e.) Clinic #5: Managing Energy and Emotions

Clinic # 5: Managing Energy and Emotions

In this clinic we're definitely moving away from basics into concepts that sit on the leading edge. This is the work we explore in Science Camp with Dr Jesus Rosales Ruiz, Mary Hunter, Michaela Hempen and myself. That doesn't mean the work is suddenly going to become difficult and hard to understand. As always, the approach I'm taking is constructional. We may be looking at complex ideas, but we will do it through the lens of behaviors you understand well.

One way of viewing this course is to say that it's about problem solving. Most of our horses have some unwanted baggage we'd like to get rid of. But getting rid of things puts us in an older way of thinking. The focus is on the problem and what we can do to fix it. In these courses you've been learning how to shift your focus very deliberately to a constructional approach. That is certainly going to be the case in this course. We may begin by looking at a training problem we would like to solve, but the solution revolves around creating new behavior, not trying to fix something that is already broken. The cribbing project will show you very clearly how this works.

You'll learn how to establish baselines and identify the environmental factors effecting your horse's behavior.

Then you'll establish a training environment in which you teach your horse the behavioral repertoire he needs to be successful. You'll see how these procedures work to:

• provide alternatives to stereotypic behaviors such as cribbing.

• address unwanted behavior your crossover horse may be presenting such as biting as you saddle him, or reacting violently to the lead.

• teach new performance skills.

We'll be following the very detailed case history of Blondie, a quarter horse mare who is the subject of a research project on cribbing conducted by Michaela Hempen under the guidance of Dr Jesus Rosales Ruiz.

So this is real world training. You will be seeing how the concepts we've been exploring can be applied to solve some very complex training issues.

Blondie during the cribbing study