Copyright 2006 Alexandra Kurland
The following posts were written for the_click_that_teaches email discuaaion list.
Contents:
More Food Delivery Basics
We've certainly had some great posts over the weekend.
Mae, I loved - no - LOVED your post on Tigger and the "Why would you leave me?" game. What a powerful statement. You have put in writing what so many others have experienced. I always want to stand up and cheer when someone is able to write so clearly about this process. It's not an easy road - to give up what we think is keeping us safe and in control, but is in reality just feeding the fire.
You wrote:
"Now for me the thing was I used to lead horses around with stud shanks all the time. my old reaction would have been when we got into the arena to let him have it a few good yanks to get his attention.. . There would no understanding at all or relaxation.
I am finding the clicker training has had a profound impact on my whole way of dealing with everything.There was always an underlying threat of a shank. Which when I took the shank away a few years ago left me in a place of fear, my beliefs hadn't changed yet. So with that I thought well he really needs a good yank but I had taken away the chain what now...the old up the creek without the paddle feeling.. .
Well thank you ladies very much for helping me make my own Paddle. Funny thing is its the perfect weight length and color. I have adjusted my whole interaction with both my horses. So now I don't feel helpless at all I just feel a deep connection with my horse. "
Mae
Perfectly said.
Foals
Susan wrote:
"I am visiting my new baby once a week--currently 3 weeks old, and was wondering if I would be able to introduce the clicker using a primary reinforcer such as applesauce until he has teeth. Any ideas?"
You can use click and scratch wonderfully well with babies. Just scratch until you see their nose start to wiggle. It's just like using food. You don't feed the entire meal after the click. You just feed a tidbit. So with scratching, you scratch just to see the look of bliss come onto the foal's face, then you ask for the next piece. Be certain also to position yourself to the side so you aren't encouraging suckling and mutual grooming. If the foal starts to nuzzle you, the scratching stops instantly. There's a section showing the click and scratch technique on the "Introduction to Clicker Training" video. The foal on that tape was extremely pushy and mouthy, quite a surprise for his owner who had always had very sweet foals before. He was three weeks old when the video was taken, the same age as your youngster. It was great fun seeing how fast he learned to control himself to get that much desired scratch.
Food Delivery
Deborah wrote:
"However when I click and come to a stop, my Vey will usually barge right on by sometimes just by one pace or sometimes by several. Question is, should I guide him back around, playing fence post till he is back in
the correct position, should I back him to the correct position, and then treat (in either of these two cases) or should I walk to where he is and start over again. "
Katie wrote a very thorough answer to this question. I'll just add that the new DVD for the "Why would you leave me?" game shows clearly the situation you describe, and the solution - which is to use food delivery to reposition your horse. The mantra is: "click for behavior - feed where you want your horse's head to be."
So Kim, this answers your question as well. I don't remember the horse you were talking about, but my guess is, if it looked like teasing to me then, it probably was teasing. Good manners around food must be built systematically. If you have a horse that is new to clicker training, you have to be very careful how much you expect in terms of good manners around the food. If you ask for too much, waiting for the horse to show you post-click self control, you can end up frustrating the horse.
I've seen this a number of times with novice clicker trainers who want the horse to show them good manners before they'll go on with the game. In the beginning stages of clicker training, you will get mugging behavior. Of course the horse is going to check out your pockets. He doesn't know you haven't suddenly turned into an "open salad buffet". That's something he has to learn through a series of lessons designed to teach him the rules of the clicker game. Those rules need to be explained step-by-step. Throw too many rules at him at once, expect too much too soon, and all you do is spoil the game for him. To keep the game safe for us, and inviting for him, we begin with protective contact - a stall guard across the door, or a paddock fence. I want to be able to let the horse explore, experiment, make mistakes, and discover how clicker training works - without having to worry about my safety. I can let the horse nuzzle at my pockets, bump my arm. I know this phase will pass, and I also know that I have set up the lesson so that things remain safe. When the horse takes his nose away from my pocket - click - that's the grown-ups-are-talking behavior I want to mark. And now I am going to feed him where I want his head to be - well out away from my body.
Using Food Delivery
Deborah, you remember at Katie's clinic how I used the unfolding of my arm "tai chi" fashion with May's draft horse, Chester . To get the food Chester had to take a step back. I didn't food lure him back by holding the food just under his nose. That's a technique I would urge people to avoid. Food luring is very different from clicking and then presenting the food in a specific location.
Think of it this way. We could click and toss the food into a feed bucket. The horse would have to move his feet to get to the bucket. If we had never used a bucket, we might have to go through a process to teach the horse that the food was going to be in the bucket. We would stand right next to the bucket, click and toss a carrot into the bucket. When he was consistently looking in the bucket for the goody, we could begin to move further away from the bucket. Now we'd click, reach into our pocket and toss the treat from that distance into the bucket. The horse would see this process, and he would know that the treat was going to be there, so there would be no disconnect between the behavior that was being marked and the delivery of the goody.
I almost never toss the food into an actual bucket. I want the horse to learn to take treats politely from my hand because when I move out into an arena or when I am riding, a treat bucket isn't very convenient. So with most horses I begin by feeding from my hand. But I don't feed in next to my pocket. I present the food out away from my body where I want the horse's head to be. You could think of this as putting the food into an imaginary bucket which is hanging just inside your horse's stall. And since it's imaginary and not an actual bucket, sometimes your horse is standing right where you're picturing the bucket to be. After you click, he has to move back up or move to the side to get out of the way of your being able to reach the bucket.
When I first started teaching clicker training, I didn't emphasize this point enough. I was sharing clicker training with my regular clients. They all had good relationships with their horses already. Adding food was a non-issue for all of them. So initially I didn't appreciate how important spelling out the details of food delivery was. That's the advantage of sharing something with lots of people. You begin to see all the little details that need to be emphasized, that can't be skipped over because the first cohort of people experimenting with a lesson already know a particular step.
As I was editing the first video, "Lesson 1: Getting Started with the Clicker", I really began to see how much I needed to emphasize the details of food delivery. The tape shows two horses who were brand new to clicker training. In one the mechanics of food delivery were consistent and clear. In the other there were some technical problems. The handler kept getting her hand caught in her winter coat pocket. She was working with an emotionally immature horse, so the little inconsistencies in timing and food delivery became magnified and resulted in frustration. You can see clearly what a huge impact imprecise food delivery had on the emotional response of this horse. That was one of the main lessons I wanted people to take away from the video. I hoped they would see how important mechanical skills are. "Training is a mechanical skill" to quote Bob Bailey. And: "don't let mechanics get in the way of good training."
The impact of mechanics is shown clearly on that tape. The first handler is Ann Edie. Her food delivery is very consistent, and that is reflected in the calm response of her horse. On the video I don't tell you anything about Ann other than that she is the owner of the horse she is working with, the Icelandic stallion Sindri. I don't tell you she's blind, but since you have now met Ann through the Panda Reports, you know that.
Obviously, Ann can't see where the horse's nose is, so she doesn't chase after the horse to deliver treats the way sighted people do. She presents the food very consistently out in front of her. If the horse wants his goody, he has to go to where she puts the food. Click for behavior, feed where you want the horse's head to be. Watching the two horses in their initial clicker training session made me realize that I needed to emphasize much more than I was the importance of food delivery.
On the video Ann was standing slightly too far back from the stall guard. She was trying not to block the camera angle, but the result was Sindri had his chest up against the stall guard. She couldn't see that he was pressing forward against the stall guard so she didn't automatically correct for it. Pushing against a barrier is not something I want to encourage. I want the horse to step back and receive his treat on his side of the stall guard. In the clip from the video we were just starting to correct for this via a change in Ann's position. But that segment of the video doesn't show clearly enough how you can use the food delivery to back the horse out of your space. In the new DVD for Lesson 1, I've added some more details on the teaching of this step. This isn't anything new, just more clarification of details. It's one of those pieces that needs to be repeated over and over again. The mechanics of food delivery are a huge part of clicker training.
Food delivery and post click manners are a process that evolves. If I have a horse that is grabby, I'll interrupt whatever the lesson is that I'm working on and teach a lesson on "table manners" (see the Step-By-Step book, as well as the Riding book.) I'll also teach "leave it". There are a number of variations on a theme for this lesson. Creativity in teaching "leave it" is a good thing, especially since you may have to present this lesson many tiimes, in slightly different ways before your horse truly understands it and is consistent in his manners. And remember- your horse's degree of consistency is a reflection of your own. (Dog trainer, Kay Lawrence prefers to refer to "leave it" as "control", as in control yourself and leave the tempting tidbit alone. I like that, since self-control is the overall response you want the animal to generalize.)
Once I have taught "leave it", I can begin to insert it into the food delivery process. Folding your arm up to your chest seems to work the best for this. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, if you withdraw the food behind your body, which is how I originally taught "table manners", this movement in some people can look fearful. And when it looks fearful, it absolutely also looks like teasing. Bringing the hand up to your shoulder keeps you in core balance. The horse can see the food is still there, but, as Katie pointed out, he has also learned that the folded-up arm is the prelude to extending your arm out away from your body - as in click for behavior, feed where you want your horse's head to be. When he sees you withdraw your hand up to your shoulder, he is quite likely to draw back from you. Perfect. Extend your arm and present the treat out away from your body.
On the other hand, if I have a normally mannerly horse who starts to grab at the treats, I need to assess my current lesson. The grabbiness is a sign of frustration, and stress. I am asking for too much, too fast, in too difficult an environment. I need to back up, make the lesson simpler, or perhaps change the lesson entirely. I need to put whatever I was working on on the back burner and work on something my horse fully understands and finds easy. Process time is amazing. The next time I revisit the lesson, I may find my horse is totally comfortable with it and can progress well.
So grabbiness can be simply you haven't yet had enough training time under your belt for good post-click manners to have evolved. The solution: trust the process and let those manners evolve in the step-by-step process of good training. Or grabbiness may be a sign of anxiety, an early warning signal that it's time to back off and regroup with an easier lesson.
Pockets
Good food delivery mechanics are part of clicker training from your first click onwards. Have I emphasized enough - probably not - the importance of accessible pockets? I've watched first time clicker trainers digging treats out of jeans pockets. It doesn't work. It takes too long to get the treat out, and the horse gets frustrated. You need pockets that you can get into and out of quickly. Most winter jackets are not suitable. Vests and fanny packs seem to work best.
Good food delivery means feeding out away from your body, not right in next to your treat pocket. In the early lessons the horse may have his nose hovering right by your pocket, but that's not where you open your hand to feed him. Your arm extends out away from your body. If he wants his treat, he moves to where you have presented the food - just as he would move to the feed bucket if you were tossing food in.
As he becomes accustomed to moving to where you present the food, you can expand the use of this. At first you can unfold your arm so he has to take a step back to get to the food. Later you can make this dance step more involved. An example of this is illustrated well in the new "Why Would You Leave Me? Game" DVD. When you are working on chains of "dance steps" you can build part of the pattern out of the food delivery. That means your horse will already have the coordination for the pattern before you ask for it as the behavior to be clicked.
The Click as Bridging Signal
In the clicker community we used to say: "the click ends behavior", until Bob Bailey called us on it. We knew what we meant, but strictly speaking, it wasn't true. Bob was right. The animal kept right on behaving after the click. It was a good reminder that everything that happened between the click and the treat delivery was also being reinforced. In fact the behavior that most immediately preceded the treat delivery was the behavior that was most strongly reinforced. So if the horse was pinning his ears at a neighbor, grabbing at your coat pocket, etc. that behavior was reinforced.
That's why initially you want to get the treat to the animal as quickly as possible. You want to minimize the amount of unwanted behavior that is occurring. But the whole point of the click is it buys you time. It creates a link between the desired behavior, the action you want to see repeated, and the reinforcer. If you have to get the food to the horse the instant it performs correctly, you might as well skip the click altogether and just chuck food.
The problem with food chucking is the treat happens after the fact. For the most part we can't get the treat to the horse at the very instant that it performs the way we want. So we need a bridging signal. The click buys you time, but at first, not a lot of time. Initially, you do have to be prompt with your treat delivery. No messing about in your pocket trying to fish out a treat, no forgetting to give your horse a treat while you get distracted by a friend, no waiting for your horse to be a perfect gentleman before you release the treat to him. You want to minimize the amount of unwanted behavior that is occurring.
You can do this by clicking and then smoothly, deliberately reaching into your pocket and extending your arm so that you feed out away from your body. Your horse won't be doing much else besides positioning himself so he can get to the treat. As your training continues, you can put more distance between where the horse ends up at the moment of the click and where he gets his treat. You can also teach and expect gentle treat-taking manners.
But this time between the click and the delivery of the treat is not to be abused. It is not click and go on with your training. It is click, and now the treat is coming. Everything that occurs between the click and the food delivery is geared towards the horse getting his treat. The click marks the end of a unit of behavior. Now you are getting the goody and delivering it where you want your horse's head to be. Your horse can see you reaching into your pocket. He knows that whatever he was doing at the moment you clicked has now set in motion this chain of events which will lead to his goody. With a novice horse, the chain is short and simple with very few expectations placed on good manners. It is up to the handler to use good treat delivery skills to keep things safe and manageable. That means no letting the horse rush you to get the treat, but no dilly dallying either. You control the pace of the lesson, and you do it through systematic, clear food delivery.
With each training session you can begin to shift the responsibility for maintaining emotional control around the food over to the horse. That's the function of lessons such as "the grown-ups are talking, please don't interrupt", and the "leave it" games. As the process evolves it is really quite astounding how much can be inserted between the click and the treat delivery without breaking the connection between the behavior that is being marked and the reinforcer. I've taught lessons where I'm the one with the food. The horse can be at the other end of the arena when it is clicked. I'll get up off the mounting block where I was watching the pair, and I'll walk at a leisurely pace down the length of the arena to deliver the treat. The horse waits quietly, no fussing or fidgeting for me to get there. There's quite a lag time between the click and the treat. How do we know a connection has been made with the desired behavior? When the rider picks up her reins, the horse returns promptly to the sequence that led to the clickable moment. He shows us he knows what he was clicked for because he readily repeats it, often with a superior version of the behavior.
This long waiting between the click and the treat is not something I would ever ask of a novice clicker-trained horse. With novice horses you want to take great care with your food delivery and really look at what your expectations are. You want to be clear, consistent, and - here's probably the most important part - fair. The principle is: you can't ask for something and expect to get it on a consistent basis unless you have gone through a teaching process to teach it to your horse."
If you want good post-click treat-taking manners, you have to go through a teaching process to teach them to your horse. Skip this process, or rush through it too fast, and your treat delivery expectations may well turn into teasing and result in a frustrated horse and an equally frustrated handler.
Follow the principle, go through a consistent, clear, fair teaching process that uses what you have already taught your horse and builds expectations step-by-step, and you will be able to make powerful use of food delivery. The more you explore this idea, the more you will discover the incredible teaching tool food delivery is, one that is so much more effective and fun to use than all that shanking, threatening, and intimidating that it replaces. It's part of the "paddle" Mae described - use it well.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
Copyright 2006
P.S. Tanya, your question about your horse seeming to tune you out never seems to get addressed, so here's a quick answer: Here's one way to look at it. Have you ever given directions to someone who thinks they know where they are going. At first they don't really listen to you. They know the route. They know how to get to town so they think they know how to get to the feed store. They aren't really listening to you because they think they already have all the information they need. But then half way through the directions head a way they don't know and nothing is computing. They get a blank look to their eyes. You know you're still speaking English, but it's quite clear the other person isn't understanding a word you are saying. I think that's one of the dynamics that happens to our horses. Your horse has a lot of prior programming. I think sometimes he gets snagged by this programming. This can happen in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it's just what I described. He thought he knew where you were heading so he went on auto pilot. He wasn't paying close attention, and then suddenly you headed off on a new "path" and he didn't go with you. He feels totally lost, not sure even what the question is. The result- the blank stare you described.
Sometimes you can be going along really nicely, working well, and suddenly one of those old threads of programming will latch onto what you are doing. Something you did was close enough to the old cues that it triggered the older, unwanted pathways with all of the emotional baggage attached, and suddenly you're in shut down mode again. To use a modern metaphor - the computer has just locked up and needs to be rebooted.
You may hit these snags for quite a while. They are very real. I've certainly encountered them. Here's another image. I think of strands of floating DNA codes. Every now and then one of these floating codes attaches itself to your training and causes a mutation. When that happens, I just regroup and go back through the steps leading up to the snag. If I chunk down, and make the pathway that I'm on more solid, these snags of floating reaction patterns become less and less able to attach themselves to what we're doing and the blank stares go away.
Lost of mixed metaphors there, but hopefully they will help you to understand the learning curve your horse is in.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com