When Classical Conditioning Accidentally Goes Operant

That's a confusing title but I wanted those terms in for search purposes.

Classical conditioning is known as learning by association. We can pair something we know the horse likes with something new, and that helps the new thing be associated with the same calm and/or happy emotions.  

Operant conditioning is learning which takes place as a result of consequences. If your horse walks up to you in the paddock and gets a carrot, that consequence will affect the likelihood of the horse walking up to you next time you enter the paddock. 

We often say that classical conditioning and operant conditioning go hand in hand. It's impossible to separate the two. If I am training with operant conditioning in mind by offering treats when my horse does things I like, the fact that I am giving treats will give an overall happy association to training with me. 

It also goes the other way. If I am trying to make a simple associations with food and something else, such as hoof trimming, and I hand treats to the horse, the horse will find any patterns in when I feed. If I happen to feed when the horse swishes her tail and then coincidentally do that two or more times, the horse may think that swishing her tail is what earns the treats. The consequence of getting a treat after she swished her tail, even though it was coincidental, will inform her decision about whether to swish her tail again. 

I experienced this challenge this morning while trying to classically condition my Kizzy pony to the sound of clippers.  In my 30 Days of Husbandry online course, Kizzy demonstrated some concern with clippers. In the last week I have been focusing on that as a training goal. She has made good progress in her comfort level and I was almost ready to try doing a little clipping, but decided on one more step first. I had been working on a lot of classical conditioning with running the clippers around her, but I know that when the clippers actually do some cutting they can change sound. I decided to let her listen to me clip another horse while she ate treats. 

Walter's "cat hairs" under his jaw

I don't clip my horses as a general rule. I like to leave them with their whiskers and other hair which serves a function. But sometimes clipping needs to be done for veterinary purposes so I like to prep my horses and ponies for those just-in-case situations  Another thing I tend to clip are the long hairs which grow along the jawline in winter. During cold and icy months, I think those hairs serve to wick water and ice away from the face. But they tend to hang on long after cold weather does so in spring I sometimes decide to clip them to neaten up the appearance. I often wait until later in the year so I hope I haven't jinxed us by using Walter as an example for Kizzy and clipping under his jaw. 

Luckily, I have been videoing my daily sessions with Kizzy and so I caught this on video.  You can watch it here. 

The Launch of Bookends Farm Academy

The 30 Days of Husbandry course is now open at https://bookendsfarmacademy.com 

Preview 30 days of Husbandry

I am about to open my new 30 Days of Husbandry course for registration. From now through the weekend this post will be available which allows you to preview the detailed description and the Introduction. I was going to open registration today but decided I better have access to my tech guy for the initial registrations so am waiting until Monday but you get to read the Introduction for free.  

Please note that this is copied from the course. Links, arrows, and things "to the right" are not available in this blog post!

Who is this course for? Participants should come to this course with at least a basic understanding of clicker training.  If you know the importance of good timing and keen observation; and have the basic mechanics of how to click and feed safely, this course can be a great next step of what else you can do with clicker training. Many of us have found ourselves in the position of needing better behavior for certain situations and wishing we had already practiced them.  These 30 skills will give you a launching pad toward that end.

Description

In this course are 30 things you can do with your horse to help her become more comfortable with her care. They include things as basic as haltering and as challenging as injections. To be clear, I am not teaching people how to administer injections, apply bandages or drive a truck and trailer. I am going to demonstrate how I teach a horse to stand still for injections, desensitize a horse to bandaging materials, and the process I use to load a horse into a trailer. 

The day that your horse gets injured or ill is stressful on you both. I want to encourage people to be proactive in training for these times. A horse who has been exposed to procedures with positive reinforcement ahead of time will be a horse who is happier and safer to be around than a horse who has no, or only unpleasant experience with them. 
I came up with this list when I had a horse on stall rest last summer. I needed things to do with him to keep his brain busy and provide his much-loved clicker training sessions. As a result, all but two of these things you can do in a stall. It’s always good to practice in a variety of locations, but it’s nice to have a list of things you can do when injury, weather, or time constraints call for a quick training you can do in a stall. I like to add one of these lessons to everyday grooming sessions in order to keep up with them even when not on stall rest. 

You will see real life oops moments. You'll see poorly timed clicks, unintended cueing of other behaviors, and some rushing through training. I try to note them so they serve as examples. Noting our mistakes helps us quickly regroup and with that knowledge we can adapt our training to get back on track.

You'll also see real life situations such as the presence of errant dogs and a cat. My intention is to have dogs confined away when working with horses and this is what I strongly recommend.  But you'll see I don't always take my own advice.
Bookends Farm is located close to the 45th parallel.  Some of the videos were taken in warm weather and some taken in winter. As a result, some of the videos show sleek and shiny individuals, and some show fuzzy and stained ones. Training can't wait for the perfect moment or the perfectly groomed pony. I love grooming and a well turned out horse, but I took advantages of training moments when I had them so you'll sometimes see us dirty.
My hope is that the variety of what you see here will help you decide what you could work on to help your horse, and a range of possibilities as to how to use positive reinforcement with them.

The Introduction

THE LESSONS- Each lesson includes writeup and brief video of various phases of training. Some lessons show the introduction of a topic, such as introducing a pony to clippers for the first time, while other lessons show progress toward comfort. Your horse will most likely offer a different response than mine do, because each horse is different. This is why you will want to work your way through all the lessons, even if you start with the ones which interest you most. If you feel frustrated or are looking for troubleshooting help, be sure to read the lesson called "But My Horse..." very carefully.

To navigate through the lessons as they are listed alphabetically, you can use the blue arrows toward the top right of the screen. Clicking the blue X will take you back to this introduction. To keep track of which lessons you have completed, click the red "Mark Complete" button. You can always come back to any lesson, even if marked completed.
You can also jump around to the lesson of your choice by using the menu at the right.

THE GOAL- My goal for your horse is what I will call Relaxed Cooperation. Please note that this course does not include what can be called “consent”, “choice” or “start button” training. This course will, however, give you a foundation for that type of training.

Let me define what I mean by relaxed cooperation because it is possible to have cooperation without relaxation and relaxation without cooperation. 

Relaxation- I assess relaxation by watching for stress signals. As you watch the videos in the course and then go out to work with your own horse, I encourage to you look for things like wide eyes and pricked ears. Does the pony lean or step away from me or an object I hold? Does she raise her head or have nostrils flaring or heart pounding? These responses tell me if my horse or pony is feeling stressed. We know they respond to fearful situations with fight, flight or freeze. I want the opposite in a horse who stands while maintaining body signals of comfort: soft eyes, ears at rest, head at mid height, muscles relaxed.  

Cooperation- Cooperation needs to be considered on a case by case basis with each topic.  Before beginning to work with your horse, decide how you are going to define cooperation. What may be cooperative in one situation may be uncooperative in another.  A horse who stands with four feet planted firmly on the floor is being cooperative for an injection, but uncooperative for having her feet trimmed! Have a picture in your mind of what your horse looks like while you are working on something and then be sure to include that picture in what you reinforce when training. 

PHASES OF TRAINING FOR HUSBANDRY

I have created four loose phases for these lessons. First, is the Introduction. By introduction, I am referring to the very first time that a horse or pony is presented with a particular experience or piece of equipment. This is relevant for both young horses and for horses who may not have had much handling in the past. But it can also involve a situation where you and your horse are just lucky to have avoided the necessity of that experience, such as an x-ray or ultrasound machine. The saying "you only get one chance to make a first impression" applies here. After that, you are in phase four, recovery phase.

The second phase I refer to as Progress. This comes after the first introduction but does not necessarily get you all the way to being ready for the real thing. The Progress portion of the training may just take a session or two or it may take weeks or more, depending on your horse and his history, as well as you and your skills. Please don’t rush this phase or you may find yourself in an unpleasant state of the fourth phase unnecessarily. 

The third phase is Ready. This means that you have gone through a thorough training process to prepare your horse and yourself for whatever is to come and you are ready for it. When you do, you’ll find out how well prepared you really were, and what holes there may have been in your preparation. And that is why there is a fourth phase.

The fourth phase is Recovery. The recovery phase is when the horse or pony has already experienced a procedure, even once, but you return to work on it more. At this point the previous experience is going to affect responses.

Many people skip this training phase and regret it the next time they need to do something.  A classic example is loading a horse in a trailer. A smart person will begin weeks in advance of actually needing to haul the horse somewhere, or better yet, when you don’t even have plans to haul but you want to be ready Just In Case. So you practice in careful and simple training sessions until your horse walks calmly into the trailer and remains relaxed while you close him in and you have even taken him for short rides down the road. Then comes the day when you need to go somewhere. You load him up, and take him to a show, or to meet friends for a trail ride, or wherever you need to go. After you get home, you clean out the trailer and put it away. That’s the mistake. How often have we heard, “he loaded fine last time”. We need to leave that trailer available after our adventure and go right back to loading practice again. Just because he got on the trailer that time, doesn’t tell us how he felt about his trip. We may have thought it went well, but we don’t know the horse’s opinion until we ask him. Maybe you had to travel on a really bumpy portion of road, or got stuck in noisy construction traffic, or the horse next to him was trying to bite and/or kick him for much of the trip.  Or maybe he didn’t like where he went: a long day of showing, being tied to the trailer in the hot sun, going to the vet clinic. Or maybe you weren’t your normal self that he has come to know and rely on because you were nervous, or distracted by other people, or just concerned about your horse.  All these things factor into your horse’s experience of what happened after he got onto the trailer and will affect how he feels about getting into the trailer again. Going right back to training the day after you return will show you whether he is still willing to load and stand calmly, or whether you have more recovery training to do (as well as thinking about what might have upset him enough to make him less cooperative afterward).  And this kind of thing happens with all our husbandry interactions from vet visits to care from us at home. That’s why it’s important to add regular husbandry training to our days.

EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES- Some of these lessons require nothing more than you and your horse, but others will be more effective with some basic supplies. I have included a list of things to have on hand. If you don’t have them, you may be able to borrow from a friend or create something out of things you do have on hand.  In the lesson on x-rays, for example, I use a small piece of plywood as a mock x ray plate. 

LASTLY If you have a serious behavioral problem, please contact a positive reinforcement professional for assistance.  I know people in different parts of the country (and other countries too) that I can refer you to if you email me, and many of us also provide online support if you don’t have anyone in your area. 

You will have six months to work on this course before your registration expires.

HOW TO BEGIN 
There is no particular order in which to do these lessons. I recommend beginning with the Haltering lesson. This lesson shows how to break things down into baby steps. After that, the Picking Up Feet lesson will give you an example of how to look for tiny beginnings like weight shifts without expecting the full lift of the foot immediately. Once you have done those two, there are a couple approaches to consider:

• read and watch through them all before ever including your horse
• choose what looks most interesting to you, do the lesson, and take it to your pony

Weary of Winter? Training Skills to Make It Easier

That's pretty wild.  I just uploaded this photo and the blogging program made it snow on it.  It was snowing when I took it.  Sometimes the internet is really creepy.  

It is appropriate since this post is about dealing with winter. Winter means different things to different people. Living close to the 45th parallel (amazing the things I learn while writing), and at an elevation of 1658 ft, this is about as harsh a winter as I ever want to deal with.  I know some have it harder, but this is enough for me.  It is beautiful, it is refreshing, it is a welcome break from all things hot and sticky (see previous blogpost for examples!). But it is enough.

Winter presents new management challenges: water freezes, grass disappears, many layers of clothes are required for outdoor activities. Last fall I thought it would be a good idea to write about some specific training goals to make winter more bearable.  Unfortunately, I did not get it written before hard winter hit, so if you find some of these things potentially useful, you can try working on them now (depending on the conditions you live in) or you can put them on the calendar to work on when it's warmer so you'll be well prepared when next winter comes.  I had some of these things trained already, but when I posted my proposal on my Facebook page, people had suggestions for other things which I'm working on this winter, when I can.  

Kizzy has frosted eyelashes at 9 below zero

Two things which I had trained for general purposes but which come in very handy in winter are following a fist target and backing at gates.  In the winter, a fist target becomes a glove or mitten target.  It seemed to be an easy transition for the horses, probably due to my body position (arm extended out to the side) being the real cue, and following whatever was held out is the behavior.  They have learned to follow target sticks, pinwheels, flapping tarps and other things I hold out, so a heavily mittened hand was not strange.  Why is this handy in the winter?  Because haltering is not easy in frigid temperatures.  My horses all "self halter"; I hold out a halter and they put their noses down into the noseband.  But then there are two options depending on how you maintain your halters.  I prefer leaving the crown piece done up so I just have to slip it over their ears.  Others prefer to leave the throat latch done up and do the buckle behind an ear each time.  Doing up buckles is not easy when you really don't want to take off gloves.  And if you do take your gloves off and your hands are the least bit damp, your fingers immediately freeze to the metal buckles.  ouch. 

Leaving the crown pieces buckled allows me to slip halters over ears but I have found that when ears are the least bit damp, they become more sensitive.  Individuals who have no problem with ear handling in mild weather will pull away.  That tells me that they probably feel the way my fingers do when they are cold: a lot less tolerant of manipulation or being bumped.  

In any case, one solution is to just avoid halters altogether and target horses where they need to go.  Paddock to pasture, pasture to stall, stall to paddock.  There aren't a lot of reasons to go elsewhere so they quickly learn the routine even without a target, unless I decide to swap something around and change the routine.  In that instance, a fist target is just as reliable as a halter.  

Backing up when I open a gate is just polite manners.  I don't need six equines crowding each other and trying to rush the opening to get inside for dinner.  In the summer, there is less pressure on the situation because they've been out in the sleepy sun grazing (unless of course they are desperate to get away from bugs).  When the temperature can't decide if it's above or below zero, the horses want to eat non-stop, they want to move to keep warm and they want to get into the barn out of the wind at the end of the day.  I make sure that my pockets are stuffed with hay stretcher pellets when it's time to turn them in.  Anyone who backs away from the gate or door gets a handful on the ground in front of them.  That both reinforces them for the backing and keeps them busy for a moment while I bring other horses in.  My over achiever then does not want to go in when I leave the door open.  He shows me he can wait until everyone else has gone in and then still stand waiting politely while I hold the door open. This is where the "walk on" cue comes in handy. I do not want to target him in because if I go inside, I let go of the door and the wind slams it on him.  So I need to get him to walk past me into his stall.

In addition to these two basics which my guys already know, I am working on two others this winter: walking behind me (as opposed to next to me) and standing for blanketing.  

Narrow paths through the snow. It doesn't look deep on either side, but trust me, step off that path and you're over your knees. 

I have a very strong preference for a horse who walks beside me when we are together.  For me, it is a safety issue. I do not want a horse behind me in case something startles him and he scoots forward.  Others think differently but this is my strong preference.  In the winter, it becomes a challenge when the horses have worn narrow paths through deep snow.  There isn't room for walking side by side.  Somebody has to wallow through the snow if you try.  In thinking about how to train this, I decided simple targeting, again, was the answer.  I have played with both Rumer and Percy with this.  Their initial confusion points out that my body position for following a target is the cue, rather than the fist itself.  When I tried to walk holding a fist behind me, they did not "see" it.  I had to introduce this position slowly.  I could have done it by gradually moving my hand from out to the side to a position further and further back until it was behind me.  That is what I would do if I was training it in the summer.  But I am training in the situation of narrow paths already existing.  Therefore, I changed my body position, rather than the arm and horse positions.  I stood sideways in the path and had the horse target my hand close to their nose.  Then I rotated slightly, facing further forward and repeated.  I proceeded this way until I was facing forward, with the horse/pony behind me, targeting my fist behind me. I did this all at a standstill. Then I took a step, click/treat.  Both Percy and Rumer took bigger steps than I did and were immediately breathing down my neck.  But this turned out to be a good thing because when I stopped, they stopped and had to back up to touch my fist and get the treat.  I decided this was a good lesson- to watch me and be ready to back up if I stop. If I take a header into the snow, I'd like to know the horse behind me is watching in case I stop and will be ready to stop and back up!  Once they are comfortable with this, I will decide what cue to put on it.  If I am carrying a hay net or water bucket, I cannot also hold a fist out behind me so there will need to be an alternate cue.

The last thing I am working on is holding still for blanketing.  You might think this would be easy and if you had asked me, I would have said so as well.  The problem I have is that I have trained each of mine to back up from a very light contact cue on the chest and/or when I face them and step close to the chest.  Well, guess what?  I do exactly those two things when doing up the chest buckles on a blanket. I face them, close to their chests and have hand contact as I fiddle with the buckles.  They back up. Because I don't blanket often, this isn't something that we practice much so with the recent cold biting wind, I've been thinking how to resolve this (the surcingles and leg straps and tail strap are not a problem- doing them up does not mimic any other cues).

My first thought was to have them target something with their nose and my second thought was to use the "stand" cue.  The problem with both of these is that while I know they would comply with those two requests, it remains that touching the chest and facing them would still be a cue to back up and in any other situation, I would expect them to move on to that next cue.  So they are doing exactly as trained.  I have also foolishly allowed them to back until they get to a wall, hoping that might stop them but they have each either learned how to back through a corner (to teach them to displace hips toward me) or learned to problem solve well enough that when cued to back when their butts are up against a wall, they adjust and find a way to keep backing. 

Right now I am thinking that the blanket itself needs to be the cue to stand, regardless of where I stand and what I do.  So I am training it from the start, recognizing that I will need to really micro shape and click often to catch them standing before they start to back.  Something I noticed the first couple times I tried, is that using food as a reinforcer also gets in the way of keeping them from backing, since I have trained a default of drawing back a bit after a click (as opposed to reaching toward me for the treat). 

My solution for this is to use scratching as a reinforcer.  There are many complicated ways to train secondary or alternative reinforcers but I took the direct and easy approach. Blanket wearing also causes the itchies.  So I touch a blanket buckle, and then scratch the chest (no click since for me click=food reinforcer).  Scratching the chest makes them want to lean in to me, rather than back away.  I pull out the end of the blanket strap or undo a snap and scratch again.  Any thought of backing away is negated by that scratch.  Slowly repeating this process has changed horses who want to back away, into horses who gladly stand for, what they think, is a chest scratching, but for me is an opportunity to do up or undo chest buckles.

Blankets piled on the door after being taken off for a sunny day.

Next topic- some simple ways I enrich my horses' winter days.