Mugging

I took some photos today of the process of teaching a horse not to "mug" for treats. This is Stowaway, a lesson pony who is the least clicker savvy of my horses. He has been here for the shortest amount of time and is a pretty solid lesson pony who hasn't needed a lot of work on his behavior. I hesitated to do too much clicker training with him because I didn't want to get into something with him that the kids couldn't follow through on. But I do occasionally let them give him a treat- for instance I like to click and treat the lesson ponies when they take the bit. The little students tend to get the bit up the ponies nose, down inside their lip or anywhere but between the teeth. Added to that is the hand in the eyeball, ears being squashed, etc and I feel like any pony who tolerates that deserves a reward!!! So I click but that can cause a problem when the ponies then reach for me while the kids are still trying to squash those ears around so I now have the kids themselves feed the treat.

So- the ponies need to stand and wait for the treat to be delivered, not go after those little fingers looking for their deserved reward.

This first photo is a typical mugging pony. He has reached around in front of me and is headed for my hand, his ears showing his intent. Through all these photos, the lead is either dangling or thrown over his neck. I am not using the lead at all to influence his behavior. I have a body position for myself which acts as a "cue" (see the other posts about cues) to remind a pony how to behave when he smells treats. I stand next to the pony's head, facing forward and with my hands crossed at my waist. All the other horses have learned that when I stand like that, it is their job to stand quietly at my side...the "no mugging" pose leads into the "grownups are talking" exercise. If you have a horse who is actually biting hands or is otherwise being dangerous, this exercise should be started with the horse in a stall with a dutch door or stall guard so that the horse cannot actually reach you. But Stowaway just needed a little reminder lesson. So when he reached like this, I simply stood still, looked forward and only looked at him out of the corner of my eye.

This next photo shows the tiny baby step I was looking for as an improvement over the previous. I was not looking for him to do any more than turn his head away from me slightly. Comparing the photos, you can see the difference. With that tiny movement away from me, I clicked/treated. A movement is easier for a horse to figure out than a duration exercise anyway. So as far as Stowaway was concerned, I had clicked for him turning his head away. He is familiar enough with clicking to understand that and after I gave him his treat, he chewed it while keeping his head out of my space. It is also very important to follow the rules of good feeding. I was careful to feed him away from my body: after I clicked, I turn toward him and extend my hand toward his chest so that he is always have to rock back from me to actually receive the treat...if the treat is always found under his neck, there is less incentive to reach toward the handler for it.

So here in this third photo, he is still flexed slightly toward me, but certainly not what I would call in my space. He is chewing his treat and waiting so I quickly click again to reward him for not reaching toward me again. Sometimes in an exercise like this it is helpful to click in fairly rapid succession so they get lots of rewards for being out of your space and aren't tempted to reach since the treats are coming regularly without that. Then you can gradually lengthen the time between clicks- 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds, etc. This is where you transition to the Grownups are Talking exercise. Not only is he not allowed to mug, he is expected to stand quietly next to me and just wait patiently.

And that leads us to the final photo:

Here, Stowaway is standing quietly and just waiting for the C/T. I can count up to 10, 15, 20, etc as I lengthen this out and what he has learned is that the C/T only comes when he is waiting like this, never when he is in my space and if he waits long enough, he will be reinforced for it. Most of the horses go through a stage where they actually turn their heads away from the handler, which comes from that initial moving the head away being reinforced. You can let this happen, time your click carefully so that you click when the head is straight forward, or wait until the head comes back to a center position to click.

Stowaway gets bonus points for standing there (he was allowed to graze) while I ran back and forth to the camera to set it on 10 second delay and then ran back to him!! :)

Kizzy, kids, cones & cues

Last Saturday, Kizzy got a chance to "show off" what she knew about targeting cones. I had a couple Pony Club kids here and I like to use the off-season to help them brush up on their handling skills. It's so easy to get caught up in Riding and forget how important all of our interactions are. Everything we do with our horses on the ground carries over into what we happens in the saddle- by being conscious of our actions, we can really see the benefit when we ride.

An example of this is our cues. Animals are very aware of our body language. We don't give them enough credit for figuring out what we want much of the time! A common example of this is when we walk off and expect our horse to come right along with us. And yet when we want to walk around in front of our horse, we walk off the same way and then firmly admonish "whoa!" when the horse "rudely" walks into us as we pass in front of them. Unless we have told them, in some way, to stand still, they think they are supposed to walk off when we do! And if they don't, they may get pulled on, yelled at or worse.

So what started off as a show-off for Kizzy, became a brief introduction for this concept that I hope to focus more on in the future. Kizzy has gotten very good at targeting cones within a distance of about 30 feet. That is as far as I have tested her which is within the confines of the round pen. That way, there are no distractions- I hope to really build it into a solid enough behavior that I can also do it outside a confined area where there may be distractions. I can now set 3 cones around the round pen and send her off from one to the other. I still click/treat after each cone. When the two girls were here, I demonstrated how I cue Kizzy to go to a cone. Starting with both hands by her nose, I extend my hand out in front of her in a sweeping movement that ends by pointing at the cone I want her to go to. She has occasionally decided it's easier to just make a little circle around me and go back to the cone that's right next to us but that doesn't earn the C/T! The girl who usually rides Kizzy got to practice a couple times and they did great. I was glad Kizzy was willing to do this for her as it's the first time she has done it for anyone other than me!

Then I got the other girl into it by posting each one of us at a cone so that we could send Kizzy from one to the other around the pen. This was new for Kizzy also so she wasn't as confident but did do it. What I noticed though, was the second girl just wanted to let her go and expected her to go to the cone herself. She did not understand the importance of the cue. Now when I began teaching this to Kizzy, there was no cue- except the presence of the cone. Simply seeing a cone was a signal to Kizzy that she could go touch it and get a treat! This was fine in the beginning at getting her enthusiastic. However, what happens if I want to use a cone in a lesson for another purpose? What if she goes to another farm where there happens to be cones in the arena? Kizzy will undoubtedly go to the cones and get frustrated because she's not being rewarded and her rider will get frustrated because the pony just wants to go to the cones! So I developed this cue as a way of telling her when it is OK to go to a cone and expect to be rewarded for it. She is just now learning that going to a cone without getting the cue first won't be rewarded. So it is important that she always get the cue.

So if WE remember how important our cues are and remember to be aware of how we cue things on the ground, we will be that much more aware of our riding cues/aids.

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