Copyright The Clicker Center and Alexandra Kurland
These articles were originally written for the_click_that_teaches list. They are intended to be used in conjunction with the book: "The Click That Teaches: Riding with the Clicker".
Contents:
The Clicker Expo - Rhode Island
WA Clinic Report; Biting and Advanced Concepts
Hip-Shoulder-Shoulder
April 12, 2006
Hi Everyone,
Catching Up: The Clicker Expo
I've had an exciting and very busy couple of weeks which is why I haven't been posting recently. Two weekends ago I was at the Clicker Expo in Rhode Island. The Expos are always an amazing learning experience. This one was made all the more special for me because Ann Edie was there with Panda. Even though I see Panda in the barn every night, it's been a while since I have watched her work. All I can say is Wow! I am in awe of that little horse. She is so totally solid, so unflappable, so focused in her work, and so obviously attached to Ann. She was with Ann throughout the Expo, guided her through hallways crowded with people and dogs, remained quiet during seminars, took naps in the restaurants, slept in the hotel room, relieved appropriately outside in the dog walk area. I should be used to her by now, but I can't get over her focus, her patience, her level-headenness - and her total cuteness.
The hotel was expecting the dogs, but the conference coordinator didn't tell them about Panda until the final pre-conference meeting. At first, they thought she was kidding. Jodi said it was priceless watching their faces. Once they got over their initial shock, they were totally welcoming. The staff all wanted to see her, and in the restaurant the waiters regarded it as a privilege to be able to "wait on the pony." For her part, Panda was the model citizen. She stayed with us in the hotel room at night. That's always a concern. If a dog has an accident, well, it's not good, but it happens. That's the attitude because people are used to dogs living with them. But if Panda were to have an accident, that's totally different, since the idea of horses sharing our living spaces is still so new. So we were very conscientious about getting her out at night. We set the alarm clock so we could take her out at regular intervals. It turned out we really didn't need the alarm clock. When Panda needed to go out, she would wake one of us (usually me) up. I was truly impressed by that. There was nothing to stop her from relieving on the hotel's carpet, but she got us up to take her out.
I'm not sure I can convey in words just how awesome it was to watch her work, to see all the pieces we worked on when she was in training with me gel into such solid guide work. She was unflappable: crowded hallways, excited dogs, long hours, nothing made her cranky or impatient. I'd been a little concerned about meal times. With such long, intense days, would Panda be able to settle and let Ann eat in peace? Not to worry. Panda took advantage of the restaurant breaks to take a nap. The waiters were walking past her, handing plates over her head, and she dozed on undisturbed. I am always astounded at how at ease she is sleeping in even the most distracting of environments.
I do have to say at the faculty dinner Thursday night she woke up long enough to check out the salad course. She poked her head up over the table as the plates were set down, much to the delight of Ken Ramirez who was sitting opposite Ann. Ann told Panda the salad wasn't for her, and she went back to sleep for the rest of the dinner. What a gem.
I was totally blown away by her endurance. On Saturday after a full day of seminars she participated in a book signing. The Expo staff thought it would be fun for people to have Panda sign her children's book, "A Guide for Ann". With the hotel's permission they set a tarp down on the floor and Panda very patiently let me press her hoof onto an ink pad and then onto the inside cover of her book. If she had gotten fussy or grumpy, we would have stopped, but Panda kept offering her foot for autograph after autograph.
For the better part of an hour she signed books, then we headed off to dinner. After dinner we treated Panda and some of the Expo attendees to a game of "Panda catch". She played with enthusiasm, very graciously including everyone in the game. For those who don't know what "Panda catch" is, this is a game Panda helped create. "Home" position is Panda in heel position, pressing her body against the handler's leg and adding in the extra flourish of her pose. She gets a click and a treat, then heads off to pick another person in the circle. She zips around behind that person to end up again in heel position. At home in the arena with Ann and myself as goal posts, she races full tilt like a little barrel horse from person to person. Great fun. At the Expo she stayed at a more sedate pace appropriate to her surroundings. But she graciously went systematically around the circle, including everyone in. (On Monday she played Panda catch with the Expo faculty. Now that was a hoot. She developed a crush on Ken Ramirez, returning to him over and over again. When he ran out of food and started to leave the circle, she scooted over to him. "Oh no! You can't leave." He was against the wall, and since she couldn't swing around behind him into position, she tried backing in, like a truck backing into a loading dock - too cute.)
After our Saturday evening game of Panda catch, on our way back through the hotel lobby, Panda took Ann on a slight detour. She headed over to the table where she had been autographing books earlier in the evening. Too funny! I think she was telling us she had been having as much fun as the people.
The Expo ended all too soon. It always does. They are still working out the details of next year's Expos. At the moment they are looking at Los Angeles and Cleveland, Ohio as the host cities. Got to clickertraining.com for more information. If you are thinking about attending an Expo, I would urge you to go. They are great fun and a tremendous learning opportunity.
WA Clinic report: Liberty Ground Driving
I was home just barely long enough to catch my breath and repack my suitcase. This past weekend I was out in Toutle WA at Debra Olson-Daniels' Magic Center. What a perfect clinic. Great people, great horses, great sharing. One of the treats for me was sharing Robin's winter project - ground driving at liberty. That means working the horses at their hip, pretending you have drive lines attached, except, of course, there are no lines. I shared this version of "Robin's Magic Hands" a couple of weeks ago with the Groton group. Kate Graham's Lucky was a superstar. He caught on magnificently to the game adding in all the bells and whistles: shoulder-in, haunches-in, even a gorgeous collected trot.
In WA we first introduced Julie Jacob's Aimee to the liberty driving. She was astounding. I worked with her for a bit which was such a treat for me. Julie has done such a magnificent job with her. Aimee added in the bells and whistles of beautiful collected carriage, shoulder-in, and even the beginnings of passage. It gave me goose bumps seeing how beautifully she worked out in front of me.
We finished off the clinic by introducing Magic to the new game. He totally knocked my socks off. Talk about gorgeous. He started off not sure what was being asked, where he was supposed to be. Totally normal. A couple of clicks later he was walking ahead of Debra in beautiful shoulder-in. He was so pretty I wanted to video his lesson so we moved to the outdoor arena. I took him just for the fun of playing with him. In this very first session Magic ground drove for me around the perimeter of the arena, halted square into his pose, changed rein, circled, offered shoulder-in and haunches-in, and changes of direction across the diagonal, all the while remaining magnificently engaged and collected. Too awesome. What a perfect way to end the clinic.
Note: I included a bit of Magic's Liberty Ground Driving at the ned of the new "Why Would You Leave Me? Game" DVD. Check out the book store section for more information on that DVD.
Biting and Advanced Concepts
So now I am on my way home, catching up with emails and two weeks worth of posts from the list. The internet moves so fast it's easy to let posts slip by without comment. I didn't want that to happen with the recent posts about biting. Arlene, Melissa M, Tanya your posts have been awesome. I hope I'm not missing anyone in this list of great responses. I agree with all the people who have commented on the wisdom on this list.
Over the weekend I was reading Ken Ramirez's book, "Animal Training". It's a hefty book, and I didn't have much energy left over at night for reading, so I decided just to open the book at random. I opened the book at a section on advanced concepts.
Ken defines advanced concepts as:
"Basic operant conditioning works wonderfully, and its concepts are easy to grasp: reinforce desirable behavior and ignore unwanted behavior. There is nothing difficult in that. But, what happens when behaviors break down? What if an animal does the unexpected? No two animals respond to problems or to the solutions the same way, nor do any two trainers. Trainers rely on technique and experience to solve complex behavioral problems. So what does a trainer do if he knows the technique but lacks experience? If a technique requires experience before a trainer can apply it properly, then I define it as an advanced concept. The problem is that everyone has a different opinion about which techniques require experience, when a trainer has gained that experience, and how to determine when a technique is applied properly. I believe that it if it's that complex, it must be advanced."
"Animal Training: Successful Animal Management through Positive Reinforcement" pg. 276
I love that last line. "If it's that complex, it must be advanced." Pretty simple.
By this definition I would say the active use of punishment to stop biting is an advanced concept. It may be that an experienced, well trained, highly skilled, educated trainer will have the timing and expertise to use punishment effectively and without creating creating unwanted side effects. However, that's a lot of qualifiers in front of the word trainer. Very few horse owners fall into this category. When inexperienced handlers are told to "get tougher" with their horses, problems tend to emerge. They are being told to use an advanced concept to change behavior. Not good.
A novice trainer should not be using advanced training concepts. So how do you deal with biting and other behavior problems while you are in the early learning stage? You control the environment, and you break the training down into many small steps. That's exactly what Arlene described so beautifully in her post.
Control the environment well enough, do your homework, break your training down into small steps, develop good foundation skills both in you and in your horse, and you may well find that you never need to use those "advanced concepts". The basics of good training will see you through.
Hip-Shoulder-Shoulder
There were several questions on hip-shoulder-shoulder (refer to the Riding book for a description of this lesson.) Katie did a great job reviewing the steps of the exercise. The more ways you have of thinking about these patterns, the better.
Hip-shoulder-shoulder and three-flip-three are very closely related. When people are first learning to set up lateral flexions via 3-flip-3, they often over-rotate the horse into HSS. It's not what they want at that moment, but I tell them to make note of the reaction. They'll be asking for it deliberately later on. So for many of you who are puzzling your way through this, I want to say, you may be making it more complicated than it really is. You are probably already getting HSS and not even realizing it.
HSS is a redirection of energy. Think about throwing a ball against a wall. The ball hits the wall and bounces back to you. In HSS we don't want to shut down energy, we want to redirect it.
We're going to start with a review of 3-flip-3. In 3-flip-3 we begin and end with three softenings of the jaw. Why? Here's a very basic way of thinking about the disengaging of the hip. Look at the photos on page 129 in the riding book. That's the sequence of photos where one person is trying to unbalance a second. When the second person stands with her feet spread apart and her arm fully extended out to the side, she can easily resist being knocked over. But when she crosses her legs, her partner can knock her off her feet. With her legs crossing her hips are disengaged, and she has no balance, no power to resist being knocked off her feet.
When you disengage your horse's hips, you are also taking away his power, his balance. A prey animal does not want to give up his balance, so when you ask a horse to disengage his hips, his first response is going to be "I'd rather not, thank you very much." In traditional training, the handler then puts the horse in a caught-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place position. He escalates the pressure until the horse yields his hips.
Disengaging the hips takes the freight train power out of the horse's hips. That means we can use the exercise to stop spooking, barging, bolting, etc. Clicker trainers need this safety tool just as much as any other horse handler, but we want to avoid the rock-and-a-hard-place trap. We break the lesson down into many small steps. We put our hand on the horse's hips, and, when he shifts his weight even a little, click, he gets a treat. We build toward the disengaging of the hips in small approximations so asking for the hip becomes just another behavior our horse is comfortable giving us - never a threat or a demand. We can transfer the direct asking with our hand placed on the horse's hip to asking indirectly with the lead or rein. That makes it more available to us while riding.
That's the beginning. When we are ready to put the displacement of the hip into longer sequences of behavior, we recognize that essentially we are asking for something the horse would rather not give us. From his point of view we are being quite rude asking for his hip, so we need to ask in the most polite way we can. So we set up the request with three softenings of the jaw: good, better, best. We are essentially saying: Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Or put it another way: "Get ready, get set, get set some more." With each give of the jaw the horse becomes better balanced to give the hip softly so it is not a jarring, abrupt, or unpleasant experience for the horse, just a rebalancing, dance step. So what you get is three set-up softenings of the jaw followed by an asking for the hip: "Get ready, get set, get set some more - now go"
After our horse gives in the hip we ask for three more softenings. In effect we are saying: "Was that all right with you? Was that all right with you? Was that all right with you?"
We are finishing the movement with three more softenings of the jaw to make sure that the horse exits from the disengaging of the hips in a soft, balanced, emotionally settling sequence of steps. So that's fundamentally why we surround the request for the hip with the softenings of the jaw. In an emergency, when you absolutely need the hip to come around this instant, you can always reach down the rein and take the hip in one clean, definite move. But do that on a regular basis, and you will end up with an unhappy horse. He doesn't want you pulling him around, any more than you want to be shoved around by someone else. Ask politely, and he won't mind giving you his hip.
So those three softenings before and after the give of the hip are first and foremost there to smooth out any "ruffled feathers" that the disengaging of the hip might have created. But since you can never do just one thing, as you go through this pattern over and over again, some really neat things emerge. You create both wonderful lateral flexions and soft, engaged rein backs.
Let's start with the lateral flexions that emerge out of 3-flip-3. Set up your good-better-best preparation. That means with each give of the jaw, your horse is setting up a deeper, more engaged bend. With each give of the jaw he is also connecting his hips to the rein. You already have the beginning shifts of the balance you want, so when you get to the fourth pick up of the rein, make your request for the hip a little thing, just a whisper. Your horse will step more deeply yet with his hind end. He's given you what you need. Release the rein. Now follow up with three more softenings of the jaw: "Was that all right with you? Was that all right with you? Was that all right with you?" And as you ask those three questions think about his outside shoulder stepping up and over, up and over, up and over. The stepping under and shift in balance in his hind end allows him to free up his shoulders. Now as you pick up the rein and ask for his jaw, the intent of your seat sending your energy over his outside shoulder results in him stepping laterally out to the side. That's the beginnings of a lateral flexion.
(Note you are not looking to the outside. It may seem to work at first, but it can create bad habits for later on. You want to look within your bend, but send your energy where you want your horse to move his feet. Here's a simple way of thinking about the sending of your intent. As you stabilize your inside hand to ask for the jaw, point with your index finger. It will be pointing towards your horse's outside shoulder. Send your riding energy along that trajectory and click when your horse follows your intent.)
Lateral flexions emerge on the balance point of going forward and going back. That's what makes them so not simple to get right. Think of a ballet dancer on point. We're talking about that kind of balance. If you ask for too much hip, you'll over-rotate your horse and instead of getting a lateral flexion, you'll stall out his hind feet. Remember in 3-flip-three I keep repeating the give of the hip is a little thing. That's because if you have done your set-up well, you already have the hip coming under with each softening of the jaw.
But let's suppose instead of making the request for the hip a little thing, you reach a little further down the rein, and ask with a more definite look back at his inside hip. In this case your horse will over rotate. Instead of flowing into lateral work, he'll swing around your inside leg and his hind foot will stall out. That's the Hip of hip shoulder-shoulder. If you've asked your horse to disengage his hips, you've no doubt encountered this response.
In HSS we're going beyond the stall out of over-rotating the hips. We're going to take the redirection of energy the disengaging of the hips creates and turn it into backing. We're going to take a common response that just happens in training and make use of the energy shifts involved.
Here's the pattern:
As you ask for the good, better, best set-up and then pick up the rein the fourth time for the give of the hip, your horse will swing around. It's like a square dance spin. The horse still has energy. And the energy is still heading in the same direction you've been walking, but now his nose is now pointed in the opposite direction.
We'll illustrate the pattern with the following symbols:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>> <
J J J H (J= jaw; H=Hip; S =shoulder)
Let's view each "> " as one step. The direction of the arrow indicates the direction the horse's nose is pointing, but throughout this pattern the energy is always going from left to right. After you've read through this article and reviewed the hip-shoulder-shoulder section in the book, walk the exercise using the tai chi walk. That may help you to make sense of the pattern and the energy shifts involved.
In the diagram above the horse is walking from left to right. He has three steps of good better best (JJJ) into one hip flip that swings him around. His energy is still going from left to right even though his nose is now pointing back to the left hand side of the page.
So now the rider picks up the inside rein, the same rein that he has been using throughout this sequence, and asks for a softening of the jaw. The horse is still energized, and his momentum is still taking him from left to right. In fact the swing of the hip is like a square dance spin, it gives him a little extra energy for the next step. So as he softens, he steps with his inside front foot. And since his momentum is left to right, that means he takes a step back.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>> < <
J J J H S
The horse has just given you good, better, best preparation into hip-shoulder. That is he was walking from left to right, you asked for a give of the hip which over-rotated him into a change of direction, and on the next pick up of the rein he took a step back. You did not pull him into the backing step. You simply received the redirection of his energy and asked him to soften his jaw into the rebound. C/T
Once the rider is consistently recognizing this redirection of energy, he can ask for an additional step. Now he sets up a good, better, best preparation followed by a give of the hip. At each step, there is a release of the rein. As the horse swings his hips around, the rider releases the rein, then immediately picks it up again to receive the rebounding energy. The horse takes a step back. The rider releases the rein, and then immediately picks up again and receives another step of rebounding energy. The horse takes a step back with his outside front foot. He's now ridden hip, shoulder, shoulder.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>> < <<
J J J H S S
The horse is moving from left to right across the page throughout this sequence, but mid-way through, the exaggerated request for the hip over-rotates him. He swings around so he ends up backing up.
For a horse to back up smoothly and comfortably, his shoulders must be lined up square to his hips. In hip shoulder shoulder you are using the good, better, best preparation to gain smooth access to the hips. Your horse will be flexing around your inside leg. The disengaging of the hips brings the shoulders back in line with the hips, but now the front end is soft, and you have access to the feet so you can easily rebound your horse's energy into smooth backing steps. Click and treat.
Which Rein?
There was a question about which rein you are on. Do you change rein in the middle of this sequence? The answer is no.
This entire sequence is ridden on the same inside rein that you began on. There is no change of rein to get the second step back of the shoulder. You are connecting the inside rein to the pick up of each foot. That's very powerful. As this becomes integrated into your horse's work, it gives you a wonderful ability to help your horse rebalance. If you change rein mid-way through, you miss the opportunity to connect the rein fully to each foot, and you may end up with some odd bends.
Once a horse backs smoothly into hip-shoulder-shoulder, you can ask for more steps. You can make the backing sequence as long as you like. You will be looking for balanced, round, smooth backing steps. Click and treat. Once he is backing well into the inside rein, you can do a couple of things. You can add the outside rein in preparation for a collected start. Or you can change rein, change the bend as he continues to back. That's a wonderful exercise for supplying and strengthening your horse's hind end.
So why go through all this to get a rein-back? When you recognize and learn how to receive the rebound of energy out of the disengaging of the hip, you can ask for a rein back without pulling back on your horse. There's no blocking of energy, no compression of the spine, no dragging back of stuck-in-cement feet. And as the horse recognizes the pattern, he will respond sooner, and more subtly. Now instead of swinging 180 degrees around, he softens, steps under and backs up all in a straight line. Make HSS a whisper down the rein and through your body, and you have a half halt - a rebalancing of weight. Ask for a more definite shift, and you have a beautiful collected stop. Transfer the energy again, and you have an equally awesome collected start. So what began as a polite way to ask for an element you need for safety, ends with an awesome way to bring out the best in your horse's gaits.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com