January 2008 Newsletter
Copyright 2008 Alexandra Kurland
The following posts were written for the_click_that_teaches email discussion list.
Contents:
Grass
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Grass
By alexandra Kurland
copyright 2008
Happy New Year Everyone!
It's snowing outside and the first question of the year is about grass. Somehow it seems like a good match for a perfect winter day.
Laurel asked for details on how to keep her horse from helping herself to grass. This is a great opportunity to explore the power of - you guessed it - bone rotations. This lesson is so much fun. No more hauling on a lead rope while your horse buries his head even deeper into the grass. A simple bone rotation pops them right up.
I think it was a highland pony who showed me the real power of this technique. She'd had a lot of practice dragging her owner to grass. Trying to do anything with her when there was grass in sight had become an exercise in monumental frustration. Her radar would lock onto the grass, and that was the end of any serious work.
Why fight that? When I took her, I let her have the grass - for a bite or two. Then I positioned myself so I was directly over the snap of her lead. You can't be angled off to the side for this to work - not on a determined, experienced puller like this pony. She had her nose firmly rooted to the ground. I slid down the rope until my arm was fully extended. Then I rotated my whole arm initiating the movement from my shoulder.
Up popped the pony's head. I'm not sure which one of us was more surprised - I that it had worked so easily, or the pony that she had come up from the grass without a fight. I threw in a quick click before she could nosedive back down, gave her a treat, and then anchored the lead in "grown-ups are talking" position. She tried to pull her head down, but locking the lead against my torso gave me a leverage advantage. She tugged a couple of times, then paused with slack in the line. That's what I was waiting for. I released the lead, stepped back slightly, said "okay", and gestured with a head down signal that it was okay for her to return to the grass.
I let her take a couple of bites of grass, then once again positioned myself directly over the snap and popped her head back up with a bone rotation. Click/treat. Then back to "grown-ups" to wait for the slack. Once she stopped trying to go down and instead kept slack in the lead, I again gave her the opportunity to graze.
With each repetition she came up even more easily. She was so soft. There was no resistance at all. As soon as I started to slide down, her head popped up. And she stopped trying to nosedive back down. Instead, she'd get her treat and then go straight into "grown-ups". I could now lengthen out the waiting to a real pause before I released her back down to the grass.
So now I made the game more interesting. We were working on a "why would you leave me?" circle of cones. I'd pop her head up. Click - treat - "grown-ups". Then we'd walk to the next cone. Stop. Click - treat - grown-ups - permission to graze. This extension of the game broke the tractor-beam lock that the grass had on her nose. I could walk her over the grass from one cone to the next. She wasn't trying to drag her head down to eat. Instead she was walking on a slack lead from cone to cone, stopping with me, and waiting until I gave her the release cues that it was okay to graze. When I wanted to move on, she came up readily off the grass and walked with me without a fuss.
If you want visuals on the bone rotations I used, refer to the "T'ai Chi Rope Handling" and the "Why Would You Leave Me?" DVDs. And for the "Grown-ups are Talking" neutral body position refer to the "Lesson #1: Getting Started with the Clicker" DVD - the last section on the Six Foundation Lessons.
More pony food manners: I'm getting ready for the Clicker Expo at the beginning of February. I'll be presenting a new program on Micro-Shaping. This past week I've been editing video. I've got some great material not just for the presentation but also for a new DVD, so that's my current project. At the moment the computer is busy processing clips which is why I am free to write this post.
One of the video clips shows yet another highland pony. She was so deeply involved in the micro-shaping game that she was ignoring spilled grain at her feet. Picture this: she's standing with her attention riveted on her handler, trying to figure out which muscle to engage to earn a click and a treat while clearly visible at her feet is enough grain to make a flock of pigeons happy. She was perfectly aware that the grain was there. She'd started the session by vacuuming up after the previous horse, but now that the game was on, she was much more interested in solving the puzzle than eating freebies.
Another pony - this seems to be a day for ponies - ignored a pile of hay in the corner of her pen to play the micro-shaping game. We were asking her to back. She consistently backed away from the hay, that is until we made the puzzle a tad bit too hard by putting some cones behind her. She wasn't sure what to do about the cones. She needed to think that one through so she opted out of the game and started eating her hay. She was clearly one of those individuals who finds comfort in eating. When you feel a little worried or frustrated - raid the snack bar. This lasted just a brief moment, long enough for her to come up with a solution to her dilemma, then she was right back in the game.
What these ponies are telling us is that if we can make the game interesting enough and at the same time keep the rates of reinforcement high enough, even they will give up their fixation on food to engage with us. I could tell more pony stories, but the computer has just finished processing the video clips so I'll leave it there for now.
Happy New Year Everyone! Let's make this a year of great discoveries, great fun, and a year in which we all find enormous pleasure in our horses.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com