The Hyena Project

Ever since seeing what zoos are capable of doing with Clicker Training, I have been inspired to believe we can do more with our domesticated animals.  The photos, videos and stories I've seen and heard over the years of veterinary procedures performed on zoo animals which they have volunteered for makes me really question why we need to use chains, twitches, tranquilizers etc to perform routine procedures with our supposedly trained and tame horses (same goes for muzzles and physical restraint of dogs of course).  

This year at Expo was as inspiring as ever.  Dr. Susan Friedman's slides were full of examples but for personal reasons, it was one of several video clips which Ken Ramirez showed that got to me this time.  It showed a hyena- a freaking hyena mind you- with his head held up in the air and pressing his neck against front of his enclosure for a blood draw. Ken said he'd held it there for 3 or 4 minutes for the draw.  Then the needle was withdrawn and he was to wait while the gauze was pressed on the spot.  He actually pulled away when the needle was withdrawn and the trainer said "ah-ah" and the hyena immediately returned for the gauze.  The point of the talk was about what to do when mistakes happen such as the hyena pulling away too soon. Ken does not like NRM's or No-Reward-Markers such as the "ah-ah" but that's not the point here.  I just didn't want anyone to think that using one was something Ken (or I for that matter) was espousing.  

The point for me was, here I am trying to get my little red pirate to stand for a Coggin's draw this Spring and I decided right then to jump tracks and see what progress I could make in getting him to volunteer for it in protected contact.  Last year he stood for his vaccinations but I had neglected to prep him for a blood draw and we ended up with airs above the ground as a result of simply running fingers down his neck to hold off the blood.  Sensitive boy, he is.  I have worked with him to desensitize him to both the hand contact and the poke- I actually did that in progress of getting it done last year.  But my concern continues to be that Percy just doesn't like my vet- or very many other people for that matter.  So even if I could keep him quiet for the process, I really wasn't confident that he would remain so when the vet showed up.  And considering the airs above the ground, my vet isn't terribly fond of working with Percy either, though he is amazingly wonderful about doing so anyway.  I am thinking if I can keep Percy inside the round pen, completely loose so he does not feel trapped or threatened in any way, and the vet and I outside the pen where we won't feel threatened or trapped, everyone might stay a little calmer.  And calmer is always better.

I decided my component parts would be:

• holding his nose to a target for a long duration
• holding his shoulder to a target for a long duration

I think if he does those together, that should hold his neck in the required position.  The other thing of course is to desensitize him to various people approaching and holding off his vein and poking him.  

He has known nose targeting practically his whole life so that's a solid behavior.  Duration work is one of MY weak points.  I never do it enough.  So I have begun working with him to hold his nose on the target for longer periods.  When we got to about 10 seconds, I started moving around as he held it there.  I wanted him to understand early on that my position was not the cue.  I did things like run my hand down his neck, pick up a foot, etc.  Not having eyes in the back of my head, I couldn't see if he kept his nose there while I picked up a foot, but I'll get some video of it before I do much more.  I did watch to see that he held it still while I ran my hand down his neck and held the vein for a second or two.  Now to work on longer durations.

His shoulder target came about by coincidence.  Or should I say, as Alex does, "cues evolve out of the shaping process".  A year or more ago I was working on desensitizing him to a tarp.  He was ok with me touching him with it and since I was clicking, he started "helping out", by leaning into it with his shoulder.  Now I had a horse who would come over shoulder first when he saw the tarp come out.  I set it aside but now I can use the simple presentation of the tarp to get his shoulder.  I am now trying to transition it to a voice cue...not sure if I'll need that but it can't hurt.  

In this video, I put the tarp onto the round pen panel and he so he comes and targets his shoulder to it.  There is also some nose targeting for a warmup first.  As you can see, he really throws his shoulder into it, resulting in his head going the opposite direction.  So I start to chain the nose target after the shoulder target.  We'll see if that gives me the position I want.

One of his favorite behaviors is fetching, so I use that to break things up a bit and reset him so he can find the shoulder target again.  My hat got a little soggy in the process.  Something also got distracting behind him- so I finished up.  Here's the link to the youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4KIcF9kKCA&feature=youtu.be

Saturday Connections

This was the dog and handler I was assigned to
"coach" for Kay's lab on Connected Walking.
It was interesting to see how he had learned to
take the pressure off the leash to be allowed to
go forward, but the visual check-in was missing.
The owner clearly loved her dog and it was easy
for her to adapt to Kay's instructions.  I think they
will be very happy with the change.

After Emma's talk, I attended Jesus Rosales Ruiz's presentation on Cues in Context.  Jesus's talks always make my head hurt.  He makes me think too hard!  Partly because his notes/slides are like Algebra, using all the discriminative stimulus shorthand with Big s's and little D's and vice versa and then I have to try to follow the topic on top of all that!  None of this is to say that I don't love it and learn from it...I just whine because he makes my brain work so hard.  

His talk meshed nicely with two others- Ken Ramirez on What to do when Mistakes Happen and Emilie and Eva's on What Happens after the Reward.  So I'll try to explain my experiences with those later.  

For now- Kay Laurence and Connected Walking.  Kay is a huge advocate for dogs being dogs, in my opinion.  Mind you she trains dogs for everything from obedience to sheep dog trialling but she keeps respect for dogness at the forefront.  Her Connected Walking talk and lab highlighted this topic.  I came away thinking that she had just spent 3 hours or so teaching people how to walk their dogs!  People get so busy training, or exercising, or multi-tasking, or caught up in their daily lives, that they either never learn or forget how to go out and enjoy being with their dogs.  Some of us are lucky in being able to have our dogs off-leash much or all of the time and so our dogs have a little more opportunity to be dogs.  They can sniff around while we work in the garden, or roll in manure while we work in the barn, or chase birds while we walk, etc.  But for dogs who spend a lot of time on a leash out of necessity for safety, I see way too many being dragged along or doing the dragging themselves.  

Kay's method allowed for giving the dog time to be a dog.  If he or she stops to sniff at something, we should allow that.  She made the comparison to walking with a friend and stopping to wait when the friend looked in a store window.  Once again, if you have a dog, you should expect that it's going to want to sniff things.  That's what dogs do.  But she actually had a process for helping people to do that- specific points to respond to and instructions on waiting the dog out, waiting for him to look at you- connect with you- before proceeding.  And the dog can only connect with you if you are available to connect with.  

And so my mind goes to our horses.  What would the ideal walk for a horse include?  Grazing of course.  Permission to look at things which catch their attention.  The opportunity to move freely in their bodies.  And a similar emotional connection- checking in between horse and human so that each is ready to move off together.  

Kay had an interesting viewpoint on the equipment for dogs which is popular today- head collars and harnesses.  Purported to be kinder, they give a person more control over their dogs.  Less pulling is advertised as being less aversive which I agree with.  Kay's point was the physical stress this equipment can put on the dog's structure if used over a long period of time.  They start to move differently to accommodate the equipment.  Pressure is applied to muscles and nerves.  Sound like anything familiar in the horse world?  Wouldn't it be nice if we could be a warning signal to the canine world- don't go there!  Steer clear of the flash nosebands and martingales and poorly fitting saddles!  Let your dog be a dog and let your horse be a horse.   

Expo Inspiration- Saturday reactivity

Saturday morning for me began with the learning lab "Teaching a Reactive Dog Class" with Emma Parsons.  Emma is the author of the popular "Click to Calm" book.  "Reactive" is a term that can apply to both dogs and horses and therefore a very useful topic for me to learn more about.  One of the sayings I heard from various people over the weekend was "it's just behavior".  This is in contrast to "OMG I have a ______ dog!"  (fill in the blank with some dreaded, descriptive word). The featured speaker, Susan Friedman, handed out stickers:

Rather than labeling individuals, it is more helpful to look at the specific behavior that is troubling and address that.  How often do we hear "snarky", "crazy", "difficult", or "neurotic" to describe horses?  Those labels seem to be an excuse to ignore the behavior and just push on through.  Labels for dogs on this list include "dominant", "shy", "loyal", or "stubborn".  What good do these labels do?  

What we do know is that there is an A -> B -> C formula in behavior.  A is the Antecedent, B is the Behavior and C is the Consequence.  Behavior does not occur in a vacuum.  There is always an antecedent and always a consequence.  The challenge is figuring out what those are for any given behavior.  Without practice, education and a very observant eye, people are often wrong about what the triggers and consequences are.  When you know them, you can change the antecedent and/or the consequence, and that may change the behavior.  

An example of a dog being reactive is my own Eloise who used to bark more than I liked.  She still barks more than I like but a lot less than she used to.  Now she "boofs"...soft little woofs that if I'm not careful, I can easily ignore because they are not at all irritating.  Why not ignore them?  Because I want to reinforce them.  I much prefer boofs to YAPYAPYAP YAP! So when she boofs, I say "what do you hear?" which of course she doesn't understand at all, but it helps me if I talk my way through things!  I treat her and say "thank you for letting me know you heard something" which again, she doesn't understand but now she finds that boofing = treats.  Boofing is good.  Sometimes if the boofing continues, I pick her up and we look out the window together (she is a very small dog) to see what might be triggering her.  Usually it's the big Ziva guard dog barking at coyotes.  Maybe Eloise even hears the coyotes.  I don't know.  What I know is that I can't stop the antecedents in this situation- I have no control over coyotes at the fringes of the property.  But I can help her learn that her triggers can have different consequences.  I skip the behavior piece entirely.  Her behavior is up to her.  But if Ziva barking (and the UPS man arriving and the plow driving by, etc) results in treats raining down all over the kitchen floor, then Eloise decides that Ziva barking is not a reason to get alarmed, but rather a reason to head for the kitchen!  The power of association has lowered her reactivity and that, in turn, changed her behavior from yapping to boofing.  I can accept boofing.  After all, she's a dog.  Dogs bark.  If you don't like barking, don't get a dog.  That would be like getting a child and expecting it not to talk.  We teach kids to talk in a way that we can deal with- we can teach dogs the same. 

The dogs who sign up for Emma's reactivity classes have much bigger issues than barking at the UPS man.  These are frequently dogs who lunge, snarling at other dogs on the leash or attack the front door when visitors arrive...possibly worse.  Her talk explained how she progresses from dogs like this to dogs who, at the end of 6 weeks, can walk on leash around a room with other reactive dogs while maintaining focus on their people.  No choke chains or other aversive methods- all positive reinforcement (can you imagine what it does to a reactive dog to be choked by a chain or zapped with a shock when they are already alarmed??)  

So how can we use this knowledge with our horses?  Remember, it's just behavior.  Find the antecedent, find the consequence, and start making adjustments.  Both Emma and Karen Pryor related the wonderful tale of how Emma completes one of these series of classes and calls Karen to say "it worked again!"...marveling over the power of positive reinforcement. 

Expo Inspiration- Friday

one of the stations for exposing puppies to new things!
 Click for interaction, sniffing, touching or just toss treats in
and around them to encourage exploration.  I have to show
Percy a mirror now!!

Clicker Expo has again filled my mind with training plans!  Each talk and lab I attended triggered ideas for animals I work with.  On my Facebook page I listed many of the different species I saw being trained with a clicker- fish, birds, big cats and little cats, primates of all sizes, marine mammals and the most inspirational of all, a hyena.  Percy has yet another nickname now...my little hyena.   I started that training plan yesterday.  Regardless of the specie being discussed or shown in a video or photo, I was able to make connections.

I spent the first day focusing (unintentionally) on the dog branch of my business.  I attended Debbie Martin's Puppy Start Right! talk about teaching puppy classes.  After that I had the honor of coaching during her Learning Lab on the same topic (an honor bestowed on graduates of KPA).  Much of her focus is on socialization and exposing puppies to new sights, sounds, smells, tactile stimuli and experiences.  There is a direct connection, of course, to this same issue in the horses.  I don't know of any concrete research dedicated to finding the ages at which this is most effective in young horses (for puppies it's 3-12 weeks).  The point I came home with is how creative one can be with new exposure even on your own property.  Yes, traveling to new places is important but the more you expose a youngster to at home, the more comfortable he will be to new experiences in general.  And of course "exposure" can be done in many ways.  The old "sacking out" of the cowboy tradition misses the mark for those of us who want confidence and a partnership.  Debbie demonstrated the skills required to keep puppies happy, not stressed, when being introduced to new things.

The other talk I attended on Friday was Julie Shaw's First Impressions- The Vital Intake Assessment.  Julie is a vet tech and has been the animal behavior technologist at the Purdue Animal Behavior Clinic.  Her talk focused on how to zero in on the pertinent details when talking to a pet owner who calls in with a behavior issue.  She listed the information she gathers during a phone call which she uses as triage. Does this person need veterinary and/or pharmacological help with their animal or is it simply a behavioral issue which can be addressed by a trainer?  She explained how dogs can be put on medication to get them to a state where training can take place, after which the meds can be removed.  Again, I was left with equine comparisons.  Medications are heavily used in the equine industry to enable and enhance performance.  Even if we ignore the physical masking which occurs, there is plenty that goes on which affects a horse's mental state.  But rather than using these meds as an aid to help the horse and train more effectively, I think they are used to avoid training.  I wonder how this can be changed and have some plans in mind.  

Light at the end of the tunnel

This winter, I have made an effort to have Percy out with other horses more.  He is out with them daily in the summer, but for various logistical reasons, it's more difficult in the winter.  But I began to wonder if his hyper vigilance could be reduced by having more company more consistently.  I realized that he is the only one who does not have nose-to-nose contact with anyone when he is in his paddock.  The lesson ponies are together and have their own shed; the other ponies share a paddock and a shed; Mariah has her own paddock and stall access, but shares a fenceline with one set of ponies, but Percy's paddock doesn't allow him to reach anyone if he is alone.  He is surrounded by all the others- on the southwest, west and east sides.  I noticed that anything appearing from those directions doesn't bother him.  It's novelty to the north and south that worry him...there are no other horses between him and the horizon.  Mariah always hangs out right along the fenceline with the ponies, and they do the same with her.  Percy hangs out next to the fence which keep him closest to either set of ponies, but he can't reach them.  Hm.  
Weather conditions have assisted me this winter as we've had some nice snow- not too much rain and (knock on wood), no miserably icy footing.  If there is precipitation, he stays alone since there is only room for one under shelter in his paddock.  But any days that are precipitation free, I put Mariah in with him.  On days I will be home to juggle if necessary, I also put the ponies in with him.  I do think it has helped.  One windy day after I had fed hay, I was leaving the paddock when big gust of wind caused a blue tarp covering some round bales in the bunker suddenly flapped up over the concrete wall with a crack.  All three youngsters startled...and then went right back to eating.  Now I have seen Percy react to that same piece of plastic before.  If it's windy, he can stand and stare at it, sure it's going to come over that wall and eat him.  He was right along the fence next to it as that's where I had coincidentally put the hay piles.  He did not respond any more than the other two.  Usually I see their different temperaments in a situation like that.  Ande is pretty unreactive, Rumer usually startles and then calms, but Percy leaps away in horror and then stares.  But all three were exactly the same (Ande was justifiably startled by the suddenness of it).  So that was just one example of my feeling that he is far better off emotionally with company...right in with him, not just within sight.  

The next marvelous thing I noticed was how he responds to me in the presence of some excitement.  Ande and Rumer love to be let in with him as his paddock is bigger than theirs and well, it's just plain different.  So they get pretty excited when they can see what I'm up to.  They start pacing back and forth, pushing each other which leads to making faces at each other and then heels start flying and the wild rumpus has begun.  The easiest way for me to move them is to let them into the round pen from their paddock, then open the round pen gate and let them in with Percy.  Once in the round pen, it's all they can do to keep a lid on it through their anticipation.  I click and treat them for standing while I fiddle with the gate.  Percy comes over and so I offer a fist through the panel for him to target, and ask him to back away from the gate.  He complies, I open the gate, and Ande and Rumer tear through and explode leaping and bucking and farting into the new paddock.  But Percy stands and waits.  I click and treat.  Shut the gate, click and treat.  And I look into his eyes and he is just as quiet and placid as, well, as I could possibly hope for.  He doesn't look like he's struggling to hold onto his sanity in order to do what's expected.  He just looks happy to be with me and being asked for well-known behavior.  He follows me to the fenceline as I leave, ignoring the mayhem behind him and the hay piles.  So he gets several long hugs and rubs before I leave.  
So THAT is my glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.  If this work has truly created a horse who doesn't notice chaos when it's right around him, then hopefully we can continue on to create a horse who can manage the world.  

Learning Curve 7

There were three sessions on Wednesday.  A lot happened in those sessions with two jaw-dropping results.  One was the way that Alex was able to hug Percy into what can only be described as a drugged state.  The other was the way he began to move as a result.  Emotions and physiology go hand in hand in my opinion.  Emotional tension leads to physical tension which locks in the emotional tension.  Trying to release one without the other creates temporary results at best.  The sessions Alex designed for Percy were a perfect blend of mental, emotional and physical stretching.  

I've consolidated the 3 sessions into one report for the purpose of this post:

Goal- continue to settle, build conditioned reinforcers, explore the turnaround.
Location- same figure 8 and basketball setup as yesterday afternoon plus a teeter totter.
Interest- yes in people and toys: he came right over, helped with manure picking (which he loves to do at home), offered hugs
Time- 10:30, 12:30 and 3:
Tempo- basket ball:3.5, figure eight: 4, "gives like butter" (Alex)
Equipment- cones, mat, hoop and loopie toy, round pen, teeter totter
Reinforcers- hay stretcher pellets, the basketball and teeter totter grew as reinforcers, the mat definitely became more reinforcing than ever.
Emotion- from tense to a drugged, sleepy high
Distractions- I tried standing on the shavings bags at one point which Percy did NOT like.  "Well aren't you volatile" (Alex). At the end he could be mildly distracted by noises outside but he came right back emotionally and attentively.  He wanted his head down.

In the initial session, we took turns with him.  One would do a tour around the figure 8, asking for little gives even when he was "squeezed" in the trouble spot. On completion of a circle, we'd stop on the mat for some hugs, then go off on the other portion of the 8 and back to the mat again.  When he gave really good responses to the bodywork/hugs, we'd go play basketball with the three of us and play on the new teeter totter.  

On the circles we were looking for good movement- straightness on a circle, yielding of his hips when asked without the tension and stiffness seen in the previous video.  On the mat, we were looking for gives to the hugs, using Alex's familiar definition of a give: "the body part should come alive with energy and move in the direction I want it to go".  The basketball allowed Percy to learn a new and fun game- a mental exercise.  The teeter totter was a new mental puzzle as well which also incorporated body control and physical stretches.  

Here is Percy on the teeter totter:

Learning Curve 6- spotlight moment

Once he finally calmed down enough to take a brief rest

OK, so- what I missed in Alex's work with Percy was that she actively asked for a response from him.  Rather than waiting for him to calm down, adjust on his own, and just decide to stay even through his anxiety, Alex asked for baby gives.  Her reasoning was based in a John Lyons story.  Many of us train by exposing our horses to as many things as possible.  We start when they are babies by introducing them to halters and ropes and grooming tools and our hands all over their body.  As they get older we add things they may see in their environment: dogs, vehicles, clippers, other animals, plastic bags or wrapped bales, farm equipment, livestock, bicycles, the plastic chain around a dressage arena, big horses, little horses, the trailer, groups of horses, the noise of a loudspeaker, a ribbon on the bridle, other horses galloping past, boots and bandages, the list goes on and on.  But, says John Lyons, what do you do the day an ostrich comes up the driveway?  Did you desensitize him to ostriches?  Or anything remotely like an ostrich?  Different animals have different capabilities for generalization- show them one dog and all dogs are OK or not.  In Percy's case, Black Angus cattle were OK but Holsteins were not.  I like to think this is because he is smart and can tell these subtle differences but I wouldn't mind if he wasn't so keenly aware!  

But the point is, you can't possibly expose them to everything in the world and what do you do when something new and different shows up?  What Alex says he needs to learn is, "even when you are afraid, you can respond to me".  I actually just typed "you need to respond to me" and then had to delete and retype when I looked at my notes because that is a significant difference.  "You need to" is taught and enforced with, well- force.  "You can" is slow, rewarding experiences which show that you are trustworthy in a scary situation.  This was not a light bulb moment but a spotlight moment.  Full on glare of a major piece that was missing from my approach of letting him be completely free to make decisions about whether to stay or leave.  If I waited until he was ready to listen, then I would always be waiting for him to determine if the environment was safe.  I need a way to tell him that I have determined the environment to be safe and so he can stop worrying and play with me.  A horse who isn't a worrier will be more ready to accept this idea.  A Percy is going to take some convincing.

Alex went on to say "if something no longer frightens him, it's no longer of use as a training tool- because you want to teach 'when you're afraid, you can still soften and listen to me'".  There's a glass half-full perspective.  The world is full of training tools.  I simply need to embrace the difficult situations as training opportunities.  I don't have to go far to find them.  As hyper vigilant as he is, I have had many opportunities to work on this right at home in the safety of his own barn and paddock.  

The reason she turned him around when he got worried was not to make him go back to the scary spot.  It was to ensure and practice getting a response when he is worried.  If he's worried about something behind him, he could just bolt off and leave town.  So when he got nervous and his head went up, she'd oh-so-softly ask him to yield his hips and turn.  I just love the way she verbalized it to him, "you're with me".  This was not a light bulb or even a spotlight but a lightning bolt.  Anyone who knows Alex's "Why Would You Leave Me" exercise appreciates the wording of it.  It's not "Hey Get Back Here".  It's "look at all the fun we can have together playing this game and you're getting all these treats, so why would you possibly want to leave?"  "You're with me" is a variation on this. It's not based not on all the fun we're having... the world can be a scary place and when the monsters are hiding under the bed is not when I want to get down on the floor and play tiddly-winks.  When the monsters are under the bed is when I want somebody I trust completely to say, "here, come with me and I'll keep you safe".  

In asking for these baby gives, you can see she wasn't using the big powerful Tai Chi wall to stop his running off.  I haven't built a reliable Tai Chi wall for her to use on him.  I guess perhaps there are horses you can use it on without ever teaching it (and I have), but with a Percy you'd get a 4 year old version of the hoof trimming explosion we got when he was a few weeks old.  So she slid down the rope without taking hold and asked for a turn.  She got a turn, but again we have the precision of Alex's work come in.  She didn't like the quality of the turn.  This isn't just about control- it's about balance and soundness and all that good stuff.  So that was the work to come.