Contents:
MicroShaping: Finding the Smallest Try Part One
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Microshaping: Learning to See the Smallest Try
by Alexandra Kurland
copyright 2007
This is going to be a long post! When I say long, I mean it. I’ve been storing up half a year’s worth of clinics to squeeze into this one post, but since I haven't sent anything to the list since May, I am overdue so an extra long post seems to be warranted.
Clinic Themes
Every year the clinics I give seem to have an overall theme. Last year it was definitely food delivery. We focused a lot of attention on what I referred to as "t'ai chi food delivery". Last fall as I was winding up the clinic season and thinking ahead into this year, I was wondering what the theme for this year would be. That's not something I set in advance. The theme presents itself as the clinics progress through the season. The theme emerges from work I do with my own horses over the winter, but I am never know exactly what I have learned that is transferrable until I start working with other horses. Now half way into the clinic season, it is clear that the overall theme for this year is micro-shaping, whether it is in free shaping or in rope handling skills.
Most of us know we want to be splitters, not lumpers. We want to break behavior down into small steps and not ask for too much too fast. Micro-shaping is splitting to the nth degree. In micro-shaping we are looking at the individual muscle contractions that generate the larger behavior.
Micro-shaping is a skill that develops over time. It is not a starting point. If you are new to clicker training, chances are you are not going to have the eye for detail and the dexterity with the clicker to micro-shape. You won't yet understand how that little nod of the head can be turned into something much more interesting - a spin, or backing, or a bow. And you may not be ready for a turned on, tuned in, enthusiastic clicker trained-horse. So many of us have only been around horses that are shut down, turned off, tuned out - we begin to think that's the way horses are. A horse that "behaves", meaning shows behavior, often gets labeled as disrespectful and rude - a bad horse with attitude.
I start people out in clicker training by having them capture a behavior. We capture targeting. We hold a target out in front of the horse and in all likelihood, the horse sniffs it. Click, he gets a treat. We are capturing targeting.
In the foundation lessons I include some free-shaping. We free shape ears forward in "Happy Faces." And we free shape nose away from treat pockets in "The Grown-ups are Talking, Please Don't Interrupt." I want the handler to gain some experience with shaping, but I want to keep this in balance so they don't become overwhelmed by a horse that is desperately offering behavior in the hopes that their person will play the clicker game. I love enthusiasm, but I want to be sure it is contained within good manners.
So in those early lessons we also focus on rope handling skills. We look for ground manner exercises that are clicker compatible. How can we use a lead to ask for forward and back in a way that doesn't poison the clicker experience? That's where the t'ai chi rope handling skills come in. I am showing people alternatives to escalating pressure. How do you create space management and good leading manners in a chunked down, clicker compatible way?
Free-Shaping
In the foundation lessons I use free-shaping, but I also encourage people to explore other ways to get behavior. I often treat free shaping as a polishing tool. We use a lead rope to get the horse to stand on a mat, then we polish the behavior by free shaping the horse to stand on the mat with his ears forward.
I do this for a couple of reasons. First, I want to use these early behaviors where things are still relatively simple, to encourage people to learn about targeting and clicker-compatible rope handling skills. If you only free shape with the clicker, you'll only learn about free shaping.
And second, I regard free shaping as an advanced skill. I want people to get a taste of it in the foundation lessons, so I'll have them free shape grown-ups are talking and ears forward, but then I want to put some structure around the free-shaping. I want to be certain that it remains a positive experience for both the horse and the handler.
Before I go any further I need to define what I mean by free shaping and why I regard it as an advanced skill.
Free shaping is the dolphin-in-a-tank model of training. The handler is not luring, targeting, molding, or modeling the behavior. He is not using a lead or his own body to move the animal into a particular position. There are no corrections given for wrong answers. Instead the handler assumes a passive body position and waits for the horse to make some small change in his behavior. The change is clicked and reinforced. Through successive approximation a more complex behavior evolves out of this original small change.
Shaping is not unique to clicker training. We can shape with pressure and release of pressure. But free shaping where there is no coercion or hints given to help trigger the behavior is. Free shaping is what creates the bright-eyed, eager, what-can-I-do-for-you enthusiasm that I so love in a clicker-trained horse. So why do I regard it as an advanced skill instead of something to be indulged in right at the start of clicker training? Why do I give you a taste of this wonderful technique and then move you away from it into targeting and tai chi rope handling skills?
There are a number of reasons. One of the main ones is that to be a good free shaper you need to be able to see small incremental changes. When most people begin with clicker training, they are lumpers. They don't yet have the eye or the experience to be good splitters. They can get a taste of free shaping teaching a horse to put his ears forward, or to take his nose away from their pockets, but to free shape a horse to back up, for example, may require an eye for detail and patience that they don't yet have. The beginner clicker trainer is looking for the horse to take a step back. An experienced clicker trainer is looking for a twitch of a chest muscle.
When a trainer asks for too much too fast (lumps), the result is a dramatic drop in the rates of reinforcement and a rapid rise in the frustration level of the horse. The horse is often an inexperienced learner himself. When the rates of reinforcement drop, he can't cope. He quits, looks bored, leaves to stand at the back of his stall, gets angry, grabs at the handler, flares his ears, paws, etc. The list of unwanted behavior can get quite lengthy. And it can be very discouraging to a new clicker trainer who doesn't understand what is making her horse so unhappy.
Of course, it is quite possible that the horse experiences a great success with free shaping. He takes a step back and gets reinforced for it. This agile learner catches on fast that stepping back is a good thing. He jumps from backing one hesitant step to backing up three of four steps. In fact he's so sure of the right answer, he isn't waiting for his handler to give any sort of signal. As soon as he sees her enter the barn, he's backing up twenty paces!
This sort of enthusiasm can be great fun, but it can also be very disconcerting. Many of us have only known shut down horses. We don't know what horses really can be like. All that enthusiasm can be overwhelming to a first time clicker trainer. The very thing that makes clicker training so much fun can also be frightening if you don't know how to manage your tuned in, eager, head-of-the-class learner.
A Horse Is Not A Dog
If you are a dog trainer reading this, you may be thinking I'm being overly conservative. Perhaps you teach clicker puppy classes where you encourage your clients to free shape high fives and other fun tricks. You have great success with this approach. You get happy, tail wagging puppies, and owners who have discovered that training is loads of fun. Your experience has been that free shaping is a great way to get people hooked on training in general. So why all this caution?
The answer is a simple one. A horse is a not a dog. By this I do not mean that horses are prey animals and dogs are predators. I mean simply that a horse weighs plus or minus a thousand pounds. A dog weighs a tiny fraction of that. Twenty or thirty pounds of doggy enthusiasm is completely different from a thousand pounds of the same kind of energy. So I want space management well in place before I open wide the doors of free shaping.
And here's something else to consider. For every happy, tail wagging dog that's being free shaped, I see just as many, if not more, who find the experience to be highly stressful. Their handlers are lumpers, so the rates of reinforcement are too low. It is important to understand that just because you are using positive reinforcement, that does not automatically mean the animal is having a positive learning experience. Magnify this stress behavior up to a thousand pounds and it can become unsafe to be around.
Classic
So now it's time for some stories.
I'm going to begin with Amanda and her stallion Classic. I met Classic for the first time when he was two years old. Amanda had gotten him when he was 18 months old and had started him out with the clicker. My course was his first trip away from home since she had imported him.
We had the perfect set-up for a beginner clicker course. The shed row was L shaped. Each stall was double the normal depth. The back half had solid walls, but the front part of the enclosure was an open pen with rails on three sides so the horses could visit with their neighbors. Classic was in the corner stall, third horse in from the end.
The first two horses were brand new to clicker training. We started them out with some basic targeting. When we got to Classic he showed off what he could do. Amanda went in with him and did some simple targeting, backing, head lowering. Classic clearly understood what the clicker was. He showed basic good manners. In fact for a two year old, he was showing exceptionally good manners. But he was also revealing both his age and his underlying anxiety about being in a new place. When he wasn't sure of what was wanted, he would grab at Amanda's sleeve. I made note of his behavior, both good and bad before moving on to the next horse. This first low-key introduction was intended only to direct us to the lessons we'd be covering in greater depth later in the course.
We were just meeting horse number five when someone took one of the resident horses out of the far end stall and walked it out of sight behind the barn. We didn't notice, but Classic sure did. He became frantic. He started spinning in his pen, pressing his chest up against the front rails. I don't like to let horses practice emotional states that I don't want around me, so I wanted to interrupt Classic's meltdown. I also wasn't at all convinced that he wouldn't either try to jump out of the enclosure, or that the rails would hold up to his full weight pressing against them.
But I also didn't particularly relish the idea of going into such a small space with a two year old stallion that I didn't know and who was now in a mental washout of emotion. I knew head lowering could calm horses down, but working in such tight quarters was always a challenge. Bringing him out was no better an option. The shed row was designed for calm horses. There was just a narrow walkway between the front of the stalls and a second rail blocking off the interior of the L. You could tie a horse to be groomed, but there was no room for schooling unless you went out behind the barn to the car park and arena. Given his current emotional state that wasn't much of an option because you first had to get him safely past all the other horses.
Going in wasn't an option. Nor was bringing him out. So instead I leaned against the rail of his pen and did nothing. Out of my doing "nothing" emerged a calm, focused horse.
Classic made it easy. Each time he came to the front of his stall, he pressed his chest up against the front rail. Then he'd shift his weight back, swing to the side, and press his chest forward over the rail again.
I simple clicked and offered him a goody each time he shifted back. It took only a couple of clicks before he was aware that a game was on and that backing was the answer. He was still anxious about the vanished horse, but he was also deliberately backing further off the rail. A couple of clicks later and he had backed himself up into the corner of his pen. But now he had a problem. His hind end was caught against the door jam. He couldn't back up any further. I waited. He problem solved. He swung his hip over the couple of inches needed to back through the doorway. In just a very few minutes he was backing twenty feet into the back corner of his stall. And all I had done was lean against the barn wall.
I do love free shaping! No matter how many times I've watched this process unfold, it still delights me. I got such a tickle out of leaning against the barn and watching Classic back all the way to the far corner of his stall, especially since I knew that that was all I had done. I hadn't wiggled a rope at him, or even leaned into him. I had done nothing active to trigger the backing except to click him when his weight shifted back. The rest had been up to Classic to figure out.
Most of the people in the course were new to clicker training. This was the first time they got to see free shaping. Thank you Classic for making their experience such a dramatic one!
I would love to have stayed with Classic, indulging us both in this game, but there were other horses to work, so we moved on. But Classic wasn't finished playing. I heard him backing up in his stall. How could you ignore such good behavior? I sent Amanda over to him to continue to engage with him. He played for a bit more, then put his head down to eat hay - the vanished horse now forgotten.
That would have been an interesting result in an of itself, but there is more to this story. The following morning I went out early and was watching the morning chores. Classic was in the back of his stall calmly eating hay. The other horses were having their stalls mucked out, their water buckets filled. One of the horses was shifted out of its stall and walked out to turnout. Classic went on alert. A horse was leaving! He started to rush forward to the front of his stall, got as far as the door jam, stopped himself abruptly, backed himself up and stood in the back of his stall yawning and yawning. He was using the behavior we had taught him the day before to calm himself down!
There were no people around his stall as there had been the day before. No one was inadvertently cueing the behavior. Amanda reported to me later that after the course she saw other instances where Classic backed himself up to calm himself down.
Grown-Ups
Amanda was one of only a couple experienced clicker trainers on the course. The others were all new to the work, but they were all very excited by what they had seen. And of course they wanted to try it with their own horses. I let them explore some free-shaping, but I didn't use backing as the behavior. Instead they focused on the "grown-ups are talking" lesson. I had them reinforce their horses for taking their heads away from their treat pouches. One lady in particular was enjoying great success. Her very reticent horse was consistently moving her head away. Her owner was bubbling over with excitement. Her horse was so smart!
I moved on to another horse. When I checked in with her again, she was no longer as excited. Her normally very reserved horse was mugging her!
I watched the interaction. Her mare had a history of abuse. She'd been very shut down, a horse who was difficult to catch, difficult to halter. She showed very little emotion, but she was well behaved once caught, quiet to groom, okay to ride. Her owner had said in the introductions she wanted more of a relationship with her horse. That's what she was getting, only she didn't know how to handle it. Her quiet, reserved horse was coming to the front of her stall soliciting attention! That's what she had meant by mugging!
To keep things feeling safe for the owner we needed to wrap the clicker training in a protective blanket of space controlling manners. We needed to shift the emphasis from free shaping grown-ups to using a lead to ask for backing and head down.
These two horses illustrated so well the power of free shaping and the teaching challenges it presents. I want to get to free shaping, but I want to do it in a way that remains comfortable for the handler.
Closing Drawers
I met Classic two years ago. Fast forward to this past winter. I was watching a youtube video of a dog being free shaped to close a drawer. The owner presented a good outward picture. She wasn't food luring or targeting the behavior. She was sitting in a chair, clicking and tossing the treats when her dog oriented towards the drawer. It looked good on the surface, but it made me squirm. The handler was a lumper. She missed so many opportunities to click, and her dog was obviously stressed. You could see it in his body language. You could hear it in his elevated respiration and his vocalizations. He was persistent, but he was clearly frustrated. When the tape ended, my main response was: "I rest my case. Free shaping is an advanced skill."
Fast forward again, this time to the Jan. 07 Clicker Expo. One of the sessions I attended was Kay Lawrence's on micro shaping. To explain what she means by micro shaping she showed two video clips. In the first she was working in her kitchen with one of her Gordon Setters. Kay was sitting in a chair with a large dog toy in front of her. She wanted her dog to put his foot up on the toy.
The video recorded a sixty second session. Kay reinforced the way an inexperienced clicker trainer would. She was waiting for gross movements towards the toy. Her dog sniffed it. Click and treat. And he did put his foot on it. Click and treat. But he also looked away, stared at her, walked off, circled, circled some more, turned away, lifted it's front paw, looked at Kay, etc. He offered a lot of behavior during the sixty seconds, but he only received a handful of clicks, not enough to keep him engaged in the process.
Kay then showed a second clip in which she reinforced any lift up of a front paw. Circling and turning away both begin with paw lifts so he got lots of clicks for the muscles movement involved in lifting a paw. His reinforcement rate shot up to over ninety percent. What we saw on the screen was a happy, engaged dog.
Kay used a dog from the audience during her talk to further illustrate what she meant by micro shaping for muscle movement rather than larger, more lumped behaviors. She taught a dog to go up a series of three steps. But she didn't just get him to go up the steps. She taught him to approach the steps straight on, instead of cutting the corners to get up the steps faster. Lumping gets you lumped results. Splitting gets you details.
Katie
I loved this. Kay's approach so parallels mine. It was what I was thinking about the day after the Expo when I was invited to work with a group of horse people who had attended the Expo. One of the participants walked her horse from her home barn to the facility where we were meeting. Her horse was anxious about leaving her familiar surroundings. She'd had to walk past a moving van with all of its many goblins, lawn sprinklers, barking dogs, and fast moving cars and trucks. She had handled things well, but she was clearly nervous, and her owner needed a break.
Julie turned her horse loose in a small pipe corral about the size of two stalls. Katie wanted nothing more than to go home. She raced around the small space and then crammed herself up by the gate. I was faced with the same situation I'd been in with Classic. I had more room to work, so I could have gone in the pen with her. And I could also have taken her out into the large sand arena that was available to us. But both options would have meant a lot of foot moving on both our parts. I chose an easier way. I leaned against the front of her pen and waited.
And waited.
Unlike Classic, Katie couldn't get her head up over the rails, so instead of backing up, all her movement was forward. There was nothing obvious to reinforce. She alternated between frozen immobility and full out flight. I knew that to break through her emotional barriers I needed a high rate of reinforcement. I needed to find something to grab hold of with the clicker.
What I found was a twitch of her chest muscles. She twitched. I clicked and reinforced. Pause. . . Another twitch. Click and reinforce. Pause again. . . Longer. . . Another twitch. Click and reinforce.
This wouldn't do. With Classic, he'd been able to offer enough of the behavior and had caught on fast enough that I could keep the rates of reinforcement high right from the start. But here the time between the clicks was much too long. I needed something to bring the rates of reinforcement up or I would loose her attention completely.
I whisked my hat off my head and offered her that as a target. Click and treat. Target. Click and treat. My rate of reinforcement shot back up.
After four clicks I put my hat back on my head and leaned back against the front of the pen. The leaning was important. I wanted to create a free-shaping cue. Kay uses sitting in her kitchen chair. That's her signal to the dogs that the free shaping game is on. When I slouched, I was saying to Katie experiment. Of course, she didn't know that at first. She went back to frozen immobility, her eyes fixed on a distant point far across the arena.
My rate of reinforcement dropped back down to next to nothing. I waited. A muscle twitched. Click and treat. Pause. . . . A repeat of last time. Long pauses, infrequent clicks - then offer the target, raise the rate of reinforcement back up. That was the pattern.
By the third or fourth sequence, I thought the muscle twitches in her chest were more intentional. They were certainly easier to spot. As she gave a very definite twitch of her chest muscle, I clicked, treated, and then followed up immediately with the target.
The function of the target was rapidly changing. At first it was simply a way to give Katie a break from the free shaping and to increase the rate of reinforcement, nothing more. But now I could use it to mark a particularly good moment. Twitch a muscle so your heel unweights just a little, and, not only do you get a click and a treat, but you also get to play a few rounds of this other, easier game. I was getting the beginnings of backing and I was at the same time increasing the value of targeting as a conditioned reinforcer.
Targets, Breaks and Conditioned Reinforcers
When I first start people and horses out with the clicker, I recommend that they count out no more than twenty treats and put those in their pocket. And here I don't mean those big commercial horse treats. Twenty of those would fill most treat pouches. I mean twenty hay stretcher pellets, twenty carrot slices, twenty grass pellets. That's just a small handful of treats. That means they are going to run out fast. While they are counting out another twenty treats, their horse is getting a break, and they are processing what just occurred. How did their horse do? What problems, if any, occured that need to be addressed? What do they need to work on next?
Assessing training is a skill I want people to develop. Over time they will be able to evaluate training as it is occurring. They won't have to stop to answer these questions, but like all "walk and chew gum" skills, that's something that takes experience and practice to achieve. A new trainer has enough to think about remembering to click the clicker and get the food delivered in the right spot without also having to think about what to do next. Breaks are good for both horses and humans.
The problem here with Katie is I couldn't safely give her a break. If I had walked away to refill my pocket, she would have gone right back to her frantic spinning. The targeting gave me a way to give her a break without giving her a break. It kept the rate of reinforcement up so she stayed with me, and it gave me a way to highlight particularly good moments in the free shaping.
In not very much time Katie was backing her first tentative steps, and her focus was back on us. She was engaged in the game instead of frantically trying to escape the confines of her pen.
Chunking Down to Micro-shaping
I took the micro freeshaping process with me to my next course. This one was in WA state with a group I see three or four times a year. We began not with micro shaping but with chunking down. What's the difference? I'll explain with a story.
One of the clinic horses was a heavy set draft cross who clearly knew how to tank through his owner. When they came into the arena on the first day, he basically dragged her to the far end of the arena so he could look out over the rails. They went where he wanted to go. He wasn't excessively rude about it. He didn't make ugly faces at her, or threaten her. He just dragged her along at the end of the lead. I'm sure we've all seen it, and maybe even been the one being dragged.
So what do you do? She clearly needed to learn to disengage his hindquarters, but how to approach it without creating a worse mess? That's where chunking down becomes such a powerful tool. I put duct tape markers on the horse's hips (See Lesson 2: Ground Manners and Chapter 9 of the Step-By-Step book). At the halt, I showed her how I could use the lead to bend her horse's nose enough to the side so that I could step towards his hip and put my index finger on the red piece of duct tape on the point of his hip. Of course, he took a step to the side to make himself more comfortable. As he did, I clicked and released the lead.
She tried it. At first she stepped straight back so all he did was back up. She had to bend his nose slightly to the side which meant stepping in a small arc out and around towards his hip. He swung his hips away from her. Click and treat.
I had her repeat this several times until they were both comfortable with the movement. He wasn't tanking off with her anymore. She was learning that she could bend his nose slightly to the side, point at his hip, and he would move over. Click and treat. Good deal. And he was perfectly happy to stay with her and get goodies. Even better deal.
Except I knew it wasn't enough. This worked just fine at the halt, but if he had started to walk out in front of her, or if she missed her timing, she might be in trouble. I needed to attach some more pieces to the puzzle.
I also needed to smooth out the step over of the hip. Asking for it in one lumped unit as she was works, but it's not very polite. It doesn't give the horse time to prepare, to set up his balance so he can step over comfortably. It just asks for the swing over in one balanced or not step.
So I started to attach more steps to create a longer chain. First I wanted to show her how to finish the swing over of the hips. I wanted her to notice that after her horse swings his hips over to the side, he is in a perfect position relative to her to back up. She could ask for the hip, click-release, feed. Then she could slide down the lead again, and ask him to back up one step. Click-release, feed. Then she could ask for a second step. Click-release, feed.
She had taught him to drop his head from poll pressure and a hand signal. So after he took two steps back, she could also add a request for head lowering. Click-release, feed.
This was initially done from her original hand signal, but we quickly transferred this to a lead request. (See Lesson 3 DVD: Head Lowering). So now we had a nice sequence that looked like this:
From a stand still, the handler asked for a give of the hip by bringing her horse's nose to the side and pointing at the duct tape marker on his hip. Click-release, feed.
She then slid up the lead and asked him to back up one step. Click-release, feed.
She asked him to back up a second step. Click-release, feed.
She asked him to drop his head. Click-release, feed.
This is what I refer to as chunking down. Each step in the process was marked with a click and a treat. In micro-shaping each weight shift within each step would have been marked.
Her horse was perfectly willing to comply with her requests. She was offering him much better entertainment than he could find elsewhere in the arena. And since each request was followed by a click and a treat, the lesson remained clear and comfortable. If we had started combining steps too soon, they both might have gotten frustrated and confused. One step at a time kept things manageable for both of them.
Learning good rope handling skills is not easy. There is a lot to juggle, a lot to keep in mind. You have to monitor your own mechanics, your horse's response, what you need to ask for next. So breaking a complex request down into all of it's individual steps is a great way to learn.
In just a few minutes we had gone from horse tanking off to a horse and handler learning the outer structure of hip-shoulder-shoulder. We had a good beginning, but the starting point so far had been the halt. Things get much more complicated once you add movement. But before you can learn how to manage forward movement, you first have to get it. So the next step in this process was asking the horse to take a step forward, click-release, feed.
This was repeated many times until asking for a forward step was readily answered with good energy. Click-release, feed.
So next came: ask for forward, then ask the horse to soften his nose to the side. Click-release, feed.
Ask for forward again and ask the horse to soften his nose to the side. Click-release, feed.
I'm sure you can tell where I am headed with this.
Ask for forward again and ask the horse to soften his nose to the side. Click-release, feed.
After this third softening I had her begin the hip sequence of asking for the hip - click-release, feed; asking for a step of backing - click-release, feed; asking for a second step of backing - click-release, feed; asking for head down - click-release, feed.
So now she could ask her horse to walk forward, to soften his nose to the side, to yield his hips over and to back up into head down. She was most definitely liking the added control this gave her.
So with this dance step well in hand, I moved her onto the "why would you leave me?" exercise. We set up a circle of cones, and she walked with her horse around the circle clicking and feeding as appropriate. She was going through the set-up for three-flip-three. (Refer to the DVDs: "The Why Would You Leave Me? Game" and the new "Three-Flip-Three: Understanding Lateral Flexions.") After a couple of trial runs, she was able to ask for three gives in a row without stopping in between each one for a click and a treat. She was now ready to add the hip. This time, instead of asking for a big swing of the hip, I had her ask for less so he kept walking forward. She followed this with two beautiful steps, up and over, up and over, of lateral work. She had just gotten her first three-flip-three lateral flexion.
On the last day of the clinic, this pair was in the arena for their session as several of the other horses were leaving. He could see them walk past and hear them loading on the trailer. What a good excuse to become a "tourist" and start dragging his person off to watch the other horses. That's what he would have done on the first day. But he never once even tried to drag her. He stayed working with her, going through sequences of beautiful, controlled lateral flexions and hip-shoulder-shoulder rein backs.
So chunking down helped this pair gain a working understanding of three-flip-three and hip-shoulder-shoulder. If you or your horse are uncertain, or confused by these patterned exercises, chunking down the pattern into its individual steps is a great approach to use. But chunking down is just one rung on the ladder to micro-shaping. Micro-shaping means finding many more small steps than even this chunked down process provided.
Smokey
So let me share another horse from the WA clinic. This horse, Smokey, is one of our regulars. She's been to almost all the clinics I've given in WA. I have always thought of her as a calm, steady, reliable horse. And indeed that is how she is almost all of the time. She is a truly lovely mare, a real gem. But she has one hole which her owner turned up when she and her trainer, who also comes to my clinics, took their two horses off to another clinic. At that clinic the second horse was ridden out of sight of Smokey. Smokey got upset and remained upset all weekend.
So that was what they wanted to work on. They wanted to find a way to trigger Smokey's panic and then get her out of it. We had never triggered this particular reaction at our clinics because the open sides of the arena allow the horses to see one another even when one is in a paddock and the other is working. But Smokey's recent upset left her much more reactive when her traveling companion left the paddock. It was clear we would have no trouble triggering her panic. In fact the problem was going to be not triggering it. Any separation seemed to be making Smokey anxious. That's one of the problems with unanswered questions. The demons can grow and take on much larger proportions. Where before she would have accepted the other horse leaving for a work session, now she was anxiously pacing the gate.
Normally I work hard to keep horses in their comfort zone, but there is a place in training for teaching horses how to deal with stress and how to calm themselves down. Many calm-at-home horses don't know how to do this. Nothing ever really ruffles their feathers, so they don't get any practice getting upset, having an adrenaline rush, and then learning how to settle down. This described Smokey. Once she got upset, she didn't know how to calm herself back down. She remained in an agitated state long after the original cause for the upset was gone.
The "horse training" way that I originally learned to settle upset horses involved moving their feet. That doesn't mean that you run them into a lather. It simply means that you allow them to move, something an upset horse wants to do, but you control where their feet go. You ask for a tight turn to the left followed by a tight turn to the right, over and over again, until all that turning has the horse wanting to stand still.
When I first have people explore single-rein riding, I use this strategy. I have them slide down the rein and ask for a tight turn to the left, releasing as the horse responds. They immediately follow this release with a request for a tight turn to the right. They repeat these requests for tight turns until their horse comes to a stand still. Click and treat. Before someone goes too far riding on a single rein, I want to be sure they know how to stop a horse.
So tight turns and lots of foot movement will generate a halt. That's one strategy. But I wanted to use another. I wanted to see if the approach that had worked so well with Katie would also work with Smokey.
The Free-Shaping Puzzle
This strategy was rapidly evolving into one of those "thesis in search of a graduate student" areas of clicker training. What is going on in these animals? What is it about free shaping that settles and focuses the horses so effectively? Why does the calming effect often generalize to other upsetting situations?
When you teach a horse to stand on a mat using pressure and release of pressure, he'll willing stand on a mat when asked. When you free shape standing on a mat, he won't wait to be asked. If there's a mat around, he'll be standing on it. If you don't know how to establish stimulus control, you'll have a horse that mugs you with every free-shaped behavior he's ever learned.
With free shaping the horse has solved the puzzle with very few hints from you. He knows what the behavior is, and he's eager to offer it. Free shaping awakens the intelligence of the horse. You can use clicker training as a sugar coating tool. The horse moves in response to pressure. You release the pressure, but you also add a click and a treat. You are sugar coating same-old, same-old. I've written about this many times. Sugar coating is great. I would much rather swallow the sugar coated pill rather than the bitter one.
When you combine the clicker with pressure and release of pressure that's what you are doing. But if that is all you do, if that is the extent of your clicker training, you will not get the bright-eyed, eager, tuned in individual that I so treasure as a clicker-trained animal. I want that eagerness. I want the horse that offers me his own ideas. I want a horse who expresses his opinions, who shows me what he does and does not want to do. But I also recognize that many people who are just starting out in clicker training may not be ready for all this energy and enthusiasm. They may not know what to do with a horse who comes up with his own creative ideas in a training session. What makes me laugh, may send someone else running in the opposite direction. So I regard free shaping as an advanced skill.
That doesn't mean that I do not include free shaping in the foundation lessons, but I place it within a structure that eases people into the process. Free shaping is an incredibly powerful tool. Before we turn it fully on, I want to be sure people understand what it is and have the tools to enjoy it.
So in the foundation lessons we begin by capturing a behavior - targeting. We free shape ears forward. We free shape grown-ups are talking, please don't interrupt, but generally the horse is on a lead so his options are limited. If the horse is barging up against the stall door, I'll free shape backing, but otherwise I'll encourage people to use their clicker compatible rope handling skills to ask the horse to back up.
I encourage people to use their rope handling skills to teach their horse to stand on a mat. Once they have the basic behavior, I then encourage them to free shape other elements of the behavior, such as ears forward, head elevation, mouth closed, etc.. They are learning about free-shaping within the space controlling structure of their rope handling skills. It's mix and match to maintain a level of eagerness that the horse and handler are comfortable with.
I love the feel of a light horse. I love the connection and energy that is transmitted down the lead or rein. It's not something I want to give up, but nor is it the only way I want to communicate. Free shaping is simply too much fun to ignore. And it is also too powerful. Free shaping is what distinguishes clicker-trained horses from other forms of training. It is what will launch horse training into a whole new realm of horse/human connections. It is where all of this work is heading.
But - and there is always a but. - free shaping can be horrendously stressful for the learner. The teacher knows what the answer is. All the learner needs to do is put one foot up on the foot stool. What could be simpler? Anytime the learner puts his paw/hoof/foot on the stool, click he gets a treat. So why is the dog whining, the horse pawing, the human giving up?
Because the trainer is a lumper and the rate of reinforcement is way too low. This has been something I have found disturbing about watching free shaping sessions. In the hands of a highly skilled trainer, there is no greater joy than watching the unfolding of the behavior. But with a less skilled trainer free shaping can be a clumsy, stressful process filled with long lulls in which there is no clicking and lots of displacement behaviors.
Just because you are using positive reinforcement that does not mean the animal is having a positive learning experience. This low reinforcement rate is especially problematic for animals that are already emotionally stressed, or who do not yet understand that they need to experiment.
So how do you open the free shaping game without creating learning stress? That's the strategy we were going to explore with Smokey. I wanted to use free shaping because I wanted Smokey to work her own way out of her worried, over stressed state. I wanted her to shift from reactive mode to a thinking, present-in-her-body state. I knew from long experience that the tool of choice was free shaping. But with a horse that is stressed and is only thinking of flight, the rates of reinforcement can be depressingly low - so low in fact that it can negate all the good to be derived from the process. Smokey wasn't thinking about what she had just done to get a click. She was too worried about being separated from her friend. This is also not a situation where you can work for a couple of minutes, then give the horse a break. Any break would have allowed Smokey to wind herself up even more. She needed to be managed to keep her from becoming so worked up she injured herself.
So what do you do? You could put her back with her pasture buddy. Safety after all always comes first, but that wouldn't resolve the problem long term. In fact it would just teach her that getting upset works. It got her put back with her friend.
So we needed to find a way to increase the rate of reinforcement, and for that I used the strategy that had worked so well with Katie. The strategy is simple enough. The goal is a calm, thinking horse. To reach this goal I wanted to alternate between free-shaping backing and having Smokey touch a target.
One of the core principles is to put as many steps between you and your goal as you can. Step one for Smokey was just getting her in the stall. She balked at the open door, afraid to go in. Targeting helped with that. We led her in, asked her to drop her head, led her back out. In and out she went until she could stay in the stall, not comfortably, not at ease, but at least no longer on the brink of a total panic. This was from a horse who was familiar with stalls, who trailered just fine, but who could not bear being separated from her pasture mate.
Head lowering is not a forward moving exercise. Her owner managed the lesson well, asking for head lowering and keeping Smokey from barging forward. Her panic subsided somewhat, enough to begin closing the door. I slid it shut just an inch or two. Smokey could handle that. Another inch. Still okay. I opened it again when she showed me she could keep her head down. Then closed it a bit more, until finally the door was closed all the way. Smokey coped with that. She could stand in the stall, her head lowered, as long as her owner was there to ask. When she seemed enough in control of her emotions to be turned loose, I had Judy unhook the lead and slide out of the stall.
Left alone Smokey started circling in her stall. She wasn't showing any signs of backing, just this mindless, stressed circling. She did stop every now and then to stare out the front of the stall. That was a start. Click and treat. Click and treat. Click and treat. We got a couple of reinforcements in for frozen immobility then I opened the window where hay was dropped in and offered her the target. She rushed over and shoved her head out the window, but I had judged it right. She wasn't so paniced that she was trying to jump out. She could touch the target and back up to get her treat. The backing wasn't to trigger the behavior we were trying to shape. It was for space management. I wanted all treats to be delivered on her side of the stall wall.
We did a few rounds of targeting, then I closed the hay door and leaned against the stall wall. This casual posture was again my signal that the free shaping was on. Of course Smokey didn't know this. She just circled in her stall, occasionally coming to a stop by the door. Click and treat, click and treat, click and treat, click and treat. Then back to targeting.
This pattern repeated itself many times over with no real sign that Smokey was settling. But she was starting to play the game. She was spending more and more time standing across from me by the door. And she wasn't just standing. She was posing. In fact she was stuck in pose. It had earned reinforcement in the past. She was going to keep on posing no matter what else we might want. Okay, if that's the behavior we were offered, we could use it to shape backing. We focused on her chest muscles. As she posed, contracting her chest muscles up, we clicked. Judy fed her through the bars. She'd start to pose again, and we clicked just as we saw her chest muscles contract. She was lifting at the base of her neck, lightening her feet. As she stretched up on her tippy toes, click, we gave her a treat, and I opened the hay window and offered her her target.
Her reward for the extra effort was the easier game of targeting. With targeting the rate of reinforcement was consistently high. Click/ treat, click/treat, her success rate was 100%. That meant her focus was entirely on touching the target and getting her treat. I let her enjoy this easy game for half a dozen clicks or so, no more, then the window closed and we were back to free shaping. Here she circled in her stall, stopped, got clicked, posed, got clicked, circled forward, stopped - posed, got clicked. Her success rate was lower, but we had gotten the game going. She was marginally engaged.
We alternated back and forth between the two behaviors. She was understanding now that lifting the base of her neck earned treats. The first time the lift of her chest muscles freed up her front foot and she took a step back, click, instantly the hay window opened. Good work, Smokey. We were making progress, but we were also losing the light. It was getting harder and harder to see the small contractions of muscles that were so important to catch. Smokey was experiencing some success so we decided to end the session before the lighting undermined our training.
On day two we brought her back to the stall. She was visibly more relaxed, much more engaged with us. But she still didn't know what we wanted. She had so much forward energy generated from her anxiety that it was hard for her to think about backing. We began to appreciate just how deep her anxiety was. This was one of those underlying currents that was good to bring out into the open where it could be worked with.
In this session we stationed a couple of people in the adjacent stall. From that vantage point they could see much more clearly than we could the tiny shifts in Smokey's weight. The stall wall gave them a consistent measuring stick against which to judge the tiny shifts in balance. Each time Smokey pulled herself up and rocked back, click, she got reinforced. She was spending less and less time circling in her stall, more time in the corner where she'd had the most clicks.
She was backing now, a step or two at a time. And the clicks were perfectly timed. When people first start working on backing, they are almost always late. They click as the foot is coming to the ground. So what does the horse learn? Bring your foot to the ground as fast as you can. That's how you get clicks.
With Smokey, people were watching Smokey's chest muscles. They were clicking as Smokey was beginning to lift her foot. So what did Smokey think was the right answer? Lift your foot up. If we withheld the click, instead of stalling out, she lifted her other foot for a second step. Good deal. So the game was never about backing. That was the result. The behavior we reinforced was the contraction of muscles that preceded the lift up and step back of her foot. And the overall goal was an emotionally calm, focused horse.
Smokey was figuring out that backing was the target behavior. She wasn't spinning forward in her stall anymore. She'd leave the targeting and go straight back to her corner to begin backing again. And now something really interesting occurred. I'd open the hay window and Smokey would come over to touch the target. She'd touch it consistently and then she would leave on her own to go over to the spot she regarded as her backing corner. She was choosing the harder backing game where she had to puzzle out the right answers rather than the simpler targeting.
On the third day she was visibly relaxed when she entered the stall. She went right to work, figuring out how to back not just a couple of steps, but how to maneuver through the far corner. Her focus on the process was absolute. I don't think she disconnected from us even once during her session.
She was definitely choosing to return to backing. She always came over to touch the target and seemed interested in it, but she also was always ready to return to backing. I began to leave the hay window open. On the first day she would have been anxiously fretting with her head out the window. Now the window could remain open and she ignored it.
My job had been to judge when to open the window and offer her the target. This was the dance - the art behind the science. I had to judge when she needed the easing back to the simpler game, when to offer it as a reward, how long to let her stay with targeting. And I had to be certain never, never to use it as a refocuser back on us. If she started circling in the stall, forgetting about backing, I couldn't use targeting to bring her back to me. That would have altered its function within the process. It would have ended up reinforcing the anxious, circling behavior instead of serving to reinforce her good efforts at the free shaping.
But now I didn't need to hover by the window watching for the right moment to offer her the target. I changed places with Judy and stood by the door. Smokey was totally engaged with backing. I opened the door part way. Instead of rushing to crowd past me, Smokey backed into the far corner. Very neat.
It wasn't long before I had the door wide open and was standing to one side. Smokey was inside, settled, showing absolutely no desire to leave. Instead she was backing through the second corner and getting rewarded with the opportunity to touch her target. All of her anxiety seemed to have vanished. She could have charged out the door. Instead she chose to stay and play with us.
You could say she had simply settled into the stall. If we had done nothing, if we had simply left her alone until she worked herself into a standstill we would have gotten the same result - except, except in the clinic where she had had an anxiety attack she never settled. She was tense the entire weekend. Yes, she worked, but her anxiety never left her. Here she had made a dramatic shift, and all we did was lean against the front of her stall and click her for small micro-movements.
It is these huge emotional shifts that have my attention. Sometimes they occur after a single click. I saw that years ago with Peregrine when I was first exploring clicker training. That early experience was one of the things that told me that clicker training was something very different from conventional pressure and release of pressure training.
Sometimes the emotional shifts happen within a single session as they did with Classic. But other horses need longer. Smokey had so many layers of tension wound up inside her, we needed the three sessions.
Time doesn't matter. What matters is progress.
Microshaping: One Strategy - Many Uses
A theme was definitely emerging for this year's clinics. The horses were showing it to me. Peregrine and Robin had started me out with this over the past couple of winters. I'd been exploring micro-shaping with them, but I didn't know how to teach it. What I did with them was not going to be easy to duplicate, but here the horses were showing me the answer. Finally I was seeing a way to guide people into the real fun of clicker training, to delve down into the layers of micro-movements without getting tripped up by poor timing and frustrated animals.
At my next clinic I had another opportunity to experiment with this lesson. I'd been looking for a good opportunity to video the sessions. I wish we had filmed Smokey. The changes would have been fascinating to track, but the light was against us. At the next course I got not one, but three opportunities to video horses.
The first horse had separation anxiety so she was very much like Smokey. The second horse, Lightheart, was a very different case. Lightheart is a beautiful, and I mean beautiful Welsh pony. She has an interesting history. Her previous owner showed her quite a bit in halter classes. When Lightheart made a mistake, she was forcefully made to back. Now anything that even remotely resembles showing makes her nervous. That means being in an arena at clinics makes her nervous. When I met her for the first time last year, we worked on the foundation lessons, particularly on head lowering before progressing to lateral flexions and riding.
This year when I watched Lightheart in her first session I saw many things I liked. I could see all the good work her owner has done with her, but I also saw a level of anxiety that didn't match the rest of the horse. And as I watched, I also thought I saw a hitch in her stifles. Was her anxiety just a reaction to past history, or was the anxiety being kept alive by a physical problem?
I wanted to free shape backing, to let Lightheart figure out how to maneuver her own body so I could see if the stifle hitch was real or caused by the handler blocking her in the rope handling. We had the perfect set-up for this lesson. The barn we were in has a large interior space which is blocked off by panels. We could set up our chairs on one side of the panels and turn Lightheart loose in the pen.
It's important for this first lesson to have the handler completely separated from the horse. It's all too easy to direct a horse without thinking you are. Horses are so conscious of space and body language. Where you stand matters. How you shift your weight matters. What most people think is free shaping is really liberty work with body language acting as the trigger for behavior. There is a difference. So if you are going to free shape, at least at first, put a barrier between you, or sit in a chair, or on a mounting block. To further distinguish the free-shaping game from those exercises where you are cueing and directing the dance, slouch against the rails. As I've said, I want slouching to become the signal to the horses that the creative, thinking game is on.
For free shaping I use an actual clicker, not a tongue click. I want the sharpness and clarity that the clicker provides. There is speculation that the sharp sound of the clicker is processed directly by the amygdala, the primitive brain stem. Since I am working on emotional issues, I want to take full advantage of that processing. If the sharp sound helps, I'm going to use it. (There's another thesis in search of a graduate student. Do you get the same emotional shift using a clicker, a verbal marker, or a tongue click?)
Lightheart
Lightheart has done a lot of liberty work. She is very hooked on to her person. She stayed by the front of the panels offering what she thought we wanted - which was head lowering.
That's the only behavior we were likely to get. If we weren't actively cueing something she knew, her default was head lowering. So that's what I used to build backing. Head lowering is not a forward moving exercise. When Lightheart dropped her head, I watched the distance between her nose and her front feet.
If the distance increased, I knew she was about to lift her head up and step forward. I wanted to see the distance close, to see her nose get closer to her front feet. We had a fascinating time watching her explore the balance shifts that brought her nose closer and closer to her front feet. We watched the most amazing abdominal lifts as she rocked her weight back into her hind end and lifted her back.
Just like with Smokey we alternated between the free shaping and targeting. And just like Smokey, the weight shifts put her feet into motion. And again because we were clicking for the muscle movement that generated the step, the backing we got was high energy. She wasn't dragging her feet back. She was marching back with energy.
We were ready to move to a new criteria and think about duration. So we put a line of widely spaced cones about four strides behind her. This was again a fascinating process. I love watching horses sort through this backing puzzle. Lightheart knew the cones were behind her, but she really didn't know what to do about it. She looked like someone who is just learning how to back a trailer. You know the barn is still twenty feet behind you, but you can't help but creep back.
Lightheart's feet started to look as though they were stuck in cement. So we went back to clicking for just a step or two and brought the energy back up.
The first time Lightheart backed into a cone, she jumped forward. How did that get back there!?
We could see her glancing back behind her. And just like someone learning how to back a trailer, she would sometimes back up a step or two, then shift forward, only to back again, but this time at a better angle to maneuver through the cones.
What a great lesson. She was learning so much about her hind end. You could see all the possibilities opening up. It will be very easy to teach Lightheart to back to a target, to back between targets, even to back through a weave pole pattern.
EquiDance
One of the many things I want to see developing is liberty freestyle - dancing with our horses. Magic hands is one form of this. It creates such a gorgeous flow and connection between horse and handler. Free shaping adds another dimension to this. With Lightheart we could see some wonderful possibilities emerging for equine dance.
That led us to Ilse's horse, Sindra. Ilse has also wanted to develop equine dance. She and Sindra are a great team, but the dance has evolved primarily out of pressure and release of pressure cues. The creative spark that comes from free shaping isn't there. When we turned Sindra loose in the pen, she showed us her default behavior - standing rooted on an invisible mat. She didn't understand that experimenting was the desired response.
We followed a similar protocol with Sindra that we had for the other horses, and got backing activated. On the third day, I wanted to be sure that Sindra understood that backing wasn't the only game in town. I didn't want her to end up just as fixated on backing as she had been on standing on a mat, Before going out to the barn we talked about what sort of behaviors might be useful. Ilse chose a spin since that would be an important element to have in a freestyle dance. During her session we were going to reinforce Sindra for turns to the side.
Sindra, of course, offered backing. Backing had worked the day before, so of course it was the one and only answer. Right?
Wrong. Now backing wasn't getting reinforced. Slight head turns were. It was amazing how quickly Sindra caught on to the change and switched to offering movement to the side. She made the switch easily because we had been micro-shaping. If backing had been the answer, she might have stayed stuck much longer on the gross movement of taking steps back. But we had been clicking her for different elements within the backing movement - for lifting her chest, for engaging her abdominal muscles, for rolling her hips underneath her. She was becoming very body aware. Shifting to a slight turn of her head, and then to a shift in balance to the side was easy work. We could see the beginnings of a spin emerging and the start of a totally new dance partnership between Ilse and Sindra.
The Free Shaping Cue
If you want to do anything more than simply free shape one behavior, Sindra's lesson is an important one to understand. And it is also related very much to understanding how single-rein riding works. The "I want something" message of the slide down the rein is very much akin to the "Experiment" cue where I slouch to the side.
Free-shaping backing is great fun, and it certainly is a useful skill, but I want something broader. I want the horse to understand the shaping game. What does leaning against a rail mean? To Sindra and the other horses in those first lessons it quickly became a cue to back. When your person leans against the side of your stall, back up, and - click - you'll get a treat.
We could have left it there. It's a cute trick. For Katie, the first horse I described, the cue became putting my hat on my head. As soon as she saw that, she started backing. Cues evolve out of the shaping process. They can't not evolve. So when people ask me: "When do I attach a cue to the behavior?", the most accurate answer is often "You already have." The question they are really asking is: "when can I transfer to my working cue." But a discussion of working cues is getting ahead of the process. Let's stay here with Sindra for the moment.
So far with each of these horses, we leaned against a stall railing and they backed up. As we alternated between targeting and backing, leaning quickly became a cue to back. But I really want leaning to mean experiment. To generalize the cue we needed to use it to create other behaviors. So with Sindra we switched our criterion. We moved to a different spot along her pen and leaned against the rail. The change in location helped her figure out that we were after something different. I think she offered only three backing sequences before she shifted to the new criterion. As Ilse uses this process to shape other behaviors, she'll develop a generalized cue that means experiment. And by alternating between the experimental behavior and targeting she will have a built in way of keeping the new behavior in balance even before she's transferred it to a working cue.
I said this is related to single-rein riding. If I teach head lowering using a lead, I will get a horse who thinks the answer is always "drop your head". No matter what the request is, the answer is always "drop your head." It would be like asking you a series of questions to which you always answer 44. "How much is 2 times 22?" 44. "How much is 7 times 9?" 44. "What color is the sky?" 44.
I want the slide down to mean "I want something." The something I want may be to drop your head, but it also might be to pick your head up and move forward. I teach this more abstract, generalized meaning by using the lead to ask for many different behaviors. The horse figures out what particular thing I want by noticing all the little differences that are associated with the slide down of the lead. For example, where I am standing relative to his shoulder; is the snap directed forward, back, up, down, left right?; where is my balance?; etc.
In the free-shaping I can't not give clues to my horse. Where I look is a huge clue that evolves into a cue. In the single-rein riding the position of my hand when I ask for the jaw is down on the saddle. When I ask for the hip, it is much higher. As the training progresses, my hand moves off the saddle and the difference between the two requests becomes much smaller, much harder for an untrained eye to detect. But my horse knows the difference. The exaggeration at the beginning drew his attention - and mine - to the change being asked for. As he understands the process, the differences become much more subtle.
In the micro-freeshaping, where we look is a huge cue to our horses. Even if you wear dark glasses so he can't see your eyes, the orientation of your head when you look at his chest versus his hindquarters will be different. And when we shift position along the rail or sit in a chair versus lean against the rails, that tells the horse that we have made a major shift in what is being reinforced. Think Clever Hans and you will know that this kind of noticing is child's play for a horse.
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End of Part One
That's enough for now. I'll let you digest this post for now and send the rest on another day.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
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Microshaping: Finding the Smallest Try Part Two
by Alexandra Kurland
copyright 2007
Part Two: This is the second part of "Micro-shaping: Finding the
Smallest Yes"
I'm just back from an intense round of clinics - six clinics in four
weeks. Some people take their Holidays by sitting at the beach. I
take mine by giving back-to-back-to-back courses. I was literally
finishing one course, getting on a train, and starting another course
the next morning. That should be exhausting, but instead it is
incredibly energizing. I discovered this last year when I set up a
solid month of clinics. I wasn't sure if I would have the
stamina to do a non-stop month of teaching. I always worry about
being away from the horses for long stretches of time, so I pack the
courses together with minimal days off in between. What I discovered
last year was the intensity of the schedule brought out layers of
details in the training that were incredibly important. That was an
unexpected and delightful result. So this year I was looking forward
to the discovery process. What was going to emerge from an even more
packed in schedule?
Cues*
The first course served as an introduction to clicker training. I
did a little with the microshaping with the one horse on the course
who was an experienced clicker-trained horse. She was a delightful
New Forest pony named Pandora. Pandora picked up very quickly on the
backing. Her owner has done a superb job with her. This was her
first trip away from home, but she handled herself like a seasoned
pro and even showed off a wonderful targeting game. Pandora has
learned to walk at liberty under an umbrella - a great skill to have
in a rainy climate. She and her owner went for walks together around
the farm sharing the umbrella -great fun!
After clinic hours I helped the organizers of the course, Nick and
Cherrie Foot with a saddling problem they have with one of their
young Icelandics. Early on in this mare's riding career a girth had
not been properly tightened. When the rider got on, the saddle
slipped under her belly, frightening both the rider and the horse.
Nick bought Muska knowing she had a saddling issue. He and Cherrie
have been making progress with her. They can, given enough time and
patience, get a saddle on her, but it is never an easy process. Once
the saddle is on her back, Muska is calm, but getting the saddle near
her is the project. I watched them the first evening. Cherrie was
asking for head lowering while a friend stood near by holding the
dreaded saddle.
The head lowering was still in the head bobbing stage. To make
progress with the saddle Moska needed to lower her head and keep it
down. I took over to work her through this stage. Muska was a sweet
horse who was very willing to work with me. I very quickly got her
head down and staying down. (Refer to the DVD Lesson 3: Head Lowering).
For every behavior you teach there is an opposite behavior you must
teach to keep things in balance. In between rounds of head lowering
I led her forward for a short break. We'd come back to stand near
the saddle. She could stand nearish, but she always bowed away from
it as we past it.
So once her head was staying down well, I took the saddle and
carried it on my left hip while I asked for head lowering with my
right hand. Once she could consistently stand still and drop her
head with the saddle that close, I began transferring it over to my
right hip. This was a chunked down process. Each small shift in
balance caused concern. Each time her head popped up, I asked her to
drop her head, and when she did, not only did she get a click and a
treat, but I shifted the saddle back to its previous position.
This takes a bit of coordination, juggling the lead rope and the
saddle, plus keeping track of the timing of clicks and releases, but
I managed it. The saddle was soon resting on my right hip. I then
began to lift it ever so slightly. Her head came up. I asked with
the lead for her head to drop, and as it did I both clicked and
lowered the saddle.
She got her treat which meant her head was now up again. I raised
the saddle slightly and asked with the lead for her to lower her
head. Down it went. The pattern repeated, and, as it did, I
gradually raised the saddle a bit higher each time. And now
something very interesting began to happen. As I raised the saddle,
and before I could touch the lead, her head dropped. What fun! I
looked over at Nick and Cherrie.
"Do you see what is happening?" I asked.
They looked puzzled. To their eyes, it looked as though nothing had
changed.
"The saddle has become a cue for her to lower her head. Watch." I
raised the saddle, and Moska instantly dropped her head to the
ground. Click and treat.
This is, of course, exactly how you transfer cues. When you want to
transfer to a new cue, you put the new cue in front of the old cue.
New cue - old cue => behavior. You present this sequence several
times, then you fade out the old cue so now you have: new cue =>
behavior.
In this case the old cue was the signal from the lead. The new cue
was the lifting of the saddle. It didn't start out as a cue. It
just morphed into one. Cues evolve through the training process.
The interesting thing about this was not that the saddle became a
cue, but that as soon as it did, Muska lost her fear of it. I could
now ease the saddle down onto her back, and she stood beautifully
relaxed with her nose to the ground. Her old concerns about the
saddle were melting away into the dirt.
I am telling this story here for a number of reasons. First, it
shows how quickly our actions can evolve into cues. It reminds us to
be aware of this process, and to be on the lookout for the cues that
are evolving. This is very important in the micro-shaping process.
Cues evolve naturally out of the shaping process. And as a matter of
fact, you can't help but have cues evolve. If you are watching the
chest muscles on your horse, and then you switch to watching the
abdominal muscles, that shift in focus becomes a cue. Look at the
chest and your horse will focus in on lifting the base of its neck.
Shift your focus to his belly line, and you'll see him exaggerate his
"abdominal crunches." If you know this, you can make better, more
deliberate use of the cues as they evolve.
It also reminds us how to transfer cues. This again is incredibly
important in the free shaping process. The cue that I start out with
is in all likelihood not going to be my finished performance cue.
Leaning against a stall door is a fun way to trigger backing, but
it's not connected to the dance we need for leading and riding. So
I'll want to generate a new, work-in-progress cue. And then I'll
want to exchange that for a performance cue. In other words the cue
I start out with is not the cue I am stuck with forevermore. Nor do
I want it to be.
The behavior I first free shape, is not going to have the polish and
finesse of the more finished version of the behavior. If I transfer
this later version to a new cue, that new cue will be associated with
the polished version of the behavior, not the clumsy first
approximation. When I use that cue, I'll get the performance
version, not the first approximation, of the behavior. If I kept the
same cue throughout, under stress my horse might revert back to the
earliest learned version of the behavior - not a good deal at all if
the horse is in a show ring at the time and I want his best behavior.
Learning to Chunk Down
A couple of days after this session with Muska, I walked Nick through
the process. Muska had linked fear of saddles and men together, so
it was especially important that he take her through this process.
Training is a mechanical skill. That became evident as Nick juggled
saddle, lead, and treats. Chunking down is also a mechanical skill.
This is another reason I am telling this story. I've discovered that
it is hard for people to go part way and only part way through a
process.
For example, in teaching the rope handling skills that involve bone
rotations (Refer to the DVD: Tai Chi Rope Handling Exercises.) I'll
often have people practice just sliding down the lead. I want them
to slide down the lead and then slide back so they can slide down
again. What I get instead is people slide down the lead and keep
going into the rotation at the end of the slide. But because they
are not yet fluid in the slide, the bone rotation is often not quite
right. So what they end up developing as their fixed habit pattern
is a behavior that is made up of flawed parts.
Also by going all the way through the sequence they turn it into one
behavior instead of a series of linked behaviors. That means that
they can't interrupt the behavior. They must go all the way to the
end each time. If the horse responds earlier to just the slide down
of the hand, they have trouble letting go. They have programmed into
their body the full sequence, not a series of interruptable steps.
This makes it much harder for them to chunk down and microshape.
This relates to the tai chi walk that is at the core of the rope
handling skills. In the tai chi walk you are always in balance. You
can freeze frame and remain in balance at any point in the transfer
of weight from leg to leg. I've practiced this freeze frame balance,
and I've also chunked down a lot of movement into its component parts
which means I can now interrupt a sequence as needed. I can chunk
down the transfer of a saddle from one hip to the other into a number
of small steps. For Muska that meant I could ask a series of small
questions to which she could consistently answer yes.
Nick couldn't. When he transferred the saddle, it was in one brisk
movement and that was way too much for Muska. We had to separate the
two of them while Nick worked out the coordination of doing just a
little piece of a bigger movement. This is a learned skill not a
natural one. Nick is not alone in having to work out the motor
skills involved in asking very small questions. And that's why I am
including this story here. You have to learn how to chunk things
down. It isn't something most people can just do without any
training or practice.
Nick caught on fast. A couple of minutes of practice, and he was
able to move the saddle around Muska in small enough increments that
she could give him a definite yes each time. The yes was indicated
with a drop of her head to the ground. It was a pretty sight seeing
him lower the saddle onto her back while she remained peacefully still.
Nick brought Muska a month later to the last course I did in this
series. He brought her into the arena, and she calmly accepted the
saddle, dropping her head right on cue as it was raised over her
back. Very neat!
Mircroshaping, Freeshaping, and Shaping on a Point of Contact
It's easy for terms to become confused with one another or to become
linked up in ways that weren't originally intended.
I've been using two terms in this post: micro-shaping and free-
shaping. I defined them both in part one, but it is worth reviewing
the definitions here, because I know from the courses people were
getting the two terms tangled up together. Free-shaping refers to a
style of shaping where you do not overtly trigger the behavior. You
aren't using lures, targets, pressure, mimicry, etc. to get the
behavior to happen. You are simply watching the animal and
reinforcing useful behavior.
Micro-shaping and free-shaping are not synonymous. You can be a
lumper and free-shape. The example I gave was that of the dog
learning to close a drawer. His handler was expecting too much too
fast and ended up with a frustrated, stressed learner.
Good free-shapers micro-shape. They are looking for small changes in
balance. They recognize that they need a high rate of reinforcement,
and they increase their criterion in very small increments.
You can shape behavior in ways other than free-shaping. I shape
using pressure and release of pressure. (Refer to the DVD: Shaping
on a Point of Contact.) I slide down a lead, taking the slack out.
That's my signal that I want something. I go to a point of contact,
but not beyond. I do not move my horse, I wait for my horse to
figure out what I want and to move his own body in the desired
direction. When he does, I release the lead, and I may also click
and treat. Shaping on a point of contact is the core of the rope
handling skills and single-rein riding.
You can use a lead rope or a rein and be a lumper. You can also use
a lead rope or rein and be a micro-shaper. The single-rein riding I
want to share has as its core micro-shaping. I wish I had a dollar
for every time I've said: "A give is a little thing, not a big
thing." I could support my horses in luxury for the rest of their
lives!
So how do you teach micro-shaping? How do you help people recognize
that tiny almost invisible softening of the jaw that is such a core
piece of the single-rein riding? How do you show them how important
that tiny movement is, how it will grow and evolve to give them all
the big things they want on their wish list?
Those were the questions I was facing as I moved on from the
Introductory Course to the rest of the June courses. I was going to
be seeing people I'd worked with before. They understood the
foundation lessons. Our goal together was to move into the material
covered by the riding book.
That was the goal and, of course, you put as many steps between you
and your goal as you can think of, especially when some of the horses
that come onto courses have major emotional issues. As we went
through the introductions during the third course in the series, one
participant began by saying her horse hated her. She showed us the
scar on her arm where her horse had bitten her to prove it. How
sad. And even sadder still, this was a horse she had raised from a
foal. She told us she had brought in a trainer to help with the early
riding. The trainer turned out to be very rough. The owner had been
present during the sessions, and her mare had associated her with the
tbad things that were happening to her. So even though the trainer
was long gone, she was still left with the emotional fallout of the
association. In her mare's mind, she remained the bad guy.
She and her mare were fairly new to clicker training, but with the
help of a more experienced clicker trainer in her area, they had
already made good progress. But still the old emotional scars were
there - for both of them. "My mare hates me," was threaded like a
poisonous tendril throughout their relationship.
We used the microshaping/freeshaping process with her. We only had
two days to work together , so I did a series of small sessions with
her. We watched the mare shift from being distracted by all the
activity and other horses in the barn to being solely focused on us.
We watched her go from cranky immobility to relaxed, engaged
activity. I began by leaning against the front of her stall well out
of reach of her outstretched neck to leaning directly under her. I'd
lean and she'd back away to the back of her stall - no grouchy
threats, no pinned ears, no grumping at the neighbor horse, and -
most importantly - no snapping at me.
On the second morning her owner reported that her mare had come up to
her to have her halter put on. Bells and whistles!!!! She was
almost in tears. She had scars on her arm, but she had stuck by this
horse. And now her mare was coming up to her to be haltered! And
all we had done the day before is lean against the front of her
stall! Well, not quite all, but you know the lesson.
Learning to See
That mare gave her owner a great gift. And she also gave everyone
else on the course a gift. She helped them to see. I gave everyone
clickers. We stationed people at the back window of her stall, along
the side walls, everywhere where they could get a better view of the
subtle shifts in her balance. At first I was the only one clicking.
I watched her chest muscles and saw a glimmer of a change, a
difference in the shadows across her chest. The change in shadows
was caused by a muscle twitch. Or maybe it was just my imagination,
and I was just hoping to see something, anything to click. At any
rate I clicked and gave her a treat.
"What is she clicking for? I don't see anything." I heard the
murmurs behind me, but I had to keep my focus on the mare. I saw
another shift in the shadows and clicked. Then another, and now it
was time for the target to come out. Click and treat, click and
treat. My rates of reinforcement went up.
The shadows changed to an actual twitch of the muscles, and now my
click was beginning to be joined by others. At first they were very
tentative. Were they actually seeing something? Anything? But they
had clicked just when I had. That helped build confidence.
Out came the target: Click and treat, click and treat.
Now we had clickers joining us from the sides of the stall where they
had a better view than I did. They could use the stall wall as a
reference point. As the mare contracted her pectoral muscles and
shifted her weight back, they could see a bit more of the stall
appear in front of her chest than they had a moment before, click.
"Good." I encouraged them. The clicks became more confident, more
numerous. Soon everyone was joining in. Occasionally we had a
cascading series of clicks, but more often they came as one united
sound. People were learning how to see, and the mare was learning
how to learn.
Choosing the Right Approach: Rasheene
I took this process on to my next course. This was a five day
course, a real treat for me to have more time. I had worked with all
but two of the participants before. Our goal here was most
definitely riding, but I wanted to begin with the free-shaping/micro-
shaping. That's in part because I was having fun with it, and also
because I saw it as such a useful way to introduce the micro-shaping
connected to the ridden work.
From a teaching perspective it makes sense to tease apart the
mechanics of riding from the micro-shaped gives we are looking for.
If I can get people micro-shaping first, then micro-shaping on a lead
or under saddle becomes a much more understandable and doable process.
As we went through the introductions on the first day, it turned out
that several of the horses sounded like perfect candidates for the
micro-shaping process. Fancy that!
We had the perfect work space for our sessions. The stable block was
an L shaped shed row. The two open sides were fenced so the stalls
formed two sides of a square pen and the rails the other. We could
bring the horses in one at a time from their turnout and turn them
loose in the enclosure. Most of them wanted to get back to their
friends so they hovered by the gate which made it easy to begin the
micro-shaping process. The principle trainer could lean against the
side of the barn while the rest of us could position ourselves where
ever we needed to be to get the best vantage point.
I'd love to describe all the horses in the course. They were each so
fascinating to watch and we learned new things from all of them, but
for brevity's sake I'll focus just on three of the horses: Murphy, a
rescued welsh pony; Rasheene another rescue case; and Lottie, a four
year old Highland pony who has been raised with the clicker.
Murphy came with his pasture mate, Rasheene. Before the course
started their owners, Rachel and her daughter Hannah, had tried to
turn them out in the paddock. Murphy became frantic. He whirled
around the small pen and started digging frantically. He made an
enormous hole in the footing where he was obviously trying to dig to
China. When I first arrived, they were busy filling in the evidence
of his anxiety.
We brought the horses back later individually to the pen. Rasheene
was too anxious to use the micro-shaping. She couldn't focus on the
targeting and she couldn't take treats. She's one of those horses
who stops eating when she's nervous. We worked on head lowering
instead, using scratches at first for a reinforcement. The petting
didn't mean much to her at first, but I don't want to lie with my
clicker. If I click, I want to pause and do something for the
horse. If she couldn't take food, I could at least click, pause and
scratch. It was awkward and lacked the elegance of food, but it
worked to settle her enough so that she could begin to take treats
from my hand. In later sessions we combined head lowering with the
"pre-why would you leave me?" game to settle her and give her a good
away from home experience.
I had another horse at a later course who also would have benefitted
from the emotional balancing that evolves out of the free-shaping
process, but again targeting was not a strong enough behavior with
her to be able to use it to raise the rate of reinforcement. She was
fairly new to clicker training. She didn't yet have a behavior I
could use as a counterpoint to the free-shaping, so again I used head
lowering to show her how she could calm herself down.
I mention these two horses because it is important to understand that
not every horse will be ready for every exercise. Both these horses
will benefit from this process, but at a later point in their
training. This is also why you need a large and flexible tool box.
Having the rope handling skills in addition to the free-shaping
helped me find an approach that could settle both of these horses
safely.
Murphy
So now it was Murphy's turn. Hannah, his young owner, filled us in
on his background. He'd been a child's show pony, but he had back
problems that weren't acknowledged. He had been ridden by children
while he was in lots of pain, and beaten by men for disobedience.
But then his former owner, a woman, had fed indiscriminate treats and
that had made him very grabby and led to more punishment. He was an
angry pony who bit, head butted and in general made everyone's life a
misery. The other horses he was turned out with didn't like him. He
didn't know how to socialize with them, or make friends.
Hannah had started clicker training with him, but had stopped because
she couldn't deal with the biting. As we discussed this, it turned
out she had started with him on a lead instead of using protective
contact. At the stage where he was just learning the rules of the
game and trying all the tactics from his previous life to intimidate
her into giving free treats, she had felt overwhelmed and had given
up. I'd already seen how quickly he could demolish his turnout so I
knew emotional issues topped the list of things we needed to deal with.
Hannah brought Murphy back into the paddock and turned him loose. He
was everything she had described, an angry, hard-eyed, anxious
horse. His muscles looked rock hard, and bunched from years of
tension. He whirled around, snaking his neck at the world in
general, before hovering anxiously by the gate.
We followed the usual procedure alternating between free-shaping any
tiny shift of weight back and targeting, but in that first session we
saw little change of note in Murphy. We got some shifts back in
balance, but if I had not prefaced his session with a long
description of this process and the changes I had seen in other
horses, I would have had a lot of people wondering why we had spent
so much time essentially watching paint dry. In fact watching paint
dry might have been more exciting than watching the non-changes in
Murphy.
I wanted to videotape Murphy's sessions, but, of course, I didn't
have the camera running for his first go round. It may have been
raining slightly. I don't remember, but in any event I missed that
first session. But not to worry, I'd get his head twirling, his hole
digging on tape in the next session - except it was all gone. The
horse who came into the ring was a different Murphy. His eye was
softer. He was focused. Hannah and Rachel kept commenting on how
different he seemed. He wasn't broadcasting his angry-with-the-world
attitude. He was focusing on us. He was taking his treats with a
softer mouth. He was offering much more deliberate shifts of weight
back. He was, they commented, thinking. They were astounded. They
had never seen him look like this before.
Murphy's sessions were all about emotional control. We started out
shaping backing paired with targeting, but Murphy soon made it clear
that he needed head lowering and "Happy Faces", as well. We micro-
shaped both of these behaviors, pairing them with targeting just as
we had backing to keep the rates of reinforcement up.
To keep things clear for him, we made some changes in our free-
shaping cues. For backing the handler slouched against the barn
wall. For head lowering she slouched in a chair. And for ears
forward, she slouched against the gate post. Slouching was the
common link for all of these, but the location helped make it clear
which behavior we wanted.
After the session where we focused on ears, Hannah walked Murphy back
to his pen, clicking and treating him for walking with his ears
forward. She'd brought a horse she couldn't clicker train at all
because of his biting. Just by slouching against a barn wall, she
now had a horse who was leading next to her with a pleasant
expression and she was able to reinforce him with treats!
On the last day I taught Hannah how to transfer to a new cue. Murphy
showed superstar potential as he very quickly learned new cues for
each of his original free-shaped behaviors. Now slouching didn't
mean head down. A simple verbal, "down" triggered the behavior.
Slouch Training
I've been told for years that I need to come up with a name for the
training I do. Clicker training, I am told, doesn't fully describe
it. During this course, I jokingly said I not only now have a name
for the training, I have a motto as well: Slouch Training: Why sweat
when you can slouch!
Lottie took slouch training to new heights. Lottie is one of five
horses, the organizer of the course owns. Hilary has been studying
natural horsemanship from the Australian trainer, Ken Faulkner.
She wants her horses to be light, responsive athletes. On the first
day we worked Lottie in hand, feeling out where she was in her
balance. Lottie clearly understood lateral work, but her energy was
stuck. Forward had gotten out of balance and was temporarily lost.
This is a fairly common stage many horses go through. It's easy to
lose energy when you are focusing on other aspects of the training.
I'd watched horse after horse become energized through the free-
shaping/micro-shaping process. Why not try this approach with
Lottie? It seemed infinitely better than slogging along trying to
get her feet unstuck. Been there, done that, not a fun lesson on a
horse that has well and truly stalled out.
So we turned Lottie loose in our playground, and Hilary leaned
against the barn wall. She has been told that if she wants her
horses to carry themselves, then she needs to carry herself in equal
good balance. That's something I very much agree with, and yet here
I was telling her to slouch!
Slouching, by the way, is something else I have found people have to
learn. Most people slouch stiffly, at full attention - not at all
the same thing. I want them to really lean to the side and look
casual. Instead, they slouch all stiff and straight. Hilary, on the
other hand, had a good natural slouch. She leaned against the barn
wall and waited for Lottie to do something, anything. Lottie was
thrilled with this new game. As a Highland pony she believed
absolutely in energy conservation. Standing still was her forte. If
we wanted her to stand still, why she could do that for hours!
Except a muscle did twitch. Or was that a cloud that passed over the
sun, so it only looked like a change in the shadows across her
chest. No matter. We clicked it anyway. By the time we got to
Lottie, our group was getting good at spotting muscle twitches.
And this was the piece that I was so loving about this process. I
looked over the group. Everyone was intently watching, clickers at
the ready. They were seeing how much can be grown out of what
initially appears like nothing. By the time we brought Lottie into
the pen, they had already seen Murphy's second session. They had
come to appreciate the importance of watching paint dry.
They had learned how to see, how to watch for slight shifts in
balance, how to use the reference points of the barn wall, or the
fence posts behind him. They were becoming more confident in their
clicks. If someone clicked at the wrong time, no one jumped on them
for confusing the horse. But well-timed clicks were acknowledged by
me with a "good", marking for everyone the appreiciation of a well-
spotted moment.
The group began conferring together, building consensus on what to
click for, whether to stay on the criterion we were currently
marking, or to withhold our click to get a bit more. We had people
in the group who began to spot other changes in Lottie besides the
lift through her chest. They saw her engage her abdominal muscles
and lift her back. We shifted our focus to the hind end, marking
those moments when we saw her hip become active. Lottie was doing
"pilates" abdominal crunches, rolling her weight back into her hind
quarters as she unweighted her front end.
She started out very much on the forehand, leaning forward and down
through her chest. Now she was picked up, elegant. The more Hilary
slouched, the more Lottie picked herself up.
Why sweat when you can slouch? Yes, indeed!
We added in micro-shaping the pose. Lottie connected it to the rest
of the good balance she was learning. I watched her silhouette
change from chunky pony to elegant athlete.
On the last day, in between downpours, Hilary worked Lottie in hand
and was amazed at the energy she now had. We'd spent three days
slouching while Lottie did her Boucher Pilates at the halt. We'd
refined her balance through the micro-shaping, and the reward was
this graceful, easy movement.
Hilary knew how to receive it and build on it, because she understood
the microshaping process. She knew how to feel for little changes,
how to release to them and to reward them with a click.
Teaching People
One of the many things I love about clicker training is it is not set
in stone. There are always new discoveries to be made, better ways
to teach something to the horses, better ways to teach things to
people. I've learned from experience to trust the process.
This free-shaping strategy is a good example. It is so simple. I
could easily have described it in just a paragraph or two instead of
the forty odd pages I've taken in this post. I could have said
simply that you pair two behaviors together. You free shape for
three or four clicks, then you alternate with targeting or some other
very simple, well known behavior that has a high rate of
reinforcement. That sums it up pretty well, but those couple of
sentences wouldn't have come close to describing all the good things
I've been seeing it do for the horses - and the people.
I've been wanting to share micro-free shaping for a long time, but I
hadn't found a way I was satisfied with. As always, it's trust the
process. I've learned that the clinic horses will show me how to
teach what I have been learning from Peregrine and Robin. Last
January out of Katie's panic some more pieces of the puzzle fell into
place. I found a way to teach micro-shaping. The process is so
simple, a couple of sentences can describe it, yet as simple as it
is, it can lead to powerful transformations in the horses. The
lessons that I have been learning from my own horses I can now share
with others.
I wasn't looking for this piece when I leaned against the fence
waiting for Katie to respond. That lesson evolved out of many
threads, and it tied them all together. Here was a way to teach free
shaping without the pitfalls I often see associated with it. Here
was a way to help horses with deep-seated emotional issues. And here
was a way to teach micro-shaping - the core element of the rope
handling and single-rein riding.
Beyond that that here was a way to have horses teach us about
positive reinforcement. I've been hearing about management training
courses that use horses. Generally the horses are in round pens and
the courses focus on reading body language. With the micro-shaping
the horses provided another very direct and powerful teaching
experience. Everyone on this five day course gained a much greater
appreciation of the power of positive reinforcement.
* They saw how much can be grown out of what seems like very
miniscule starting places.
* They saw how much performance is effected by rates of reinforcement.
* They learned how to get outstanding performance by increasing their
expectations in small increments.
* They saw enormous changes in the horses ability to focus and remain
emotionally stable.
* They saw what happens to performance when they became too goal
oriented.
For themselves:
* They learned how to notice and acknowledge small changes.
* They became focused, attentive observers.
* They became good team builders, supportive of one another.
* They learned how to assess progress.
* They learned how to judge when to move forward to a new criterion,
when to back up a few steps to make it easier for the learner.
* They learned when to be creative and suggest a change in criterion,
and they also learned when to become good team players and work
within the group consensus for the good of the horse.
* They learned to have confidence in their own judgement.
* They learned how to see and use small details, but also how to keep
the whole horse and the evolving behavior in focus.
I'm sure others in the group could add to this list. Clicking as a
group helped people learn and build confidence. And no one in the
group needed to be an experienced horse person to participate. Only
one person needed to interact directly with the horse. The rest were
observers, clicking at appropriate moments. This very simple process
opens the door to sharing clicker training and all we can learn from
horses with a broader audience. With the free-shaping we could just
as easily have been running a course for corporate executives, or
troubled teenagers as a course for horse people. If we had been, we
could not have chosen a better way to present a case for positive
reinforcement and all its many benefits.
Our horses, our teachers. How true that is. We are honored to have
them in our lives.
Classic
I can't end this post without bringing it full circle back to
Classic. I got to work with him again at a course up in Scotland.
He's four now, and very gorgeous, but he had a tough time right after
I met him that first time. Amanda moved with him to France and put
him in a stable where the management and the handling were
horrendous. She almost lost Classic to colic. She emailed me the
details of his ordeal after she moved back to the UK and got him
settled in a safer, more horse-friendly environment. Her well-
mannered youngster now had the emotional scars that bad handling can
create. He suffered even more from separation anxiety, and she was
struggling with the decision of whether or not to geld him.
When we met up in June, she had decided to postpone that decision.
Yes, she was still figuring out how to work with a young breeding
stallion, but on balance he was a well-mannered, well socialized
horse that she could manage on her own.
On the first day of the course Classic was the last horse to come
into the arena. He'd watched each of the other horses walk up to the
arena. And yes, they had returned, but, but, first they had left -
and their leaving made him anxious. So by the time he came into the
arena with Amanda, he was all on edge. He was all agitation and four
year old temper tantrum, but he never once showed any aggression
towards Amanda. He could have pulled away from her, but he chose to
stay with her, even though he was exploding with upset energy.
Amanda did a superb job managing him. We didn't keep him in the
arena for more than a few minutes. This was a getting to know you
session, not a training session, and he clearly needed to get back to
the barn and the other horses. We could work with micro-shaping
there much more effectively than we could here in the open space of
the arena.
We set up the micro-shaping for all the horses, working them in their
stalls. I'm so glad I had a chance to meet Classic through this
process. What I saw was a very body aware, very bright horse who has
the most amazing sense of humor. And what a gentleman! He is an
incredibly soft, kind horse. Amanda, you have done an outstanding
job with him.
Amanda has already written about her experience with the micro
shaping. It's always good to hear how the horses are processing
their course experiences. Amanda wrote:
Tues: June 26, 2007
I too started to go through a spell of lethargy from my horse with
training. . . Last week I was at a clicker clinic with Alex and
(among many other things) we covered micro-shaping and using another
behaviour (targetting) as a secondary reinforcer......bingo. I have
an enthusiastic horse again. He is quite an analytical boy at the
best of times and is having a blast with micro-shaping.....trying to
figure out what each of his muscle groups actually do. But from
watching his expresions, he really understands that when he gets the
target it means he has done something quite special. When he thinks
he has done something special he looks to me as if to say 'target for
that one please :-)'. His face lights up when he gets the target and
I can visibly see that this is a huge reinforcer to him. Then he
stands there looking all smug that he got it right :-)) He makes me
laugh. But anyway......
The result of doing this for only a couple of sessions over a couple
of days is that I have a horse that is glued to me without me having
to prompt (unless I ask him to stand) and walks with me step-for-step
(never asked him to do that, he has just started to do it), is once
again walking away from mares to be with me instead (found myself in
a couple of situations to test that one since I got home from the
clinic).
He is so enthusiastic again and I love it. The behaviours that we
had established before are improved with no extra training, just
because his enthusiasm has picked up.
If you can see his face when I give him the secondary reinforcer to
say 'good job', you can see that he knows this is a big reward, not
just the next task. Then when the target goes away and I change my
body posture (cue to start experimenting), there is no hesitation to
go back to the micro-shaping. When he thinks he has done a good job,
he looks for the target. It's definitely not a pattern that he is
following, so I am confident that he knows that this is not a
behaviour chain. He seems to understand that this is a way of saying
'YES , good job, that was an excellent approximation', as opposed to
'yes'.
***********
I learned years ago that for every step we find in the training there
are always a hundred more you can break that small step down into.
And what I also learned is that when you follow these small steps,
the most amazing things become possible.
Amanda, you've been told that you can't possibly train a big stallion
like Classic, but you are learning the people who told you that
haven't experienced the power of clicker training. As we keep
finding ways of saying "yes! - that was right!" to our horses, we
push back the boundaries of what is possible.
All the Best!
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com