Newsletter February 2007

February 2007 Newsletter
Copyright 2007 Alexandra Kurland
The following posts were written for the_click_that_teaches email discussion list.

Contents:

Calming Your Horse

It's Worth Repeating

Are You Releasing Enough: Questions and Answers

Homecoming: Why Do We Clicker Train?

Happy Horses

Poisoned Cues

The Training Game

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Calming Your Horse
By Alexandra Kurland
Copyright 2007

I've had an interesting couple of weeks, and a couple of plane rides that were long enough to get some emails written. So I'm about to send off a series of posts. My apologies to those who have overcrowded in-boxes for the number and length.

Do you know how to calm your horse?

It's the start of a new clinic season, so that's a question that will get asked a lot as people take their horses out of the comfort zone of their familiar environment. It's a question that I found myself asking several times during a recent clinic. I was out in CA for the Clicker Expo. After the Expo a group of the attendees had arranged with me to have a lesson day with their horses - essentially adding an extra day to the Expo just for horses.

The day didn't start off that well for Julie, the organizer of the clinic. She had to get her horse from the barn where she was stabled to the training facility where we would be working. It was only a half mile or so away so she had decided to walk over rather than trailer. She didn't usually take her mare, a beautiful arabian named Katie, to the training facility because it meant a somewhat nerve wracking walk through traffic.

When we got to the barn, Katie greeted Julie with an eager nicker. Her person was here! They obviously had a great relationship. Julie let Katie have a few minutes in a sand arena to roll and stretch her legs before we headed off to the training facility. I followed along behind as Julie led Katie out of the barnyard. We were in a narrow lane with a high fence blocking our view of the houses below.

As soon as we entered the lane, Katie was on the alert. Her head shot up, and she became stiff-legged and tense. Something was bothering her. She walked on her tip toes ready to spook.

I suggested to Julie that she do a little targeting. She needed to play the "touch the goblins" game to settle things down. Julie offered Katie her hand to touch. Katie was only marginally interested. She understood the behavior, but it wasn't strong enough to override her concern.

We continued on down the lane to a gate that led into another narrow lane. As soon as we passed through the gate we saw what had been worrying Katie. A moving van was blocking the far end of the lane. We hadn't known it was there, but Katie certainly had. So here was lesson number 1: just because we can't see what is worrying a horse, doesn't mean there is nothing there.

Poor Katie, she was surrounded by scary things. The moving van was in front. And to the right were some very aggressive sounding dogs. Add to that one of the neighbors chose that moment to back her car out of the driveway we were crossing.

Julie managed to get Katie past the driveway, out of the way of the car, but then Katie froze. She wasn't going any further until she had had a good look at the moving van. We all know what that feels like. Our horse is rigid, head up, eyes fixed on the distant object, ready to jump. Julie offered Katie her hand to touch. Katie just ignored her. We needed something that was a stronger stimulus. The ground was littered with long dried strips of bark. I picked one up and held it out to Katie. Curiosity got the better of her. She reached out to sniff the bark: click and treat.

I offered her the bark again, placing it just an inch or so beyond her nose - not so much that her fear would keep her from investigating it, but enough so that she had to stretch her nose out to touch it. Click and treat.

We inched forward down the lane. The movers had seen her at this point and very thoughtfully moved their van out of the lane. But their giant boxes were still there. They were clearly more of a worry than the van itself.

The bark lost it's appeal as we got closer to the boxes, so I switched to my hat. That worked wonders. I held it out as a target. Click and treat. Click and treat. Katie followed it up to and past the boxes. As soon as they were behind her, the tension melted out of her body and she walked on.

We turned out of the lane and headed down a busy street lined with houses. All was going well. Katie was walking politely next to Julie. There was slack in the lead. She was okay with everything until we encountered a lawn sprinkler. Katie's feet froze on the pavement. She was thinking maybe she had had enough for one day and would like to go home. I whisked my hat off my head and held it out to her as a target. Click and treat, click and treat, we made it past the lawn sprinkler. Next came another barking dog, and a noisy car that sounded like a jet engine taking off. Targeting got her past all of these distractions.

All of this is standard "touch the goblins". It got Katie past the scary objects but it didn't truly calm her down. As we approached the training facility she was again up on her toes with a bit more pull on the lead than I would like. She wasn't spooking or trying to scoot away, but settled and relaxed would not have described her.

The training facility was a public riding arena in a town park. We arrived just as the main arena was being dragged and watered. The noise of the tractor engine didn't help Katie's growing unease. We walked past the arena to four small pipe corals set side by side. Julie popped Katie inside and unhooked her halter. Katie spun and whirled around her tiny pen. If the fence hadn't been there, she would have been bolting for home.

To the left of us was a round pen. Three of the other clinic horses were turned out. Every few minutes something would set them off and they would race around the arena bucking and kicking at each other. They were like popcorn kernels. When one jumped, they all scooted, setting Katie off in her pen.

The fifth horse arrived a few minutes later adding to the general excitement. The groundkeeper finished dragging the arena, but he was now fussing with his equipment. Someone was having an early morning picnic in the pavilion just past the arenas. The smoke from their barbecue billowed out over the horses. Delivery trucks rumbled past on the road, and periodically a rider would come to school a horse in the far arena.

Don't Take Score Too Soon.
So that was the environment Katie had to cope with. I know Julie was feeling frustrated. Why out of all mornings did the moving van have to be in the lane? Why couldn't it be a normal morning so that Katie could have had a calm walk to the arena? Julie wanted to work on three-flip-three and other riding questions. And yet here she was dealing with the same-old, same-old of her horse getting upset and being too anxious to ride. How frustrating.

But frustrating or not, you have to work with the horse you have, not the horse you wish she would be. One of the other participants was in a similar boat. Her horse was not handling the herd dynamics that were going on in the round pen. They took two of the horses out, but the third horse was still upset. When I asked her owner what she wanted to work on, she told me her horse got upset out on trail rides. She had to be out in front. If another horse passed her, she'd get upset.

Well, I didn't need to see the horse under saddle to see a demonstration of this behavior. Her horse was completely locked onto the herd dynamics that were going on around us. She never even glanced towards her person. Her focus was entirely on the other horses. She was quiet enough when they were near her, but any time one moved to another spot, she became anxious.

In both cases the environment had more control over the horses than anything their owners did. This is a common scenario which is why I am taking so much time to describe it. For brevity's sake, I'll describe what we did with Katie, though I used a similar approach for both horses. With Katie we could have simply left her in her pen while we worked the other horses in the hope that she would desensitize to this new environment and settle down enough to ride. As she discovered that nothing was going to hurt her, that the other horses weren't going anywhere, that the roaring engine of the tractor was not a tiger come to eat her, she probably would have settled. The problem with approach this is she would settle disconnected from her owner. The next time she was upset, her owner would have no active tools to help calm her. She would be just as at the mercy of the environment as she was now.

If Julie could get Katie out to enough new places often enough, maybe Katie would learn to adjust faster each time she encountered a new environment. But it's also possible Katie would continue her current pattern of first becoming upset by anything new.

Leaving her emotional control up to the passive process of desensitization did not feel like a very satisfactory solution. Nor was the standard horse training process of putting her to work - i.e. making the wrong thing unpleasant and the right thing easy - a direction I wanted to head..

Micro-Shaping
Clicker training offers a different alternative. We had one tool already working for us - targeting, though that needed strengthening. What we needed to activate more strongly was free shaping. Free shaping shifts the horse out of reactive, instinctive emotional patterns and into the thinking part of the brain. A horse that is offering behavior, that is focused on earning clicks and treats is not a horse that is going to be worrying over goblins.

Kay Lawrence gave a wonderful presentation at the Clicker Expo on micro-shaping. She showed a great video clip of a dog that was being shaped to put his paws on a box. At first the shaper was focused on the final goal. The dog was clicked for pawing the box. Over a sixty second training session he pawed the box just a few times. The rate of reinforcement was very low, and the dog was only marginally engaged in the game. His attention kept wandering to other parts of the room.

Kay then shifted to micro shaping. In the first instance the dog basically had to touch the box to get clicked. In other words the handler was being a lumper. In the micro shaping the handler clicked for muscle patterns that would lead to the end behavior. In both trials Kay counted the number of behaviors the dog offered: nose dips, paw lifts, turned head, touching the box. These along with the number of clicks were recorded. The success rate for the lumped process was around 20%. In the second set the success rate jumped to 80%. Quite a difference.

With a horse in a stall or pen, one of my favorite behaviors to free shape is backing. If a horse is pressed up against the stall door, this can be an important space-defining exercise. And for a horse that is on edge with the flight reaction kicking in, backing is a wonderful incompatible behavior to shape.

With Katie I knew that shaping was only going to help me if I used a micro-shaping process. If I waited until she took a full step back, I'd lose her. She'd be too worried to keep her attention on me.

Compounding the problem of her emotional upset was a basic lack of familiarity with the free shaping game. For all her movement Katie was stuck. All of her attention and energy were focused forward towards the outside of the pen. There wasn't a whole lot I could click. I watched her chest, looking for changes in her muscles that I could build into a step back. Her muscles quivered slightly, click and treat. Pause. Again she shifted slightly. Click and treat. Pause. This was no good. The rate of reinforcement was much too low.

At the Expo Ken Ramirez from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago showed some wonderful video clips illustrating how to develop conditioned reinforcers.

He just sent an excellent post on the subject to the Clicker Expo list. I'll excerpt some of it here:

Training for new positive reinforcers: By Ken Ramirez posted to the Clicker Expo list Feb. 5
PRIMARY REINFORCERS - A primary reinforcer is defined differently in different texts. However, the two most common definitions are reinforcers that "satisfy a biological need" or those that are "inherently reinforcing.' This would be reinforcers that do not depend on any previous association and usually include food, water, air, sex, shelter, etc. Food tends to be the primary reinforcer of choice in most training stuations with our animals.

SECONDARY REINFORCERS - This is just another name for a conditioned reinforcer, which is defined as a reinforcer that has "acquired its reinforcing value thorough its association with a primary reinforcer." For most of us the clicker or marker signal is the first "secondary reinforcer" that we establish. It has no meaning initially, but after many pairings with a treat, we all have seen the value and reinforcing properties of the clicker. One of the focuses of my class at the Clicker Expo was to demonstrate how to train and utilize other secondary reinforcers, such a toys, tactile, and clapping, among others. I used clapping as a demonstration by showing how I taught my 3-year old spaniel mix to accept clapping as a reinforcer. My primary message was to suggest that trainers need to make sure they establish these other reinforcers rather than assuming that an animal will find it reinforcing. I frequently see young trainers who are having difficulty because they use something like a pat on the head to reinforce a behavior offered by their dog; but because they have not done the ground work to teach the dog the meaning of the head rub, the dog does not find it significantly reinforcing and the young trainer may have difficulty maintaining the behavior. Secondary reinforcers are powerful, but they must be well-established to be effective.

TACTILE REINFORCERS - Some trainers will argue that dogs find tactile reinforcers inherently reinforcing and thus consider it a primary reinforcer. However, I believe that we fail to recognize the powerfully reinforcing social value that raising, caring for, and feeding our dogs provides. Tactile is reinforcing to our dogs because of those and many other factors. We all know that not every dog will accept petting from just anyone, it has a great deal to do with the relatinship we develop. I beleive that tactile is one of several very potent reinforcers available to us for use with our dogs, but I still beleive it needs to be established and conditioned so that it has the maximum reinforcing potential.

WHY IT MATTERS - Determining whether or not somethng is a "primary" or "secondary" reinforcer is really more academic than practical. However, I find that it is important that young trainers at least recognize that many reinforcers have to be established or taught to their animals - without that recognition and understanding an inexperienced trainer can take reinforcement for granted and not succeed. Once a trainer is experienced I think there is less of a need to be thinking or asking "is this a primary or secodary renforcer?" Instead, experienced trainers simply rely on their knowledge of the animal and become good observers of behavior to determine which reinforcer the animal responds to best in each situation - without regard to whether that reinforcer is technically a primary or secondary reinforcer.

Ken showed the video of his dog learning about applause. He would clap, then present food. Clap - present food. The clapping took on a positive association for the dog as it was paired with the goodies. In your training you want to create conditioned reinforcers. This is how you can diversify your training so you are not dependent upon one type of reinforcer. If your horse stops eating because he is worried about going on a trailer, do you have other things he finds reinforcing, or have you put all your eggs in one basket?

Building Conditioned Reinforcers
Katie was perfectly willing to eat,. That wasn't the issue, but I needed to increase the overall rate of reinforcement. So out came my hat again. Touch - click and treat; touch - click and treat. This was a familiar, easy behavior. She had already learned that touching the hat helped keep monster sprinklers and other scary things at bay. Touching the hat was reinforcing. She could be highly successful. I kept the hat pretty much in one spot. I didn't make the game harder by making her move around to get to it.

The game was predictable. Easy. She didn't have to venture out of her physical or emotional comfort zone. She could stay right by the gate and earn click and treat after click and treat. If we had videotaped the thirty seconds or so of focused training, we would have seen that the only behavior she offered was targeting. She was 100% successful with a high rate of reinforcement. I let her touch the hat six or seven times, then I put it on my head and leaned against the pipe corral.

In her talk Kay explained how and why she uses shaping for some behaviors and luring or targeting for others. Her dogs understand both processes, so how do they know when its a free shaping session and experimentation is desirable? Kay sits down. Sitting in a chair is her cue that the free shaping game is on.

Kathy Sdao in her lab on the creativity game had a similar strategy. She establishes a cue that signal's to the animal that the game is "show me something new". When I free-shape, I set aside the t'ai chi balance I teach in the rope handling. Instead I lean casually against the pen or stall door. T'ai chi balance says I want something - read my intent from my balance. A relaxed stance says its a treasure hunt - figure it out.

What is your Goal?
We played this game with both horses. The second horse was even more stuck than Katie. Her owner was feeling very frustrated by her horse's seeming lack of response. "She knows back. Can't I just cue her?" was the question.

My answer was, yes, you could cue her - if backing were the goal. But backing is just a means to a much more important end. I don't want backing for backing's sake. I want thinking and problem solving. In the riding book I shared the story of the treasure hunts my father designed for birthday celebrations. The fun of those treasure hunts was figuring out the clues. If he had told us the answers the first time we got stuck, I probably wouldn't remember the treasure hunts at all. The fun was figuring out the puzzle.

It's great that both of these horses already had cues to signal backing, but here they were in a treasure hunt having to figure out the answer all over again. What we were awakening was a thinking process.

Karen Pryor is working on a new book. At dinner Thurs. night she described the major sections of the book. She shared with us some charming research on happy rats which demonstrated that rats do indeed laugh. Her book is going to explore the emotions of animals, a taboo subject, but one certainly that is near and dear to the hearts of clicker trainers. Yes, they do have emotions. Yes, they do think. Hooray! Finally somebody is going to say this out loud! She's got some fascinating research on how the click is processed, but I won't let that cat out of the bag. We'll all have to wait for Karen's book to come out in another year or so. I will just say that it suggests that the treasure hunt analogy is a very appropriate one.

Micro-Shaping
I wanted Katie to shift out of her anxious, reactive flight instinct so I slouched against the side of the pen and watched for micro-movements I could reinforce. Her chest muscles quivered. Click and treat. She shifted her weight ever so slightly back. Click and treat. That was enough. I reinforced her by returning to the easy game of targeting. I whisked my hat came off my head, stood up straight and held it out to her. Click and treat, click and treat in rapid succession. Five or six touches went by in a matter of seconds.

I put my hat back on my head and slouched against the pen. Same thing. Katie looked puzzled. She wasn't sure what, if anything, she was supposed to do. I watched her chest muscles and found something to click. One click, two clicks, then back to targeting.

On the third shaping set, she took a step back. That was cause for celebration, for bells an whistles. I had been quiet all through the targeting and the shaping. Now I erupted with a "good girl, aren't you smart!" along with a click and treat. Then immediately the target came up. Click and treat. Click and treat.

When I slouched against the pen the next time, she didn't hesitate. She took a solid step back. "Hooray! Good girl!" Click and treat, then back to targeting. It was clear the targeting was doing its job. It was beginning to function as a secondary reinforcer. Play this harder game for a click or two, and you can have the easy game back.

Katie started offering multiple steps. She was understanding that backing earned goodies and attention. And it was also clear that putting my hat on my head and slouching were becoming a cue. I would eventually want her to generalize this to mean we're free shaping. But for now to Katie, it simply meant back.

We were having good success. If we had been video taping so we could record her success rate, we would have seen that we were sitting in the 90% or higher range. It was time to make a change. I shifted position slightly, moving her to the side of the pen so she had to orient away from the security of the gate.

I repeated the process, lowering my expectation to begin with until she was once again eagerly offering backing in this new location. Julie now had a good idea what the strategy was. I turned Katie over to her. We had to clean up some details in the mechanics - mostly around the "I'm shaping now" cue. Julie had a hard time relaxing. She was on guard, as ready to jump as her mare. She had to practice looking casual.

Creating a Herd of Two
At the Clicker Expo I gave a presentation on Panda, the mini I trained to be a guide for the blind. When I first got Panda, we became each other's shadow. She was only nine months old and I did not want her to be alone. The first weekend I had her, I was teaching at a barn in my area. We put Panda in a small holding pen at the far end of the arena, and I stationed my chair next to the pen. Throughout the clinic, I never strayed more than a few feet from her.

The following weekend we had to travel a bit further away from home. I took my horse trailer with me. At night while everyone else went off to a warm hotel, I slept in the trailer with her. While she was adjusting to her new life, she was never left alone in a strange environment. I think that is part of what has made her such an extraordinary horse. We can so easily over-face and unnerve our horses. We expect so much of them. We take them away to clinics or to shows and leave them alone to cope. Some do. Some just worry and fret.

I told Julie that she was going to train Katie to be a guide. That doesn't mean she was going to take her into stores or restaurants, all the places Panda can go. But it did mean she was going to ask Katie to stop at changes in footing, to take her around obstacles, to point out landmarks. They weren't just going to go for walks around the neighborhood. Julie was going to give Katie a job. She was going to become a good "tour guide", pointing out all landmarks and potential safety hazards. It was going to become her job to get them both around them safely. "Touch the Goblins" was going to be transformed into a new game. Katie was going to discover that the neighborhood around the barn was full of opportunities to solve puzzles and earn reinforcements.

The first step in this process was creating a solid bond. So Julie spent the day with Katie. Her first task was to use the targeting and free shaping to get Katie engaged with her, and then to move around the perimeter of the pen until Katie felt safe and secure any where in the pen.

I went off to work with the other horses, and I was pleased to see when I glanced over that Katie and Julie were soon working comfortably at the back of the pen, and the other horses moving about did not disturb them.

At lunch time we set up a picnic near Katie's pen so Julie could sit next to the fence. When Katie came over and checked in with her, click, she got a treat. She was very polite, never mugging or making a pest of herself. Rather she stationed herself at Julie's shoulder, nuzzling her occasionally, but always in a very soft, companionable way. The frantic, anxious behavior of the morning was gone.

When it was time for Julie to walk Katie home, they went off together as a united herd. We watched them walking up the street on the far side of the park. When Julie stopped half way up the hill for a rest, Katie calmly dropped her head and waited. Beautiful.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

Afterword

This is an excerpt from a post sent to The Click That Teaches list by Julie.

"Without going into too much detail, Alex thought that Katie needed to be put on a high rate of reinforcement and that I should not leave her throughout our stay at the arena. I had no idea what an impact this would have on our relationship. Alex said that often we ask that our horses calm themselves. The training that took place was to have Katie look to ME for calm. Being away from home is very, very hard for Katie. For the first time, she seemed to enjoy our time together. I sure enjoyed our time together. Having my horse nuzzle me, stand over me and yearn to be with me are huge ego boosts, no doubt. What a gift. In the almost 8 hours that we spent together, I believe that she left me 3 or 4 times to go check out some distractions, but then quickly came back to me to touch her target. In essence, we were engaged for almost the entire time.

Next session: We did our usual exercises in the arena on the property then went for our usual walk. Katie walked us right up the driveway to the gate leading to the gauntlet and the public arena where we had spent our day together. She touched the gate pole and put her head down as if to say she was ready for another session together. Alex's suggestion was to have Katie be my guide horse (like Panda). I think that her idea was the best idea I had ever heard. I have subsequently put together our lesson plan of stopping at uneven surfaces, pointing out potential obstacles, overheads, etc., etc. just like Panda. It will be her job to take care of us. Keep us safe.

Thank you, Alex, for taking the extra time to help us with our horses. We are ever so grateful.
Many, many thanks.

Julie & Katie

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It's Worth Repeating

by Alexandra Kurland

There are some posts that need special highlighting and Cindy's Jan. 31 post is one of them. She was responding to something Melissa wrote:

Melissa wrote:
"Her balance is much better when I ask and release 3 or four little times during the turn - she's less on her forehand, and also mentally more focused on where we're going. Holding on encourages her to just tune out, lean on the rein a little, and not engage herself in the task. "

Cindy added:
"Melissa, this is soooo true. . . . It has paid off, even when roaring around the countryside foxhunting. I ride along, asking for little gives, little gives, little gives. We are at the point where I can ask for the gives just by "rotating my bones," even at a gallop, and I don't have to throw the reins away completely. My horses navigate better, are more balanced, and far more responsive now that I am not "hanging on."

I realize this is not the subtle venue of dressage and ground work usually under discussion on this list, but this new awareness and practice has empowered me as a rider, and made my horses considerably more responsive in that adrenaline- and herd-charged environment. I do dressage work and the exercises at home, and on the trails, between days of hunting. It's producing happier horses, and a much happier human."

This is such a good reminder that all this work is intended for "the real world." You don't have to stay in the confines of an arena to discover it's value. Thank you, Cindy, for sharing your hunt field experiences.

And Tanya added her horse's version of using the work in the real world:

She wrote:
"I have to chime in with my own example of the horse applying a taught skill on his own. I am thrilled to see Jake trot in the field when he runs and plays with other horses (Jake is my hard-pacing TWH whom I taught trotting with CT). Well, today . . I saw something even better: a collected trot! He started offering it in the sessions by adding the "pose" to the trot, but I never expected him to do it on his own! How cool is that!"

Very cool indeed!

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

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Are You Releasing Enough?: Questions and Answers

By Alexandra Kurland

Laurel wrote:
Wed Jan 31, 2007
Subject: Re Releasing follow up
"I've been working/playing with Belle on the Gloria Esfandiari version of HSS "go forward, good, slack out of rein, hip over, foot in front of other foot, lines up feet behind front feet, good, shoulder back one step, good, other shoulder back one step, release the rope/rein, good boy!" With all the talk of baby gives, is this a good exercise to put them into instead of keeping up the steady rein contact through the whole exercise? Belle is a lot stiffer and less sensitive, no, wrong word, less reactive than Jedda, but she picks things up very quickly too (I often get that look 'Was that all you wanted?') and 'got' this straight away."

Laurel, you should not be holding on throughout the exercise. Each give, each response in the chain earns a release. If you have been holding on, you may want to go back and review the process of getting individual gives of the jaw.

Take the slack out of the rein, and wait for Belle to soften her jaw. When she does, release the rein and click and treat. Repeat this until she is readily softening her jaw as you begin to activate the rein. You activate a rein by sliding down it to take the slack out.

When this feels automatic -you ask- she gives - you can string together two releases before you click.

Slide down the line, she softens her jaw: release.

Slide down the line, she softens her jaw: release AND click and treat.

When she is responding promptly and consistently to each request of the rein, add a third release before you click.

Slide down the line, she softens her jaw: release.

Slide down the line, she softens her jaw: release AND click and treat.

When she is consistent with this step, add a fourth release, but on this pick up of the rein, you'll be asking for her hip to connect directly to the rein.

Slide down the line, she softens her jaw: release.

Slide down the line, she softens her jaw AND steps over more with her hip: release AND click and treat.

Depending upon how much hip you ask for you can either continue on into three-flip-three, or you can get hip-shoulder-shoulder. In both patterns each correct weight shift is rewarded with a release.

Laurel asked in a later post:

"Belle completely took the wind out of my baby gives in HSS yesterday, I'd hardly started sliding to make the first contact and she was nearly through the whole procedure with THAT look which says "yeah, I get it." It makes 'shaping on a point of contact' kind of difficult when they won't let you GET to a point of contact, Alex? anyone? where do we go from here? Are they rushing through to prevent the contact from happening? Have I missed the point completely?"

It is important to recognize when the process has created the result you are after so you are not staying stuck in the process. Hip-shoulder-shoulder and three-flip-three are designed to help your horse find her "t'ai chi" balance. A novice horse does not know how to organize her own balance any more than most of us do. So when you first ask for 3-flip-3, for example, each cycle through of the pattern helps the horse learn more about her balance. As the horse becomes familiar with the pattern, she will pick herself up into the 3-flip-3 balance at the first touch of the rein. That is the result you are after. Now it is time to use the 3-flip-3 balance that you have spent all this time creating. You are ready to attach 3-flip-3 to geography via circles and the three training turns. (Refer to "The Click That Teaches: Riding with the Clicker".) But first you may want to go back and review releases to make sure you are both understanding the underlying concepts.

Once your horse starts to offer the three-flip-three balance as soon as you begin a new sequence, your hand sliding down the rein becomes a receiving hand versus an asking hand. You are receiving the beautiful balance your horse is offering you, acknowledging it, accepting it, not necessarily changing it.

You also asked about sliding to a point of contact. The point of contact is dynamic. It does not mean you go to the snap each and every time you touch the lead or rein. You go to the snap, if that is where the point of contact is, but on a very connected, tuned in horse, the point of contact may be much further down the lead. The point of contact depends upon the exercise you are working on, the balance your horse is in, and the degree of connectedness that has already been established. If you are going to the same spot each and every time because that was your starting point, you may not be listening to your horse or evolving your technique through the process.

There's a section in the Shaping DVD that addresses this point.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

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Homecoming: Why Do We Clicker Train?
By Alexandra Kurland
Copyright 2007

Joyful Greetings
I was away over the weekend at a clinic. Last night my plane got in early enough for me to get to the barn before it closed. As I walked down the aisle saying hello to each of the horses, I got a happy "you're here!" response back. Robin is in the end stall. When I got to him, he didn't just say: "you're here!". He did a huge double take in his stall. "YOU'RE HERE!!!!" was his response. There was no saying hello to anyone else. I had to go into his stall to talk to him. He was so clearly excited to see me. He puffed himself up in his best pose. "You're here! You're here! Play with me! Play with me!" If he could speak, the words would have come tumbling out, but he didn't need words for me to see how delighted he was to have me home.

I remember when I was six a favorite uncle came to visit. He did magic tricks! Real magic. He could make things appear and disappear. He could pull pennies out of the air or from behind your ear. I remember bouncing up and down in my excitement to see him. That's how Robin felt to me.

Ann very kindly offered to take Fengur out of the arena so Robin and I could play. But first I had to go say hello to Sindri in his outside pen. Robin gave a disappointed shake of the stall guard as I closed his stall door. "Come back and play with me!" his forlorn look seemed to be saying.

I did play with him, but first I had to say a proper hello to Panda which meant walking past Robin's stall.

"She's coming back! No, she went by." I could feel the roller coaster of his emotions. "I'm coming Robin," I promised him. But now I had to get some treats from the grain room and cones out of the tack room. Each errand involved another trip past his stall.

Finally his door was open and I had my halter in hand. I do so love clicker training. Robin was clearly excited. He was going out! He was going to play! But he greeted me quietly, and we went through the rituals I've established for haltering and exiting a stall. I don't have to tell him what to do. He knows the routine and follows it automatically.

Out in the arena I tossed the cones out in an approximation of a circle and we played Robin's version of the pre-why would you leave me? and why would you leave me? game. It involves lots of energy, and lots of laughter, and is ever so much fun for both of us. He reminded me so of a small child at Christmas time - so excited, so happy. The energy never felt dangerous or out of control. I never felt as though I better smush it down, dampen it out. I could let him express the joy he felt. I could put my hand on his shoulder and jog along beside him as he puffed himself up. What power! And what a privilege to be able to share in the expression of his equine joy.

Clicker-Enhanced Training
So why do I clicker train? At the clinic this weekend we talked about the difference between clicker training and clicker-enhanced training. Clicker-enhanced training is adding the technology of the marker signal paired with positive reinforcements to to an existing training system. The handler has added the reward, but has also kept the "do it or else" component of correction-based training. In this hybrid system it is not understood that the opposite of positive reinforcement is no reinforcement. Unwanted behavior is not ignored. It is reprimanded. Adding the clicker may indeed enhance performance. With the clicker, the handler may not need to increase pressure as much or as often, so done well clicker-enhanced training can be a huge improvement, especially from the animal's point of view.

There is however the danger of poisoned cues. When correction becomes the opposite of positive reinforcement, poisoned cues and the stress associated with them become a very hard-to-eradicate part of the training. At the Clicker Expo I had several long conversations with Jesus Rosales-Ruiz about poisoned cues. He's been questioning why the stress remains for so long, even once correction has been stopped.

His answer is a poisoned cue is a compound cue. The possibility of correction and reward become intertwined so every time you reinforce the positive result, you are also keeping alive and strengthening the hidden threat of the correction. It does not fade as you might hope simply by discontinuing the correction. In fact that's why it can seem as though you can stop correcting an animal. It "knows better". The threat remains strong all the while you are petting and praising. So yes, the animal does avoid the unwanted behavior. Keeping corrections as part of the training is very reinforcing to the trainer. It appears that they can have their cake and eat it too. A couple of well-timed corrections early on in the process stops the unwanted behavior. Now the trainer can pet and praise and look like a kindest of handlers, but every time they are praising, they are also strengthening the hidden do-it-or-else threat. In spite of all the praise the tension, stress, and other underlying negative side effects of adversives remain.

Clicker Training
Clicker training is more than simply using a marker signal paired with a reward. What distinguishes clicker training from clicker-enhanced training is a deep understanding that the opposite of positive reinforcement is no reinforcement. It's not that a clicker trainer ignores unwanted behavior. This is not a permissive anything-you-want-to do-is-fine-with-me system. What this mean is a clicker trainer remains non-reactive to unwanted behavior. There is a profound difference.

I see a behavior I do not like, but I do not add any fuel to the emotional fire by correcting it. Instead I put my horse away, have a cup of tea, and work out a lesson plan to address the issues I do not like. Instead of escalating pressure to stop the behavior, I find more steps to put into my training. Pressure and release of pressure can be present, but the pressure serves only as information which helps my horse get to the answer faster. It is not escalated. It does not become a do-it-or-else threat.

There are many horse owners who do not want a clicker-trained horse. They want the clicker-enhanced model. They wouldn't know what to do with Robin's enthusiasm. In fact it would make some people very uncomfortable. They appreciate how much easier they can teach certain tasks with the clicker training, but they want the containment that the other side of the training coin creates.

Having your cake and eating it too can sound great. You get to reward and correct. That sounds as though it should be a good way to develop a well mannered, emotionally balanced horse. And it might be except for the pitfall of poisoned cues. Having it both ways has the potential of backfiring and creating more problems than it solves.

I've certainly poisoned cues with Robin. My horses are my guinea pigs. I ask them questions. What do you think of this technique; of this training approach? I ask them first before I try things out on other people's horses. They tell me what should be woven into the mix, and what should be discarded. Through them I understand better why some training approaches need to be avoided even though they seem initially to get results, and why others fit in comfortably with clicker training.

My horses can show you all the layers of my exploration, especially Peregrine who has been my partner the longest. So yes, I have poisoned many cues with Robin. And that's what made last night all the more joyful for me. There was no hesitation, no stress, no worry over consequences or mistakes made. Robin wanted only to be with me and his joy in our training games was so pure. So why do I clicker train? For moments like these that let me share in the delight of a happy horse.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

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This post is in response to a series of questions and comments people had after watching clips of dressage competitions on youtube.

This discussion goes back to one of the first posts I sent to this list. It is so important to find a look that pleases your eye. Not a judge's eye, not your neighbor's eye, but your eye. When you watch these horses on youtube, what draws you to them? What makes you push the pause button and move on? Show a video clip to ten horse people, and you'll get ten different opinions. If you are new to horses, it is useful to listen to others talk about a particular performance. What is it they like or don't like about the horse? But then you have to run the video through your own filters. They may not see the swishing tail because their training has taught them to disregard that. If all the horses someone sees swish their tail, they'll tune it out. So what you see depends in part upon what you have been taught to see and what you have been taught to ignore.

It's all right for what pleases your eye to change over time and with experience. If all you have ever eaten are store bought tomatoes, you may be perfectly satisfied with their cardboard taste, but once you have had tomatoes fresh from the vine, you may never again buy another one from the supermarket. Contrast is a great teacher.

Your goals and your belief systems will also color what you see. If your goals are strictly performance oriented, your horse's opinion of what you're asking him to do will matter only to the extent that it effects his performance.

I want performance, but I also want happy eager horses. Yesterday was a short night at the barn. I didn't have much time to spend with any of the horses. As I led Sindri back out to his paddock, he spun around me and planted himself very decidedly in the wash stall. He didn't want to go back out. He wanted to keep working. I love that!! Some trainers would read that as disobedience. I read it as the highest compliment a horse can pay me. Sindri wanted to stay in the barn with me rather than go back out, even though outside meant another horse for company, hay and a hot mash.

Yesterday I gave a lesson to Barb and Brittany. Many of you know Barb through her wonderful posts. Barb has been inching her way back to riding at a snail's pace. Several years ago she had a terrible fall which resulting in a serious injury, so fear is a huge factor in her training. Yesterday Barb rode Brittany. Hurray!! Her longest ride yet in a lesson. When she got off, Brittany had a very satisfied expression in her eyes.

Okay, am I merely being anthropomorphic? Am I making up fairy stories to suit my needs? Maybe. How do any of us know what someone else, horse or human, is feeling?
I've heard people say that they have a hard time reading horses because they aren't very expressive. I find them wonderfully expressive. So how do you learn to read a horse? Spend time watching them. Become familiar with them, both left to their own devices out in their paddocks, and also interacting with people. As you begin to read them better, you will see things in training your eye did not catch before. This will make you appreciate some forms of training even more than before, and it will make other training which you previously embraced very hard to watch.

So by all means ask people what they think of a particular horse or style of training, but ask yourself as well, and even more important, ask the horses. They will always tell you.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

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This post was written in response to a series of posts on poisoned cues.

First, this whole concept is very new, and for every answer there are ten more questions. The research has yet to be done to see just how far reaching an effect poisoned cues have in the real world. I've found it to be a useful concept that for me explains some of the results I see from certain types of handling.

Here's a quick way to think about poisoned cues. You are teaching a young puppy to sit. Sitting is a behavior that gets offered a lot, so you begin to attach a cue to it. You say "sit", the puppy sits, click and treat. The puppy gets a bit of hot dog. You repeat this many times until "sit" becomes a reliable predictor of hot dogs for the puppy. Every time he hears the word "sit", he has learned that plunking his rear end to the ground gets his person to hand him goodies. The word "sit" becomes a good thing because the emotional effect travels backwards. Hot dogs make the puppy's tail wag. They trigger happy feelings. The emotional effect travels backwards, so the happy feelings associated with hot dogs travels backwards to the word "sit". "Sit" make the dog feel good.

But now the puppy is distracted. The handler says "sit", and instead of sitting, the puppy sniffs something on the carpet. The handler gives the puppy a sharp leash pop. He is poisoning the cue. The next time the handler says: "sit", the puppy may show a little uncertainty, a little hesitation. He is facing the lady or the tiger choice. Does "sit" lead to a leash pop or to goodies. Now the degree of "poisoning" will depend upon many factors. If the trainer is consistent, has good timing, is breaking his training down into many small steps, etc. the degree to which a cue becomes poisoned may be very slight in an otherwise well designed training program. But in other situations the degree of stress can be significant, and you can see a huge drop off in the prompt response to a cue. This is especially true in situations where incorrect responses are routinely punished, or handling is inconsistent. That part is easy to understand. Of course the animal would show stress where there is inconsistency in the consequences.

In the initial experiment on poisoned cues done by Jesus Rosales Ruiz's graduate student, the dog became very slow to respond. He wandered across the kitchen floor instead of heading straight to the designated target. What Jesus found most interesting was this effect lingered even after many trials in which there was no negative consequence. So the question was why? This effect was not linked to inconsistencies in the handling which would of course lead to confusion and a slow response. The dog's reluctance lingered even though the handling was consistent and no more corrections were given.

Jesus is speculating that the response lingered because the poisoned cue is operating as if it were a compound cue. So what are compound cues? The example Jesus described was using two cards as a cue, one green and the other blue. You present both cues, get a response, reinforce the response. Repeat this until the association is made.

Now you present only the green card, and reinforce the appropriate response. Repeat this, using only the green card. You will be strengthening the animal's response to the green card. You can measure the animal's success rate over a series of trials.

Now the researcher presented only the blue card and found that the success rate matched that of the green card. Even though the blue card had not been presented during the previous trials, the initial pairing created a compound cue so that both were strengthened when only one was used.

Now if this is indeed a valid process and not something that is limited to a laboratory set up, there are applications to real world training. For example, I like to teach head lowering through several different processes. I might start by teaching head lowering via targeting. When my horse is readily lowering his head in response to the target, I'll introduce poll pressure. I'll put my hand on the horse's poll. Since the horse has just been offering head lowering to the target, he's likely to drop his head. When his head drops, I'll remove my hand. Click and treat.

I now have two ways of triggering head lowering. Out of this I can develop two very different cues. If I can pair these cues together to trigger head lowering, thus creating a compound cue, then each time I use only one of these cues, I am actually strengthening the other. So in a situation where I can only give one of the cues, that cue will still be effective even though I may not have been using it as frequently as the other. There are all kinds of places where this process could be very useful.

The problem arises when we poison one of the cues by correcting unwanted responses instead of remaining non reactive to them. Jesus is speculating that the reluctant behavior of the dog in their study remained strong because the adversive reaction was acting like a compound cue. The behavior did not fade over time as we would hope, but remained because of the association of two opposing outcomes to the same cue. He drew out several diagrams which helped sort out the puzzle.

As Jesus described this process to me, I thought it explained some of the situations I encounter where an unwanted emotional response remains in spite of many repetitions where the horse encounters only good consequences. And even though we can create a light, soft, feels-like-heaven response in a horse that was previously stiff and defensive, there is a difference between that horse and one that comes to the work more as a clean slate. The difference can be subtle, but it is there.

So yes, absolutely, we can retrain and shift a horse's attitude and response to handling - to leads, to reins, to a rider's presence on their back. But poisoned cues may explain why some horses seem to remain stuck in certain patterns, for example, swishing their tail at the use of leg, even when the rider is using a leg aid with great care. It certainly creates some food for thought.

So what is the take away message? First, that we need more research to answer all the questions the initial experiments raised. And second that not all pressure is bad, but given the possibility of poisoned cues, it is important to use pressure in a clicker compatible way. If poisoned cues and their lingering effect turn out to be a valid concept, then the choices we make about corrections - when, if ever, to use them - become all the more important.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

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The Training Game

by Alexandra Kurland

Here's a great way to gain insights into your horse's emotional state:

Play the training game. (Refer to "The Click That Teaches: A Step-By-Step Guide in Pictures" or the Riding book for instructions.) Play it with lots of people. You'll see some people breeze through it. They know how to ask questions via their actions, and their partner has good timing on the clicker and knows how to break the process down into small steps without getting the trainee stuck in those steps. The game is fun. There's lots of laughter and lots of success.

But other people get very flustered. They get stuck, they get anxious. They get cross, they get impatient. When you experience that in the training game, or watch someone else experiencing it, it gives you a much better appreciation for what our horses go through trying to figure us out. And, very importantly, it makes it easier for you to read and interpret your horse's body language. You can watch a human stall out and look perplexed. Even better they will often verbalize what they are feeling, so you have direct information about their emotional state. When you see a horse exhibiting similar body language in the same situation, it's not such a huge stretch to say they are feeling frustrated. The better you become at reading these emotions, the better you'll be at shifting your training so you can bring your horse into a better emotional state for learning.

So is this being anthropomorphic, or is it simply learning to be a better trainer? I prefer the later answer.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com