SEEKING

SEEKING (intentionally capitalized to differentiate it from the simple word) is a term and concept credited to Jaak Panksepp of Washington State University. I first read about it in Temple Grandin's book Animals in Translation and later in Karen Pryor's book Reaching the Animal Mind. I won't try to explain it here other than to say it is what motivates animals to do things...and it has a large part in everything from why an animal goes foraging for food, to drug addiction and gambling, to clicker training.

The reason I bring it up is because Kizzy demonstrated the concept beautifully today. If Clicker Training was really about food, then it would make sense that an animal would work for the food as long as there was no "free" food available. Today, I absent-mindedly threw Kizzy a flake of hay when I went to the barn before thinking about the fact that I was planning on working with her. Certainly a Welsh type pony knows the value of free food. Nonetheless, I picked up the wooden mat I have been using to teach her Mat Work, filled one pocket with hay stretcher pellets and the other with a few peppermints and went in her stall. I had to walk around Her Fuzziness to plunk the mat down as she didn't exactly step back away from her hay pile when I entered. But when she saw the mat, she lifted her head, turned, walked to the mat, and stepped onto it. I clicked and gave her a peppermint because I was so pleased that she had chosen to work with me. The younger horses will always leave food of any kind to come and play but I thought Miss Kizz might be a little too jaded for such nonsense. I continued to work with her for a little while and after the initial peppermint, I just gave her the normal 2 hay stretcher pellets per click. She was choosing to stay, stepping on and off the mat upon request, in exchange for what amounted to a total of about a handful of hay stretcher pellets. Since there was a large flake of hay right there in her stall, free for the taking, it had to be something other than the food motivating her to work with me. What is it? Temple Grandin:

Dr. Panksepp says the best he can come up with is intense interest, engaged curiosity, and eager anticipation.

Recent brain research has indicated that the

part of the brain starts firing when the animal sees a sign that food might be nearby but stops firing when the animal sees the actual food itself.

(again from Temple Grandin). So it isn't the food (or drug or coins coming out of the slot machine) that is exciting, it's the....SEEKING.....of it. It's the puzzle, the challenge, the game that is fun. And that is why Kizzy was willing to leave her food to come see if she could figure out how to make me give her treats. It truly was the training which was rewarding because she had to figure it out, not just be pushed or pulled into place.

To quote Karen Pryor, it is SEEKING which differentiates Clicker Training from traditional training.

In traditional training, animals learn what to do and what to avoid around people from the reactions of people. It's the same way animals learn what to do around other animals in the wild, from the reactions of other animals.

In OUR kind of training, animals learn how to find food, increase their skills, and discover new ways to have fun the same way they learn in nature—from exploring the world itself.

Kizzy and Mat Work

One of the challenges I chose for the Clicker Challenge on Facebook was working with Kizzy on mat work. The challenge is almost up and I have learned a lot in this three weeks- I thought it would be a simple exercise, as it has been with others.

My first challenge was in the type of mat I used. I have been told that horses really like a wooden mat and the guess is that they like the sound for some reason. So I used a piece of plywood this summer and really liked the results compared to the flimsy doormat I had used previously. But plywood on snow is slippery, and snowy hooves on plywood are slippery. So I began working with Kizzy in her stall with the doormat. After a couple sessions, I could see that she frequently had her foot half off the mat, even though I was shaping her for having her feet in the center of the mat. I realized that she probably could not feel when her feet were on the mat compared to when they were on the shavings. I realized that if I used the plywood, she would be able to hear her feet hit the wood. She could certainly see it as she approached, but I began to really wonder about horses' ability to see where their feet are for this kind of work. Due to their blind spot, right in front of their noses, they wouldn't be able to see where their feet are precisely. This is all conjecture on my part, but certainly gives me things to think about and look for while training.

Another thing which happened was classic- Kizzy was using me as her cue. Not just for when I wanted her to step on the mat, but for where the mat was. And even further- where to stand even if the mat wasn't there. I had, without even realizing it, started standing right next to the mat. I probably did this unconsciously to sort of block her from stepping off the edge of the mat. But then when I tried to stand a little further from the mat, she didn't step on the mat at all, but lined up right next to me as if on an imaginary mat. This was a classic example of when we think we have taught behavior A (in this case I thought I had taught her to stand on the mat), but really what the horse learned was behavior B (in this case, to neatly line up next to me like a dog at heel, with no regard for the mat at all!).

It took us several sessions to clear this up and I'm not completely sure we have it fixed yet. I found a small piece of particle board (easier to lug into a stall than the larger piece of plywood I'd used this summer...not to mention I can't find that and I fear it's under the snow somewhere!). At first, the big breakthrough was her confidence in the way she stepped onto it once she could hear her feet landing on it. If her hoof ended up half off the edge, she quickly and easily corrected herself....she could feel that!

I thought that was the solution there, but soon found that if I was not right next to the mat, she still lined up next to me instead of stepping on the mat. This led to a frustrating session as I tried to click and treat a couple times and then step way away from the mat for the behavior to continue, but she just didn't get it. This was also an opportunity for me to learn more about Kizzy. She is very food motivated (she is a pony after all!) and I'm quite sure she'd stand on her head for food as long as she understood what I wanted. I also know she isn't "stupid". This was MY training problem, not her learning problem. But it was apparent how hesitant and concerned she was when she didn't get clicked. I work with the young ones so much that I get spoiled by their willingness to keep trying new things to get a click if what they are doing isn't working. But "crossover" horses- those who were originally trained with more traditional methods where creativity is discouraged rather than reinforced, are much less likely to try new things. And Kizzy's past is a bit murky and she is very worried about being wrong. So when I didn't click as she lined up next to me, you could see her confusion as she tried again and again but did not venture to try anything different. Then she would just stop and stand next to me. Poor pony.

So I started over from the beginning- clicking as she stepped onto the mat right next to me and gave her a full ten chances to be correct and get reinforced. I wanted that plunk plunk of her feet on the wood to become a part of the routine and set in her head along with the click. Then I moved about 2 inches further away from the mat and gave her many more trials there. I slowly moved my position (rather than "testing" her by moving further away) in different directions so that she got used to the stepping on the mat even if it meant stepping forward away from me or not being right next to me. And when she did make a mistake, which happened when only one foot landed on the mat because she was trying to be closer to me, I did not wait to see if she would correct herself because I had seen that only lead to confusion for her. Instead, I quickly and quietly asked her to back up off the mat and try again. Luckily, she caught on to that. If both feet didn't thunk thunk onto the mat, she was corrected and given another chance for immediate success. After a couple successes with that, I quit for the day.

I hope to video it soon, maybe today, and we'll see how things go. Photo above is Kizzy with a couple of her biggest fans- me and a student :)

Clicking for Grooming

The weather has been really nasty here for the last several days but in the days before this I spent a lot of time with the shedding blade. I found myself using the clicker for many different behaviors while grooming.

Starting with the youngest, Percy got clicked for letting the shedding blade touch him all over his body. This is his first experience with it and he was happy to sniff it and bite it and showed no fear of the thing itself. As a result, I did not feel the need to click for just touching it and did not want him to think that was the purpose of the exercise! But I did click for standing still while I used it on his neck, and then progressed on to the rest of his body. When I first began with clicker training, it was hard to always think in terms of clicking FOR a particular behavior. I found myself almost clicking for MY behavior. In other words, if I was able touch a horse with the blade, then I clicked. Then if I was able to touch him twice with the blade, I clicked. This was very unproductive because I wasn't pinpointing a specific behavior of the horse. The horse might have been standing, might have been fidgeting, might have actually been pulling away. So the horse was getting rewarded for all these things. I am better now at deciding what specific behavior to look for...and knowing that I have to teach that behavior before I can expect the horse to do it in difficult circumstances. So in this case, I knew Percy already knew the rules for standing still (no moving feet) and for head down. I did a quick review of these behaviors so he knew what track I was on, and then began to use the blade, clicking after 1 swipe with the blade, then 2 swipes, then 3 etc. When I moved to a different part of the body, I began again with clicking for 1 swipe...being willing to stand still for having your neck worked with is different than standing still for having your tummy tickled! I think the most difficult thing for him was that at times it felt really good and he wanted to lean into it and his little nose would screw up as he tried so hard to hold still!

With Ande, I did the same basic exercise but required stillness from more of his body. I had done Percy just loose in his paddock, but Ande is familiar with cross-ties and I am trying to do it a lot so it becomes very natural for him to stand on them and not fidget with his head or bite the ropes, etc. He is really quite good, but more practice and reinforcement never hurts. I was also much more random with the clicks with him. I basically just worked away on him and clicked about once on each general body part (neck, barrel, rump, upper leg) when he was in the ideal position. He didn't move much but sometimes his head was up, or looking around at me. I chose the times that his head was low (as low as the cross ties allowed) and he had a relaxed expression on his face.

Rumer needs a lot of work on her feet. I clicked for the shedding blade as well- somewhere between the frequency of Ande and Percy, but I focused a lot of time on working with her feet. She is quick to pick up her feet like her mom. It almost seems like she is snatching them away from you but since I know Kizzy does the same, I don't try to change it. But that's her front feet. With her back feet, she does snatch them away and can kick out...she has been quick with her hind feet since she was a day old foal! I have always reasoned that she was different from the colts in this way- the boys bit, the girl kicked...seemed like a natural response. Luckily, Rumer gave up kicking when I started clicker training her- she began offering her front end instead of her hind end! But she is still sensitive to someone else touching her hind feet. The farrier tends to just hold on when she does that, but I want her to learn to relax and not have to go through that bit. So I am clicking her for leaving her foot down when I touch it. Then I gradually proceed to letting her just rest her foot and I will work up to having her rest it and letting me actually pick it up, rather than her doing the lifting.

Kizzy is the one who had me giggling because with all the cone work I've done with her, she is really getting into this game! For such a timid mare when I got her, it's great to see her putting herself out there and try things. With her, I wanted to teach her to stand with her nose on the cone for a duration of time so that I could groom her without tying her. I had taken her out of her paddock so there was the whole barnyard to explore and bits of hay just begging to be vacuumed by Kizzy the professional cleaning woman! I got her enthusiastically bonking the cone with her nose and then progressed to waiting a fraction of a second before clicking to give her the idea that she needed to leave her nose there as opposed to just a quick tap. She was pretty quick and pretty accustomed to just having touch it so it took several tries but she got it- sort of. The reason I got laughing was because she was so enthusiastic that she kept trying to do different things to the cone- smacking it with her nose to send it teetering like one of those punching clowns. But- she did get better at it- and in the process, I was able to give her a thorough shedding while she never left the cone. More practice to come with that one!

Kizzy learns lateral work

I certainly had no intention of teaching Kizzy lateral work when I took her to the round pen today. It was one of those situations where my training plan worked backwards. I started at one place and kept backing up steps until I finally found a place that we could work from. That isn't the best method to approach these things with but it is eye-opening to see all the layers of training that can be missed if you don't take the time to back up.

Since Kizzy has learned to love targeting cones (and even went so far as to start smacking one around the other day!), I thought my next step would be to teach her to go between a set of cones. My purpose is to use this to give her a gateway of cones to go through, between which I could then place ground poles or small jumps for kids. It is challenging enough for kids to worry about position and pace without having to steer as well. Since Kizzy has no jumping background, she isn't a "point and shoot" pony who will figure out which general direction she's pointed at and find the jump for the child.

So I picked out some very different-looking cones so she could learn which to target and which to go through- these are smaller, white, flimsy and not solid whereas her targeting cones are the big road construction type cones. I also used two sets of "Bloks"...the plastic blocks that can be set at different heights and used to make little jumps. That way, they will transition perfectly to their jumping purpose. So with those 3 pairs of "gates" set evenly around the round pen, I started out leading her around and would Click/Treat every time we went through a pair. I am trying to be careful to get behaviors more solid before progressing with them so I made myself count out 10 repetitions of this behavior- 5 in one direction and then 5 in another. I found a huge discrepancy between the two directions. To the left, with me leading her on the traditional side, she marched right along eagerly and even quickened a tad as we approached the gate. But to the right, when I was leading from her right, she lagged behind me and would always try to go around behind me either when I clicked or after I treated. So I changed my criteria to doing 10 full repetitions to the right alone. By the tenth, she was staying more consistently next to me but still with nowhere near the enthusiasm she had to the left.

My next step was to lay the leadrope over her neck and walk to the inside of the inside cone while she walked between the cones. I want to progess to my standing in the middle of the round pen and sending her around on her own. Yes, I could just chase her around with the longe whip, but that would not have showed me all that going through these steps did and I think I am going to have a much happier and more cooperative pony in the end this way. Again, to the left, she seemed to pick that up pretty well, but she had a tendency to drift toward me so she wasn't in the center of the gate. I needed a way to send her away from me. I tried the same cue I had used to send her to target a cone....but that made her go to one of the cones or bloks and touch it with her nose. Well, that was good I guess, that she figured out that cue so well! But I was going to need something different here. So I thought of the longe whip. My traditional training has taught me how to send a horse out on a longe line, so that's what I decided to try next.

I let Kizzy loose in the round pen while I went to get a whip and do some thinking. What I was remembering was how Kizzy behaves while I longe her with kids on her. She does this a lot and is still happiest the closer she is to me. When I try to point the whip at her shoulder to push her out, she gets VERY cranky, pins her ears and swings her head at me. I realized I have never taught her to move away from a whip, I have just used the threat of a whip to send her out. Not that I really meant to threaten her with it....but when you wave a whip at somebody to make them go away...well that's what you are doing! And what I got in return was Kizzy's defensive behavior. I'll refrain from commenting on why that wouldn't be a good form of longeing in any situation but it certainly wasn't ideal for trying to teach kids on her back.

So I decided to use the same method I had used with Percy- if an 8 mo old weanling can do it, a teenaged pony should be able to! So I restocked my treat pouch, and took my lashless longe whip back to Kizzy. It only took me a trial or two to abandon the whip entirely and realize I had started (and in fact so far only used) my finger with Percy. Kizzy's pretty reactive and she wanted to move when I touched her shoulder. I clicked for that once or twice, just to tell her that moving was what I wanted (as opposed to a situation where I wanted her to stand still while I groomed or handled a wound). But then I withheld the click and lightly held the lead so she couldn't go forward. I didn't put any pressure on the lead, just held it so that if she tried to go forward, she would hit it and be stopped. She stepped forward and back a couple times before I saw a step that I could see was at least fractionally to the right and I clicked that. I tried again and once again we got a forward-backward try first, but then a distinct step to the right- away from my hand. I clicked and made a big fuss over her. That was all it took- she now knew that she needed to step away from the pressure (very light) of my finger on her shoulder. I was able to pretty quickly focus on her outside front leg as the clickable moment and within minutes, she was offering that as the first step and got lots of repetitions of that and lots of treats as well as verbal praise. I think that is important with her because of her worried temperament. She really responds to the kids and moms who fuss over her in a soothing manner :)

That quickly evolved into letting her walk forward, applying my finger and voila! beautiful lateral steps! We only did that about three times but I was sure she had it and so she got a huge handful of all the hay stretcher pellets left in my pouch as well as some carrot pieces I had. What a difference it will make if she will willingly move away from me pointing the whip at her shoulder instead of feeling threatened and forced to. Now if only I had started the day's session there :)

Kizzy and targeting cones

Today I will introduce you to Kizzy. Kizzy holds a special place in my heart; perhaps it is because she is the littlest, perhaps because she was the pony who started me off giving Jr Pony Club lessons here or perhaps because she was a rescue who was a challenge to even catch when I first got her. The littlest lesson kids love her (and so do their moms!). She is not at all a laid back pony- and kids who learn to post on Kizzy have really accomplished something as her trot steps are rapid-fire! Kizzy is also Rumer's mom :) She is about 12 hands and in her early teens. I have had her about 3 years.

I began using her as a lesson pony the first year I had her even though I knew very little about her background. My daughter, who is a perfect pony rider because even as an adult, she fits on ponies just fine, had ridden her and she was a little wiggly but didn't object to being ridden. I was only planning on using her for one beginner on a longe line anyway... little did I know how that would grow!

I knew she had been treated harshly and she was very head shy; and very quick to jump and react around people. Initially, I just gave her time to get used to us and tried to reward her with treats and pleasant experiences whenever people approached.

Fast forward to today. I have used her in lessons with many children and she has come along nicely. It is great to introduce new kids to her because they can easily see how they need to move slowly around her so she doesn't get worried. Because of her size being perfect for very young children, I am trying to find ways to make her job enjoyable and be a good mount for small children as they become more independent and go off lead. My current project with her is teaching her to go to a cone even if it means going away from me. Now that she feels safe with me, she'd rather stick close to me when kids are on her than go off around the arena. As long as the kids use proper rein aids, she does go along, but sometimes it requires stronger aids than I'd like and I'd rather she was happy with her job of going where a child "suggests". I'm hoping to use targeting cones to teach her to go around the arena, to go over a line of ground poles or a small jump and go straight to the end, etc. without needing a lot of direction from her tiny riders.

Now Alex Kurland has filled my head with fantasies of teaching a pony to identify colors and be able to direct them around a whole course from a distance. I'm sure she is very capable of doing that but right now, I need to start at the beginning! So after teaching her to target cones, it took some time to teach her that she could walk away from me to go to a cone. As soon as I tried to stop and just have her go a step beyond me, she would stop dead. Good pony! I can't fault her for that!

So I needed a cue to tell her it was OK to keep going beyond me. Today was the first day we really achieved that. What I do is slide down the leadrope as we arrive at the cone and invite her to continue going forward by extending my hand out in front of her nose in a gently sweeping motion. At first I hung back just a hair as we approached the cone and made sure not to put any pressure on the leadrope that she would interpret as a request to stop. I do want this pony to halt at the slightest request from a small person. I felt it was a huge success when she took this tiny initiative to go beyond me. Even though she is VERY food motivated, she is more concerned about getting in trouble. I repeated that several times to make sure she was confident in stepping ahead of me and to try to be sure that both she and I were clear on the cue: I need to be very consistent with the cue I am giving her and I wanted several repetitions so I was sure she really understood it. Then I began to ask for a little more- a full step ahead of me, then a step-and-a-half, etc but with many repetitions at each new distance. I had put out two cones about 6 feet apart. At first I had her target one cone, then just led her to the next one to target, then led her beyond the cone and turned and came back to both cones again. When we had built up to her going the length of the (short) leadrope from me, I moved the cones further apart and laid the leadrope over her neck so I could let go of her and have her go further from me. At the end of our session for today, the cones were about 15 feet apart and I could send her from one to the other! She isn't enthusiastic about it and so I want to work on this more so she will do it without hesitation and worry. But I hope we are on our way!

You can see a couple photos of Kizzy on my website: www.bookendsfarm.com