Oct2007

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

Contents:

Teachers: Stories from the Horses

Ears: More on the Foundation Lessons

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Teachers: Stories from the Horses

By Alexandra Kurland

Stories from the Horses

Julie: Thank you for sharing your experience with Cherokee. As you said at the beginning of your post you shared in the hope that others would learn from your experience. It took great courage to share. That is a huge gift you gave to us. And it is also a gift you are giving back to Cherokee. She knows your heart. And she wanted her story told. Perhaps she played more of a role than you know in your decision to take her to the Expo.

When I write about clicker training, there are horses who seems to want their stories told. They pop into my head and the words flow onto the paper. But there are other horses who seem to hide themselves away when it comes time to tell their stories. They are like shy wallflowers. They hide behind the curtains while these other horses rush onto center stage. Some horses want to be Teachers. They have important work they want to share with all of us.

Cherokee wanted her story told. She is one of those Teachers and you are blessed to have her in your life. Teachers often present us with hard lessons, but they give rich rewards in return.

You encountered someone who was caught up in the goal and the drama, who thought results matter more than the means. Or perhaps that is unfair. Perhaps he truly had Cherokee's best interests at heart and thought this "tough love" approach was the best way to reach her.

"When I was young, I did the best I could. When I knew better, I did better." Maya Angelou

Teachers
It is so easy to get hung up in the goal and to want to rush the process. We saw that at the clinic this past weekend even with a group of clicker trainers. One of the regulars had brought her Arab, Troubadour to the clinic. Michelene has only had him for about a year. Just prior to his coming to live with her his previous owners rode him out on a long trail ride in a saddle that rubbed his back raw and left him with many physical and emotional issues. When I saw him for the first time last year, he was an anxious and very disconnected horse.

Michelene has done a wonderful job creating a solid relationship with him. He's not the same horse I first saw, but he still worries. And one of the things Michelene has identified that he worries about is ground poles. She can get him to walk over them, but always reluctantly. Left to his own devices, he will always go around them. Ground poles aren't the only things he's reluctant to cross. She described a small trickle of a stream in his field which he treats with great fear and trepidation. If he has to cross it, he doesn't just step across it. He over jumps it as though it were an enormous chasm.

Ground poles seemed like a great project for the weekend, especially since we had already introduced Troubadour to micro shaping at our last gathering. So we went on a scavenger hunt around the property to find suitable props for the training. We turned up two heavy wooden split rail fence boards, a square fence post and five pool noodles.

We scattered these around the round pen that was set up in the indoor arena. The round pen had a definite scary end. Just outside the back door of the arena was a small pond inhabited by a very alarming goblin - a great blue heron standing guard in the cattails around the pond's edge. Troubadour knows the goblin is back there, but he was very brave about using the entire round pen and not squishing himself up near the gate.

He was not, however, brave about the ground poles. Michelene walked with him to the first ground pole, a purple pool noodle. Troubadour sniffed it. Click and treat. He took a moment to check out the heron and to listen to the horses running in the paddocks on the other side of the arena. Michelene waited. Troubadour sniffed the ground pole again. Click and treat.

But he was also clearly distracted by the horses running. We didn't want them getting too wound up outside, so their owners brought them in. Troubadour liked that better. Now he could concentrate. Michelene moved on to another ground pole. Troubadour followed, not by stepping over the ground pole, but by walking very deliberately around it.

Michelene repeated this scenario. At each ground pole they came to, Troubadour was willing, albeit a little hesitantly, to sniff the ground pole, but each time they moved on, he made a point of walking around the pole, never over it.

It was a beginning. We worked him for just a few minutes and then gave him a break. When he came back in, he was much more interested in the ground poles. He was now actively sniffing them. He seemed particularly interested in the pool noodles. He rocked them forward and back, pushing them around with his nose. When Michelene walked on to the next ground pole, Troubadour deftly shoved the pool noodle out of his way and walked in a direct line to the next ground pole. We all laughed at his cleverness. It was certainly one solution to this vexing problem of how to get past the ground poles.

But now people were offering suggestions. They wanted to get Troubadour over the ground poles. What if we did this? What if we did that? Why aren't you clicking him for this other thing?
The conversations buzzing around the group were as interesting as Troubadour's response to the ground poles.

In an exercise like this, there are many possible strategies we could have used. All of them will get the horse over the ground poles, but what you have to look at is what really is your goal? If the goal was just to get Troubadour over the ground poles, we could have had that done in the first five minutes. He would have walked over them with Michelene. Put a lead rope on him and a target out in front of him, and I don't think it would have taken but a minute or two for him to consent to follow her. He came from a jumper barn. He's gone over fences. He would have gone over these ground poles. But we wouldn't have shifted anything in his spirit. He would still have had the same dislike of ground poles, and his relationship with Michelene would not have rippled to a deeper level of connection.

Tools and Goals
The ground poles were a tool. It's easy to mistake them for a goal. Yes, I wanted him to step over them, but I wanted Troubadour to solve the puzzle for himself. So we took our time. We forced nothing. We used the micro shaping strategy to give him the time he needed to think his way through the puzzle.

Initially he was reinforced for touching the ground pole with his nose. Michelene alternated this with having him touch her hand as a target. In micro shaping, the targeting is not intended as a directional lure. It is a simple, easy behavior that gives the horse a break from the hard work of the real puzzle. The temptation in a situation like this is to hold your hand out so the horse has to stretch over the ground pole to get to it. You certainly could do this, but I wanted Michelene to use her hand target to take all the pressure off of Troubadour. It was to act as a conditioned reinforcer. In other words, she was saying to him: "Interact with the ground pole, and you get to play this easy, familiar game." She was to position her hand so Troubadour didn't have to reach for it.

I could almost feel the tension this created in the spectators. They so wanted to help Troubadour over those ground poles. I had to keep reminding them that the goal was not to get him over the poles. They were a tool only. We needed to be patient and let this process play itself out.

We were lucky in that I had limited the number of horses we had for this clinic. That meant we had time for multiple sessions throughout the day. Troubadour came back for a third session. He was now very willing to walk up to each ground pole and explore it with his nose. He pushed the pool noodles around, back and forth, shoving them aside when he needed to follow Michelene to the next ground pole.

We were clicking him for dropping his head and touching the ground pole. With an almost seamless transition we were now able to shift the focus to his feet. We began by watching him shift his weight ever so slightly off a front foot. Click and treat. He'd been about to more off around the ground pole, but the click kept him stationed in front of it. He knew this foot-lifting game. He'd played it before. And he was comfortable now standing next to the ground pole. The ground pole was suddenly transformed from scary object to be avoided to the place where you got to play this familiar and much enjoyed game.

So now we had him standing in front of the ground pole, lifting a foot and setting it down. Click and treat on the lift. He'd do this two or three times, then Michelene would offer him her hand as a target. Click and treat.

We all got a huge laugh when he very pointedly set his foot down squarely in the center of one of the pool noodles. The two ends popped up on either side of his leg. Michelene quickly offered him her hand as a target. Click and treat in rapid succession. "Aren't you the smartest horse!" she was saying with her actions. He didn't have time to be afraid of the pool noodle bumping against his legs. He was too busy touching her hand and getting treats.

They moved on to a wooden ground pole. Troubadour tried to balance his front foot on the pole.

"He thinks I want him to stand on the rail!" Michelene exclaimed.

I'm sure that is indeed what Troubadour thought. He was certainly making a good effort to do so. Again people worried. That wasn't what they wanted. Shouldn't they do something active before this idea took root too firmly?

We are in such a hurry to rush in to help. Troubadour was exploring the ground poles. He was discovering what they felt like under his feet. He was learning how they moved, what they sounded like. We needed to give him time to explore all this at his own pace.

We were ready to end this last session of the day. Troubadour had been getting lots of clicks and treats for stepping on pool noodles. Michelene walked towards the gate to get his halter, and Troubadour surprised everyone, including himself, by walking directly over the split rail ground pole to follow her. Lots of treats and laughter for that.

"Watching Paint Dry"
You never know what you have taught. You know what you have presented, but never what the horse has learned. We were all eager to see how Troubadour would process Saturday's lessons. Would he come in and walk right over the ground poles with an I-can-do-anything swagger? Or would he still be cautious and go around them?

The answer Sunday morning was Troubadour was still not ready to walk directly over the ground poles. He could engage with them. He could put a front foot up on the wooden poles, and he could step directly on the pool noodles. But he was clearly still very concerned about stepping over them.

He pawed at the rails as a best effort attempt to stand on them. Sometimes his toe extended just a fraction beyond the pole. Click and treat. That was our new criterion.

After a couple of rounds of this he was no longer trying to stand on the pole. At this stage it looked as though he thought we wanted him to move the heavy wooden rails the way he was able to so easily move the pool noodles. He wasn't at all sure that was a good idea. Moving the rails would have meant getting them tangled up under his feet.

Michelene let him explore a split rail pole for a bit, then moved on to a pool noodle. Troubadour stepped deftly around the rail and stationed himself by the pool noodle. This was much easier to push around with his feet. Every now and then he would bump the pool noodle so it ended up between his feet. Click and treat, then lots of targeting for that. He even managed several times to roll the pool noodle so it ended up under his belly. Click and treat. And more targeting.

This was so clearly part of his concern, having the ground pole under his belly. Seeing this, we could have changed tactics and approached this is a totally different way. We could have taken a more active role in desensitizing him to the ground poles. The pool noodles were easy to hold, easy to move. It would have been a simple matter to design a totally different lesson plan using these same objects but a very different strategy.

Would it have been wrong? No, just different. But I like what we did. It was so fascinating watching Troubadour sort his way through the puzzle the ground poles presented. We gave him the time he needed to think his way through the puzzle, to work through his fears, and to find the answer for himself.

We never shut the door on his escape routes. We never made going around the ground poles a dangerous choice. Running out to the side was never punished as it is for so many horses. He could stand in front of the ground poles playing the click and treat game, and he could also walk around the poles.

That option was always available which made it all the more heart opening when he finally stood in front of one of the split rail poles, paused, clearly in thought, and then stepped over it to join Michelene on the other side.

Life Lessons
Patience and persistence. And understanding that the goal is never the Goal. And knowing that there is no hurry to get things done yesterday. These are such important lessons that our horses teach us. When I was first starting out with horses as a young adult, I discovered these lessons. They were taught to me by Peregrine's mother. They were great gifts she gave me.

Before she was mine, she was forced to submit to a hose bath. She had never seen hoses before and she was afraid. The teenager who had been sent out to give her the bath tried to strong arm her into submitting. She reared up and struck him on his head and shoulders. I'm sure she had a chain over her nose, and I'm sure she was shanked severely for her actions. I don't know if they succeeded in giving her a bath that day, but I do know they created a deep fear of hoses in a very young horse. They labeled her as a witch and afterwards treated her accordingly.

When I first started working with her, I could not lead her down the barn aisle to the gate into the indoor. We would have had to walk over the hose to get there, and that she flatly refused to do. The trainers at the barn could have forced her over the hose. I suppose I could have asked for their help, and they would have man-handled her over it. I knew what they did to get horses over fences. It wouldn't have been any different. Only it's not what I wanted for her. She was my horse now, and we were heading down a different path.

I was greener than green, working with a yearling who had learned some very dangerous responses when people tried to force her to do things she was afraid of. I knew I didn't have the handling skills to get into a confrontation with her. That would have resulted in a wreck. What I had to rely on instead were patience and persistence. Every night I brought her out and groomed her in the barn aisle. When we were done, we turned around and headed out through the back of the barn, away from the hose.

Each night we inched our way a little closer to the hose. I was in no hurry. She was a yearling. I had all the time in the world. Eventually I could groom her right next to the hose. We did that for a few nights. Then one evening I felt as though I could just walk her over the hose. I asked, and she followed without a fuss. Patience and persistence. I learned that they are core tools for horse training. And I learned something even more important. The goal is not the Goal. She followed me over the hose. But more than that, she followed me everywhere I asked after that. We formed a bond that was unbreakable because I did not force her.

The "Goal" Is Not The Goal
I know at times the lessons I present at clinics are like finger nails on a blackboard to some of the people watching. These observers are action oriented. They need to make things happen. Letting a horse paw at a ground pole when they could just make it walk it over is almost more than they can bear to watch.

There are certainly times when action is needed. Over several decades of horse training I have accumulated many more horse handling skills to accompany those core tools of patience and persistence. I do not always have to choose the slow approach. But even now with other options available to me, I still find great value in exploring the slow answer. I love the ripples that flow out from these lessons. We do not have to be in a hurry to get things done. Training is not a race unless we turn it into one. There is no giant clock ticking in the background.

We live in a culture that likes its drama and values fast results. It's easy to get sucked up into this mindset. All the "shoulds" come rushing in. "You should be riding that horse." "You should be cantering that horse." "You should be, you should be." We listen to those voices and not the ones in our hearts saying we are doing just fine, and so are our horses. We get rushed off our course forgetting that horses live in their own time space where our dizzying race isn't important. They don't care about the ribbons on our walls. They care about the love in our hearts.

If we are lucky, we find horses who teach us these amazing life lessons. But it is easy to be derailed by our hurry-up-and-make-it-happen culture. Clicker training can be amazingly fast. We have all been bowled over at times by the speed at which horses learn new skills.

Clicker training also can be grass-growing, paint-drying, agonizingly slow. There are times when you need to remember that the goal is not the Goal. There is no urgency except from the dead lines we ourselves impose. We don't need to get the job done today. Instead we just explore, ask questions, present puzzles, keep our hearts open, and let our horses connect with us in ways many of us would never even dream is possible.

Often at clinics, and at home, training is about the small "g" goals. It really is about getting the saddle on the horse, getting the foot safely in the stirrup. But when training shifts its focus and we remember the larger Goals, training enriches our spirit in a way that pursuit of those smaller goals never can. They are tools, markers, stepping stones we use to measure progress. When they become the end in itself, the warning flags from our horses appear. With enough life lessons behind us we learn to listen to those flags.

Julie, the world is full of people who want to get the job done fast. Your intentions were good when you signed Cherokee up for the Expo. You wanted to help her. You were taking her to someone you thought could peel away some of the old layers of her fear. You discovered instead someone who was in a hurry to make things happen. Life's lessons can be hard. But the strength of your bond with Cherokee remains intact, and of that you should be very proud. Thank you for sharing. It took courage and it is hugely appreciated by all of us on this list.

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com

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Ears: More on the Foundation Lessons

by Alexandra Kurland

I've been traveling so I'm behind, as usual, with the list, but the discussion about ears caught my attention as I was reading emails on the flight home. I thought I'd weigh in with a post of my own because I'm one of those who thinks clicking horses for putting their ears forward is a useful exercise. In fact it is so useful, I regard it as one of the foundation behaviors of clicker training.

Foundation Lessons
When I first produced my "Getting Started" video back in 2000, I regarded three behaviors as foundation lessons. They were targeting, backing, and head lowering. I've now added three more: standing on a mat, grown-ups are talking, and ears forward. I was certainly teaching these behaviors at that time, but I didn't yet think of them as foundation behaviors. I do now.

This doesn't mean that there aren't many other behaviors that are essential in the early stages of training a horse. If you are working with a youngster who is just being socialized to people, there are many lessons that are of utmost importance. You need to teach that horse to accept handling, to stand for grooming, to pick up its feet, to allow itself to be haltered and led, to stand tied, etc., but all of these lessons can be taught more easily if they are built on a solid clicker foundation.

Clicker training is great fun, and that's especially true of free shaping. In fact it's so much fun, it's easy in the early stages to get carried away and to teach a hodgepodge of behaviors. In one sense this isn't really a problem. Horses always tell us what they need to work on next. If you get an over-eager, over achiever who is throwing behaviors at you - smiling, bowing, rearing, doing Spanish walk, fetching everything in sight, and also mugging you whenever you aren't clicking, crowding into your space, pinning his ears when he can't figure out which trick is the one you want - you'll realize that maybe it's time to put a little order into your training. You'll start learning about stimulus control.

You'll add some rules to the game which allow it to remain fun and still be very reinforcing for your horse, while at the same time creating some safety checks for you. If you were to start off clicker training whatever strikes your fancy without giving any thought to an overall system of training, you could still salvage this mishmash of behaviors and turn it into something quite wonderful. The only problem you might encounter is that horses very often latch onto the first behaviors they learn with the clicker and use them as security blankets. When in doubt, these are the behaviors they will offer. Under stress this horse is going to start popping out his original versions of Spanish Walk, smiling, bowing, and, of course, that all time favorite - rearing.

Given this, I want to choose the first things I teach my horse with care. I want them to be behaviors that are going to serve me well, and which aren't going to cause problems if they pop out off cue. I also want these foundation lessons to fit together. I don't want isolated lessons. The behaviors I've selected as foundation lessons all mesh well together. While the horse is learning good manners, the handler is learning the fundamentals of how clicker training works. What emerges is a balanced, organized training program. This post is about teaching horses to put their ears forward, but you can't really understand why I include that behavior in the foundation lessons unless you also look at all six lessons. So I might as well tell you right now: this is a long post.

Targeting
Targeting is a great starting behavior for many reasons. It's an easy way to introduce the horse to the clicker, and it's very easy to control. If you don't want your horse touching a target, you can just take the target away. When I first started experimenting with clicker training, I thought of targeting as nothing more than a cute trick. I now know it to be a powerful training tool.

Targeting is an essential tool in my clicker training tool box. I would not want to be without it. It can get frightened horses onto trailers, over unsure footing, standing still for medical treatments, grooming, mounting, etc., the list goes on and on. Essentially all leading is a form of targeting, so the sooner we introduce the concept, the better. What I have seen, though, is that people who use some other way to introduce clicker training to their horses often end up skipping targeting altogether. They don't appreciate all that targeting can do for them, so they never return to once they get past basic training.

Backing
Backing is an obvious foundation lesson. We need to be able to move horses out of our space. Backing can be taught using targeting, and free shaping. But it can also be taught with pressure and release of pressure so it introduces the handler to the concept of clicker compatible rope handling skills. Backing raises the question: How do we use pressure and release of pressure without undermining the clicker training experience for the horse? For many of us that means reshaping how we use lead ropes and pressure. The opposite of positive reinforcement is no reinforcement, not correction. Many people have used backing as a correction, not as an incompatible behavior. It may sound like semantics, but there is a difference. So part of this foundation lesson may be not so much teaching the horse to back, but shifting his emotional response to the request.

Head Lowering
Head lowering is another obvious foundation lesson. Emotional control is an important component of any training program. A horse who is nervous and afraid of "tigers" lurking in the bushes is going to be reluctant to lower his head to graze. He may drop his head, grab a bite, and then be on guard again, but that serene picture of horses grazing together all with their heads down is only gong to be taking place if those horses feels relatively safe and relaxed.

When a horse has his head up, he can scan the horizon line more effectively for movement. So picture what your horse looks like when he's feeling anxious. He's going to be on the alert with his head up. When he's satisfied that the danger has passed, then and only then will he feel comfortable dropping his head down to graze.

Think about the number of hours your horse spends grazing, and you'll begin to understand the powerful conditioning that creates. A lowered head position becomes linked to feelings of calmness. If you can get your horse to lower his head, you can begin to trigger an emotional shift into this calmer state. But even if this link were not there, head lowering would still be useful. A horse that has his nose to the ground cannot at the same time be mugging your pockets. Asking for head lowering gives you a way of filling your horse's dance card so you aren't drawn into the drama of actively correcting unwanted behavior.

Head lowering has the additional benefit of teaching the handler more about the fundamentals of clicker training. You learn how to build duration so you don't end up with a horse that yo yos up and down between dropping his head and getting his treat. You learn more about rope handling, free shaping and targeting. And with the other two foundation behaviors, you learn how to balance one behavior with another. You can ask your horse to back up, and then use targeting to bring him forward. Click and treat. And to keep him from getting overly wound up by the fun of this new game, you can then balance these two behaviors by asking him to drop his head.

Emotional Links
What I've just described is a simple process, and for most horses it is. You ask them to drop their head and, as soon as they understand what you are after, they willingly, and easily oblige. The head goes down, the eyes gets soft. Calmness is the immediate result.

But for a nervous, reactive horse the opposite can actually happen. This horse sees lions and tigers behind every bush. When you ask him to drop his head, it makes him more anxious, not less. He wants his head up where he can more effectively scan the horizon line. With his head down he cannot be as watchful. A worried horse has his head up, not down in the grass.

He doesn't yet trust you, a not very observant human, to keep him safe. You know there aren't any tigers in the bushes, but he doesn't believe you. So he'll drop his head down, but then he wants it right back up again. Down for a quick click and a treat is one thing, but leaving his head down to build duration is quite another. So with this horse head lowering isn't just a behavior, it's a process. You don't run quickly through the six foundation lessons, checking each one off the list as you go. "Yes, I can do that one. Got that one. Got that one. Good I've got all those, now tell me how to teach flying changes." These foundation lessons take some time. They are interconnected. Each one builds on and strengthens the others. By the time you have figured them out and seen how the layers fit together, you will have built a truly solid foundation, one that can support not just a ramshackle "shack", but a magnificent "mansion".

There's so much more to be said about head lowering, but this is a post about ears, so I need to move on or I'll never get there.

"The Grown-Ups Are Talking, Please Don't Interrupt"
So far you've taught your horse three of the foundation behaviors: targeting, backing and head lowering. This gives you a great start for clicker training, but your horse may still be mugging your pockets looking for treats, so clearly "the grown-ups are talking, please don't interrupt" is an important lesson to introduce early on. " Grown-ups" teaches emotional self control to both the horse and the handler. The horse learns that he can't just help himself to the goody pouch, but if he moves out of your space, click, he gets a treat. And the handler is learning to be non-reactive to unwanted behavior. He is exploring one of the key elements of clicker training: the opposite of positive reinforcement is no reinforcement. It is not correction.

Twenty Treats
When people are first starting out, I recommend that they start with the horse behind a barrier. We put the horse in a stall with a stall guard across the door, or a small paddock with a safe fence. I also don't have them fill their treat pouch full of goodies. Instead I have them count out twenty treats - twenty hay stretcher pellets, twenty carrot slices, a quarter cup of pelleted grain, if that's what they're using.

They get their treats, their clicker, and a plan. The plan may be to use up that first round of twenty treats working on targeting. When the goodies are gone, they step away to count out twenty more treats. While they are counting out their treats, I want them to be assessing what just occurred. How did the horse do? Did he touch the target? How consistent was it? Is he ready to move on to something else? Can you start moving the target around, or perhaps work on a different behavior next time? Or was he hesitant, worried, reluctant? How could you make the game easier for him so he can be more successful? You want a high rate of reinforcement in the early stages. What could you do to increase the rate of reinforcement? Did he grab at your pouch and try to mug you? Maybe in the next round you need to focus on "grown up are talking" instead of targeting. And here is the key question: was there anything about his behavior that would suggest to you that it would be unsafe to go into his stall with him with your pockets full of goodies?

Usually the answer to that question is he looks fine, and the handler goes right in with the horse, but sometimes the answer is well, we're not sure. He's still a little pushy, and he looks pretty grumpy. He makes faces at his neighbor. He's resource guarding, telling the horse in the adjacent stall to stay away from this game. And when he gets frustrated, he grabs the food just a little too hard. These are all behaviors I want to make note of, but not become reactive to. Instead, with this reactive, grumpy, or just generally emotionally immature horse I'll take my time, keeping the barrier between us to teach him more about how clicker training works.

Think about the child in school who can barely read. He's the one acting out, becoming disruptive, aggressive, or withdrawing altogether. But show him how to be successful and his behavior changes. It must be so frustrating to be caught in a system where you never know any of the answers. You don't know how to solve the puzzles that are put to you. It's all a confusing muddle, so you try to protect yourself as best you can. You feel trapped and threatened in a system that you cannot escape.

"Happy Faces": Ears Forward
I don't want my horse to feel that way ever, so I want to take my time in the beginning stages to make sure he understands how the game is played. Ears forward gives me a great opportunity to explain a bit more about clicker training. I can stand safely out of range and watch my horse's ears. When even one of them flickers forward, click and treat. At this point, ears forward is not about changing the internal emotional state of the horse. It is simply about free shaping a behavior and giving my horse more experience solving simple puzzles. Ears pricking forward is an easy action for me to see and for my horse to become aware of. It generally doesn't take very many clicks before my horse is aware that flicking his ears causes me to give him goodies. "Hmm. Interesting. Let me try this again. " Ears flick forward. "That worked! What fun. I can control my person! Flick ears, get treat. Not bad!"

So back to our novice horse and handler. You run through your treats and go back for more. But now your grumpy horse is eager to play. The game is becoming much more interesting. With this next set of treats you might work again on ears forward, or you might switch back and focus on targeting or maybe backing. You are slowly weaving these behaviors together to create a balanced picture.

Why Ears?
I suppose I could have chosen some other behavior for the handler to free shape besides ears. So why in particular do I focus on ears? Again there are many reasons for this. One is because it is a fairly simple, easily observed behavior. At this stage in the process it isn't just the horse who is learning the game. The handler is, as well. That means her timing isn't as sharp as it's going to be later. And she's more of a lumper than a splitter when it comes to criteria.

When you play the training game (see the books for a description of the game), you can see the effects of splitting versus lumping on rates of reinforcement. A splitter will have her training partner on a high rate of reinforcement and the game will go smoothly. But a lumper will be asking for too much, too fast. The rates of reinforcement will drop. Her partner will feel confused, frustrated, angry, anxious, defeated - all the emotions we don't want our horses to feel, at least not in large doses.

I want people to practice shaping, to experience the power of it. And I want the horse to gain experience as well, but I want it to be a fun, successful experience for him. I want to start out with simple puzzles so he gains confidence and becomes progressively better and better at solving more difficult puzzles. If all you do with clicker training is use it in conjunction with pressure and release of pressure, you will get improved performance, but you won't get the sparkle in the eye, that eager what-can-I-do-for-you enthusiasm that I so dearly love in a clicker-trained horse. So I want people to gain experience with free shaping, but I want them to do it within a systematic, structured framework so neither they nor the horse become either frustrated or overwhelmed by the process.

Free shaping is fun, and it does create enthusiasm, but if you have only known shut down horses who we think are "behaving" because they are actually offering no behavior, all that enthusiasm can be overwhelming.

Body Language
There is another reason ears forward is one of the foundation lessons and not just a side bar. I want people to become aware of their horse's body language. It's easy in the early stages to become a little overwhelmed by all the details. Even very experienced horse handlers can feel clumsy when they first start clicker training. They have to manage the target and the clicker and keep track of their timing, and then there's the food delivery. It all sounds so simple, but in actual practice it's a lot of new skills to manage. Something has to give, and that something is noticing not just that your horse touched the target but all the other things that were going on at the same time. It's easy to be so focused on getting your timing right and keeping your hand out of the treat pouch before you click that you completely don't notice that your horse is pinning his ears every time he touches the target. He's resource guarding, protecting the game from his neighbors in the adjoining stalls.

I don't want this grumpy looking faced to become attached to targeting. By making "happy faces" one of the foundation lessons, my intent is to broaden people's attention so they begin to notice not just the ears but other important details about their horse's body language. Clicker trainers become very good observers. As they become training "junkies", they learn to look at the tiniest if tiny details in a behavior. They are looking for things to reinforce. And the process of clicker training informs them about their horses internal emotional state.

Karen Pryor talks about this in "Lads Before the Wind". With dolphins, she writes, a researcher may have to spend hundreds of hours watching dolphins in the wild before he could come to any conclusion about why dolphins breach, that is rise out of the water and slap themselves back down into the water. But a trainer may need only a couple of sessions before he can make some pretty solid statements about that behavior. If that trainer has jumped a bit too far ahead, if he's withholding the click trying to build a behavior too quickly, the rates of reinforcement will drop. The dolphin performs the task at the previous level expecting to earn a fish, but gets nothing. He tries again, gets nothing, and now he breaches out of the water and lands so he soaks the trainer from head to foot. It is not too much of a stretch to say that that behavior is an expression of frustration and has an element of aggression linked to it. We can learn a lot about the meaning behind certain behaviors by observing the context in which we see them used.

Anyway I digress. By directing a handler's attention to ears in those early lessons, my hope is the handler will become more aware of body language in general and more sensitive to the horse's emotional needs. When people start clicker training, they begin to realize how much they have not been listening to their horses, how much they have not understood how anxious, worried, or needy their horse was. This is something I hear so often in clinics as people explore clicker training. Shaping ears forward is a starting point for learning how to listen really and truly to our horses.

This doesn't mean that we are going to force a horse to put it's ears forward, or that we are going to be instantly creating happy horses. Again, like head lowering, putting the ears forward is more than a behavior, it is a process. A generally content horse will pop his ears forward and be delighted to play this game. But other horses may struggle with this behavior. The handler will start to notice that her horse has his ears back a lot - when he's groomed, when he's saddled, when anyone approaches him, when he's ridden. What is this about? Focusing twenty treats worth of attention on ears forward sets up a cascade of questions and causes the handler to check saddle fit, hoof care, nutrition, dental care, Lyme disease, ulcers, etc. etc.

Safety Nets
And this brings me to another reason for shaping ears forward - it's a safety net for the horse. Aggression comes from a place of fear. That's a statement I encountered early on as I was learning about horse training. That's true not just for horses, but for people as well. So how does this relate to ears?

We're hard wired to read some expressions as friendly, others as aggressive. Ears forward, ears back, they could have no link to a horse's internal emotional state, and we would still respond to them as if they did. Ears forward to us is a happy horse. Ears back is an angry, grumpy horse. That's our programming. That's how we read faces. And so people in general tend to treat horses who have their ears forward a little differently than would a horse who habitually has his ears back. When you walk up up to a horse who has its ears forward, its much easier to be relaxed and at ease than when you walk up to a horse that has its ears pinned. And of course the horse who has his ears pinned senses this guardedness and is more likely to feel worried than the horse who has his ears forward. So ears forward or back becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The handler begins to relate ears back with guarded, more aggressive behavior, and responds accordingly. He may be a little rougher with this horse, which just confirms for the horse that he was right to grump. What a vicious cycle. It's one we can interrupt in part by reinforcing our horses for ears forward.

If you are horse shopping, you may walk right past the grumpy horse to chose the one with what we humans would read as a pleasant expression, so again happy faces is a safety net. I learned this years ago when I brought two llamas to the farm where I board my horses. I thought people would love having the llamas there, but oh no, llamas, I was told, spit. That's all I heard, that is until I taught the llamas to give me llama "kisses". In other words, I reinforced the llamas for putting their noses gently against my cheek. Now I heard, "Those llamas love you." I knew it had nothing to do with love. It was a shaped behavior, nothing more, but people began to respond to the llamas differently. Now they welcomed them into the farm because the llamas gave "kisses".

So ears forward especially for the grumpy horses, is a safety net. We tend to treat the horse that greets us with his ears forward just a little bit better than we do the one that pins his ears and turns his back on us. We're more likely to champion that sweet-faced horse and make the extra effort to figure out why he swishes his tail when the saddle comes out, or is reluctant to pick up his feet for the farrier, or seems so uncomfortable after he's eaten. Many of our horses need good champions. They need to learn to put their ears forward so we feel more welcomed into their space. If they really don't want us there, they'll still be able to tell us. Those ears won't be forward with a soft look until they do feel comfortable with us nearby.

Standing on a Mat
So far I've covered five of the foundation lessons. This post wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention the sixth: standing on a mat. These six behaviors are not linear. You don't teach them in a set order. You generally start with targeting, but one horse may need you to introduce head lowering after that while his neighbor needs "grown ups are talking" or "happy faces". So instead of a linear order, you want to think of a cluster of interrelated behaviors, each one building on and strengthening the others. The exception is standing on a mat. That is a more complex behavior, and I generally introduce it after I have worked on the other foundation lessons.

Standing on a mat does many things for a horse. It addresses fear issues, shoulder barging, emotional self-control, patience, the list goes on and on. Mat work helps the handler improve her rope handling skills, and it refines her ability to balance one behavior with another. It certainly brings into focus the principle that for every behavior you teach there is an opposite behavior you must teach to keep things in balance. If you spend too much time reinforcing your horse for standing on the mat, you may find he doesn't want to leave it. The mat is where all the goodies are. It's the right answer, and he's not leaving. So what do you do?

You rely on another fundamental principle: you can't ask for something and expect to get it unless you have gone through a teaching process to teach it to your horse. You ask yourself what tools have you already activated that will help you get your horse off the mat? You have two: targeting and backing. Get out your target, or hold your hand out as a target just an inch or two from his nose. When he stretches out to touch it, click and treat. Hold it a little further out, and he'll very quickly be walking off the mat. Click and treat.

But he may also be dragging you back onto the mat as soon as you've walked around and its back on his radar screen. So now what do you do? You ask for backing. Click and treat. Then "grown-ups" or maybe head down. When he can walk forward keeping slack in the line, you'll let him go to the mat. Emotional control and good manners are growing out of these simple lessons.

Duration
You don't want to glue your horse onto the mat, but you do want to build some duration. So you'll get him on the mat, click and treat. Then you'll begin to withhold the click ever so slightly. if his feet stay on the mat, click and treat. You'll repeat this a few times, then you'll walk him off the mat again - just to be sure that you can, and also so that leaving the mat is your idea, not his.

You'll gradually build up the length of time before you click. You'll build your duration around averages. On average he stands on the mat for two seconds, then on average for three seconds. That means that sometimes you are clicking after two seconds, sometimes after four or five, but over your twenty treat trials the average is three seconds. By the time you've built up to an average of four to five seconds, you'll be noticing that there is quite a lot of variability in his overall behavior. His head is in different positions, sometimes his ears are forward, sometimes back, etc.

Shaping By Priority
So now you are going to learn how to train by priority. You are going to stack one criterion on top of another. The most important thing is that the horse keeps his feet on the mat, but now you are going to wait until his head is in the grown ups are talking position. This will probably be very easy for him because you've spent so much time reinforcing him for this polite, space-managing behavior. So now he is standing with his feet on the mat and his head in the "grown-ups are talking" position. Instead of waiting four or five or six seconds before he gets himself to the clickable moment, he's consistently nailing it in one second. Time to stack another criterion on top of these others.

Ears forward is a great one to add again because you have already worked on it, so he will be likely to offer it. I won't have ears forward on a specific cue at this point. I want my horse to have the experience of not getting clicked immediately and having to experiment a bit to find the right answer. There's a huge difference between waiting to be told what to do, and having to figure out the answer for yourself. The later helps build up what in the horse world we refer to as "heart", that wonderful try-again attitude that creates great horses. Stimulus control is evolving through the process of learning the foundation lessons, but even if I had an ears forward on cue, I wouldn't use it here. I want to use my shaping skills to connect ears forward with mat work.

This is where training by priority comes into play. When I first shaped ears, the horse was behind a barrier and ears were the only thing I focused on. He was obviously doing many other things at the same time that he was popping his ears forward, but my focus was on his ears. I was globally aware of the rest, but the timing of the click was focused on the specific action of his ears. With the mat that scenario changes. Now if my horse pops his ears forward, but at the same instant he takes a step forward off the mat, I won't click him. The most important thing is that his feet remain on the mat. So I'll replace his feet on the mat. Click and treat. Then I'll shift my focus again to my stack of behaviors. I'm learning a skill I'm going to need later under saddle where stacking criteria becomes even more important and also more complex and subtle.

Happy Horses
So including ears forward in the foundation helps both the horse and the handler in a myriad of ways. Does it create a happy horse? Who knows. If we could do a brain scan, we might be able to see which parts of the brain were being activated so we could more accurately state which emotions a horse was experiencing at any given moment. Without that who can really say what someone else is feeling? But we do know from our own behavior that physical postures and actions trigger or become linked to specific emotional states.

It may well be in the beginning stages of the work, ears forward does not trigger a calm, relaxed emotional state. The horse puts his ears forward because that's what gets you to click. But as you work through the foundation lessons and he becomes fully engaged in the game, those behaviors do become linked to emotional states that reflect a calm, happy, contented, and also eager-to-please, eager-to-be-with-you horse. Popping the ears forward when he sees you triggers the same good feelings in him that hearing the voice of a loved one triggers in you. It's a conditioned response.

Lessons and Layers
The foundation lessons deliberately use very basic behaviors, so it is easy to dismiss them as simple, "see Spot run" kindergarten lessons. But within these lessons are layers and layers of important learning both for the horse and the handler. You can choose to skip over one of these lessons because it just doesn't seem important or relevant to your horse, but you may discover later that you have left out an important part of the foundation. You end up with Swiss cheese and lots of holes instead of a solid structure. So, if for some reason, you do decide to take out one of these behaviors, do consider all the many things it gives you, and be sure to include something else that serves the same purpose.

Everything is everything else, and you can never do one thing. Those are also good principles to keep in mind as you are constructing a solid foundation upon which to build your clicker training experience. We are all pioneers in this, so there is always room for experimentation. And each horse needs a training plan tailored to his specific needs. But, while we are all pioneers, at least for the beginning steps of clicker training we are now traveling over a well worn path, one that becomes more interesting with each horse that travels down it.

Have fun!

Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com