Peggy Hogan, in California, hosts a great group and site on Facebook called Clicker Training Horses. If you're on Facebook, I highly recommend you check it out. The subject of training for medical procedures came up recently, right as I was dealing with the same issue myself.
Percy, my TB x WB, age 2, came in with a fat hock. Fat hocks make me nervous. This was unusual in that it was high and inside. There was very little heat, and no pain or lameness. I didn't really think it was joint related but hocks aren't something I like to ignore. I was torn because I know how to throw the book at a hock on sport horses (icing, medicating, wrapping, sweating, x-rays, injections etc) and I know how to look the other way when a lesson pony has a puffy spot (they just get better). But Percy didn't fit either of those categories. I didn't need to worry about losing training days but I also didn't want to ignore anything which could cause problems for his career as a sport horse down the road.
Oh, and one other problem. We've been working on having him pick his feet up nicely with just a touch on the hind leg. Oops. Now I needed him to leave his foot DOWN so I could palpate. I decided to give the leg 24 hours to get better by itself. It didn't. I called the vet. He offered to come out immediately as it was the only time in the next 2 days he could get here. I decided it was a good idea. Time to panic train. I had 20 minutes to convince Percy that leaving the leg down was as reinforcing as picking it up. Thankfully, that was a breeze- a much smaller problem in reality than it was in my mind. I just clicked for leaving his foot on the ground when I touched his stifle (not anywhere near where I touch him for picking up his foot) and then worked my way down. I was also careful to maintain a very different body position- squatting and facing him, not bending over toward the rear. He got it in minutes. By the time the vet arrived, I could poke, rub, massage all over that rear leg from either side.
Feeling confident, I led the vet to him. Percy was in the round pen because it was bright natural light and we have had so much rain this fall, it was the driest place outside. The only problem with the round pen is that Percy feels Important when he's in there and likes to puff up a bit and show off. Funny boy. As the vet approached him and reached out to stroke his neck, Percy flattened his ears back. Wow. I realized that was the first time in his life I had seen him do that. He is SUCH a sweet and inquisitive soul, but I had never realized that he never put his ears back until I saw him do it and it was a shock. (Ande used to pin his ears at only days old when his mother tried to move when he was nursing!) I have to admit that I was struck incapable at this. I just did not know how to react.
I really like our vet- he's capable, common-sense, quiet and unafraid. But he's not a clicker trainer. I have never felt comfortable asking either my vet or farrier to adapt to my training techniques. I know I could make their work with my horses go better if I did and I should get over it but for some reason, I just feel that they are professionals and I shouldn't be telling them how to do their job. Perhaps if I felt that either one was too harsh, I would feel differently. But they both have wonderful, if traditional, approaches that do not intimidate the horses. And while I can get the horses to do things for me with CT, sometimes they need to learn that others need to work with them as well. I can do the prep work, but I can't BE somebody else.
So here was Percy, head up in the air, ears back and my vet simply continuing on slowly. OK, so he wasn't being reinforced for his behavior- the vet did not back off. But I also know how talented Percy is at standing up (he demonstrated that at his first hoof trimming as a baby and practices regularly in the field while playing with others) and I feared that was next. I needed to redirect this before we went there because that WOULD stop forward progress and be reinforcing. I tried putting a fist out to target, but his eye was on the vet. So I said "HEY!" to get his attention and instantly put my hand on his poll (I could barely reach it). Thankfully, we have practiced that a zillion times and he reacted instantly by dropping his head a couple inches. Click and treat and hand on the poll again. Rapidly. Normally a hand on his poll instantly puts his nose in the dirt, but even in this tense situation, I got an immediate reaction of some kind which I could reward and we were on the road. I continued to CT as the vet worked his way back toward his hind end and down the leg. He lifted his leg once, I put a tiny bit of pressure on the lead and was quiet. When his head came down a fraction, his leg did as well- CT and we were making progress again. He put his leg all the way down and left it on the ground. Phew.
The vet agreed it was probably not the joint (another big Phew!) but a sprain/strain in the lower gaskin area. We discussed hosing but Percy hates being hosed. We have worked on it I know his mother hates it as well, as do most TBs unless the air and water temperatures are just right. They just have very sensitive skin. In northern VT with no hot water in the barn, I had 2 days this summer when it was hot enough that he enjoyed being hosed with icy water. Now it's fall, cold and muddy. Luckily the vet understood that and thought bute and massaging would be good as long as we saw progress. He suggested an IV injection of banamine and dexamethazone to get the healing started. I let Percy loose for a moment in case he wanted to let off steam while the vet went to his truck for the meds. No, he wanted to follow us.
When we went back in, Percy's ears went back again. It made me so sad! It reminded me of a certain little girl who needed some nasty medicine when she was about 2 years old. Normally a very cooperative child, she did not want that medicine! She fought like a wildcat kitten and it took three adults to hold her down to squeeze it in her mouth. At the same time, she was using her best adult verbal skills to bargain with us to no avail. With Percy, there were only two adults and he weighed a lot more than that little peanut of a girl. My Clicker Training skills were all I had to explain the process. Thank goodness they worked! Head down= CT. Any level was accepted as long as it kept getting lower. My vet slipped the needle in in a split second and I just kept clicking away as long as the head came down when asked. The ears waffled between back and sideways but he stood like a rock for 2 syringes worth. My biggest concern at that point was Ande who was reaching through the round pen to chew on him! The vet kept saying, "he's really doing quite well, don't you think?" Amen!
Next project: twice daily bute paste. I hadn't done anything with a paste syringe since worming him a couple weeks ago. The first time with the bute, I tried putting a halter on him and CT'd him to stand while I approached his lips with the syringe. I got it in but it really didn't feel right. So the next time I went in his stall without a halter and just stood with the syringe. Being friendly and curious, he couldn't stand it and took a step toward me. CT. That continued to be my approach. I kept my standard to 10 clicks before increasing the criteria. He usually increased it on his own before I had to. I think the important part of letting him approach rather than me approach him, along with the 10 clicks at the same criteria level, was that it gave him a LOT of opportunities to sniff the bute paste. He got a little in his nose just from the end of the tube, he got to walk away and come back. He got to sniff and sniff and sniff without being at all threatened by it. He volunteered to take it in his mouth and then I walked a step forward between each click until he was pursuing me around the stall trying to grab the syringe. Mentally, that was a big step for him.
Then I stepped back by his shoulder so he had to turn to touch it and that's how I managed to get him to target it with the corner of his lips rather than his muzzle. I made sure to get a full 10 trials with it in his mouth before squirting the bute in on the 11th. Then I clicked and offered the hay stretcher pellets. He took them and dropped them. I continued to CT for any interest in the syringe. This is the hard part because he got "punished" by the nasty medicine and I wanted to override that with many more positive experiences but they can't taste anything good afterward. He has a lifetime of reinforcement for the click though and it seemed to work for me here because he kept touching it for the clicks, even though he dropped the treats each time. After a few times like that, he stopped taking the treats so each time I dropped the treats into his feed tub. Even though he wasn't eating them, I think the noise of them falling into his tub was reinforcing and they would be there for him. I also unwrapped a couple peppermints. I think the noise of those unwrapping is highly reinforcing and hoped that their strong smell would overpower the bad taste. I kept this up until he was taking the syringe in his mouth again and then just dropped a handful of hay stretcher pellets in his tub along with a couple more peppermints and left him. He had been trying to eat a couple and so I was pretty sure that left alone, he would commence to eating, which he did. AND he'd taken the syringe in his mouth many times without the punishing taste being repeated. So now I'm going to go back out and do it again.
There is a whole list of veterinary procedures on this discussion on Peggy's Facebook site that were put together by a vet who recently attended one of her clinics:
1. Intranasal vaccines
2. Clippers
3. Injections: intramuscular, intravenous
4. Eye meds
5. Handling ears
6. Handling the lips & tongue, giving oral meds
7. Handling the sheath or udder
8. Taking the temperature
9. Handling the feet
10. Just standing still
I think these are great winter projects!!!
Yesterday I had the opportunity to audit a day at a clinic with a nationally known trainer. I've decided not to name this person (I think) because my intention is not to criticize nor recommend, but simply discuss what I saw. I was there from 9: to 3: and heard afterward that they were just finishing up at 7:30 PM! I left at 3: both because I had to get home to my own chores but also because I reached a point of discomfort in watching this trainer work with one of the participants' horses. Until then, I had actually been reasonably impressed with what I saw and heard.
First off, I was bemused that this poor person had to take the time, on what was the third day of the clinic, to instruct on bridling and mounting! It did make me feel better about the number of times I have needed to do the same thing with students. With beginners, one expects to do this. But it's frustrating with people who have been riding for a while. Unfortunately not many instructors teach their beginners how manage these basics properly, and they proceed through life bumbling along just "getting it done" with no thought to what they are doing or how. They move on to instructors who assume they know these basics so they don't even look at the student until he or she is in the saddle. And so we have hordes of people who call themselves riders when they have to fight the bridle onto their horse and then play ring around the rosy on the mounting block until they finally launch themselves into the saddle, to quote this trainer "like a sack of turds". So, it was nice to see her pay attention to these things and address them, even though you could sense the sigh of frustration when she realized these were issues.
Secondly, there is this topic of trying to figure out what one's horse is feeling. This trainer specializes in this topic. Some people just don't care- the horse is no more than a machine which doesn't have feelings or if it does, it just needs to "get over it" so the rider can do what she wants. It was really nice to see this trainer's responses and hear the explanations as she interacted with the horses. For a while anyway. But I'll get to that. For most of the day, she kept me happy by truly giving the horses choices and accepting it when they chose not to do something. She seemed to get what she wanted from them by just asking again and backing off when they complied. My take is that the horses appreciated her efforts and were not worried about the outcome so they were willing to work for her.
OK, now that last sentence was completely non-scientific in behavioral terms. Words like appreciate, worried and willing are pretty loose and many of the smoke and mirrors trainers on the clinic and demo circuit abuse them. But I'm getting off topic here. Smoke and mirrors will have to be another day.
I also appreciated this woman's understanding of biomechanics. I was a little horrified at the lack of decent muscle development in the horses that were there. But she talked about lateral bend and longitudinal bend, had the horse she was riding stepping under with his hind end and rode easily off the inside rein. Her position was faultless and her seat dead quiet. She stressed the importance of ground work as basics.
What got me back in the car on the way home at 3: was when she started working on the shoulders. She began with the horse she'd been riding and when he didn't get the exercise right off, she got into his face too much for me. Previously she had been rewarding try, but here she seemed to want it all- bingo. When she didn't get it, she got louder. In the morning, she had used the example of how useless it was to scream at deaf people, and yet, that's what it seemed to me she was doing. And at that point, I thought she also stopped giving choices and reading the horse's responses. I saw fear and confusion in the horse (that's smoke and mirrors talk for a high-headed, wide eyed horse whose respiration had gone up rapidly).
She had been trying to demonstrate something to one of the clinic participants so he could do it with his horse. The interesting thing to me was that when she got in the horse's face (literally waving her hand and rope at the horse's head), she not only lost clarity for the horse, she lost clarity for the person observing! He could not see what she was doing and how to mimic it. It became very fuzzy for everyone. When she first began the exercise, I thought, "oh, this is just like Alex's Hip-Shoulder-Shoulder exercise. Instead it was hip scramble scramble. The clinician was unable, in my observation, to explain it to her horse or to the participant. So then she took the participant's horse. And that is when I had to leave. Because she didn't explain it to that horse any better and she started "talking" for the horse...saying this mare thought she was pretty. The mare had the same body language as the other horse- head up, eyes wide, nostrils showing increased rate of respiration. Maybe pretty to some, but I don't think that's what the mare was thinking herself. Instead, her body language said "I want to get out of here" and she avoided the trainer as best as possible.
So to my eyes, it was bad enough to have brought this fear out while at the same time not explaining it to the horse. But then I felt I was being lied to when she was speaking for the horse. So I came home to my own horses, not at all sorry to have observed, certainly giving me plenty to think about, but also hoping those horses figured it out without too much more fear and confusion being involved.
We had our first frost last week, followed by many more of them! We are always lucky to hold out so long in this area but we are in a protected valley where the cold air slides off the garden most nights...the lower fields get frosted before the garden.
I'm not a big fan of regular worming for several reasons. First of all I don't like the fact that we are producing resistant species of parasites. Research has also shown that many horses are resistant to parasites themselves and do not need regular worming- local vets suggest doing fecals to determine the parasite load of individuals and worming accordingly. While I haven't done a fecal in years, the tendency toward rotund of my ponies does not indicate a parasite load! Last, but not least, because we rotationally graze (and that means only 2 or 3 days on a paddock and then on to the next- 30 days rest for each paddock before being grazed again), exposure to infestation is less than in other management scenarios.
That being said, I do like to worm in the fall and sometimes spring. We do see bot eggs on the horses and though I try to remove them, I don't know that I get them all. I like to clean everyone out before winter comes to be sure that all the feed that I'm paying for is being utilized by the intended recipient! This year we got a double dose of bots for some reason. Normally we see them in later August- this year I saw some in late July, then again in September. So when I ordered a blanket for Mariah and they had a sale on Ivermectin with a boticide, I added them to the order.
Day before yesterday, I stocked my pockets:
Right front- weight tape
Right back- paper and pen
Left back- one tube at a time of wormer paste
Left front- trash pocket!
It was great fun to see the different reactions. I remember when crinkly wrapper meant wormer and everybody suddenly refused to be caught! Not so with clicker ponies :) Crinkly wrappers mean goodies! Stowaway is the most suspicious but also the least reactive so I chose to do him first. He, Kizzy and Rumer were all in their run-in paddock together. I had waited until I was sure all hay was long gone as I know the magic of putting wormer in a mouth with any hay just means that the hay catches the paste and it gets spat out! Sure enough, Stowaway eyed me suspicously. He hasn't gotten many, if any, wrapped peppermints- mostly hay stretcher pellets, so the crinkly paper wasn't too convincing to him. But even though his head and eyes showed suspicion, he stood still for me to tape him and then easily administer the paste.
I could have worked with each horse with treats first, but again, I did not want to fill their mouths with goodies only to have them spit it out with wormer on it. I wanted those mouths empty and was relying on established trust...not "train today because I need results today".
When Rumer heard the crinkly wrapper, she came over to volunteer as the next patient. Always front and center, she happily stuffed her head into her halter, stood like a statue as I taped her and poked the tube in the corner of her mouth. I realized how nice it was to have all the youngsters familiar with the weight tape this year! No one new to introduce it to. It's always a windy day and nothing like a fluttering weight tape flapping about while I'm reaching underneath bellies to grab the other end. She was puzzled at the lack of fun involved with this process but didn't seem the least concerned about the wormer or offended that all she got was a an appreciative word and face rub for her patience.
Kizzy was standing off- fully aware of the process but always game for crinkly paper. She ignored my rude comments about her weight, obviously sure that it was her fuzzy coat and nothing to do with the fact that ribs are a theory-only with that pony. Times like this, I always look back at the pony she was when I got her- couldn't be caught, extremely head shy and worried about people. I adore her pudgy, furry self and am so glad of how she's turned around.
On to the other paddock: Percy, Ande and Mariah. I had put them in the round pen so I could drive through their paddock with the tractor to deliver hay to the barn. It was right next to the run-in so quite handy to my pile of wormer tubes.
But oh dear, when I went in the round pen. Two little boys had been hearing crinkly paper and seeing me others and and they could not WAIT to see what I had planned. I decided to use jealousy in my favor with Percy the youngest (and most likely to say it's his way or no way) so I started with Ande. Of course I had one hanging over each shoulder trying to stuff heads in one halter- rather a challenge but I did manage to block Percy long enough to let Ande put his halter on. That, however, did not deter Percy's curiosity. While I taped Ande, Percy pulled the pen out of my back pocket. I retrieved the pen from his teeth and quickly scribbled down Ande's weight while Percy pulled the fluttery weight tape out of my front pocket and Ande tried to push him away because this was HIS game. Good grief. I let Percy pretend to fly a kite with the weight tape while I administered Ande's wormer and told him what a good boy he was to hold stock still and not even move his head. Then I retrieved a very soggy weight tape from Percy's mouth. The empty crinkly wrappers were shoved deep into my trash pocket where he couldn't get at them. While Ande tried to figure out what that stuff was in his mouth, I put Percy's halter on, much to his delight. He gave his best "I'm being good, I'm a statue, see me not mug you?" pose, while his little lip pooched with the effort of self control. The little red statue stood while I taped him, stood while I wrote down his weight and then really thought he ought to help with the crinkly wrapper. When the wrapper went into the pocket and he saw the wormer syringe, the expression changed to Worried. Having had stitches in his lip as a weanling, he's had his share of unpleasant experiences...see http://bookendsfarm.blogspot.com/2009/03/owie.html
I was wearing my treat pouch so I decided that I'd risk food in the mouth to reinforce a good experience. First I let him target the syringe for CT. Then I held his halter gently to prevent him from targeting it with his muzzle and just touched it to the corner of his mouth for a CT. Then he understood it was a "will you let me do this to you" game. If he moved- no CT. If he stood and let me touch him with it- CT. Then I let it poke him > CT. Then I poked it between his lips > CT. By now he was into the game and not moving a muscle as I worked the syringe further and further into his mouth each time. The worry was gone. I tried to give him plenty of time to chew each hay stretcher pellet so that he didn't have a big mouthful of food. Finally I pushed the plunger down and that was that. I wore a little of it along with some well mashed pellets but most of it stayed in his mouth. Then I continued the game- but even though he let me put the syringe back to his lips and even in his mouth, he did not want the treats. That's the bummer about wormer. It's such a strong taste that everything you give them afterward just tastes like wormer. But, the point was, he was not upset by the process and there had been no battle, no restricting and the worry had gone DOWN in the process, not up.
Last but not least, Mariah. When I took Percy's halter off (by the way, I would have done them all without a halter if they'd been in their stalls but in a group in paddocks, it was easier to organize with halters on), I turned to Mariah and laughed out loud. Her owner says she makes me whimsical and indeed she does. She was standing there, for all the world looking like a matron waiting in line for her flu shot. She was as close to the boys as she could get- firmly in line so no one who came along could get in front of her but not rudely pushing either. The expression was one of bored impatience. She knew she had to do this bloody procedure but she wished the technician would hurry up as she still had the grocery shopping to do. Ears to the side, back leg resting so that in my mind I could see her enormous pocketbook slung over her shoulder as she waited. Relieved that it was finally her turn, she stepped forward to her halter and stood like a stone as I crossed my fingers that my weight tape was long enough to go around her huge frame (barely!). She waited while I wrote it all down, didn't fuss as I wormed her (had that head gone up in the air, I would have had no recourse whatsoever), and then turned to go when I was done. What a hoot.
Anthropomorphize? Me? Never.
Before I get on Percy, I want to have some pretty solid voice commands on him. I've learned a lot in recent years about putting behaviors on cue so I'm going about this very carefully.
The first thing I've seen is how many people think their horses (or dogs) know voice commands but in reality the animal is responding to body cues that the person doesn't even realize she is giving. The story of Clever Hans illustrates how well horses observe our body language (if you don't know the story, you can google it easily). Like a lot of people, I talk to my horses but now see that most of what they hear is, "blah, blah, blah, blah". They might be able to pick up something from my tone of voice. When longeing horses, I was taught to use a crisp, upward swinging tone to encourage a horse in an upward transition and a low, slow voice for downward transitions. If you think about this, then the horse really doesn't know the word. Others who do this: do you say "trot" the same way whether you are asking for it from walk or from canter? More importantly, I think if anyone videoed me longeing a horse it would be obvious that I am also using body language to affect the horse's response. Some Natural Horsemanship methods employ this but they use very obvious movements- not for the sake of the horse (again- see Clever Hans!) but for the sake of us humans who need to be obvious or we'll screw it up!
If I am going to transfer my voice commands from the ground to under saddle- which is my purpose in teaching this before getting on- I won't be able to use my visual body cues because Percy won't be able to see me. So I need to teach this carefully and test it thoroughly to be sure he is responding to my voice and not something else.
In hand, Percy walks off promptly when I walk off. So he is responding to the visual cue of my movement. Some horses wait until they feel a pull on the lead to walk off. Some horses have to guess which their person wants from day to day. In beginning to teach him voice cues, I follow the rule of
new cue -> old cue -> behavior
in this case: voice command immediately followed by walking off
Done repeatedly and consistently, Percy anticipates that when I say "walk on", I will then walk. I start to see his body begin to prepare for the walk as I say "walk on". I am very careful as I do this not to combine the new and old commands. I don't want to say "walk on" AS I begin to walk, because then the words become "blah, blah, blah" as he is really responding to my body (a horse's easier and therefore preferable way to read people). I want to be very still with my body, maintaining a forward position just as I if would if I were expecting him to stand still next to me. But when I saw his body prepare for walk from my words, even though my body hadn't changed, I knew he was anticipating that walk would come next.
This is similar to our newest Jack Russell Terrier, Eloise. She came through a rescue and previously lived in an apartment, always on a leash when she went outside. As a result, she learned to LOVE her leash because she LOVED to go outside. So when the leash consistently and repeatedly was followed by going outside, the leash became a cue for going out! I find this very funny because I've never had a dog who liked a leash before! My older Jack Russell, Beetle, Hates his leash. To him, it means being constrained because he grew up off leash and when he sees his leash, he gets very depressed. The presentation of the leash became a very different cue for these two dogs. Also important to note is that even though Eloise is now off leash almost all the time, she still LOVES to see her leash and gets very excited. She doesn't like to be on the leash (she pulls and pulls) but seeing me pick it up still elicits real excitement from her. Her early and consistent lessons have stayed with her.
So, back to Percy. I want him to respond with enthusiasm when I ask him to walk on. Preferably not as much as Eloise with the leash (!), but I want him to walk off willingly and happily, not sluggish and unsure. What made Eloise so enthusiastic? Positive reinforcement! Going outside was hugely rewarding for her. Luckily, Percy is a temperament that likes to move so walking off is rewarding, but I can add more power to that with the click and treat.
I have not been clicking and treating to this point because walking off with me was taught when he was just a weanling- I haven't had to reinforce that for quite some time. And when I added the verbal cue, initially he was still responding to my body, not the voice. But when I see him begin to move, even a tightening of his muscles and or a lean of his weight forward, in response to my voice- before I move my own body, then I click and treat. I am reinforcing the fact that he responded to my voice.
At this point, (which is where we are spending time right now), I am being as observant as I can. I always preface walking off with the verbal cue. If he moves before I do, I click and treat. If he doesn't respond, I simply walk off with him. I also have to watch to be sure that he doesn't walk off without any cue. Practicing this, horses sometimes just learn walk-stop-walk-stop. They aren't responding, they have just learned the drill. So I stand for different amounts of time before cueing him. If he moves with no cue, I quietly slide my hand down the rope and ask him to stop and back up...no unrequested forward! He is learning that if he responds to the verbal cue he gets a CT and is becoming more and more responsive to it.
When I do get on him, it will be a different situation so I will be very rewarding when he responds. But taught this way, I am confident that he really does understand that "walk on" means walk (and I will teach, whoa and trot and canter the same way). Then I can transfer "walk on" to a leg aid, in the very same way. At that point the verbal cue will be the "old" cue and the leg aid will be the "new" cue. So I'll apply a little leg and immediately follow it with the verbal cue. As soon as he responds to the leg aid before the voice command, he'll get a CT and we'll be on our way.
Percy's 2 year old education continues with some review of the Good, Better, Best exercise this week. When he was just a weanling, I taught him to to yield to a little pressure on hips and shoulders and chest. I find this a very important thing to teach and regularly remind because horses instinctively push against pressure and youngsters turned out together practice that a LOT. "I'll shove you and you shove back." Instinctively this works for horses or other prey animals (from whence "herd" and "flock" comes) because it puts them in a tight group with less exposure to the predators nipping at the outside. Anybody who can push to the inside of the group is safer than those who stay on the outside! When you're a baby horse, it's just plain fun to shove back and forth with your buddies in the pasture. So regular, positively reinforced lessons in yielding to my touch counteract those instincts. Think about what happens when you use more pressure instead of positive reinforcement...what instincts come up?
So he knew how to move both his hips and his shoulders laterally and was very very good at it. However, this week I noticed we had lost a little of the coordination between the two. I'm guessing this came about because on our daily treks to pasture and back, if he crowded me a bit, I'd touch his shoulder and ask him to step away and he did so he'd get clicked. But I wasn't paying attention to what the back end was doing.
So it was time to review Good, Better, Best. Again, this is my interpretation and my experience of the exercise. If you want full explanation from the master, go to Alexandra Kurland's books and DVDs. She initially got the exercise from John Lyons and refined it further for her uses and of course, added the +R. I love it because I have found it helps so many riders and horses to really feel and understand their connections. It's a great way to really soften up one's aids and develop an incredibly light and responsive horse (remember, the sign of a good rider is one who looks like he's sitting there doing nothing!).
Although Percy has worn the bit, I have not yet asked him to work in it. Those baby teeth are still falling out (found one in the paddock just the other day) and being replaced with new ones coming in. Anybody who has ever dealt with a teething child knows how painful that can be. I'm not going to add further insult to injury. Therefore, our G, B, B is done in a halter and not quite as refined as if done with careful feel with a bit. But it does teach him to yield, to bend (not overbend) and to connect his front end with his back end.
I begin by sliding my outside hand down the rope toward the snap. The slide is important...I refer you again to Alex's work! One note I'll make on it though is that at the clinic, Alex reiterated the importance of using two fingers to slide rather than the whole hand and Wow, did Percy tell me it's about TIME I got a little quieter! Putting a tiny bit of pressure on the rope, I ask for a fraction of a give toward me. This is very, very slight because once I ask with the bit, all I will be asking for is a give of his jaw. It will probably not be visible to the naked eye. I'm just going to be asking him that when I pick up the contact, I want him to soften his jaw to my hand and not brace against it. With the halter really I'm only asking him to show me he's paying attention by giving me the slightest response. The microsecond that he responds, I quietly drop the rope from my left hand and CT to say thank you. That's "good". I taught it by itself first.
Then on to "better". Here, I ask for a little more as I'm looking for him to soften in his poll. I always precede asking for "better" by asking for "good". It's a series of gives which I want him to learn and be able to run through mentally as soon as I pick up the rein. After "better", comes "best": asking for still a little more bend so that I can see his neck bend (not the kind of nose to stirrup bend you sometimes see which makes no sense to me). Although I initially teach these at a halt, then we progress to doing it at a walk and I have to be careful to keep the horse moving forward- I don't want to confuse him but just explain that he's to bend while maintaining forward movement.
Finally, we go to the hip. Once we've practiced the good, better, best gives, I ask for even more and look at his hip to get him to yield his hip and step up and over with his inside hind. This is where I noticed Percy had gotten disconnected. The first couple times, he simply stalled out rather than stepping over. Oops. I needed more forward and more obvious "bestest" ask to get that inside hind activated. Today he did very nicely at it. We're going to stay here for a bit until I see that he's thinking about his inside hind when I initially ask for "good"....that's the point after all. I want him to respond to my picking up the reins by stepping up and under with his hind end. For now, we'll keep it an obvious step over, but once he's got that down, I'll ask for less and less so that I'm only getting a step under when I ask that lightly.
Then it's on to 3F3 and HSS!
Continuing with what I'm doing with 2 year old Percy, I am beginning to introduce the mounting block. My expectations for him before I try to "ride" him will be that
- I can let go of him in the ring and go to the mounting block
- he willingly approaches the mounting block
- he lines himself up in the perfect position for me to place my foot in the stirrup
- he stands quietly while I get on
- he continues to stand quietly until I ask him to move off.
The reasoning behind this method of Alexandra Kurland's is that a horse who will do this is willing and ready to be ridden. A day that a horse trained this way does not go to the mounting block is a day that the horse for some reason is expressing he does not want to be ridden. There are numerous stories of situations when the horse was ill or sore and not approaching the mounting block to be ridden was the sign he gave his rider. Also, a horse who willingly approaches the mounting block is happy with being ridden. If he refuses, he might be telling me that he finds riding confusing, uncomfortable, scary, etc. That is an opportunity for me to look back at recent rides to see what may have gone wrong to make him feel this way. This may sound nutty to the "horse should do what I want him to do crowd" (which used to include me), but when I see how willing these youngsters are, I see that they can enjoy and look forward to rides.
The video shows that Percy has a halter but no lead on. I am freeshaping him at this point- not giving him direction as to where to stand or how but letting him experiment and simply clicking when he takes a step in the right direction. More recently, I used another exercise to practice his responsiveness to a rein cue for stopping and hip gives before I actually get on. I think both methods together provide a good balance.
We hear this phrase all the time when it comes to horses. But recently it's made me think about the wording. If we have "won", doesn't that mean the horse has "lost"? I prefer to think of training as win-win. If my horse finds himself in a new situation, I don't want him to automatically become fearful because he associates new or scary situations with an impending Fight. Then he's worried about the new thing AND worried about a fight.
A friend recently began a thread on the forum at The Chronicle of the Horse magazine about Clicker Training (see the "Off Course" section). I was really excited to see all the responses which appeared in short order. Clicker Training is more mainstream than I realized! More than one person responded about using CT to get a horse through a spooky situation and how easy it made it as well as how it changed the horse's attitude toward things in the future. Horses who have played "Touch the Goblins" see new and scary things as an opportunity to approach and conquer! One does have to be careful because when they like to approach scary things, sometimes we have to be the ones to warn them to go slow...like my young ones who want to touch the electric net the first time they see it!
Even if we ignore what "losing" does to the horse's frame of mind (and it would be pretty silly not to consider that in a training situation), what does it do to my frame of mind? I might approach something new like a bridge to cross and if my horse hesitates, I immediately put the "Make it Happen" into my approach. I wrote about this in http://bookendsfarm.blogspot.com/2010/08/taking-make-it-happen-out.html . I prefer to approach challenging situations like puzzles. Hm, what is going to be the best way to deal with this problem in a way that both my horse and I "win"?
The great thing about Clicker Training is that having the horse win is a critical piece of the whole method! If he does what I want, he wins a prize- a treat, an opportunity to do something he wants to do, permission to retreat to a safer feeling place, etc. So we both win. Yesterday I took Ande out to the arena, successfully passing the usual scary parts of the barnyard without a bobble. However, I knew that our two little pigs had escaped their pen in the barn and were out rooting in the paddock next to the barn. I find pigs hysterical- horses don't seem to agree with me. I was prepared for Ande to be alarmed at their funny little noises, headless appearance (heads rooting in the mud) and unexpected cavorting just like any young animal. I stopped when we came around the corner of the barn so he could have a look. He looked, but at that point they were pretty quiet and he was unconcerned after a moment's glance. Good boy.
We continued on to the arena and had a slightly better view of them. He stopped and looked again. Curious, but still not concerned. Good boy. (no clicks and treats needed here) I continued on to longe him- circles, walk, trot, canter, over trot poles and a small jump. At one point, he was standing motionless after a treat (he's using himself very nicely over trot poles these days!) when a neighbor fired off a gun. I jumped, but he didn't. About two seconds later, however, the piggies came screaming out of the barn where they'd gone for a siesta. That startled him and he shot forward in alarm. He didn't run me over and he stopped himself before hitting the end of the longe line. His head was high and eyes were popping. I raised my hand to his poll and he dropped his nose to the ground. Click and Treat! Head came back up but not as high- the exercise was doing it's job. Practiced and practiced and practiced in relaxing situations, he was responsive and happy to cooperate because he knew it meant good things for him- he got treats AND it helped him calm down. Horses don't like to be alarmed- they really do prefer being relaxed. They might enjoy playing, but I don't believe they really enjoy being frightened. I do believe that "getting after" a horse who is spooking will only increase their anxiety level. And trying to soothe a horse who is nervous can reward the horse for spooking! But asking (not demanding) for something specific from a worried horse, and having him respond by calming down can then be rewarded so that they actually learn to calm themselves.
So after a couple moments of head down and rewards, Ande and I continued on with our longeing. We had both won- I had a responsive and manageable young horse; he had calmed down and the opportunity to go back to work which he likes because he gets rewarded regularly for accomplishing new things.
