People

Everywhere we went Panda attracted a crowd. We couldn't take two steps out of her stall without being surrounded by people wanting to pet her. Whenever I took her out she was always wearing her harness identifying her as a guide horse in training. When a guide is working, especially when it is with its blind handler, it's important to leave it alone. You don't want to distract the animal from its job. That gave me a polite and understandable way to restrict the amount of handling Panda had to deal with. When I did let people come up to her, I put her first in heel position and asked them to approach her from the side.

 

Panda responded to the attention with a pleasant expression, and sometimes even a wiggling of her nose as they found her itchy spots. That was a huge shift from her earlier outings where she had been warning people off. I was also pleased to see that Panda was responding to people who crouched down infront of her by drawing back.

 

Now this can sound awful. It sounds as though I was teaching her to be afraid of people, when in reality I was just turning them into a cue. Draw back when a hand is outstretched to you, and click!, you get a treat! This was a game Panda was understanding, and it kept her from nibbling on people's outstretched fingers.

 

Hugs

Panda had yet another breakthrough Friday evening. I was settling her in for the night, giving her her late evening snack. Like everything else I treat meal times as training sessions. Panda has learned that fussing at her door, demanding food, makes both me and the food disappear. To get me to bring her food into the stall she has to hold herself still. Once I'm in the stall she has to line herself up next to me in heel position. Click! At that point I'll put her dish down.

 

While she's eating, I usually spend some time leaning over her, rubbing on her, just to habituate her to more contact. Panda generally didn't mind this, so long as I didn't reach under her belly. At home that would make her wiggle and squirm away like a little kid being smothered by a bear hug.

 

Friday when I put my arms around her, I didn't feel the usual drawing into herself. I gave her a squeeze, remembering what I've heard about autistic children finding comfort in a full body squeeze and the speculation that animals have the same response.

 

I pressed my arms around Panda and felt her whole body relax. Click, she got a treat. At the same instant, I released her from the bear hug, so two things marked her acceptance of the hug: the click, and the release of pressure. I squeezed her again, and again she responded back. Instead of drawing into herself, she relaxed and melted into my arms. Finally! I wasn't the predator grabbing her around the neck and pulling her down. I was a trusted friend embracing her with an affection she could return.

 

This opened the door to another important lesson. I could now sack her out. As I leaned over her, I reached up and tousled her forelock. No problem. Click and treat, plus the immediate withdrawal of my hands. I repeated this, rubbing her all over, playing with her ears, her muzzle, doing all the things she normally found annoying, but now accepted with good grace.

 

I hope I'm clear here about what was happening, and why I had not done this sooner. When I say that Panda up to this point had not been comfortable being touched, I don't want you to picture a horse who was quivering in fear or throwing herself on the ground every time a human came near her. I could certainly handle her, groom her, pick out her feet, etc. but her initial reaction was always to draw back from any approach. This is totally understandable, especially given her size. It is all too easy to "make" a horse behave, especially one that weighs less than 100 pounds. It's so natural to force compliance instead of teaching the animal cooperation.

 

Panda's early handling was clearly very kind, but in any breeding program that produces over forty foals a year, there's bound to be a certain amount of "just get the job done" handling. Panda liked people. She was incredibly sweet, loved being scratched and fussed over. She just didn't feel comfortable with grabby behavior.

 

I could have sacked her out in the early stages of her training, but the principles of training made me postpone that lesson. "You can not ask for something you have not taught your horse." I had not taught Panda to stand still. Until that layer was in place, the sacking out needed to wait.

 

If I had done it earlier, yes, I could have habituated her to my hand, but I would have been forcing a lesson on her that she was not ready for. I would have seen the life go out of her eyes. I don't want to teach her that she's "just a horse" and she has to put up with anything I choose to do with her. That's not the kind of relationship I'm interested in developing. I'm not a production trainer. I don't have a set time in which I have to have Panda trained and ready to work. I have the luxury of being able to take my time, and wait for each lesson to emerge.

 

Think of training like peeling an onion. To get to the layers underneath, you have to remove the outer layers. You can do so in big clumps, but with most horses it's so much more effective if you peel back one thin layer at a time. You can see the layers underneath. You know where you're headed, you just have to be patient and peel back the training one step at a time.

 

That's why it is so important to focus on the principles of training, and to understand the emotional component of the learning process. That's what keeps you from being distracted and focusing prematurely on issues that over time are going to melt away on their own. At Tufts Panda was pinning her ears at people. At the Equine Affaire, that behavior was gone. Focus on what you want, not the unwanted behavior. Find one small thing you can ask for and get on a consistent basis as your starting point. Train in small steps so your horse continues to be successful. And most of all enjoy the process. Panda was reinforcing for me the importance of all these fundamental training principles.

 

In case you haven't figured it out by now, this is why I am sharing in such detail her training. It is not to teach you how to be a guide horse trainer. No pun intended, but that would be the blind leading the blind. But I know many of you reading this are new to training. You're struggling to understand your horse, and you're probably surrounded by people all giving advice, much of it conflicting.

 

Who do you listen to?

When your horse acts out, offering behavior you don't like, do you clobber him, or feed him carrots?

 

For me the answer is always "go to people for opinions and horses for answers." The horses tell us so clearly what their issues are. And they also tell us when they are ready to work on them. If you just keep saying to yourself "I can't ask my horse to do something I haven't taught him to do", you'll come out right. That applies to every component of behavior. So for Panda I could not work on the handling issues until she was comfortable with all the components of standing still. This may seem like a slow way to train, but consider all the things she had learned in less than two months of training. Think of all the extra goodies I had accumulated by working in this slow, systematic fashion. And remember also, Panda is just ten months old, so we have all the time in the world to get things done.

 

Head Lowering

On Saturday Panda had another opportunity to show off her training. I gave another presentation. This time we were joined by one of my clients, Bob Viviano and his horse, Crackers. My original plan was to start with Panda, spend just a few minutes with her and then let Bob show off his horse. That was the plan, but if there's one thing you learn fast at these big expos is you have to be prepared for anything.

 

I had just started my presentation. Panda was with me in the ring, and Bob was waiting with Crackers. All was well, or would have been except for an over-eager volunteer who lowered the big overhead door a little too soon. It came down smack on Crackers' rear end. He could cope with all kinds of things, crowds of people, other horses, the lights and sounds of the arena, but he couldn't cope with the sky falling on top of him!

 

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Crackers fussing. Bob was doing his best to calm him down, but he was forgetting his tool box. One of the huge advantages to teaching and working with a variety of horses is it keeps your tool box fresh in your mind. Bob was used to Crackers being a calm, stable horse. Crackers hadn't always been that way. It used to be he couldn't walk down the driveway at home without finding something to worry about.

 

Bob had done such a good job training his horse, he'd forgotten how he had created this calm, level-headed attitude. With Crackers fretting over the door and what all of a sudden felt like very close quarters in the demo ring, he needed to go back and enforce the head-down cue. Under the pressure of the performance, Bob was forgetting how.

 

So I tossed Panda's lead to another client, Dolores Arste, and took Crackers from Bob. I wish I had had a stall where I could have put Crackers for a few minutes while I explained to people what I was going to do. That's one of the frustrations of these small demo rings. Crackers needed my full attention. He couldn't just stand quietly while I talked for ten minutes about head lowering and how you teach it. If he'd been able to do that, he wouldn't have needed the lesson. I had to work him, and hope people could sort of, maybe, follow what I was doing. It was a frustrating position to be in because while he was the perfect demo horse for this lesson, but we weren't in the perfect demo space.

 

I got Crackers settled enough to take the edge off his panic, and then made the decision to send him back to his stall. I felt badly for Bob in that he wasn't able to show off all the fun things he had taught his horse. On the other hand, it clearly showed how clicker training can be paired with pressure-and-release-of-pressure exercises to help horses out of their emotional meltdown moments.

 

"Trailer Loading"

While all this was going on, Panda had gone through an interesting meltdown of her own. She wasn't used to being left. For the past two months she had been my shadow, following me everywhere I went, and now without any warning I had tossed her off to someone else. Dolores told me later that she fretted, fussed, and even tried rearing.

 

Dolores stayed very focused and reinforced her for heel position. At first Panda ignored her, and then all of a sudden the light bulb went on. She locked into this secure position and became just as focused on Dolores as she is with me. And that, of course, is exactly the kind of emotional stability you want these base behaviors to create. That's why I put them on such a high rate of reinforcement. Robin has his "pose". Panda has "heel position". Both behaviors become emotional anchors for the horse and the foundation for all their performance work.

 

After Crackers left, I took Panda back. We had a couple of new things to add to the behaviors we'd demonstrated on Thurs.. One was the sacking out, and the other was free-shaping Panda to go into an over-sized dog crate. We set the crate up in the middle of the arena, then turned Panda loose to investigate it. Panda looked inside. Click and treat! Three clicks later, and she was in the crate! I wish all "trailer loading" could be this easy.

 

Panda is Guiding!

As we left the building after the presentation, I picked up Panda's harness and told her "forward". We were pointed across the parking lot, headed for the opposite side and the long walk back to the stables. Panda navigated me in a straight line across the street and stopped at the edge of the road. Click and treat. I gave her a right turn signal, picked up the handle of the harness, and waited to see what she would do. Panda turned to the right and guided me back to the stables.

 

Now it's not at all surprising that she would know where the stabling area was, or that she would head in that direction given the chance. Any self-respecting horse would do that. But what stunned me was the path she chose.

 

In our walks at home I always stayed on the edge of the road. We never wandered off the "shoreline" as it is called, except to go around obstacles, and then we always returned to the edge as soon as possible. Panda showed me that she has generalized this to you find an edge and follow it. Instead of cutting diagonally across the parking lot on the direct route back to the barn, she hugged the line of the buildings.

 

I followed behind her, offering as few navigational signals as possible. I was fascinated by the accuracy of her course. At each obstacle we came to she made exactly the right choice. What really amazed me was that at many places I would not have followed the path she chose. That's what told me she was truly guiding, and not just reading my subtle signals. For example, as we wrapped around the first building, we entered the front entranceway. I would have cut straight across. Panda went into the alcove and followed the line of the building exactly.