Accomplice

Today, I wanted to try to transition to my giving the "walk on" cue from his back- something I hadn't been able to get him to understand when I worked alone.  He would move, but felt this awkward weight on his back (me) and found it easier to go backward or sideways.  Because he is so sensitive, there wasn't anyone I felt comfortable asking to lead me.  But now I had an accomplice.

Before we could do that, I needed to teach Anna my routine.  She had participated yesterday, but as the rider, not the handler.  I sent her off around the cone circle with him, but there was something (can't remember what now) I wanted to demonstrate to her so I approached them.  Percy pinned his ears when I got close.  Aha- I was confusing him again.  I am his person, and here I was approaching but Anna was a perfectly good vending machine so now what was he to do?  We decided to take turns being his handler and Anna came up with a wonderful "transition" exercise.  When we switched handlers, the new handler would offer a fist target a couple times as the other person left, and then the new handler took over.  That person would do a circle or two and then we'd swap again.  He could look forward to the new person approaching because that person would offer a fist target he could interact with, and then he'd get to work with them.

It worked quite wonderfully.  And I was able to get on, swing my legs a bit, feel my wonderful boy and take some steps.  Because we had done so much before getting me on, we didn't do too much after that.  But she'll be here tomorrow too!

Cues as Reinforcers

As I head into the last month of my KPA course, I find myself extremely grateful for a better understanding of Cues as Reinforcers.  Attending Clicker Expo for the first time in the midst of my KPA course was a wonderful immersion in all thing clickerly.  I saw and heard many examples of cues as reinforcers there as well.  When I returned home, I decided to put this into action and had an "aha" moment in my first attempt.


It was early Spring and I was longeing Ande over a little jump.  We're still working on combining all the preferred criteria over fences: a nice forward approach but not rushing, good form over the jump, and a polite, clean landing.  The landing was giving me the most trouble.  If the jump was nice and I clicked at any point over it, he landed with the brakes on to receive his treat.  If I clicked when he landed, he screeched to a halt.  If I did not click until several strides after he landed (trying to reinforce a polite landing), he would either hesitate as if wondering why I did not click or the quality of the jump would deteriorate.  


I can't remember now if I went out with the intention of using a cue as reinforcer or if it came to me in the moment.  Ande has been reinforced oodles for trotting on voice cue- for years and whether in an up transition or a down transition.  Therefore, "trrrottt" fit the description for a cue that could be used as a reinforcer: it had been taught and maintained with +R, had a solid reinforcement history and was a fluent behavior.  


So this time when Ande approached the jump in a forward active trot, rocked back and was clean with his knees, instead of clicking, I said "trrrottt" as he went over.  It was magic.  He landed with his ears up and trotted cleanly off with no hesitation, no question, no frustration, no structure-jarring halts.  I let him trot 5-6 steps and then clicked.  Voila.  It was so easy it was ridiculous.  All this mystery of how to fade clicks and treats disappeared.  Not only was I the cookie, behaviors themselves had become the cookies.  


This opened up all kinds of opportunities for me to utilize cues as reinforcers more often.  Over the years I have built up quite a little treasure trove of individual behaviors.  Now I can link them together with an understanding of how cues work and how chains work.  Certainly all the foundation lessons are useful as reinforcing cues.  Instead of viewing all my requests as more demands on the horses, I now see them as welcome cues.  They know this stuff- they enjoy it (obvious by their willingness to offer them to me even without asking sometimes).  It isn't a burden to them to comply- it's an opportunity to interact and earn more reinforcement.  By mixing them up, I gain more attention and interest from the horses.   I can balance them in ways that enrich each session. 


Standing still for grooming is now so reinforcing that I was able to finally get Percy to hold a quiet mouth with a bit in it.  When I focused on the bit, so did he (chew, chew, chew, tongue rolling, head twisting).  When we focused on the grooming, the bit became a part of the pleasant process.  I spent years working with him on allowing me to touch and groom different parts of his body so that he really enjoys it rather than tolerates it.  Just this week I realized how much better he is about being groomed than his mother is (sorry Zoe).  She loves parts of it but hates other parts of it.  There are days she enjoys it, days she tolerates it and days you wish you'd stayed in the house.  Percy happily stands in the barn aisle for grooming.  He is not tied, he has access to both his paddock and a hay pile but instead he stands.  He has worn his bridle and practiced his new yawning behavior while I go over every inch of him with all the different brushes.  When I stop, he reaches into his grooming box and hands me another brush (he likes the rubber ones).  Actually, he just keeps handing me brushes whether I stop or not.  Handing me things is a fun behavior- I can use that to reinforce other things.  


I have now taught him to back on voice cue.  I've tested it in several situations but next want to expand my experimentation to see if he'll do it when I'm somewhere other than in front of him (can I stand behind him and get him to back to me?).  Since retrieving is such fun, I can use that as a reinforcer.  I'll just hold his little toy, ask him to back and then toss it for him, clicking and treating when he hands it to me.  


I'll need to be sure that all these behaviors stay reinforcing- with a background in traditional training, it's easy to get caught up in the riding and forget that.  If my flexions are reinforcing, then I can use them to reinforce a nice transition.  If transitions are reinforcing, I can use them to reinforce flexions.  Either way, I get a happy balanced horse.  

Duration Lab with Kay Laurence Part One- stillness

This lab was subtitled Duration in Moving and Static Behaviors, yet Kay broke it down even further (part of a clicker trainer's M.O. obviously). I am actually working on this behavior as I type this- with Eloise the dog, not a horse, but the correlations are obvious.

Kay broke stillness behaviors down into "calm stillness" and "contained anticipatory" stillness. The first is when you want your animal to chill out and relax, such as Eloise lying on her mat next to me as I type right now. The other is when you want the animal to wait for the next active cue- a start line in agility or perhaps the start box for XC?? In all instances you may want the animal still, but the difference is the accompanying emotion- sleepy? or taut like a rubber band pulled tight?

Kay uses a specific body position to differentiate which type it is. She uses the type of click and the food delivery- both style and placement- to help shape the behavior. And she uses follow up

behaviors which correlate. In this first photo, Eloise was still wanting to jump up when she heard me click. Continued slow clicks and methodical feeding gradually calmed her to stay in position.

Dogs have many positions they can lie down in. There is the sphinx like position from which they can launch up into activity and there is the position when they are rolled over on one hip- a more relaxed position in which they would be more likely to sleep. There is also the flat out position ("dead dog" in our house). When I pulled Percy's mane this Spring (I had let it get quite long and thick over the winter out of sheer laziness), I reinforced him for longer and longer durations of standing while I worked. I do this when I work on his mane and he's quite good for it (I use a cheater comb so no pain involved!). But this year we added a new twist and I'm thinking that I can use Kay's methods to a specific "stand" while I pull his mane. The twist was that he yawned fairly early on in the process and I clicked because it was a relaxation sign. So he yawned again....and again. But he made himself sleepy in the process! Pretty soon his eyes were drooping and his head was hanging (he was loose in the aisle). Just exactly what I wanted while working away at his mane. Not the "stand" I'd like for a halt in the dressage ring- this was a different behavior. So I think I will intentionally ask for the yawning type of stand in many little sessions while I keep his mane short this summer.

Kay also stresses the importance of watching your animal to know how he or she functions normally- WHICH hip does your dog sleep on most? Observing the dog sleeping on its own will help you determine which position she's most comfortable in and therefore more likely to stay in when put there on cue. Once you get the dog to lie down in front of you- perpendicular to your knees such that when they curl, it is toward you, you then treat by placing the food toward the dog's tummy so it encourages them to relax over onto the far hip. Likewise, while working on Percy's mane, I did not ask him to step back or turn to get the treat. I reached out slowly (but promptly) and delivered it to the low position his head was in. Kay quoted Skinner as saying, "the way the reinforcer is delivered is more important the what the reinforcer is".

Ever know you could click differently according to the behavior you're working on? I do this subconsciously with a tongue click when I'm working with horses- quiet behaviors get a very quiet little almost "tic", whereas active behaviors get a loud "KLOCK". One encourages maintenance of a quiet attitude, the other keeps a horse jazzed up. Kay even does this with the clicker. Using a box clicker, she showed how you can rest your finger flat on the metal piece to quiet the sound (and you can also muffle it behind your back or in a pocket) vs using the tip of your finger to get a louder click. For still behaviors, she also separates the two parts of the click- holding for a bit before releasing the tab. Usually I do this when I click by mistake and wish there was a way to stop mid-click!!!

How you end a training session matters as well. I chose to work on Eloise's "settle" behavior while typing because I knew that Eloise would eventually doze off as she relaxed next to me. She did. Her eyes are open in this final picture because she heard me click the camera.

So alternately, if you want to work on stillness that contains excitement, you feed while they are still in the sphinx position, you use a clear, sharp click, deliver the food fast but in a position that reinforces staying in position and end the behavior by cueing an active behavior or releasing for a wild play session.

This is the type of halt I'd like for a dressage test. Square and collected, ready to spring into the next gait requested.

Clicker Expo!

I finally got to attend Clicker Expo. I've wanted to attend several times and last year even made plans to before life got in the way. You'd think nothing could actually meet the expectations I had built up over all that time but Clicker Expo did. One of my anticipations was actually meeting people face to face that I had befriended via The Click That Teaches yahoo group list and on Facebook. It was great fun and as someone else said, just like seeing old friends.

I also got to see The Great Minds of Clicker Training, hear some of them speak, and even ask a question or two. An added bonus was that a surprise birthday celebration was given for Karen Pryor who will turn 80 in May. I truly hope I am as physically, mentally and emotionally active at that age as she is. What an inspirational woman.

Now I can see the Herculean task that people like Katie Bartlett, Mary Hunter and Amanda Martin take on when reporting back to others about the talks and labs at Expo. Neither Katie nor Mary were at Expo this year (they both attended the ORCA conference - the Organization for Reinforcement Contingencies- this year and wrote reports). So I still have meeting them to look forward to at a future Expo. Amanda Martin did attend, however, and I had the great pleasure of rooming with her. Katie, Mary and Amanda all have websites and/or blogs that are well worth looking at to find reports of past Expos, ORCA and other helpful information.

Since they do such a fabulous job of reporting back, and since this blog is really about my experiences with Clicker Training, I thought my approach should be one of sharing tales of putting what I've learned into use. Hopefully that will allow me to stretch my shared experiences over time and encourage me to continue going back to my notes for inspiration. For now I will tease you with the names of the lectures and labs I attended. A lecture is just that, and they were an hour and a half each. The labs were opportunities for those who brought their dogs to get direct instruction from The Greats on the topic just presented and for the rest of us to see the reality of attempting to put skills into action. They were also an hour and a half in length and I really admire those who shipped dogs long distance and were willing to get up in front of a large group AND a great mind, to try their hands.

Friday I attended:

Hang in There! Duration in moving and static behaviors with Kay Laurence (a very entertaining woman in addition to being brilliant)

Generalization- scientifically explored with Jesus Rosales Ruiz. (the man actually put generalization into an algebraic formula!)

Positively Solved, a complete approach to common behavior problems with Debbie Martin and Tia Guest (this was a very practical lecture and a relief after the former head spinning talks)

Saturday:

Theresa McKeon presented a great talk on TAGteach. Theresa is one of my heroes and is a teacher of people that we should all aspire to be like. This talk was for Academy graduates and students only so it was an extra that I felt very fortunate to attend.

1+1=3 Adduction & Combining Cues- Ken Ramirez is a fabulous speaker, teacher and trainer whose day job is the VP of animal collections and training at the famous Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. He showed videos of amazing training of sea animals....and some of his adorable pet dog :)

1+1=3 in action- this was a lab where he helped individuals with the challenge of taking two different behaviors and adding them together to get a novel behavior. What follows is a brief video of one of the attendees whose dog quickly caught on to adding "spin" and picking up his leash, to spinning with his leash.

I topped off a full day with Ken when I attended his Aggression Treatment and Context lecture at the end of the day.

From 4:- 5: there was a panel discussion with Kathy Sdao, Karen Pryor, Jesus Rosales Ruiz, Alexandra Kurland, Aaron Clayton, Ken Ramirez, Julie Shaw and Michelle Pouliot.

The guest speaker that night was Clive Wynne, canine cognition expert from the University of Florida

Sunday:

First off was a presentation from Helix Fairweather on utilizing the module format for designing dog training courses. On the flight home, I scribbled it into a translation for horses and look forward to giving it a try very soon!

The AL-Lure of Luring lab with Kay Laurence- an interesting concept to compare to work with horses.

Smart Reinforcement lab with Ken Ramirez- the use of various reinforcers (play, or tactile reinforcers for instance) and how to be sure that they are truly giving you the reinforcement you desire

Seeing the Future with Alexandra Kurland- a lecture where she showed the advantages of utilizing video and replaying it at various speeds in order to see "what happens before" so that you can predict it the next time.

That will keep me busy for a while, don't you think????

What are my cues....really?

This weekend Eloise (dog) and I head down for our second KPA workshop. As I had hoped, this course is improving my skills and depth of knowledge in training. Whenever the exercises are appropriate, I try to do them with a horse as well as, or instead of, a dog. And when they aren't compatible, I stretch my brain to see what correlations I can draw.

My biggest stumbling block (so far!) is stimulus control. I have been whining to anyone who will listen (or read) how frustrating I find it. All trained behaviors should be under stimulus control. This is defined by:

1. The animal should perform the behavior every time it perceives the cue (can be verbal, visual or other...thus "perceives")
2. The animal should not perform this behavior when it hears a different cue
3. The animal should not perform a different behavior when it perceives the cue
4. The animal should not perform the behavior in the absence of a cue

The first one is easy. The second one is pretty easy. The third one is less so. The fourth one is impossible.

My problem is that my animals offer behaviors all the time. They love training. They love to work for me. They love to show off, interact with people and get attention. This is the result of Clicker Training- animals who throw behaviors at you in order to engage you. It's far better than animals who do obnoxious things like bang on stall doors or paw on the cross ties. Instead, they offer lovely Pilates positions, target anything which might be accepted as a target and grab clothing they think you might have dropped and hand it to you helpfully. How lovely! So I reward. But did I ask for these behaviors? No. So technically they aren't under stimulus control.

I thought it would be doable to correct this. I had read my lessons, watched the videos, understood the concepts and related it all to things I've done before. How wrong I was. It seems like everything in the environment is functioning as a cue. Percy thinks a target just needs to be touched. "What do you mean, wait until you say touch? Why? I know what you want. Give me the bloody thing so I can touch it!"

One of the reasons I did not predict such a problem is that horses who are not under stimulus control can be dangerous (as opposed to Eloise who sees me pick up the clicker and starts popping and backing and downing and spinning helter skelter but does no damage). The crutch I have used, however, is asking for an incompatible behavior. If I don't want Percy to touch a target, I ask for Grownups. He happily complies. But that's different from an animal who simply waits to see what exactly you want. I should be able to put out a target and choose to have him pick it up or touch it. If I speak fast enough, I can do that...but if I don't immediately tell him what to do with it, then he decides. I should be able to put down a mat and ask for him to touch it rather than step on it. Not a chance. Mats are for stepping on! (he actually tried to step on it when I held it up to try to get him to wait...yup, dangerous).

Now it's not that Percy doesn't understand the cues. It's Jane that doesn't understand the cues. As Alexandra Kurland says, objects are cues. People are cues. So he knows what to do in the presence of all these things (put anything on the floor these days and Eloise has the same opinion only she lies on it, rather than just stepping on it....her mat work is excellent. But not under stimulus control. Sigh). So if the object is the cue, then neither Eloise nor Percy are wrong. They are not performing the behavior in the absence of the cue...the mat is present. Cue perceived, behavior performed.

Wow, I've been struggling with this for over a month and there it is, right there. Alex says cues evolve out of the shaping process. So for Percy, the presence of an object evolved into a cue. I did not train for it differently. I'm taking well-known behaviors with well-known cues and changing the rules. It's a wonder he hasn't refused to work with me at all. Just like we need to generalize cues to new environments (Eloise believes strongly that the chair I am sitting in, the room we're in or whether I'm standing or sitting are the cues), we also need to introduce the idea that an object, a place, a body position is not a cue fairly early on in the shaping process. Unless of course we want the object to be a cue.

In hindsight that all seems so obvious. I've got work to do in the next 2 days....wish me luck!

How Much does "Why" Matter?

Frequently the first thing which pops into mind (above, Eloise demonstrates "POP" this past weekend) when a problem arises with a horse is "why did he do that?" Or, "why won't she do this?" In the last couple years, I've come to tell myself that frequently it doesn't matter. It's hard to let go of, but the truth is, many of us get horses who have backgrounds we know nothing about. No amount of Freudian questioning is going to reveal the truth. We may know some or even a lot about the previous home...but before that? The horse may have had several owners and homes and certainly has had innumerable experiences with people, trailers, competitions, other horses, other animals, etc. Rarely do we know this horse's parentage beyond possibly a name on registration papers- nothing about the temperament of the mare who raised him to weaning.

So it's reassuring to think that, using proper training theory, we can usually overcome any previous experiences and train the horse to respond differently to a given situation. I love to ask other trainers their thoughts about this and this past weekend was a great opportunity. I attended my first KPA workshop, part of the six-month Karen Pryor Academy Training Partner certification. The other trainers were dog trainers so it was a different community from which to learn. The instructor, Carolyn Barney, of DOGS! Learning Center, reiterated a couple very valid points which I had previously decided were critical. First, before beginning to train anything, we have to make sure that there is no medical reason preventing the horse (dog, whatever) from performing a desired behavior.

A horse who refuses to stand still for mounting should have his back checked and his saddle fit assessed, as well as the mounting skills of the rider evaluated. If the answer to "why won't he stand still" is any of these making the horse uncomfortable, he is not to be blamed for moving and the behavior can be easily modified by making adjustments to make him comfortable. Horses can be taught to stand for awkward riders of course- therapeutic riding horses and lesson horses do it all the time. But if the rider can be corrected instead, it's a kinder route. There is also the issue of whether or not the horse is enjoying being ridden, but I consider that part of the training process, so it will right itself.

The other situation Carolyn mentioned was an emotional issue. If you ask yourself "why" and the answer is that the horse/dog is afraid, then that should be addressed before trying to train. Peggy Hogan, of The Best Whisper is a Click, reminded me of this when I was trying to teach Percy to tolerate being hosed. When fear is involved, you go to classical conditioning. Many of us use Clicker Training (a method of Operant Conditioning) specifically because it does not include fear and we know animals do not learn well in a fearful state. You can scare a horse into doing something such as getting into a trailer or crossing water, but he isn't learning, he's just doing. By using positive associations with the fearful situation, you can remove fear from the picture, and then use Operant Conditioning to teach. Standing and hand feeding Percy while the hose was running (not on him) allowed Percy to change his associations with the noise and sight so that I could begin to train him to tolerate being hosed.

Some people will tell you that a horse is just pretending to be afraid, but I don't think that's part of a horse's nature.

We discussed other over-the-top emotional states like anxiety and excitement. I would say anxiety is simply another form of fear and so should be addressed in the same way. I'll need to think and observe more about excitement because my experiences so far don't bear that out. A horse who is excited is probably showing distraction which in a horse can come right back to fear- watching that horizon for the lions coming over it in a new situation. Or he is anticipating something- speed for instance- and positive reinforcement can be used to teach the horse to stand and wait but still be ready to leap from the start box (just watch Susan Garrett's dogs on the start line of an agility competition).

One of the other students at the workshop brought up a very valid reason to share the "why" if you can come up with it- to reassure the owner that it's not necessarily something that he or she is doing which is causing the problem (sometimes of course it is!). Because this course is about becoming teachers as well as trainers, it was really helpful for me to hear this. I may not need to know why an animal is exhibiting a certain behavioral problem, but if I am going to help someone else with their animal, we need to find out if they need to modify their training to prevent this problem. If it isn't related to the owner's handling, then that owner can be reassured that we can correct the problem with training and not to worry about what may have happened in the animal's past to cause it.

Do I Have to?

Recently, the topic arose of whether or not a horse ever "has to" do what he is asked when we are Clicker Training. I think both sides of the debate have merit and it comes down to how you define "have to" as well as a lot of other things.

On the side of those who think that "have to" is not part of the Clicker Training process, I agree. One of my basic premises is that the horse has the choice of whether or not to respond to any of my cues (which differentiates a cue from a command in my opinion). If I give a cue and the horse does not respond, that is information, not defiance. It could very well be that I have not trained it well enough, or have not trained it well enough to generalize to all situations (the difference between a horse who goes wonderfully at home but things fall apart in a new situation). It could be that my cue was unclear in a given situation, or that I was not paying attention to see that the horse was distracted. If I am in the mindset that the horse "has to" respond, then I am closing the door to all that information and my training will suffer as a result- I have eliminated the possibility of feedback from my horse until, well, it's a dire situation and the horse feels he needs to react in a very strong show of emotion to be heard.

On the other side of the question is the people who say that there are times when a horse has to respond in certain situations. Who wants to ride a horse that decides not to stop when asked? Or even lead one for that matter? It's dangerous.

So I think it's important to define what we mean by "have to" and what training methods we're going to use to get there. For many trainers, "you have to" means there will be consequences if you don't. In fact, there are always consequences- we don't live or train in a vacuum. So what will those consequences be? Do we ask again? Ask in a different way? Make a training plan to address this? Those are all what I would call clicker compatible consequences to a horse ignoring a cue. Others may give up. This is what many beginners do because they have no tools with which to address a problem. Still others will escalate- kick harder, pull more, put on stronger equipment. And others will punish- a whack with a stick is just one item in a collection of punishing responses. Those are not clicker compatible consequences.

Another question to ask is what behaviors you think a horse "has to" respond to and why? Is it because you don't want to be embarrassed in front of other people or at a competition? Is it to keep you comfortable? As in, "I don't really feel comfortable with this horse trotting through here and I'd rather be walking". Or is it safety? "You HAVE TO stop right now or that truck is going to hit us both?" Certainly the last is a reason I would agree with is a situation that I would say the horse HAS TO stop. And feeling comfortable is very close to that same need. Feeling embarrassed? Well, as clicker trainers, we're pretty used to people looking at us like we've lost our marbles anyway so this is just more practice for letting that roll off our backs.

So how do we convey "have to" using Clicker Training? We train. We make "have to" equivalent to "I'd be happy to". We Think, Plan, Do, to quote Susan Garrett. Think about what we want (as opposed to what we don't want). For instance we want a horse to stop when we ask. We come up with a plan, using all the tools that Alexandra Kurland and other clicker trainers have generously shared. And then we train: foundation lessons, baby steps, regular progression, assessing progress, plan some more and train some more, reinforcing every step of the way so that the horse says "stop? I'd love to" and he stops.

I think "you have to" implies some sort of threat out of the fear that the horse might refuse. But if the horse learns to love to work with us, why would she refuse? Well, shit happens, as they say. Things don't always go according to plan. A situation may arise that we have not had time to train for. Or we may not have thought to train for. We may have been building up a great response from our horse to our stop cue and may have a horse who walks politely along with us, following our cues for stop and go without a problem. But then early one morning a wild animal goes through your pasture fence, tearing it down and scaring your horse silly so that she gets out. You may no longer be in your safe training area and may not have trained for the neighbor's property yet. Plus you have this horse who's acting half out of her mind thanks to the intruder. Now what?

I think the answer is different for all of us, depending on our own personal emotional state at that point. I know the more I have clicker trained, the more confident I am in those situations. A chain over the nose never made me feel as safe as having a horse who knows how to calm down on cue. Even though, in a hairy situation, she may not go into complete responsive relaxation, the training that has been laid down gives me the tools to ask her to relax....traditional training never gave me that. It gave me tools to be bigger and tougher and threaten good behavior, but a simple touch on the poll which simply means relax? Magic. If I get even an inkling that I have been heard in that request, I know I'm on my way. The trust that builds up over those training sessions- putting a horse in a mildly uneasy situation and helping her learn emotional control- will mean that she is more likely to look to me for assistance rather than feeling threatened by my "you have to".

Think of yourself in a tense situation- if there is someone there whom you trust, doesn't that in itself make you more comfortable? And if that person suggested a way for you get out of that tense situation, wouldn't you be likely to take that person's advice?