May, 9, 2006
Know What You Are Teaching
By Alexandra Kurland
The last couple of clinics I have done have served as great reminders about the importance of basics. At one of these clinics I got to work with a coming two year old gypsy cob filly named Rosie. Rosie is a total charmer. I could easily have taken her home with me! What a fun horse. I always think of gypsy cobs as quiet, very mild mannered horses. Rosie is anything but! She has a sparkling, play-with-me, pay-attention-to-me energy that makes her both a joy to be around, and also a challenge.
Her owner has been letting two young 4-H students work with her. They've done a great job introducing her to the clicker, but they have run into some problems. When I met Rosie at the start of the clinic, she clearly understood the game even better than her human teachers.
On Sat. I had them show us what they've been working on. They work primarily in Rosie's stall. She isn't their horse, so they can't take her out on unsupervised walks. They have taught Rosie to back up, and they have taught the beginnings of "the grown-up are talking, please don't interrupt" lesson. Now here's the "but", and it's a huge one. They had taught "grown ups" standing in front of Rosie. They thought the behavior they were teaching was take your face away from the treat pouch. Rosie thought it was line yourself up so you are facing your human. So it didn't matter where they moved in the stall, she repositioned herself to face them.
It might have been cute seeing how hard she worked to put herself in the "right" position, except her two teenage handlers weren't aware that this is what she was trying to do. They were at times making it extremely difficult for Rosie to be "right". There wasn't always room in the stall for her to get into the position she was sure was the answer. The result was a growing level of frustration on her part. All of us watching could see the hand writing on the wall. This was not a good situation. Rosie was a hair trigger away from snapping at her young handlers.
Clicker training is such a powerful tool. You will get more of what you reinforce. So it is important to look at your training from your horse's point of view. What does your horse thinks he's getting reinforced for?
Basics, Basics, and More Basics
The first behaviors you teach a horse via the clicker are so important are so important. They will become his comfort behaviors. They will be what he defaults to when nothing else seems to be working, so choose well what you want to train. Look at what your horse is doing. Does it make you feel more confident around him? Or less confident?
Rosie loved the clicker game. When they opened her stall door, she was right there, eager to play. And when they tried to leave, she was right there again, crowding them at the door to prolong the game. Her level of anxiety was acute. When we stood outside her door, she banged on the bars, demanding attention. This was not a happy clicker scene. Her anxiety stemmed in large part from the inconsistencies in her training. It was clear that what Rosie needed were some simple rules, some structure that would make it easier for people to engage with her via clicker training. The sessions we did with her during the clinic were so much fun to watch. I wish we could have hung a video camera from the rafters of her stall. Rosie was a quick study, and the lessons she learned are so important. They are certainly ones many horses need.
Step One involved teaching Rosie a "leave it" skill. I wanted her to understand that a closed hand was not a food-offering hand, and grabbing at the hand made the hand disappear. I stood in front of her with food in my closed fist. When Rosie mugged my hand, I pulled it up to my shoulder. When she took her head away, I again offered my hand. But each time she mugged me, I withdrew my hand to my shoulder.
When she hesitated and pulled her nose away from my hand, click, I turned my hand over and gave her the food.
I repeated this until she was consistently pulling away from my hand. Then I had her teenage handlers repeat the same process. Rosie was a quick study. She pulled her nose away from their hands just as she had for mine.
With the self control of a "leave it" in place we were ready to tackle the bigger issues of space management. So step two was resolving the crowding at the door. I didn't want to have to send Rosie out of my space. I wanted her to learn to back up on her own initiative. That's so much more powerful.
Kay Lawrence who is one of the members of the Clicker Expo faculty makes the following distinction in her training manual ("Learning About Dogs, Clicker Novice Training: level 2 Clicker Trainers Course"):
"If a behavior is to be developed that the animal must be able to transfer to many situations and truly "understand", . . . it is desirable to develop this behavior through free shaping or problem solving.
If a behavior is only to happen in specialized situations, in a very particular way where there is always a controlled cue, it is best developed through controlled learning."
The distinction she makes is certainly interesting food for thought and applied well to Rosie's situation. The simple behavior I wanted from Rosie was backing. The concept I wanted her to understand was space management, so I chose to free shape the behavior. I wasn't going to trigger backing with targets, pressure, or other body language clues. I simply waited at her door and watched for any shifts of weight back.
At first Rosie turned away from the door. She was creating space by circling away to the side, but her movement was essentially forward. I wanted a clear backwards weight shift. That was the criterion. The more precise you are, the easier it is for your horse to learn. It wasn't good enough that Rosie move away from the door. She had to back away from it. At first any weight shift back was clicked. I'd crack open the sliding stall door and reach her treat inside. Then I closed the door again and waited.
Rosie caught on fast. Within just a few clicks she was backing three steps to the opposite front corner. From there she figured out how to rotate her hips so she could continue backing. She ended up lining herself up parallel with the far wall. By this time I was entering her stall to feed her. That meant that I was also practicing leaving her stall.
After delivering the treat, I often took just a step or two off to the side. If she stood still, click, she got a treat. So I was also introducing her to ground tying and the "Can I touch you?" lesson. Anytime she started to grab for her treat, my hand went to my shoulder. The time we'd spent earlier inserting a "leave it" into the mix served as a reminder that I needed quiet waiting. I used a softly spoken, "gentle waiting" verbal cue to remind her that she needed to show me self control before she would be given her treat. Note: Just a reminder - I would not require this kind of self control of a clicker newbie. The delay in treat delivery would create frustration. I can only ask for polite "table manners" after I have gone through a teaching process to teach them to my horse.
If Rosie started to follow me out the stall, I became still. I didn't send her away. Instead I gave her the time she needed to remember what to do. Backing away got reinforced. It was really fun watching her start to crowd in on top of me, catch herself, and then back herself away.
The whole process illustrated beautifully one of the fundamental organizing principles behind good training: you can't ask for something and expect to get it on a consistent basis unless you have gone through a teaching process to teach it to your horse. I couldn't expect Rosie to show me a leave it until I had gone through the teaching process. Once I had introduced the lesson, it was fair game to use it. The same was true for the backing. I couldn't expect Rosie to back out of my space until I had gone through a teaching process to show her that's what I wanted. Once she understood that backing was a possible path to reinforcement, it was again fair game to use that in other situations.
We worked with Rosie late Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning we did a couple of short sessions with her. Then in the afternoon I had her owner, the owner of the farm where the clinic was held, repeat what I had been doing. She stood at the stall door. She didn't give any active cues. There was no driving Rosie away. Her owner simply stood at the door and let the context of the situation lead Rosie to the right answer. "When people come to your stall, the best way to get attention and to get them to come into your stall to play with you is to back up." That's exactly what Rosie did. Rosie backed herself up and stood politely against the far wall. All the anxious, frustrated behavior of the day before was gone. It was a very pretty demonstration of the power of shaping and the importance of clarity.
Context Cues
We don't have to actively trigger every behavior we want to teach. We don't always have to "make things happen." For many behaviors we can let the horse figure out what is wanted, and then let them be responsible for remembering their "company manners". I don't want to have to demand from Rosie each and every time I approach her stall that she remember to back up. I want her to offer that behavior on her own. Think of it like teaching a small child to say "please" . There are all kinds of ways to shape this behavior, some very positive, some very punitive. Some children never learn good manners, but for most the behavior becomes a normal part of their social interactions. As adults we don't have to be reminded to say "please". It comes to us automatically.
I want to choose my teaching process with care because I want to be mindful of the emotional associations I classically condition in along with everything else. When I come to the stall door, I don't want my horse reacting with fear or anxiety. That's what will happen if I use punitive techniques. If my horse understands how to get a friendly reaction from me, he'll use that behavior to invite attention. So I'm going to show him how to say: "please may we play" by teaching him some people-pleasing behaviors. The appearance of someone approaching the stall door will be the cue. "If you want the human to interact with you, back up."
Cues evolve out of the shaping process. I make use of context cues throughout my training. The sooner I become aware of them, the more powerfully I can put them to work for me. With Rosie I began by leaning against the door jam of her stall. My posture was casual. I wasn't doing anything to trigger one type of response over another. I wasn't moving into her space, waving my hands, shifting my weight. I was just leaning up against the wall, watching her. I could have clicked anything: ears forward, head away, turn to the side, etc. I chose backing because that's what I needed to balance out her over-eager pushiness.
It wasn't long before going to this casual, waiting posture triggered backing. The posture had turned into a cue. Pretty neat. I didn't have to use the rope-waving, whip-cracking triggers of traditional horse training. I could just give Rosie the "mother's look", that slightly raised eyebrow that sends little ones scurrying to show you their very best behavior.
Once I have the behavior of backing I can attach other cues to it. I can add standard "horse training" cues as desired. When I use this training process, these more traditional cues won't have any unpleasant emotional baggage attached to them. That's so important when you want to develop a happy, long term relationship.
Snail's Pace: Taking the Time it Takes
You need to know what you are teaching and why. Remember the principles: Safety always comes first, and for every behavior you teach there is an opposite behavior you must teach to keep things in balance.
Early on in my clicker training experience I was working with a haflinger gelding who would aggressively charge his owner on the lunge line. He had some other equally unpleasant habits, all designed to intimidate his handlers. The first time I met him, he told me in no uncertain terms that if I even thought about getting tough with him, he'd nail me first. He couldn't have been any clearer about his intentions had he spoken English. Picking up a whip was going to get me kicked, run over, or both.
He was essentially a charmer of a horse. I think originally he'd been an enthusiastic, eager-to-please youngster, but his intelligence and his enthusiasm had intimidated people. He'd been punished for his eagerness, and the result was an angry horse.
When he came to me, I spent the first week of his training working him exclusively in his stall. I free shaped backing, just as I had with Rosie. For that first week I did all of his training sessions in his stall. I have to say that I felt guilty working at this snail's pace. I was being paid to train this horse. When his owner came for a visit at the end of that first week, all she saw was her horse backing up to the back corner of his stall.
During the next week, we progressed to the indoor arena, Again I worked with protective contact. I turned him loose and cracked the door open slightly. He backed away. Click and treat. Very neat. When he showed me that he could be polite, I moved into the arena with him, and we went through the dance steps of liberty training. From there I put him on a lunge line. He was doing great until I asked for a trot. Something in the added energy triggered his old patterns. His ears flattened, and he started to charge.
Horses are so much faster that we are. When they come at you, there is no time to react. They can be on top of you before you can do anything to stop them. This horse spun towards me with all his old fury. And just as abruptly, he slammed on the brakes and backed himself up. He'd run into a new, stronger stimulus that interrupted his old habits. When he lined himself up to face me, a new, unpoisoned cue took over. He backed himself up out of my space and turned his head away. Very neat.
And what was even neater - he never again even thought to charge me. We developed a great relationship and had a grand time together. What a fun horse! A snail's pace - I do love it. That's truly the way to train.
More Snail's Pace Basics
At the end of April I did a clinic at Katie Bartlett's farm. One of the horses at the clinic was a Belgium draft horse. His current owner had rescued him from a very abusive situation. He was a sweet horse, very gentle, but pushy. The main concern his owner had with him was he was difficult to load. Her local trainer had to load him for her, and it generally took more force than she was comfortable using on her horse.
I met Chester first in his stall. We were reviewing basics. As usual the horses were showing us some important gaps in their education. Chester understood targeting, but he didn't understand polite table manners. He reminded me of the equine version of a Saint Bernard. He had big droolly lips that sucked your whole hand up into his mouth. I wanted to use food delivery to back Chester up a step. After each click, I would step forward, fully extend my arm into his space and expect him to back up to find the food. Chester was confused. He'd never had to go hunt for his treats. They were always right out in front of him where it didn't take any effort to get to them. All this backing up was an unexpected puzzle. But I was persistent, and slowly Chester began to anticipate the treat delivery. Instead of obstructing the food delivery, he began to move back out of my way.
Now why is this important? Why not just click and feed where his head is? Because my goal with Chester wasn't just to teach him to touch targets. My goal was to get him on the trailer. By getting him to move his feet forward and back during that first target training session, I was setting him up for trailer loading success. Everything truly is everything else. I was also building a relationship. I was showing Chester how I operate. I was asking him to back, but if he didn't respond to me right away, I wasn't going to escalate the pressure. If I wanted to get him on the trailer without a fight, I would need him to trust that understanding of the parameters in which I work.
On Sunday I again worked with Chester. I used him to teach the clinic participants the "pre- Why Would You Leave Me?" game. This is a "loose-leash leading" lesson where the handler walks from cone to cone to cone on a circle, clicking and stopping at each cone. Here again food delivery is critically important. If Chester ended up barging slightly ahead of me on the stop, I sure wasn't going to feed him where his nose had ended up. That would have just reinforced the barging behavior. Instead I used the same skill I had worked on earlier in the stall to back him out of my space for the food delivery. As I stopped, I reached into my pocket, got the goody, turned towards Chester and fully extended my arm so that he had to back up to get out of my way. And when he backed, he discovered my open hand offering him the treat. Good deal. Chester was beginning to walk in his own space, to keep slack in the lead, to stop with me at each cone, and to back as I turned into him. Good deal.
That was the prep I took with us into the trailer loading. Before I go into the details of trailer loading I just want to put in a couple of quick reminders. The first is that what goes up must come down - meaning, if you take a horse off to a clinic or a show, he not only has to be able to load onto a trailer to get there, he also has to load back on to get home. I've seen some terrible trailer loading sessions at the end of clinics. The horse and the clinician are tired and cranky. Yes, the horse does finally load, but sometimes not without considerable effort on everyone's part. That's not how I want clicker training clinics to end. I want the horses that come to them to have good experiences throughout. That means that I encourage people to leave their problem loaders at home. By all means come to the clinics, but, until your horse has learned how to travel, leave him at home. Learn the skills needed to work with your horse in a clicker training context, then spend the time between clinics to teach your horse how to be a confident loader. That's my preference. That way the horse that comes to the clinic is ready to learn, and we won't be undoing a weekend of good work with a high-pressure trailer loading at the end of it.
Here's the second reminder: when you have a horse that is a sticky loader, put the trailer in a safe, fully enclosed paddock or arena. The enclosed area generally dampens down three quarters of the energy horses put into not loading. And you can be a better teacher when you know that the horse isn't going to be running out across a busy road should he get loose.
Chester would go on a trailer, with a bit of force applied. His owner knew she could get him home, but she also knew she wanted to find a different answer, so at the end of the clinic I helped her with the loading. To get Chester on the trailer, we stacked the deck in our favor. We backed the trailer into Katie's "indoor arena" - the back half of a large equipment shed that had been cleared out for the clinic and enclosed with safe panels.
With a safe work space, we were ready to load Chester. "You can't ask for something and expect to get it on a consistent basis unless you have gone through a teaching process to teach it to your horse." I had gone through a process to teach Chester about food delivery. I used that basic skills to load Chester on the trailer. I could ask him to go forward, click and back him off the trailer to get his food. What! Now there's a strange notion. Shouldn't you be feeding the horse on the trailer? Not always, not right away. Initially, I showed Chester that if he followed me forward, he would get what he wanted, off the trailer. So going forward was safe because it led to backing up, but the backing was under my direction, not Chester's whim. And it was never done punitively. I wasn't making the outside of the trailer dangerous and the inside safe. I was making all the behaviors I was asking for safe, whether they were inside or outside the trailer. I could back him and have him follow me forward for his treat. And I could ask him to target forward, then click him and have him back to get his treat. Which meant very quickly I could also have him follow a target forward, and he was comfortable staying put to get his goody. The key for Chester was we had practiced good food delivery in several different situations prior to asking him to load. He went on fairly quickly, all things considered, and without any fuss. What got him on was the review of basics back in the stall Saturday afternoon.
So the message from these clinics is basics, basics, and more basics. Before you get carried away with advanced clicker games and riding, check in with your horse. Are you both on the same page of the rule book? I want horses that are eager to play with us, love their clicker training sessions, but are relaxed about it. I don't want the anxiety of the over-eager over-achiever, or the lethargy of the shutdown learner. So look at what you are getting. Is it what you intended, or do you have some tidying up to do? Rosie is a super bright horse. I could easily tuck her away in my back pocket and take her home with me. I love her personality. She's such a bright learner and her life experience so far has not shut her down. She has all the makings of a clicker superstar. She was certainly a great teacher during the clinic. Everyone got to see how quickly she could let go of her anxious, demanding behavior and became a polite, attentive student. And Chester - what a sweet heart. With his size he could easily have turned into a frightened and frightening bully, but instead he worked with me and with his owner. He showed me how much he loves and trusts her by his willingness to go on the trailer in spite of his fear. He wanted to be with her and to please her, and that is truly the sign of a great clicker training relationship.
All the best!
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
May 23, 2006
Following Hands
By Alexandra Kurland
Hi Everyone,
My apologies for my long absence from the list. I've been finishing up a new video on the "why would you leave me?" game. It's in the final production stages now and should be available very soon. It has a great visual that will help those of you who are pondering how to get your horse to give to the hip; how much hip to ask for; when do you have the hip?; how much hip is enough? I think I'll wait until it is available before launching into the next phase of the riding discussion which is asking for the hips and for head lowering. The mechanics of these lessons are very much dependent upon a very simple exercise which is included in the new video. I don't mean to leave you dangling with a cliff hanger, but there are times when a picture is worth a thousand words, or at least the thousand words become more meaningful when accompanied by the picture. So give me a couple of weeks and I should have the new tape. I'm hoping that it will be done before I head off for the June clinics. And yes - it will be available as a DVD.
I'm not even going to try to catch up with the list, but I have to say to Mae - you come up with the best expressions and descriptions. Your kite string image is wonderful. And: "The clicker training has become my hearing -aid." What a great line. I love the discoveries you and Tigger are making together. I remember at the clinic when Joanna was talking about all the ground work she does with Joey, and how foreign that felt to you. And now you are discovering how much fun ground work is and the connections between it and riding. Everything is everything else. The relationship that grows out of all this is so awesome. Thank you for sharing. Your posts are a delight to read.
Anna, you asked about contact.
"This maybe ties in with my problem with imagining contact . I
have to ' follow ' , yes ? But his head moves around with his
walk ,the bumps in the ground , looking at things , flies , etc
and its very difficult to track .. if there is a float , any
failures in my following are ironed out ..... If I held on harder so
his head couldnt move around - if I kicked him on so he didnt stop
when he felt pressure - wouldnt that be miserable for him ? But is
that what people do ?
One of the questions that arises is what are you following with? One of the styles of riding that is actively taught and that I see quite a bit of in my area involves a following with the arms. I'll use an old exercise from TEAM to describe this type of following. Two people stand facing one another. One person puts a bridle over her head and holds the bit in her hands. She's the "horse". The other person picks up the reins. She's the "rider". Both people then swing their arms back and forth. The swing of the arms of the "horse" is meant to mimic the motion of the horse's head. The "rider" then gets in sync with this swing by swinging her own arms back and forth. The object is not to bump the "horse's" mouth.
When this is done as an awareness exercise, you have the "horse" close her eyes and give verbal feedback on the rider's hands. It's an interesting exercise and one I recommend people try. It will forever cure you of using certain types of hand positions with your horse. For example, most people find that if they hold the reins in the "piano hands" position where your knuckles are facing up, the "horse" feels an unpleasant increase in pressure. The same thing happens when the rider's wrists are over-flexed to the outside or broken in - two very common rein-holding positions. The goal is to explore your rein-holding mechanics with feedback from your "horse" to find a following hand that creates a pleasant, clear line of communication.
You can explore other things too, such as what happens if you hold your breath, slouch to one side, change the rotation of your pelvis. And here's a fun one - what happens if you tighten your toes? It's amazing the difference your "horse" feels. If your human horse can feel these differences, you know your real horse absolutely can.
So this is a good exercise and certainly instructive. I'm glad I've experienced it. It early on made me much more conscientious about my riding. I understand how much of a difference even little changes can make, and how unpleasant I can make things for my horse without even being aware of what I'm doing. If your horse is fussing under saddle, it's well worth getting a friend to give you some feedback on what the reins feel like from his end of things. It has certainly forevermore given me a fingernails-on-the-blackboard feeling whenever I see certain riding positions. So it's a good awareness exercise, but I would not want you to transfer it directly to riding. When you do, you see the rider's arms moving back and forth with the motion of the horse's heads.
Now I know that a certain number of you reading this are thinking: "Well yes. That's right. That's the way I was taught. Are you saying that's not what we should be doing? My horse goes well like that. " I know some of you are thinking this because as common as this style of riding is, there are bound to be a number of you on this list using it. And you know from the way I am creeping sideways into this discussion that I am about to say I disagree with this style. So here goes.
. . . Except maybe I'll creep sideways a bit more to help you understand that you aren't really wrong, but that it is another cart before the horse situation, just like riding on two reins. I've written on the list that I view single-rein riding as part of a continuum, not an end in itself. It flows into riding on two reins, but the problem is most of us started out riding on two reins and were never told these other rein-handling techniques even existed. It's as though we all started out on finished, well-schooled horses. "Here," our instructors were saying to us, "here's a school master. You can learn how to ride a finished horse first." That's all well and good, except I know that the horses many of us started out on were a far cry from finished school masters. We were started out on horses that in some cases were greener than green, with riding techniques that belonged in the middle of the process instead of at the beginning. And the system gets perpetuated because when beginner riders gain a certain level of proficiency riding this type of training, they then pass the system on by becoming the next generation of teachers.
If this shoe doesn't fit, you are lucky. Don't wear it. There is good training out there, good instructors who know how to develop horses and riders. But I know from my travels that there is also a great deal of this cart-before-the-horse type of instruction going on. The instructors may have the best intentions in the world, and they may turn out mannerly, safe horses, but they are missing out on that died-and-gone-to-heaven feeling that comes from great balance.
Single-rein riding is part of a continuum, and so is the action of following with the hands. When a beginner rider is taught to follow the horse's mouth in the manner described above, they more often than not end up on a dead end path. Here's what I see in these riders. When they begin by learning to follow with their arms, they by-pass learning to follow with their seat.
And their horse - well, their horse may be content with what's going on. They can move their head and neck freely. The rider isn't bumping them in the mouth. So, if that's the case, what's the problem? Again, it's a dead end path. Just as the rider by-passes learning to use her pelvis to follow and direct the motion of the horse, the horse doesn't learn to use his back to carry the rider. He'll be pulling himself forward using the motion of his head and neck, instead of engaging his back and sending himself forward from behind. When he fails to learn to use his back to carry weight, his long term soundness may be in jeopardy.
Once a rider has learned to use her pelvis and the horse has learned to work from his hindend, following with the arms emerges. It is a by-product of good riding, connected to an educated seat. But taught prematurely it blocks good riding from developing. So if you are pondering these questions about contact, think about how you use your seat. If the answer comes back, I have no idea, that's fine. Part of the function of the single-rein riding is to clarify this for you. The process of learning to ride the geography of lateral flexions will develop a great seat and great hands.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
May 26, 2006
Basic Leading Question
By Alexandra Kurland
Gill wrote:
"I'm working on ground manners with Erry. She has quite a few issues! At present we have just started 'go forward' work as in Alexandra's second video (where she works with that lovely little stallion Sindri).
I'm finding it very difficult though! When we get a go forward response I am cr, but she tries to pivot on the inside fore, crowding and stepping in to me, even though I'm trying to move her out.
I'm sure I'm not doing this very well but its hard to co-ordinate. "
Hi Gill,
The conversation seems to have skipped over your question. I just finished watching the proof for the Lesson 2 DVD so the lessons you are working on are fresh in my mind. It is a lot to coordinate at first, so chunk down what you need into very small, manageable bits. The bits will grow into larger units. Keep a journal of your training sessions. What can feel like no progress at all when viewed within a single session will start looking like huge progress when you can track it over time.
A couple of things to check. Pockets. Make sure the pockets or pouch that you use for treats are easy to get into. Delays in getting the food out will contribute to the problem.
Begin by training your motor patterns. You mentioned Sindri. This is something I did quite a bit with him when I was working out the mechanics of a particular step. His reactions were sometimes not what I would have expected from our other horses, so I needed to make sure I was being very clear in my asking. For example, in the lesson you're working on, suppose you want to slide down the lead towards the snap with one hand as you reach back to signal your horse to move forward with the other. At first that can feel quite awkward. It involves bridging the lead between two hands. So practice a small piece of the process. Practice sliding down with one hand and lifting the other. Click and treat. It doesn't matter at this point what your horse just did. Click and treat, then repeat the tiny piece of the mechanics you're working on. You're really clicking you, but your horse gets the goody. When you feel comfortable and confident with this piece, add a little bit more to it.
You can use this opportunity to practice good food delivery techniques. If your horse wants to wrap around you after he goes forward, have him take a step back to get his goody. That will help get him off his inside shoulder. The food delivery will help him become very comfortable with the process of resetting his balance via backing.
As you practice the mechanics, your horse will probably settle in and relax. He'll start to enjoy the feeling of you sliding down the lead. After all it leads to good things. When you feel confident with the mechanics of the set-up for the asking, go ahead and ask him to take a step forward. As soon as your horse responds, even a little, click and treat. The tiny steps will let you become comfortable with the next layer in the mechanics.
And don't worry if at first things feels awkward. They often do. The clips I showed of Sindri were, as I recall, his first training session in the arena with me. As you saw, what he wanted to do initially was wrap himself around me. Icelandics are definitely contact-craving horses. It made leading in a straight line something of a challenge! When a horse doesn't know the "dance steps", it can feel awkward. I've worked with horses that made me feel as though I was picking up a lead rope for the first time in my life. They're crowding in on top of you, and it can make you feel all thumbs. When that happens, going through the chunk down of the mechanics can really help. As you go through each tiny step, the horse begins to understand where he needs to be to match the dance. And then things smooth out and become quite pretty and pleasant.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
We've certainly had some great posts over the weekend.
Mae, I loved - no - LOVED your post on Tigger and the "Why would you leave me?" game. What a powerful statement. You have put in writing what so many others have experienced. I always want to stand up and cheer when someone is able to write so clearly about this process. It's not an easy road - to give up what we think is keeping us safe and in control, but is in reality just feeding the fire.
You wrote:
"Now for me the thing was I used to lead horses around with stud shanks all the time. my old reaction would have been when we got into the arena to let him have it a few good yanks to get his attention.. . There would no understanding at all or relaxation.
I am finding the clicker training has had a profound impact on my whole way of dealing with everything.There was always an underlying threat of a shank. Which when I took the shank away a few years ago left me in a place of fear, my beliefs hadn't changed yet. So with that I thought well he really needs a good yank but I had taken away the chain what now...the old up the creek without the paddle feeling.. .
Well thank you ladies very much for helping me make my own Paddle. Funny thing is its the perfect weight length and color. I have adjusted my whole interaction with both my horses. So now I don't feel helpless at all I just feel a deep connection with my horse. "
Mae
Perfectly said.
Foals
Susan wrote:
"I am visiting my new baby once a week--currently 3 weeks old, and was wondering if I would be able to introduce the clicker using a primary reinforcer such as applesauce until he has teeth. Any ideas?"
You can use click and scratch wonderfully well with babies. Just scratch until you see their nose start to wiggle. It's just like using food. You don't feed the entire meal after the click. You just feed a tidbit. So with scratching, you scratch just to see the look of bliss come onto the foal's face, then you ask for the next piece. Be certain also to position yourself to the side so you aren't encouraging suckling and mutual grooming. If the foal starts to nuzzle you, the scratching stops instantly. There's a section showing the click and scratch technique on the "Introduction to Clicker Training" video. The foal on that tape was extremely pushy and mouthy, quite a surprise for his owner who had always had very sweet foals before. He was three weeks old when the video was taken, the same age as your youngster. It was great fun seeing how fast he learned to control himself to get that much desired scratch.
Food Delivery
Deborah wrote:
"However when I click and come to a stop, my Vey will usually barge right on by sometimes just by one pace or sometimes by several. Question is, should I guide him back around, playing fence post till he is back in
the correct position, should I back him to the correct position, and then treat (in either of these two cases) or should I walk to where he is and start over again. "
Katie wrote a very thorough answer to this question. I'll just add that the new DVD for the "Why would you leave me?" game shows clearly the situation you describe, and the solution - which is to use food delivery to reposition your horse. The mantra is: "click for behavior - feed where you want your horse's head to be."
So Kim, this answers your question as well. I don't remember the horse you were talking about, but my guess is, if it looked like teasing to me then, it probably was teasing. Good manners around food must be built systematically. If you have a horse that is new to clicker training, you have to be very careful how much you expect in terms of good manners around the food. If you ask for too much, waiting for the horse to show you post-click self control, you can end up frustrating the horse.
I've seen this a number of times with novice clicker trainers who want the horse to show them good manners before they'll go on with the game. In the beginning stages of clicker training, you will get mugging behavior. Of course the horse is going to check out your pockets. He doesn't know you haven't suddenly turned into an "open salad buffet". That's something he has to learn through a series of lessons designed to teach him the rules of the clicker game. Those rules need to be explained step-by-step. Throw too many rules at him at once, expect too much too soon, and all you do is spoil the game for him. To keep the game safe for us, and inviting for him, we begin with protective contact - a stall guard across the door, or a paddock fence. I want to be able to let the horse explore, experiment, make mistakes, and discover how clicker training works - without having to worry about my safety. I can let the horse nuzzle at my pockets, bump my arm. I know this phase will pass, and I also know that I have set up the lesson so that things remain safe. When the horse takes his nose away from my pocket - click - that's the grown-ups-are-talking behavior I want to mark. And now I am going to feed him where I want his head to be - well out away from my body.
Using Food Delivery
Deborah, you remember at Katie's clinic how I used the unfolding of my arm "tai chi" fashion with May's draft horse, Chester . To get the food Chester had to take a step back. I didn't food lure him back by holding the food just under his nose. That's a technique I would urge people to avoid. Food luring is very different from clicking and then presenting the food in a specific location.
Think of it this way. We could click and toss the food into a feed bucket. The horse would have to move his feet to get to the bucket. If we had never used a bucket, we might have to go through a process to teach the horse that the food was going to be in the bucket. We would stand right next to the bucket, click and toss a carrot into the bucket. When he was consistently looking in the bucket for the goody, we could begin to move further away from the bucket. Now we'd click, reach into our pocket and toss the treat from that distance into the bucket. The horse would see this process, and he would know that the treat was going to be there, so there would be no disconnect between the behavior that was being marked and the delivery of the goody.
I almost never toss the food into an actual bucket. I want the horse to learn to take treats politely from my hand because when I move out into an arena or when I am riding, a treat bucket isn't very convenient. So with most horses I begin by feeding from my hand. But I don't feed in next to my pocket. I present the food out away from my body where I want the horse's head to be. You could think of this as putting the food into an imaginary bucket which is hanging just inside your horse's stall. And since it's imaginary and not an actual bucket, sometimes your horse is standing right where you're picturing the bucket to be. After you click, he has to move back up or move to the side to get out of the way of your being able to reach the bucket.
When I first started teaching clicker training, I didn't emphasize this point enough. I was sharing clicker training with my regular clients. They all had good relationships with their horses already. Adding food was a non-issue for all of them. So initially I didn't appreciate how important spelling out the details of food delivery was. That's the advantage of sharing something with lots of people. You begin to see all the little details that need to be emphasized, that can't be skipped over because the first cohort of people experimenting with a lesson already know a particular step.
As I was editing the first video, "Lesson 1: Getting Started with the Clicker", I really began to see how much I needed to emphasize the details of food delivery. The tape shows two horses who were brand new to clicker training. In one the mechanics of food delivery were consistent and clear. In the other there were some technical problems. The handler kept getting her hand caught in her winter coat pocket. She was working with an emotionally immature horse, so the little inconsistencies in timing and food delivery became magnified and resulted in frustration. You can see clearly what a huge impact imprecise food delivery had on the emotional response of this horse. That was one of the main lessons I wanted people to take away from the video. I hoped they would see how important mechanical skills are. "Training is a mechanical skill" to quote Bob Bailey. And: "don't let mechanics get in the way of good training."
The impact of mechanics is shown clearly on that tape. The first handler is Ann Edie. Her food delivery is very consistent, and that is reflected in the calm response of her horse. On the video I don't tell you anything about Ann other than that she is the owner of the horse she is working with, the Icelandic stallion Sindri. I don't tell you she's blind, but since you have now met Ann through the Panda Reports, you know that.
Obviously, Ann can't see where the horse's nose is, so she doesn't chase after the horse to deliver treats the way sighted people do. She presents the food very consistently out in front of her. If the horse wants his goody, he has to go to where she puts the food. Click for behavior, feed where you want the horse's head to be. Watching the two horses in their initial clicker training session made me realize that I needed to emphasize much more than I was the importance of food delivery.
On the video Ann was standing slightly too far back from the stall guard. She was trying not to block the camera angle, but the result was Sindri had his chest up against the stall guard. She couldn't see that he was pressing forward against the stall guard so she didn't automatically correct for it. Pushing against a barrier is not something I want to encourage. I want the horse to step back and receive his treat on his side of the stall guard. In the clip from the video we were just starting to correct for this via a change in Ann's position. But that segment of the video doesn't show clearly enough how you can use the food delivery to back the horse out of your space. In the new DVD for Lesson 1, I've added some more details on the teaching of this step. This isn't anything new, just more clarification of details. It's one of those pieces that needs to be repeated over and over again. The mechanics of food delivery are a huge part of clicker training.
Food delivery and post click manners are a process that evolves. If I have a horse that is grabby, I'll interrupt whatever the lesson is that I'm working on and teach a lesson on "table manners" (see the Step-By-Step book, as well as the Riding book.) I'll also teach "leave it". There are a number of variations on a theme for this lesson. Creativity in teaching "leave it" is a good thing, especially since you may have to present this lesson many tiimes, in slightly different ways before your horse truly understands it and is consistent in his manners. And remember- your horse's degree of consistency is a reflection of your own. (Dog trainer, Kay Lawrence prefers to refer to "leave it" as "control", as in control yourself and leave the tempting tidbit alone. I like that, since self-control is the overall response you want the animal to generalize.)
Once I have taught "leave it", I can begin to insert it into the food delivery process. Folding your arm up to your chest seems to work the best for this. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, if you withdraw the food behind your body, which is how I originally taught "table manners", this movement in some people can look fearful. And when it looks fearful, it absolutely also looks like teasing. Bringing the hand up to your shoulder keeps you in core balance. The horse can see the food is still there, but, as Katie pointed out, he has also learned that the folded-up arm is the prelude to extending your arm out away from your body - as in click for behavior, feed where you want your horse's head to be. When he sees you withdraw your hand up to your shoulder, he is quite likely to draw back from you. Perfect. Extend your arm and present the treat out away from your body.
On the other hand, if I have a normally mannerly horse who starts to grab at the treats, I need to assess my current lesson. The grabbiness is a sign of frustration, and stress. I am asking for too much, too fast, in too difficult an environment. I need to back up, make the lesson simpler, or perhaps change the lesson entirely. I need to put whatever I was working on on the back burner and work on something my horse fully understands and finds easy. Process time is amazing. The next time I revisit the lesson, I may find my horse is totally comfortable with it and can progress well.
So grabbiness can be simply you haven't yet had enough training time under your belt for good post-click manners to have evolved. The solution: trust the process and let those manners evolve in the step-by-step process of good training. Or grabbiness may be a sign of anxiety, an early warning signal that it's time to back off and regroup with an easier lesson.
Pockets
Good food delivery mechanics are part of clicker training from your first click onwards. Have I emphasized enough - probably not - the importance of accessible pockets? I've watched first time clicker trainers digging treats out of jeans pockets. It doesn't work. It takes too long to get the treat out, and the horse gets frustrated. You need pockets that you can get into and out of quickly. Most winter jackets are not suitable. Vests and fanny packs seem to work best.
Good food delivery means feeding out away from your body, not right in next to your treat pocket. In the early lessons the horse may have his nose hovering right by your pocket, but that's not where you open your hand to feed him. Your arm extends out away from your body. If he wants his treat, he moves to where you have presented the food - just as he would move to the feed bucket if you were tossing food in.
As he becomes accustomed to moving to where you present the food, you can expand the use of this. At first you can unfold your arm so he has to take a step back to get to the food. Later you can make this dance step more involved. An example of this is illustrated well in the new "Why Would You Leave Me? Game" DVD. When you are working on chains of "dance steps" you can build part of the pattern out of the food delivery. That means your horse will already have the coordination for the pattern before you ask for it as the behavior to be clicked.
The Click as Bridging Signal
In the clicker community we used to say: "the click ends behavior", until Bob Bailey called us on it. We knew what we meant, but strictly speaking, it wasn't true. Bob was right. The animal kept right on behaving after the click. It was a good reminder that everything that happened between the click and the treat delivery was also being reinforced. In fact the behavior that most immediately preceded the treat delivery was the behavior that was most strongly reinforced. So if the horse was pinning his ears at a neighbor, grabbing at your coat pocket, etc. that behavior was reinforced.
That's why initially you want to get the treat to the animal as quickly as possible. You want to minimize the amount of unwanted behavior that is occurring. But the whole point of the click is it buys you time. It creates a link between the desired behavior, the action you want to see repeated, and the reinforcer. If you have to get the food to the horse the instant it performs correctly, you might as well skip the click altogether and just chuck food.
The problem with food chucking is the treat happens after the fact. For the most part we can't get the treat to the horse at the very instant that it performs the way we want. So we need a bridging signal. The click buys you time, but at first, not a lot of time. Initially, you do have to be prompt with your treat delivery. No messing about in your pocket trying to fish out a treat, no forgetting to give your horse a treat while you get distracted by a friend, no waiting for your horse to be a perfect gentleman before you release the treat to him. You want to minimize the amount of unwanted behavior that is occurring.
You can do this by clicking and then smoothly, deliberately reaching into your pocket and extending your arm so that you feed out away from your body. Your horse won't be doing much else besides positioning himself so he can get to the treat. As your training continues, you can put more distance between where the horse ends up at the moment of the click and where he gets his treat. You can also teach and expect gentle treat-taking manners.
But this time between the click and the delivery of the treat is not to be abused. It is not click and go on with your training. It is click, and now the treat is coming. Everything that occurs between the click and the food delivery is geared towards the horse getting his treat. The click marks the end of a unit of behavior. Now you are getting the goody and delivering it where you want your horse's head to be. Your horse can see you reaching into your pocket. He knows that whatever he was doing at the moment you clicked has now set in motion this chain of events which will lead to his goody. With a novice horse, the chain is short and simple with very few expectations placed on good manners. It is up to the handler to use good treat delivery skills to keep things safe and manageable. That means no letting the horse rush you to get the treat, but no dilly dallying either. You control the pace of the lesson, and you do it through systematic, clear food delivery.
With each training session you can begin to shift the responsibility for maintaining emotional control around the food over to the horse. That's the function of lessons such as "the grown-ups are talking, please don't interrupt", and the "leave it" games. As the process evolves it is really quite astounding how much can be inserted between the click and the treat delivery without breaking the connection between the behavior that is being marked and the reinforcer. I've taught lessons where I'm the one with the food. The horse can be at the other end of the arena when it is clicked. I'll get up off the mounting block where I was watching the pair, and I'll walk at a leisurely pace down the length of the arena to deliver the treat. The horse waits quietly, no fussing or fidgeting for me to get there. There's quite a lag time between the click and the treat. How do we know a connection has been made with the desired behavior? When the rider picks up her reins, the horse returns promptly to the sequence that led to the clickable moment. He shows us he knows what he was clicked for because he readily repeats it, often with a superior version of the behavior.
This long waiting between the click and the treat is not something I would ever ask of a novice clicker-trained horse. With novice horses you want to take great care with your food delivery and really look at what your expectations are. You want to be clear, consistent, and - here's probably the most important part - fair. The principle is: you can't ask for something and expect to get it on a consistent basis unless you have gone through a teaching process to teach it to your horse."
If you want good post-click treat-taking manners, you have to go through a teaching process to teach them to your horse. Skip this process, or rush through it too fast, and your treat delivery expectations may well turn into teasing and result in a frustrated horse and an equally frustrated handler.
Follow the principle, go through a consistent, clear, fair teaching process that uses what you have already taught your horse and builds expectations step-by-step, and you will be able to make powerful use of food delivery. The more you explore this idea, the more you will discover the incredible teaching tool food delivery is, one that is so much more effective and fun to use than all that shanking, threatening, and intimidating that it replaces. It's part of the "paddle" Mae described - use it well.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
Copyright 2006
P.S. Tanya, your question about your horse seeming to tune you out never seems to get addressed, so here's a quick answer: Here's one way to look at it. Have you ever given directions to someone who thinks they know where they are going. At first they don't really listen to you. They know the route. They know how to get to town so they think they know how to get to the feed store. They aren't really listening to you because they think they already have all the information they need. But then half way through the directions head a way they don't know and nothing is computing. They get a blank look to their eyes. You know you're still speaking English, but it's quite clear the other person isn't understanding a word you are saying. I think that's one of the dynamics that happens to our horses. Your horse has a lot of prior programming. I think sometimes he gets snagged by this programming. This can happen in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it's just what I described. He thought he knew where you were heading so he went on auto pilot. He wasn't paying close attention, and then suddenly you headed off on a new "path" and he didn't go with you. He feels totally lost, not sure even what the question is. The result- the blank stare you described.
Sometimes you can be going along really nicely, working well, and suddenly one of those old threads of programming will latch onto what you are doing. Something you did was close enough to the old cues that it triggered the older, unwanted pathways with all of the emotional baggage attached, and suddenly you're in shut down mode again. To use a modern metaphor - the computer has just locked up and needs to be rebooted.
You may hit these snags for quite a while. They are very real. I've certainly encountered them. Here's another image. I think of strands of floating DNA codes. Every now and then one of these floating codes attaches itself to your training and causes a mutation. When that happens, I just regroup and go back through the steps leading up to the snag. If I chunk down, and make the pathway that I'm on more solid, these snags of floating reaction patterns become less and less able to attach themselves to what we're doing and the blank stares go away.
Lost of mixed metaphors there, but hopefully they will help you to understand the learning curve your horse is in.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
T'ai Chi Structure
By Alexandra Kurland
I am home - finally after a non-stop round of clinics in June. That's an interesting process giving back to back to back clinics. I'm not sure why it is different from doing a clinic on the weekend with breaks of a couple days in between, but it is. I did six clinics in June, got home from the last one, had two days to catch up with the accumulated mail, and then took off for clinic number seven over the Fourth of July weekend.
So where to begin, and how to describe all the discoveries, horses, people, and adventures. I think the best way is to write about one of the core themes of this year's clinics. That's t'ai chi structure and how we can use it to be so much more effective in our training.
Here's the background: So much of standard horse handling is built around the threat of escalating pressure. If we clicker train one moment, then shake our lead rope at the horse the next when he crowds in on top of us, we are undermining the clicker training experience.
Those wiggling lead ropes keep us safe - or so we think. We could discard the lead altogether and rely on targeting and free shaping, but since we're going to ride, it makes sense to keep the lead rope in the picture and turn it instead into a positive training experience. But how do you do that without falling back into old patterns - relying on muscle and force to get a response? How do you replace your make-it-happen tendencies with clicker-compatible rope handling skills?
The answer is you train muscle memory patterns. You make those so habitual that they become automatic. What does that mean and how do you begin?
States of Excellence
Years ago one of my clients was studying neuro-linguistic programming. For her course work she needed "guinea pigs", and I eagerly volunteered. We went through a process that looked at states of excellence. What were the sub modalities that went into creating that state where everything flows, where things come together with ease, and where you work at a level of great competence, efficiency and creativity?
I was intrigued by both the concept of a state of excellence and by the process of exploring what that meant for each individual. The next time I saw Linda Tellington-Jones, the founder of TEAM, I shared this NLP process with her. What were the sub modalities that created the state of excellence that Linda worked in when she was with a horse? The rest of us could imitate her outer actions, but the response of the horses when Linda worked went beyond anything the rest of us achieved. What was the difference? What created the state of excellence Linda worked in? The process revealed images and layers Linda was not consciously aware of, but I noticed afterwards she began to refer to them in her teaching.
That was a chunk of years ago now, long before I started experimenting with clicker training, but the concept of a state of excellence has stayed with me and guided my teaching. I am forever looking for better ways to describe what I do. I use this concept to continue the discovery process - to find ever better ways to connect with horses and people.
Lateral Work: Exploring the Layers
"A teacher is someone who started before you." I love that phrase. It doesn't mean a teacher is an expert, it just says a teacher is someone who has been thinking about a subject a little longer than the person they are it sharing with. There is always more to learn. You never have all the answers, you never have a complete, finished picture, and if you think you do, there is always a horse waiting for you to make you stretch a little further in your understanding. Thank goodness!
So how does all this relate to the clinics? Well I've been looking at lateral work and how it is taught for years now. When I first learned it, there was a lot of crashing and bashing your way through the lesson. The horses learned to balance themselves. Their gaits improved, they got lighter, they stayed sounder - all good things - but the process that got them there wasn't much fun in the beginning for either horse or handler. Okay, that was a first approximation. Some of the single-rein work made it better - or at least more understandable. And then along came clicker training and that changed everything. Now I could get into lateral work without all the crashing and bashing on the horse. This was wonderful! And the horses certainly agreed. When you know how something is normally taught, and you see it popping out so easily - wow! - it really does knock your socks off!
But there were still challenges in the teaching. I want to work in hand, meaning I want to work in close to my horse, working with a lead or a bridle and asking for shoulder-in, haunches-in, piaffe, passage, etc. I've been looking at clicker compatible ways of teaching this work. There is a huge difference between lightness and an abandoned rein. Many riders in an attempt to be light abandon the rein or lead, meaning they are absent on the lead. There is no communication going down the line. There is slack in it, but no connection to the horse other that it is attached to his headstall.
I want the lead/rein to be alive with energy. I want it to be an active communication line. As such it transmits a wonderful feel both from my horse and to my horse. How do I communicate to others what this alive, energized feel is like? How do I help someone find this feel? Just as there are many roads to Rome, there are many ways to connect to this feel. There is no one right way to get there. And that's a good thing, because the more ways I can find to explain a process to my horse, or to another person, the more likely we are to connect to a shared experience.
So I began with the outer trappings of rein handling. That's the first approximation in. And it's a good way to start. It's like molding clay. Take a lump of raw clay and give it a general form. Ah, we're making a horse, not a giraffe. Good first approximation, except the horse looks a bit like a hippopotamus. Oh dear. So we need to refine the clay a bit, add some more details, maybe work on our sculpting technique.
The T'ai Chi Wall
That's the process of teaching/learning rope handling skills. I began with the outer trappings. I taught people to slide down the lead. If you slide all the way down a lead overhand you arrive at the buckle in a funny, upside down arm position. Try it. Get a friend to hold the buckle end of a lead for you, or lacking that, tie a lead to a door. Slide down the lead until your little finger touches your friend's little finger. In the riding book this is illustrated on page 37.
You are now in the upside-down, little-finger-pointing-to-the-sky position shown in the 2nd panel. If you now rotate your arm so your thumb points up, you gain a leverage advantage which allows you to shift the balance of your partner. Your friend will be rocked back on her heels. You don't have to do anything more. As she becomes aware of her own imbalance, she'll make the clickable change.
This is a neat rein mechanic. It was so neat I decided in the third video to give it a name - the t'ai chi wall. When a horse is being very bargey, very emotional, you can use the t'ai chi wall to ricochet his energy. You aren't trying to shut down his energy. You aren't telling him to stop moving his feet. You are simply redirecting his energy, and in the redirection you create the possibility of a clickable moment.
I called it the t'ai chi wall because, when you really need the full power of this lead-handling technique, you have one hand near the buckle of the lead, and the other on the horse's shoulder with no slack in the lead rope in between. The lead creates a wall. The power you have is impressive. Try that with your friend. Set up the t'ai chi wall as illustrated on page 37 and have your friend attempt to push through you. Try it first with slack in the lead between your two hands. You and your friend will find yourselves in a pushing match. If you're both horse people, you're both strong. You both heft hay bales and haul water buckets, so it becomes a contest of wills to see who is the stronger. Not good - especially when you transfer this to your horse. In a strength contest he'll win every time.
Now try the same thing but with the slack taken out of the lead so the line is taut between your two hands. Again have your friend try to push through you. With the line taut, she'll encounter a wall that redirects her own energy right back at her. Very neat.
That's the basic structure of the t'ai chi wall. It's really quite simple to describe, but what happens in actual practice? Well, when I give those directions to a group of people, there are some who get it right away and make it look like the elegant dance that it is. But there are others who make it look like a train wreck. They are adding make-it-happen muscle into the mix instead of relying on structure. Using gross muscle control blocks their ability to feel and to fine tune the process so the end result is far from the soft communication that this t'ai chi structure is designed to create.
And there are others who slide down but without any connection to their core power. They have an arm movement, but there's no structure behind it, so the horse piles over the top of them in the same way it always has.
Hmm. Back to the drawing board to add more layers to the puzzle.
It isn't enough to give the outer trappings of the movement. You have to look beneath to really understand what is going on. This goes back to the state of excellence. In NLP the researchers were using the state of excellence process to access the working skills of talented people. What were these people doing differently that made them stand out from others in their field? What had they learned from a lifetime of experience that could be extracted and transferred to someone else? Did you need to be Linda Tellington-Jones and have her life experiences to create the same kind of shifts in animals that she did, or were there teachable, transferrable components that would bring someone closer to her state of excellence? The answer, they found, was there were teachable, extractable components. You didn't need to walk in someone's shoes to be able to achieve a high level of performance.
That's good news for horse people, because there's no way we could duplicate one another's horse experiences. My thoroughbred, Peregrine has been one of my principle teachers. If I couldn't extract the critical components out of what he has taught me, everyone learning from me would have to find a horse with horrendous stifles. Peregrine taught me about the importance of going just to a point of contact and not beyond. Going beyond into the the range of making things happen is the slippery slope leading to escalating pressure and backwards traction - the great cripplers of horses' minds and bodies.
T'ai Chi Structure
Years ago I took a t'ai chi class from an instructor who had originally been trained in China. He had studied t'ai chi and other martial arts, and also trained as a gymnast. He was incredibly strong, incredibly flexible. His outward mastery of the t'ai chi forms was very beautiful to watch. In contrast, I was stiff and uncoordinated, but when we practiced push hands together, I could consistently knock him off his feet. He had all of the outer trappings, but none of the inner structure. I knew none of the forms, but I had been looking at internal structure for years because of my horses. I very early on recognized that core structure was a major component both of ground work and riding. I also learned that many riding instructors don't understand or know how to teach this inner core, anymore than this t'ai chi instructor did. So what is it? How do you teach it? I've been asking that question and peeling those layers for a chunk of years now.
James Shaw (Ride from Within) gave me some important clues. He talks about the power of bone rotations. In his morning ground sessions he does a neat demo where he has someone try to hold down his forearms. He picks the tallest, strongest man in the group. The two men stand facing one another. His assistant presses down hard on James' forearms. It's a struggle, but usually the taller man can keep James' arms at his side. But then James rotates his bones and his assistant goes popping backwards off his feet. So easy. It doesn't even look as though James is exerting any effort. And really he isn't. He is just rotating his bones and that accesses the power of his core.
When I first saw that, I was truly excited. That's why the t'ai chi wall works! We're rotating our bones from that funny upside down position to a more normal-feeling, thumb-to-the-sky orientation on the lead. It is the rotating of our bones that gives us power. Okay. Another clue, another huge piece of the puzzle had emerged. Once I understood how important bone rotations are, I started to look for them, and the funny thing is they are everywhere. Pay attention to your rope handling skills. You'll spot lots of places where there are bone rotations. Why is that important? Because every time you find a bone rotation, you have an opportunity to use leverage instead of force. In other words, as you take advantage of the weight shifting potential of the bone rotation, you can avoid having to escalate pressure.
And why is that important? Because escalating pressure is the bad apple in the barrel. Escalating pressure creates negative side effects. It may get the immediate gross result. The horse steps back out of your space, yields his hips over, or whatever else you were after as the desired response. But it creates along with that response, negative side effects. You get tension, fear, a global dampening of behavior. The horse lives under a "punishing parent" effect that creates stress. It may appear to be mannerly, but those manners come at a heavy price.
So at the fork in the road where we would need to escalate pressure to get the job done, we want instead to look for alternatives. The alternatives involve finding more steps and other ways of asking for the same thing. Where rope handling is concerned, it involves learning how to use structure instead of force.
So bone rotations were a big part of the puzzle. Another was fully extending your arm. Put the two together, add in the t'ai chi walk, and you have assembled a huge layer of the puzzle. Now what does all this mean?
The Foundation: Clicker Basics and Food Delivery
Bone rotations and the power that comes from a fully extended arm are both illustrated in the new "Why Would You Leave Me?" DVD. You can see both the underlying exercises that define these phrases, and the enormous effect they have on the horse. In the tape I'm helping a handler clean up a detail in the food delivery. The handler is working her horse in the pre "why-would-you-leave-me?" game. Her horse is basically a pleasant fellow, just a bit pushy. As she walks the circle of cones, he's stopping more or less with her, but he's diving down at her hand for the food and he's crowding into her space. She's got part of the lesson, but it could be so much better. The details I add are the techniques of food delivery that make use of bone rotations. When she again takes the horse, the picture is totally different. She is able to direct him out of her space. The mugging and walking past her disappears and is replaced instead by a mannerly, very pleasant picture. The neat part was that it all evolved out of a very simple change in mechanics.
"Training is a mechanical skill. Don't let mechanics get in the way of good training." Bob Bailey
So what did I show her. The best way to answer the question is to refer you to the DVD, but I'll describe it here as well. The core exercise that helps people access this work is illustrated on page 145 in the riding book. That's where I have you first bring your arms up in front of you very much as though you were holding reins. Then keeping your elbows comfortably at your side, you test your range of motion by moving your hands out to the side. This is an observe-without-judgement exercise. You aren't trying to change anything. You are simply seeing what your current range of motion is.
Now lift your arms up and straight out to the side as illustrated in the book. Your thumbs will be pointing up. Go through the arm rotations so your thumbs point behind you, up again, forward, down, and then back so your palms point up. That's the one I like. It always reminds me of a bird flying - a wonderful feeling once you get used to it. Don't strain yourself by overstaying in this position. Rotate back around - thumbs down, forward, and finally up again. (Note, I'm using your thumb as a reference, but to go through these rotations your entire arm will be involved. Collar bones, shoulder blades, breath, what else are you aware of as you rotate your arms? And if you go through the same sequence again only this time focusing on rotating your shoulders and letting your hands follow, you will find the movement is different from the first round. How you sequence an action, how you initiate it, changes the quality of the movement. That's an important understanding both for learning about core structure and also for accessing quality movement in your horse. )
Building the Frame: Accessing Structure
Once your thumbs have returned to the thumbs up position, release your elbows to your side. Let them just drop down. After you've held your arms up through these rotations that will be easy to do. Dropping your elbows down will be a welcome relief. With your arms at your side, test your range of motion again. Most of you will find that your range of motion has dramatically changed. That's easy to observe. What may not be quite so evident is the change in your core structure. It's there. It just needs pointing out. And that was what was so much fun about this round of June clinics. The clinics were very much about helping people discover their core structure. First accessing it, and then recognizing how much it does for them. The change in the horses as people found their core structure was so striking.
So let's see if I can share some of this here.
First key phrase: fully extend your arm. Again, this is well illustrated on the new "Why Would You Leave Me?" DVD. Let's have you lift one arm back up as though you were going through the bone rotation exercise again. Stand near a wall for reference so that your finger tips are a half inch, or maybe a bit less from the wall. Hold your arm so that your thumb points forward, palm facing down. Now from your shoulder rotate your arm so your thumb rotates slightly, just a couple of degrees up. As you do, you'll be able to tickle the wall with your finger tips. Very neat. You have just fully extended your arm through a bone rotation.
How does this relate to horse handling? In the clinics I'll demonstrate what this does for you. I'll partner up with someone who has good access to this fully-extended-arm bone rotation. I'll take her hand and walk myself out in an arc in front of her until her arm is fully extended in that upside-down, t'ai chi wall position. I then instruct her to rotate her arm into a more normal feeling position so that her thumb is now pointing up. This allows her to fold her arm to her side by bending at the elbow.
As she folds her arm to the side, I'll feel my weight shifting back into my heels and I'll allow her to take me. The action will swing me around so that I end up facing her. Hello! If I were a horse trying to leave, the handler would just have created a clickable moment, a brief bit of breathing room before the horse's emotional energy takes over again.
With the handler I have her practice this sequence several times until it becomes fluid. I know the feel of the weight shift so I go with it each time the handler accesses it even a little. I want to build confidence in the handler's ability so I allow the shift in balance.
As she taps into the order of the sequence, I challenge her with a little more pull which actually helps her find her core power. I like the feel of the bounce back that you get when the handler taps into her power. Instead of it being an aggressive action, it generally makes people laugh.
If I put too much energy into leaving too soon, I'll overwhelm the process and the person will revert back to old patterns of using muscle and will miss the opportunity to discover that her real power comes from core structure. So it's a delicate balance of challenging the system enough so that learning can take place, without overwhelming it so the person becomes discouraged.
The sequence in this process matters. It's the nature of chains that we tend to rush through them to get to the end result. That means at some point in this process the handler will be dragging her elbow back before she has rotated. What she will discover is she has no power and she gets pulled off her feet by the exiting "horse". When she goes through the steps, letting her arm fully extend, then rotate, then folding her arm so that it returns to her side, it's quite staggering how little effort it takes to pop her partner right back to her. Again this is illustrated in the "Why would you leave me" DVD.
Release The Elbow
The folding of the arm to the side is a key element. Earlier in describing the end sequence in the bone rotation exercise I used the phrase "release your arm to your side". These are related and very important concepts to understand. They ripple through everything from food delivery to rope handling to single-rein riding. And that's the beauty of it. I can be teaching food delivery, building a muscle memory pattern, and really be preparing a person for riding. Very sneaky!
So let's look at the significance of folding your arm to your side. It's a key element in your underlying core structure. It has direct bearing on the rein handling mechanics of single-rein riding, especially for the outside rein. Get it right and everything works smoothly. Get the outer trappings, and it's hit or miss whether or not you really get the intended result.
Pretend you are reaching down a lead or rein. You know now about fully extending your arm, so you're going to be reaching way out in front of you. When your arm is fully extended out in front of you in the little-finger-pointing-up, palm-facing-back, upside-down position, rotate your arm.
Now here's the tricky part to describe without actually being there to guide the process. I want you to feel the contrast of what happens when you use muscle to bring your elbow to your side versus simply releasing your elbow. I want you to drag your elbow to your side using your shoulder muscles. In clinics I'll have someone stand behind me resting their hand gently on my shoulder blade. As I drag my elbow to my side from my shoulder, they'll feel my back muscles activating. My arm will end up in riding position as though I am holding a rein. My elbow will be at my side. Things will "look right", but my arm will not be connected to my core. To illustrate this I'll close my hand around an imaginary rein and have someone else push on my hand. I'll have to really brace and use a lot of muscle to keep my elbow from being pushed back.
When I used my shoulder to bring my elbow to my side, I went past the point where my elbow connects to core, and without even being aware of it, I created backwards traction on the rein. This is so common. I see it everywhere, and it so shuts down the movement of the horse. Over time it can have a crippling effect because of the added compression on the horse's spine and major joints.
So what is the alternative? Reach down the lead again. Let your arm fully extend into that up-side down position, rotate your bones so your thumb is pointing up. Now before you take any action remember what it felt like to release your arm to your side when I first had you go through all the bone rotations. You were working to hold your arm up. To bring your elbow back to your side you just let it drop down. You released it to your side. Do that now. When I do that in the clinics, the person resting her hand on my shoulder feels my back muscles staying quiet. They aren't activated in the release of the elbow. But when a second person pushes on my elbow, it doesn't budge. I don't have to work at all to keep it there. The harder they push, the more their energy is transferred through my hips and straight into the ground. I can stand there all day, because I'm not working, but they'll get tired fast and quit pushing.
And if I want, I can take that core groundedness straight up from my feet, unfold my arm forward and send them popping backwards off their feet - all without effort or any feeling of aggression.
That's such a huge piece of finding clicker-compatible, effective rope handling skills.
Practical Applications
Let's look at some of the places core structure makes a difference.
First, food delivery. I want to feed the horse out away from my body where the perfect horse would be. If my horse were absolutely perfect (which of course he is because why would I handle anything but the perfect horse!), he'll be exactly where he should be to get the treat. That's easy to say, easy to understand, but sometimes not so easy to execute in practice - at least not when the actual horse you are handling is acting more like a freight train than any image of equine perfection. In this case how you extend your arm and present the treat matters a great deal. You still want to feed where the perfect horse would be, but there is a freight train of energy blocking your way.
So after you reach into your pocket to get a treat, draw your arm up to your shoulder. Think about bone rotations. If you just bend your arm without accessing the learning that comes from the exercises I described earlier, your shoulder will remain up and tight. Yes. your arm will be bent, but it won't be connected to your core. You can test to see if you found the right position by pressing on your closed hand. If you missed your core structure, you'll be able to push your elbow back. But if you are solidly into your core, you'll be able to push hard on your hand and your elbow will just anchor into your hip.
Let's suppose you folded your right arm to your shoulder. Now step forward with your right foot as you unfold your arm. This is so much fun to do with another person. At the most recent clinic my partner was being a very pushy "horse". We were going through the basics of targeting, how you use the food delivery to back your horse out of your space so he is no longer crowding over the top of the stall guard (see the new section in the Lesson 1 DVD). My partner was determined to be as obstreperous as possible. She was acting the part of a pushy, in your-face, backs-down-from-nothing horse.
I clicked, reached into my pocket, brought my arm up to my shoulder so I had the full power of the bone rotation working for me, and in one smooth movement backed her right out of my space through the power of my unfolding arm. I loved the expression on her face as she found herself taking two full steps back. How did that happen!? Why did she do that? She was intending to put up a fight. Power without force - I love it! - That's what creates clicker-compatible handling skills!
Can you clicker train without knowing anything about core structure? Absolutely, yes. Does an understanding of these details make a difference? Again, absolutely yes. And the more issues you have with a horse, the more important these elements become. One of the horses in the June clinics illustrated this point well. His owner had tried clicker training, but didn't know what to do with her horse's over-eager pushiness around the food. He was an Irish cob, black with white stockings, very pretty, and also very bright.
I started him over, beginning with basic targeting, using the food delivery to move him out of my space. The pawing, pushing, frustrated behavior that had put his owner off trying clicker training very quickly disappeared. He was a gem to work with. Simple mechanics made the difference between a clicker pest and a clicker superstar.
Rope Handling Skills
You can unfold your arm from your side to access your power for food delivery. And you can do the opposite, releasing your elbow to your side to access your power during rope handling. Here are a couple of examples, one from the ground skills, and another from riding.
Ground skill: I've already reviewed the t'ai chi wall. Let's see how this applies to the real world of interacting with a horse. Suppose you are working with a stuck-in-cement, somewhat pushy horse and you need him to back up. Let's start out on his left side. To ask him to back you'll turn in to face him positioning yourself so you can focus on the point of his near shoulder.
You'll be sliding down the line with your left hand. Right handed people will at first want to slide down with their right hand, but this produces an unbalanced position for the handler. Using the left keeps you in your power position. You'll slide all the way to the snap ending up in your now familiar upside down position. Rotate your arm. Now as you fold your elbow to your side, take a step forward so you step up under your elbow connecting the release of the elbow to your core structure.
In this position you can wait patiently while your horse figures out his next move. You're balanced. You're comfortable. You aren't expending any energy to stay in this position. You can stand like this all day, but your horse can't. As you stepped up under your releasing elbow into the t'ai chi wall position, you shifted your horse's weight. He's now in a slightly unbalanced position. All you have to do is wait while he a.) notices that perhaps he's not really all that comfortable - (it's like wearing shoes that don't quite fit. They feel all right when you first try them on, but after a few minutes you realize that you really don't want to wear them all day.) And b.) he figures out what to do about it. You are helping him to become more body aware, more sensitive. If he tries to shift his balance forward, he'll encounter the solid wall of your grounded, postlike position. "Can't go that way. Hmm." The wheels are turning. When he shifts his weight back, click!, you instantly remove your hand and give him a treat.
So yes, we are using negative reinforcement with the clicker. And one of the motivators driving this process is the discomfort he feels from being placed out of balance. This can sound like a negative thing. You might be wondering why as a clicker trainer I don't by-pass this stage by using targeting or free shaping. Why don't I teach him to back and then attach a lead cue or hand signal to it. The answer can be found in the previous paragraph. I want him to learn to listen to his body. I want him to become aware of subtle weight shifts. I want him to learn to rebalance, to find an answer that brings him into harmony not only with his own balance but mine as well. By incorporating pressure and release of pressure at this stage where the requests are on a gross level of awareness, I can develop the sensitivity of feel in both the horse and the handler that I will need for more advanced work.
Still not sure why I make this choice - here's another example. At the last clinic we were discussing the sequencing of things and the whys and wherefores of how you trigger particular behaviors. I stood behind one of the participants and placed my fingers very gently just behind her ears. Then I asked her to turn her nose to the side. She moved as she interpreted the words, I followed, seeing what her pattern was. Then I had her look straight ahead so she could again turn her nose to the side. This time my fingers offered a gentle suggestion of a different pattern. We repeated this process several times. She took her head straight, then turned to the side following the guidance of my hands. Then I asked her to drop her chin slightly, in effect giving at the poll. Again at first I felt what her pattern was, and then I guided her into a slightly different orientation. As she followed my hands, her spine became involved in the movement. If she had been a horse her back and withers would have been lifting under the saddle. It was at first a tiny movement, but very noticeable to both of us. The guidance of my hands led her to the discovery of a subtle, but oh so important sequence of movement that resulted in a major change down the length of entire spine.
She trusted my guidance and allowed me to enter her space. I ask this also of the horses. I ask them to trust me. I show them I understand core movement and they answer with their heart. It is a great gift indeed.
The pushy horse I described earlier learned clicker basics on the first day of the clinic. He learned about targeting and happy faces, backing and grown-ups are talking. And most of all he learned that the game wasn't going to disappear. He didn't have to feel anxious about losing this new connection with people. As soon as he realized that I would return and play with him again, his insistent banging on the front of his stall stopped.
In between sessions while we discussed the work we had just done and what we were going to do next, his owner put him back out in his paddock. At first she reported that he tried to ignore her when she went out again to get him. He kept on grazing and made her walk out to him. That was very typical of the relationship she had with him. With just a little targeting under his belt, he started walking up to the gate to meet her. And by the end of the day he had shifted from rushing to get back to his paddock to being reluctant to leave our training pen. I love that!
And on the second day he showed me such wonderful gifts. I took him out into a larger work space, and played the "pre why would you leave me?" game with him followed by the "why would you leave me?" game, and out popped the prettiest lateral work. It was right there to be had. When I put him back in his training pen, he was completely locked on to me in liberty work, with an understanding of body language cues that was staggering - all this had evolved out of the clicker foundation lessons of the previous day. Because I took my time with those, the rest flowed so easily.
I was chatting with a friend the other day, describing some of this and she made the comment that she's found the same thing: the more simple foundation work you do, the more the advanced work just pops out. She went on to say that that's very much the basis of classical dressage - you work on tiny weight shifts, on simple reaction patterns, and the advanced work - lateral work, flying changes, piaffe, passage, etc. - emerges from that. Exactly right.
Anyway I digress. It is important to understand that we are working with pressure-based systems. It's important to call a spade a spade and understand that an important motivator in this process is discomfort. But we want it to be the discomfort that is akin to finding your own weight shifted back into your heels and taking a step by to rebalance yourself. The discomfort should never cross the line into fear or pain. That inhibits learning. The goal is to make your partner more internally aware of his own balance. You are becoming dance partners, learning to read each other's balance. Horses are masters at this. In many ways we are the student, but as the student, we sometimes need to take on the role of teachers, to bring the horse into a place where we can work in harmony together.
Head Lowering
I think I'm still digressing, so let me return to the t'ai chi wall mechanics. One of the horses I worked with in June was a very agitated Arabian whose owner had some very great confidence issues. When I took him, it became quite clear that he needed the head lowering lesson of Video Lesson 3. It's in this video that I gave the t'ai chi wall its name and made it something real. It's interesting what happens when you name something. It takes on a life of its own. Instead of being just another way to use a lead rope it became a separate entity. Interesting.
With this horse I used the slide down of the rein, rotation of the arm, step up under my elbow as I folded my arm, but unlike the stuck in cement horse, this horse had an excess of energy. Instead of planting himself rootlike on the post of my arm, the effect of the t'ai chi wall was to ricochet his energy back at him. And in those moments when I needed to magnify the backing effect, I could also unfold my arm from my core. The power of that kept his feet in motion so he never felt trapped. In less time than it takes to write this out, his nose was dropping down to his ankles. A few clicks later his nose was all the way to the dirt. Instead of being a reactive bundle of nerves scaring both himself and his owner, he could stand still in his own space, calmly and quietly. And when his owner took him, she did a magnificent job using her core to tap into what he had learned. In this case it wasn't just that he became more manageable. When I took him, I could feel his fear. And it wasn't simply the fear of being in an unfamiliar setting. I could feel that he didn't know how to find a safe anchor. He was afraid, and he didn't know how to unwind out of his fear. His owner couldn't help him because his fear made her afraid. Head lowering gave them both breathing room - literally. It created a space in which they could connect and help one another. And it worked as quickly as it did because of an understanding of core mechanics.
Riding with Structure: Mounting Blocks and Connected Hips
I promised a riding example, so here it is: Before I go very far on a horse I want to know if his hips are connected to me. In other words do I have brakes and a steering wheel? That's what the hips give me. In clinics we often get horses who don't stand well next to mounting blocks. I always regard this as a good thing. You want to take advantage of this to get a horse soft and connected to the lead. In one of the June clinics we had a thoroughbred who was just being started back under saddle after a long rehab. His current owner showed me his before pictures - they didn't even look like the same horse. I'm sure you can picture it: underweight thoroughbred, no muscles, horrendous feet, and complicated back issues from a too-narrow-by-several-sizes saddle. His feet were now in great shape thanks to the expert trimming of his current owner. She'd also worked diligently on his balance, and found him a saddle that fit. He wasn't the same sad horse in the photos. He was definitely ready to be ridden, but mounting was still an issue for him. He remembered riding with very negative emotions, so he tended to swing out wide from the mounting block. His owner had been working on this for a while, and she wanted some pointers on making it better.
I used the technique described in the step-by-step book, but I added a fun twist to it. In the foundation lessons I teach horses to stand on mats. In the mounting block lesson the roles are reversed. It's the handler that stays on the mat, i.e. the mounting block. If I've done the "why would you leave me?" game, I have a horse that walks next to me without my having to hang onto the lead. It's important that the horse walks himself to the mounting block. I don't take him there with the lead. Why do I want that? Well, for one thing this can evolve into your leaving the horse out in the middle of the arena, walking over to the mounting block and then calling him over so he comes on his own and lines himself up perfectly beside you. That's great fun and a great clicker exercise to show to others. But even more important, it gives your horse a way of saying: "not tonight, please."
Peregrine, is one of those horses who lines himself up to the mounting block. I know he knows the ritual, and I know he's very consistent in the behavior, so any time he's reluctant to come to the mounting block, I also know I need to check for something wrong. He's telling me he doesn't feel well, and I trust him. He's not trying to get out of work. He's telling me something is bothering him. He's got a stomach ache or his feet aren't right - something. I listen to him because through the clicker training I know I can trust him.
So I do not hold the lead as I walk up to the mounting block. The horse and I walk toward it together, but as I step up onto the mounting block, I reach out with my right hand and slide down the lead with the left to ask for a stop. The horse usually over rotates and swings out away from the mounting block. Fine. I release the rein, switch hands and ask the horse to swing back the other way. A new-to-the-exercise horse will overcompensate in that direction. Again fine. I switch back to the left and repeat the process. I'm in no hurry to get on. The whole time I'm asking him to swing to the left and to swing to the right I'm connecting up his hips to the rein. By the time I do get on I will absolutely know that if I pick up the inside rein, he will yield his hips to it. And what's more he'll yield them promptly and softly from a light touch on the rein. The feel down the rein won't cause him to stiffen up or panic. He'll be familiar with it. Even if his past history causes him to tense up and move off when the rider first swings her weight into the saddle, the response to the rein will be so automatic everything will remain safe. He will yield his hips around, which will keep any anxiety from escalating into a train wreck.
So that's what I did with this horse. Only once he was lined up fairly well, I didn't get on. Instead I stepped down off the mounting block and walked casually off with him, so we could repeat the whole process all over again. I wanted to be certain he understood how to present himself to the mounting block. To become consistent, we needed to repeat the process several times. When I step up on the mounting block, I want the horse to understand that I have in essence become a target that he is to orient to.
So how does this relate to our discussion of structure? If the horse overshoots, I slide down the rein, rotate my arm, and fold my elbow to my side. It's that action that yields his hips. As his hips begin to swing round, I release the rein, so I am releasing him to the mounting block.
With this horse once he had the general idea I added in a fun twist. As I stepped up on the mounting block, when the saddle was even with me, I took hold of it front and back with both hands. That quickly became his cue to stop. So it turned into a game of capture the saddle. Great fun really, and so easy for his owner to make use of. When it was her turn to try, she climbed up on the mounting block and reached out for the saddle as he lined himself up next to her. He came to an instantaneous halt, perfectly aligned in front of her. Talk about reinforcing the handler!
So now she was ready to get on. And her horse was ready to be ridden. We hadn't rushed the process and asked him to accept a rider before he was mentally prepared to handle that responsibility. His owner got on. He stood still for her, click and treat, and when he walked off, he walked off on the buckle, click and treat.
We'd been working on "why would you leave me?" into three-flip-three on the ground, so that's what she tapped into now. And she used bone rotations to receive each of the soft releases he gave her. She lifted her buckle hand up, releasing her elbow down as she did so. And as she lifted her buckle hand up, she began the slide down of the inside rein. Her horse was connected to her, so her job was to recognize each give was a little thing because she already had what she was looking for. If she had gone down with the full power of the t'ai chi wall rotation, she would have over-rotated him out of the beautiful balance they had already set-up together. So a big part of this work is recognizing when you have done your job so you can receive the subtleties of each weight shift.
Three-flip-three is an exercise of subtlety. By the time you are ready to ask for the next part of the chain, you already have it. You slide down the inside rein asking the horse to soften his jaw. To do this you can use the "floating box" image from the "why would you leave me?" game". It's "come into the box" once; "come into the box" twice; "come into the box" a third time; now that you are soft and lightly flexing to the side, how about yielding your hips - excellent; now soften to me again from jaw to hip and shift your shoulders over; now soften to me again from jaw to hip and shift your shoulders over again; now soften to me again from jaw to hip and shift your shoulders over a third time. That's three-flip-three. It becomes a lovely, flowing dance which is very settling for both the horse and the rider.
But suppose a herd of emus had suddenly come crashing their way into the arena. All that beautiful soft work might have flown out the window as the horse melted down into a blind panic. In that kind of a situation you don't have time for three softenings of the jaw. You need the hips to yield to you now - in one stride, without any hesitation. So you slide down the rein, but you haven't thought about structure, rotating bones, or fully extended arms. You simply pick up the buckle, reach a bit down the rein, and then draw your inside hand up. Your horse is supposed to have swung around, but he's still bolting off away from the emus! You've got your outside hand somewhere up around your ear, your inside hand is feeling totally useless, and the whole thing feels like a hopeless mess. Time to panic!
Why is your neighbor's horse not bolting off with her. Why is her horse now standing still with his nose on the ground with things looking calm and under control? It can't be, oh no, it isn't all that practicing of food delivery and t'ai chi mechanics that she keeps yammering on about!?
So here's the alternative scenario. As the horse starts to melt down, before he has a chance to jump off even one stride, you're lifting the buckle and sliding down the rein. Your outside arm goes through its own rotation, so you end up with your elbow released down, connected to your core, and your outside hand up. The result is your outside arm forms a solid triangle, and your outside hand connects it via the rein to other triangles.
As you lift the buckle up heading towards your triangle, core-connecting position, you are simultaneously sliding down the inside rein with your inside hand. The lifting of the buckle with your outside hand helps you slide further down the rein with your inside hand. But this time without even thinking about it, you're fully extending your arm.
This lets you reach much further down the rein, so now when you rotate your arm and let your elbow release to your side, you have found exactly the right amount of rein to leverage your horse's hips around. He responds instantly. As you feel his hips swing into motion, you release the rein, so he doesn't feel trapped or unbalanced. You change rein, picking up the buckle and sliding down the inside rein, again fully extending your arm so you pick up exactly the right amount of rein to leverage his hips around. And again, you release him. You repeat this and as you do, you feel his emotions settling. The emus aren't really so terrible. You can feel his balance shifting physically and emotionally. This time as you swing his hips around, you can release him into a halt. You can let him stand still, click and treat, or you can pick up again on the same side and ask for his inside shoulder to take a step back; release the rein; ask again, this time getting the outside shoulder to take a step back. You've just ridden hip, shoulder, shoulder into a soft rein back. You didn't pull him back. You simply redirected his energy into the rein back. And if you have taught him the head lowering exercise I described for the Arab, you can now release him into head lowering.
You used the power of your t'ai chi structure - or phrased another way, the power of triangles. We know from engineering that triangles give buildings great strength. They do the same for riders, but it is power without force, strength without aggression, creating clicker-compatible rein handling skills.
The emus can pass on by, and you can return safely to your lesson. You've understood both the full power of these t'ai chi wall exercises, and also the subtlety of them. They are designed to keep you safe and to let you dance.
And to dance, you need only add in the t'ai chi walk (Ch. 24 in the riding book), but that is a layer for another day. It has been over a month since I have last written anything to the list, but this post may take about that long to read and digest!
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
resources referenced in this post
Books
The Click That Teaches: Riding with the Clicker
The Click That Teaches: A Step-By-Step Guide in Pictures
DVDs
The Click That Teaches: Lesson One: Getting Started with the Clicker
The Click That Teaches: Lesson Three: head Lowering: Your Calm-Down Cue
The Click That Teaches: "The Why Would You Leave Me?" Game
The Click That Teaches: T'ai Chi Rope Handling Skills
The Click That Teaches: Shaping on a Point of Contact
The Click That Teaches: Three-Flip-Three: Understanding Lateral Flexions
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Strategies for Dealing with Biting
By Alexandra Kurland
Donna asked how to deal with her horse's biting problem (July 20):
"Gambler is a 4 year old QH gelding. He has a lot of behaviors he performs well but in between he's biting at me. . . I'll ask him to back out of my space which he does and he'll stand nicely, but the moment I or anyone else asks for forward motion he's back to his mouthy self. He has a worse bad attitude towards other people. He pins his ears and swings his hips at the farrier or he even did it toward the clicker trainer I paid to come from a neighboring state. She did some of that Parelli stuff. Shaking the rope like a snake to back him up. . . Then she would bop him in the chest with the handle end of my whip to make him back. . . He was totally rude to the farrier last nite. I have really been working on his feet. I can do anything with them, but the farrier can't. . . "
Hi Donna,
For starters, take a deep breath, put Gambler back in his stall and go have a cup of tea. It really does help. And while you're having your tea watch some of the training videos. I don't mean to sound like an advertisement, but the videos are a great resource where you can watch clicker trainers train.
After you've reviewed the tapes, have somebody videotape you with Gambler. I know, sometimes it can be hard to watch yourself on video, but it's a great starting point for resolving Gambler's biting issues. When you watch yourself on video, how do you look? Relaxed, organized, focused? Or nervous, reactive, and clumsy?
There are lots of triggers, lots of reasons horses bite. I'm not suggesting that you are to blame for his biting. That's what the rough and ready trainers are probably saying, so you don't need to hear the same thing from me. But it is the case that mechanics matter - a lot. So in resolving Gambler's frustration, anger, fear, defensiveness, bullying - whatever emotional label fits him the best - it makes sense to begin with the area you have the most direct control over and that's you.
When you watch yourself, do you look consistent, grounded? Is your timing solid? How is your food management, your food delivery? Do you remain focused on what you want Gambler to do, not the unwanted behavior?
At a recent clinic one of the people watching me with a horse made a really interesting comment. She said she learned as much watching what I didn't do, as what I did. I thought that was profound. That really is the core of clicker training. When the horse pushed into my space, I was non-reactive to it. I stayed focused on the task at hand and didn't get sucked into the drama of a pushy horse. What I didn't do was all the reactive stuff she was used to seeing. What I did was stay focused on the lesson I was working on so I could provide consistent opportunities for reinforcement to the horse.
I wrote a lengthy post recently on mechanics. There's a tremendous amount in there that will help you with Gambler. It's amazing how horses change when we change. At the clinics, there will often be some horse/handler teams that are really struggling. The horse will be all over the person, and the handler will be feeling as though she has two left feet and has never held a lead rope before in her life. So we do what I'm suggesting here. We put the horse away, and work on mechanics. When we go back to the horse, the picture is different.
Role Playing
Watching videos is a great training aid. Another is getting a friend to play the role of the horse. I've described this in several posts and also in the riding book. Have your friend hold the snap end of the lead, while you slide down the lead to ask for the same things you ask of Gambler. She'll give you feedback. Sometimes it's verbal: "That felt a little abrupt"; "That felt good". Sometimes it's involuntary. Sometimes your human "horse" will find herself jerking her hands away, kicking out, bolting off! It's amazing how we end up reacting just like our horses. And when a handler begins to smooth things out so the communication down the line is clear, even the most obstreperous human "horse" suddenly finds herself responding politely. When the mechanics are good, you just plain find yourself flowing with your partner. All thoughts of leaving, resisting, snarling, snapping melt away. It's lovely to experience, so once you've been the handler for a while, switch roles and be the human "horse".
Have your friend go down the lead abruptly just to feel what that's like. Have her swing the lead aggressively to chase you back. That's quite an experience. As I say to people, it's easy to get horses to back up and ground tie by swinging ropes. Getting them to trust you again can take a whole lot longer.
Once you've felt abrupt handling, have her slide down the lead to ask you to back up. Sliding down the lead signals your intent. It gives your horse a chance to respond softly.
However, if she is sliding down the lead with a lot of make-it-happen muscle, you won't be any happier with this approach than you were with the abruptly swinging rope. Nor will you like it if she is so soft there's no clear intent being communicated. All rope handling techniques require some skill to use.
The purpose of the recent post on body mechanics was to help the handler find the middle ground between being too strong and forceful on the one hand, and too wishy-washy on the other. In the middle ground you are using your core structure to communicate clear intent. So experiment with the exercises in that post to see what differences you can feel. When things feel clear and consistent, go back to Gambler. Think of him as the master teacher. You're asking his opinion of the work you've been doing. "Did we get it right?" He'll tell you with his behavior. If he's soft and responsive, you'll know you did good work finding your core structure. But he may also tell you you have some details to clean up. He'll tell you that with a grumpy look, stuck feet, or a swish of the tail. Listen to him. He's only trying to help you become a better horse person!
One of the details that he may tell you needs cleaning up is food management. It sounds as though Gambler needs a lot more work in this area. You mentioned that having the treat bucket in sight created problems, as did your treat pouch. One of the things I've learned is that pockets matter. Whether you are using a jacket with pockets or a treat pouch, you want to be certain that you can get in and out easily. Any delay fumbling around for the treat can make a huge difference to the horse. It can create the frustrated, grabby, angry behavior you are trying to extinguish. So with your friend, practice good food delivery. There are a lot of good visuals on the new "Lesson 1: Getting Started with the Clicker" DVD and "The Why Would You Leave Me?" Game DVD so I'll refer you to those for more on this subject.
Pockets do matter. Most jacket pockets are the wrong shape and cause delays. Most pants pockets, especially jeans pockets, do not work. You wouldn't think a little detail like that would matter, but it does. Treats kept in plastic bags also cause problems. Dump your treats into your pocket. Getting into a plastic bag causes a delay. I watch a lot of horses, and the ones where people use plastic bags to keep their pockets clean, definitely show more negative behaviors associated with the food delivery.
Good food delivery techniques settle horses. You'll see that on the "Why would you leave me?" DVD. And that's good news because that's something you have control over. So again, this may not be the direct cause of Gambler's problems, but mechanics can go a long way towards either resolving an issue or keeping it alive. They can contribute to a horse's overall confusion and frustration, or they can clarify the communication so the problems melt away. So the first step in easing your frustration over Gambler's behavior is to find a friend who is willing to play "horse". You'll both learn a lot, so don't feel as though you are imposing. If your friend also has horses, she'll be learning as much as you are from the experience.
Lesson Plans
So now let's go look at Gambler's behavior. First, if he is biting, you may need to go back to beginning steps and work him with protective contact. That means put him in a stall where you can work him safely with a barrier between you. If you don't have a suitable space, see what you can construct. Having a safe area where you can work can make a huge difference.
So what will you teach him? For starters you might free shape him to back away from the stall door. This will give you valuable practice shaping behavior, seeing if you can spot the tiny weight shifts that will lead to the goal behavior. It will show you how to build a behavior from a tiny weight shift to an actual step to multiple steps. Is there a point where you both get stuck and you build in a glass ceiling? Does three steps - click become the behavior? If you ask for four, does Gambler become frustrated? And when he's frustrated does he act out by biting at you?
That will at least tell you one root cause of the biting. It may be an expression of a horse who is just learning how to learn and doesn't know how to handle his uncertainty. You see different responses to not knowing what to do next. Some horses get frustrated and shut down. They look bored, uninterested. They aren't bored. They just don't know what to do next. Instead of experimenting, they've learned the safest thing is to shut down. People do this too, so it's a response we all can be very sympathetic too.
Another reaction is to become defensive. In traditional training horses are often punished for making mistakes. Think about how that feels. Imagine you are back in school and you've been called up to the blackboard to write out a math problem. You have no idea how to answer the question. Two plus two is just not adding up to anything. Does it help to have your teacher yelling at you? No, it just makes you want to hide in a corner. Or perhaps you're the one who turned into the class clown. If you disrupted the class enough, the teacher would be too busy reprimanding you for your antics, and you wouldn't have to stand in front of the class and be ridiculed.
Horrible feelings. But this in many respects is the dynamic our horses are caught up in. Make a mistake, move when you weren't told to, or don't move fast enough and you get punished. So many horses either shut down, or become defensive. Gambler sounds as though he's one of the ones who became defensive.
So in the stall where you can ask for one thing at a time, you are going to show him what kind of a teacher you are. You are going to answer the questions he has about humans. And you are going to help him learn how to learn.
Stall Training
Start out by counting out twenty carrot slices, or twenty hay stretcher pellets. In other words, don't just stuff your pockets full of treats. Begin with a measured, small quanity. And each time you step away to refill your pocket, spend the time when you are counting out your treats, to assess Gambler's behavior. He'll tell you what you need to work on next; when you can move on to other things; when you need to spend a bit more time on the current step.
With the backing, initially, you'll use food delivery to reposition him back to the front of the stall where you can ask again. You'll be free shaping this, waiting for him to shift his weight back, click and treat; shift his weight a bit more, click and treat; take a full step back, click and treat; etc.
Once he is readily backing a couple of steps back, you can pair this with targeting. Have him back up, then present your target to bring him forward again. Click and treat, but now use the food delivery to back him out of your space. (Refer to the DVDs for mechanics of food delivery.)
He's now back out of your space, so bring him forward with the target again, click and treat, but now feed forward so he's in good position to back up again. When he backs, click, and deliver the treat forward. Next you might wait for him to back, then target him forward. Click and treat.
With only twenty treats for each small training session you'll be able to see how much variability you can add into the mix using these two behaviors. Gambler will tell you when you are overwhelming him, asking for too much too fast. He'll tell you when your mechanics have gotten disjointed by adding in the complication of targeting. He'll also tell you when you can move on and add another layer of complexity to the process. Learn to listen to him. He'll be a great teacher.
More Basics
What are some of the other behaviors you want to teach? Happy faces absolutely. And Grown-ups are talking. And of course, head lowering. That's a great behavior to teach a grumpy horse. In clicker training we want to ask for behaviors that are incompatible with the unwanted behavior. Instead of fussing at Gambler for biting, ask him to lower his head. He can't put his nose on the ground and bite you both at the same time. So work not just on getting him to drop his head, but to drop his head and leave it down.
You can teach head lowering initially from targeting, and then from simple pressure and release of pressure on his poll. Later, you'll want to teach him to drop his head in response to his lead (refer to "Video Lesson 3").
Unpoisoning The Lead Rope
And speaking of leads, once all of this clicker foundation work has given you a solid base to work with, it's time to reintroduce the lead. It sounds as though Gambler has a very poisoned attitude towards lead ropes. I've met a lot of these horses who grab at the lead when you try to lead them forward. I view this as the horse being protective of his face. So two things for starters: 1.) go back and review the rope handling mechanics - yet again. Every time you revisit rope handling you will discover new things. Perhaps some of the people who have been to clinics will jump in here with some of the they've learned from these exercises. At every clinic we look at lead/rein handling mechanics, and as many times as I go through the process with people, there's never a time when I don't learn something new.
2.)The second thing I would recommend is, if you are currently using a rope halter, go to a flat nylon or leather halter. At this stage you are still working in a small paddock or stall. You don't need the extra bite of a rope halter to give you control, so ask Gambler what he thinks of the flat halter. In clinics I generally don't make equipment changes. Whatever lead/halter the horse and handler are comfortable using, is the one that I work with. But since Gambler is having a biting issue, you may find going to the flat halter will make a huge difference. It certainly has for a great many of the horses I have encountered.
Changing equipment isn't a magic pill. You have to show Gambler that he can trust the lead. So here are a couple of simple suggestions.
Lesson 1.) Stand next to Gambler in the neutral-body-position of "grown-ups are talking" (refer to the Lesson 1 DVD) We'll assume at this point you've done your homework and he knows this lesson. He now stands reasonably well, keeping his head in his own space. Great. Click and treat. Return to neutral-body-position, but now begin to slide down the lead. In the ideal world, working with the perfect horse, you would be able to slide along the lead, and he would respond appropriately and promptly to the lead. But this isn't the ideal world. Gambler has concerns about the lead, so you aren't going to slide very far down the lead. In fact all you may do is is turn your body slightly so you can touch the lead. Click and treat.
Repeat this. Touch the lead. Click and treat. You are following the "four second rule" described in the "Can I touch you?" lesson of the Step-By-Step book. If you think you can slide your hand down two inches before he'll become reactive, click and take your hand away at one inch.
Slide a little further down the lead, Click and treat. Click and treat before Gambler has a chance to react and snap at the lead. If he grabs at you, you know you asked for too much, too fast. So go back and do less. You aren't asking him to do anything active at this point. You are simply saying to him: "You see, I can slide down this lead, and nothing terrible happens to you. It doesn't hurt. I don't turn into a fire-breathing dragon. I am still the same, patient, consistent teacher that I was in the stall. The lead is just a communication tool. Here's how it works."
When he'll let you slide all the way up to the snap, you'll be in that upside down position described in the body mechanics post and illustrated in the books and videos. If he's comfortable having you slide all the way up to the snap, instead of clicking and taking your hand away, rotate your arm as you step forward so you can support your elbow on your hip. You will have practiced this with your friend so you know you can do this using your core positioning, not brute force.
With your arm rotated into this tai chi structured stance, you can wait comfortably for Gambler to figure out what to do next. He'll be feeling a little out of balance. He's the little kid at the blackboard who isn't quite sure what to do next. He sort of knows the answer, but he needs time to think, and that's what you're going to give him. You aren't going to fuss at him, or try to hurry him along. You're going to give him all the time in the world to sort through this puzzle, and when he shifts off your hand, even a little, click, you'll take you hand away and give him a treat.
Are you worried you won't feel when to let go? With your hand right on the point of contact with his balance, you will feel when his weight shifts. You won't have to be able to spot some nuance of change in muscle tone. You'll feel him leaning on you, then shifting his weight off your hand. The positioning helps you spot the right answers he's giving you.
Go Forward Lessons
So that's helping to unpoison the lead for backing. How about unpoisoning the lead for going forward. For a team that is just beginning to learn about leading, I'll use two triggers to help explain forward movement. The first is targeting. We start this in the very early foundation lessons with the clicker. The horse learns to walk forward a couple of steps to touch the target. Click and treat. Repeat this. It won't be long before your horse is readily walking forward following his target. Now you can fade the target out. You in effect will have become the target. When you walk forward, he'll walk with you. That's a great first step towards teaching good leading skills.
The second lesson uses a go forward cue from behind. When I first met Robin he would follow well, but the first time I asked him to come forward from behind, his feet grew roots and he shook like a leaf. Hmm. Interesting response that!
For riding we need the horses to understand the come from behind cue, so that's when I teach the "duct tape" lesson (refer to video lesson 2, and Chapter Nine of the Step-By-Step book.)
For Gambler you may need to add in a third lesson, combining "Robin's Magic Hands" with the "Why would you leave me?" game. It sounds as though Gambler may have had forward shut down. (Mind you, I obviously haven't met Gambler. I am making these statements based on the information you provided in your email which I'm then matching to other horses I've met that sound similar. This is very much a case of - if the shoe fits, wear it. If I met Gambler, I might see some entirely different dynamic at work, but the lessons I'm suggesting are good starting points. And if the shoe doesn't fit Gambler, it will probably fit some other horse that someone else is puzzling over.)
The WWYLM game is a transition lesson. It opens up lateral work, a key element for safety and also for performance. And it asks if a horse is ready to be ridden. I want to know that the horse is with me - that I can let go and ride on the buckle, and he won't be leaving. I want to know that I can slide up the lead and it won't stall out forward movement, or create tension. I want to know that when I slide up the lead, the horse will instead soften his jaw, organize his drill-team balance, connect his feet to the lead, and move in unison with me.
For many horses when you slide down the lead and ask them to soften, they stall out. You end up having to oblige forward, either by pulling them forward from the lead, or sending them forward from behind. It sounds as though Gambler has been chased around a bit, and he's telling you he doesn't like it. So you're going to use a different tack.
Now note this is in addition to the other lessons - not in place of them. I think many people are thinking the wwylm game is in place of some of the other exercises in the books and videos. But none of these lessons are intended to exist in isolation. They all compliment and support one another. They are additive. The more different ways we present a lesson the better. The cumulative effect of good, patient, consistent training is what changes horses.
"Robin's Magic Hands" is a targeting lesson. You want your horse to target his shoulder to your hand. You'll begin simply enough. Standing next to him, you'll place your hand on his shoulder. Slide your hand forward to the point where the heel of your hand is pushing his shoulder muscle forward. He may not move forward. That's okay, just wait. If he swings his head around toward you, use your outside hand (your left, if you're on his left side) to move his head back straight. Just press your finger tips against his jowl. And note, if he's still biting at you to the point where this feels unsafe, you aren't ready for this lesson. Go back to the beginning of this post and review all the lessons with him.
You don't want him swinging his head to the side just yet, so any time he looks around at you, reposition his head forward. When he finally does start moving his feet, stay with him. Keep your hand on his shoulder and follow him. When he takes a step or two forward, click and give him a treat. Make sure you click before he can get going so fast you can't stay with him.
Repeat. It won't be long before he is walking off fairly readily. This is offered forward rather than obliged forward - and there is a huge difference.
As he begins to walk forward more and more steps, you can control where he goes in your work space via your food delivery. Here's how that works: suppose he walks off heading toward the gate. Ideally you'd like him to walk towards the circle of cones that you laid out at the other end of your paddock for the wwylm game. So let him go just a step or two. Click. He's doing what you wanted, walking forward at a pace that let's you keep your hand on his shoulder. The click should cause you to interrupt your forward movement. The click is punctuation. It inserts a comma between the behavior and the treat. Make sure the comma is there, but also make sure it is a comma, not a period. I don't want you to rush your food delivery so your horse ends up "eating on the run", sort of fast food delivery for horses. Nor do I want you pausing so long after the click that you end up food luring your horse into the new position.
So where are you going to feed your horse? Where the perfect horse would be. If your horse had been walking with you, following your hand, instead of wandering off on his own agenda, where would he have ended up after the two or three strides that you took together? The actual horse ended up angled off towards the right headed to the gate. The "perfect" horse would have been curving around slightly more to the left. So take a step off to the side as you reach into your pocket for the treat. This will let you deliver the treat exactly where the perfect horse would have ended up.
Repeat this process. As you continue, you will find that there are times where you and your horse are walking together. You aren't following him to keep your hand on his shoulder. He's beginning to match his intent to yours. In fact you can begin to lead the dance. If you start to separate, he'll bring his shoulder back to your hand. He won't be pushing through you. Instead he'll be matching your strides and keeping pace exactly with you. That's a really fun feel. And it creates a beautiful look in the liberty work. It's also a great concept to teach. I want the horse to generalize this task. I want him to make it his responsibility to keep his body attached to mine. Think about what this means under saddle. The horse becomes responsible for keeping his bones underneath mine!
Once you have a good 'Magic Hands" connection, you're ready to add back in the connection to the lead or rein. This is actually easier to do in a bridle, so let's work with that. We'll start out on his left side. Have him go forward with your right hand on his shoulder. Use your left hand to pass the rein to your right hand. Click and treat.
You want to make sure that this slight movement of the rein doesn't disrupt anything, so repeat this a few times. Having trouble picturing this? All I want is for you to end up holding a slack rein in your right hand, but I don't want you to have to move your right hand off your horse's target spot on his shoulder to get the rein. So you'll use your left hand to deliver the rein to your right hand.
Next walk off, use your left hand to deliver the rein to your right hand. Now slide down the inside rein with your left hand and ask your horse to soften slightly to the side. You're now in the wwylm portion of this exercise. But instead of pulling him forward from the rein or sending him forward from a whip, you've inserted the "Magic Hands" step.
This has helped a great many horses who had become defensive about the lead or rein. Instead of snapping at your hands or grabbing the lead, they allow the handler to slide up the lead. Instead of dodging Gambler's teeth and falling into reactive patterns that work against both of you, you'll find yourself dancing with him, and truly enjoying the time you spend with him.
So on to the last issue - getting along with the farrier. This one can be hard, and there are lots of different strategies you can adopt. One of the farriers I used years ago had a lot of anger in him that erupted all too frequently in the horses' direction. I was just starting with Robin, and this was an issue. The older horses could cope, sort of, but Robin was afraid of him. This was not the farrier to use with a youngster who was just learning to have his feet handled. I ended up using a different farrier for Robin, but even so, just having someone who was so angry in the barn was upsetting. The horses didn't like him, so I stopped using him. Someone can have all the skill in the world, but if their "bed side manner" is lacking, I don't want them handling my horses.
You'll have to decide if your current farrier is someone who can work with you and your horses. That doesn't mean he has to agree with your training. He just has to tolerate it. You'll do your homework to prepare Gambler for the farrier. And you can show the farrier how well Gambler picks up his feet for you. Make sure you practice holding his feet in the positions a farrier needs for trimming. You might even want to invest in a hoof stand and teach Gambler to rest his foot on it.
You've got lots of time until his next visit. So teach Gambler the clicker foundation lessons. When the farrier comes for his next visit, you'll be all set to show off Gambler's beautiful "grown-ups are talking" behavior. Teach him a couple cute behaviors, things like fetching, that make people smile and relax. Plan ahead for your next farrier appointment so Gambler can have lots of ways to show the farrier how cooperative he is.
In summary biting is a symptom, not the disease itself. It is communication. When we learn to listen to our horses, when we provide for their emotional needs, when we give them sufficient turnout and time with other horse friends; when we meet their nutritional needs; when we deal with any pain issues they may have; and when we treat them fairly and consistently in training, the underlying issues that become expressed as biting disappear. Emotional control evolves out of a good foundation. Respect, that much overused word, evolves out of consistent, fair handling. So for now, when you are feeling so frustrated by Gambler's behavior, take a deep breath, step back a step or two, far enough so you can appreciate all the good things the two of you have accomplished together so far, have that cup of tea while you think about the next step in your training, and then enjoy the process of building a lasting relationship with the horse you so obviously love.
Alexandra Kurland
theclickercenter.com
Copyright 2006
