Expo I have found so many “go to” people, other speakers who have a varied background and can support this desire to keep my training out of the “fog zone” of untested assumption. I still find myself in awe of their collective knowledge. Susan Friedman, Kathy Sdao and Jesus Rosales Ruiz are some of my “go to” people when it comes to supporting, refreshing and updating my continuing understanding of the science. I love having these “reality checks” as well as lengthy behind the scenes chats.

Ken Ramirez is so inspiring. The man has trained more species than just about anyone and he always has a practical yet inspiring outlook on how to enrich and make our animal’s lives better. His application of clicker training principles is so diverse. This Expo we got to hear of his extensive project work with elephant conservation; it was touching, heartwarming and inspiring.

Sarah Owings and Laura VanArondonk Baugh are two other speakers with a wealth of experience and a way of presenting the material that makes these important distinctions so clear for people.

Another element that made this Expo exciting for me was the opportunity to co-present a lecture and lab with Eva Bertilsson and Emelie Johnson Vegh. These women are very dynamic, but their fun and dynamic nature is backed by incredible experience and knowledge. Our current project “Animals in Control” is a lecture we’ve given for the last 2 years and reflects a wealth of information. We were able to show video from multiple species, some gathered from our own training, showing the process of creating cues the animals give US that signal their readiness to cooperate in a process, procedure or training experience.

Every time I’ve presented this information I’ve had people come up to me and express how glad they were we presented it, how much more they want of this kind of information, how much they value the idea of giving the animal choice and how they want to learn more so they can incorporate the material into their own training. This is really exciting for me and I look forward to the opportunity to be able to teach ongoing classes on this way of organizing sound training principles.

Be sure to watch for announcements about this new course. Hope to see you online.

It’s all about shaping

From time to time I read something posted that suggests that guessing during the shaping process is frustrating for the horse. My experience is that we can easily teach our horses to be creative if we set it up to follow their direction and encourage their interaction with some item in the environment. This is especially true when they’re beginning to learn to offer behavior. Once a horse learns to play the game of “show me something different” it can totally change their understanding of how shaping works.

Truthfully, I think the horses are capable of understanding shaping quickly, but WE need to understand that they also explore new things in their own individual manner. Some make bold, easily recognizable efforts, others make very small moves to investigate.

It can be hard to sort through what we’re seeing and sometimes the human withholds the click, either wanting too much change in the variations of behavior, or they wait for something that the horse cannot give in the moment. “Different” doesn’t have to be grandiose, it can literally be a shift in eye movement.

Watch this video of my friend’s horse. You’ll see this horse try a variety of ways to interact with a box. He’s quite clever at offering different behaviors, but this process was LEARNED. There are some moments where you might see behavior offered that is clicked after it is finished, or you might see the horse continue to offer the behavior after the click has happened.

With the exploratory games where behavior is offered spontaneously we are encouraging variety. Sometimes that variety is also very reinforcing to the horse. If he ignores the click, I let him explore, but I let him explore without clicking. Sometimes I interrupt the exploring, sometimes I let them move to a new behavior after they have exhausted the current interest PROVIDING it’s not a behavior that can lead to some useful behavior I might want to capture and shape in the future.

I have ALSO done this type of exporatory training with no click at all, just feeding them as they continue to investigate.

creative shaping  Watch this video to see more about shaping games.

Once there is some variety to the horse’s offerings, we can begin to shape behaviors that are useful to us that range from husbandry to riding.

So the next time you read an article that suggests that horses NEED to have R- in their lives because they get too stressed by guessing, come back to this page and learn how you can make the process fun and easy for both of you.

There is an ongoing resource of information in my groups and online classes as well.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ClickerTrainingHorses/

SHAPING!!! It’s a GREAT tool to have in your toolkit.

Are you teaching your horse to brace?

If someone said “We need to scrutinize the effect of every single item we use in our interaction with a horse, whether it be a halter, saddle or bridle,” I would whole-heartedly agree. In fact I would probably expand on that to include everyday items we use around them, say a grooming brush for example. But maybe even more significant is how we use our bodies in our interactions with the horse.

 

The reason I say this is because ultimately, it’s the QUALITY of touch, or how we connect to our own bodies when we connect to our horses that makes the real difference. Let me give you an example. Take the difference between a flat halter or rope halter. The flat halter is usually made of a web material, compared to a rope halter, which is often yacht braid with knots on the nose. The knots can be aversive and potentially severe and the thinner braid can put painful pressure on the poll.

 

 

Because of this feature people tend to prefer flat halters. But wait, let’s take a deeper look at those as well.

In my work with Peggy Cummings I learned to watch how horses braced against contact from the human, whether it was from a halter or the human’s touch. I witnessed, participated and finally assisted in clinics where horses arrived stiff, rigid and fully braced against the feel of the flat halter. Not only were the horses dull to the cues given by the handler using the flat halter, their necks reflected years of muscle development that was created by the effort of pulling against the human who was unconsciously adding unnecessary pressure on the halter, or, was consciously adding unnecessary amounts of pressure in an effort to control the horse. The evidence showed that it was people really just ended up building more brace and resistance in the horse.

 

I’ve watched well-intentioned horse-loving people reach up and touch a web halter and in the first moments of contact I could see the horse brace. It was the HUMAN’S touch that triggered the brace. In fact even reaching for the halter caused some of these horses to lift the head and try to evade the touch. The flat halter allowed the horse to pull even more resolutely in the opposite direction than where the handler was suggesting through her use of the tool. This reinforced the brace and the vicious cycle continued.

 

Be assured, I’m confident those same horses would have been resisting and bracing if they were wearing a rope halter. My point is this had less to do with the equipment being used and MORE to do with how the person had learning gaps in how to use their bodies when handling this equipment.

 

The truth is the people approach horses with braced bodies; their own bodies are disunited or rigid and this rigidity gets relayed to the horse. Furthermore they are often completely unconscious of their own movements. They turn and walk away from the horse, fully expecting the horse should follow, even if the horse is unprepared to follow. Consequently the lead rope tightens, the halter exerts pressure, the horse’s head lifts higher with the nose moving forward, the neck stretches and finally the horse takes a couple of awkward steps setting him up to be heavy on the forehand. The lack of balance, softness and feel in the handlers touch of the lead or halter is often combined with a mindset that suggests that if the horse is unprepared to follow it deserves to feel the halter tighten. This absolutely builds layer after layer of brace into the horse.

 

The problem is seen in every discipline with horses wearing every type of halter. Even people who are trying to train their horses with kindness and positive techniques, can be seen turning and walking away while they unconsciously pull, manipulate or handle the lead in such a way that the horse is feeling pressure, not the good kind of pressure, but the kind that builds brace. Remember, our pulling creates their brace. Our handling creates resistance.

 

The same can be said of saddles. One might think that a bareback pad would guarantee comfort for the horse, yet if the horse has to drag around a  someone who is so tight that the compression alone creates discomfort, then the bareback pad is not the answer. Changing the rider’s body awareness and use IS the answer.

People also use their body language to cue the horse to do something, yet they move faster than the horse, or they try to push the horse with their energy. They also use tactile cues that, instead of being inviting, are poking, prodding or otherwise stiff and rigid.

 

So I would like to offer this suggestion. Instead of trying to blame a piece of equipment, as if somehow switching halters is the answer to a horse’s comfort,  I would vote for taking it a step further advocating an intense focus on teaching the HUMAN how to connect with their own body in a fully balanced, healthy way, then take that conscious awareness and connect with the horse. Our timing, rhythm, balance and integrated movements are ALWAYS either adding suppleness or brace to a horse. It is up to us to keep ourselves conscious of this fact.

 

Remember every time you ask something of your horse, whether it’s through your touch or a piece of equipment, you are either building more softness or building more brace.