One of my favorite things about Clicker Training and teaching Alexandra Kurland's foundation lessons is the ability to talk a horse away from the edge. I distinctly remember the first time I realized I had that capability and the relief that flooded through me as I approached a hysterical yearling, knowing that I didn't have to be bigger and more hysterical than he was in order to get through to him.This morning I had reason to be grateful again (and there have been many instances in between!). I have recently changed the horses' schedule so that the young ones are out in their dirt paddock all night, go out on grass for several hours early in the morning, and then spend the hot, buggy part of the day in their stalls. The past couple days have been rainy and when I've gone out in the morning, three little faces look out at me from the run-in, willing to go out in the rain to eat grass, but not overexcited. This morning, however, was a bright morning with sun streaming through the lifting fog- and a brisk 40 degrees. They knew the new routine and were very excited about going out to a grassy paddock. I usually take Ande out first, since the grass keeps him content while he waits for the younger ones, and then I take Percy and Rumer out together so neither of them gets left alone.
Today we had the added interest of having to go through a bit of a construction zone to get to their grass paddock. I have one of those fabric covered hoop buildings as a run-in shed which proved to not be as wonderful as I thought. It held up well to the winds and snows, but not to equine inhabitants. Thankfully, I didn't need it last winter and my dear husband is now trying to shore it up for a new horse arriving next week. So the large plastic covering is off and lying to one side. Because that paddock hasn't been used all spring, the grass is waist deep and you don't see the plastic until you get fairly close. To get to the next paddock, you have to go between the plastic and the skeleton of the shed...a narrow path just barely wide enough for two horses and a person. Inside the shed, eight deep holes have been dug for support posts for walls and the support posts not yet in concrete emerge at crazy angles. Yellow shovels, blue handled rakes, a wheelbarrow, white buckets and jugs all hide in the grass surrounding the skeleton shed. In addition, that paddock has a spring which keeps one area we walk through quite damp. With the recent rains and the tractor going up with supplies, there are deep tractor tracks full of water to cross. The area is perfect setup for conditioning young horses to surprising things!
Ande navigated this maze admirably. His neck was arched as he peered through the grass and blew at all the new things that appeared but he picked his way carefully and politely. I held out my fist to target a couple times just to keep him focused on me but that was all it took. When I returned to the barn for the other two, they were in high spirits. They love to get each other going and they were racing around their dirt paddock having a grand time. Rumer was doing her Fritz imitation (of Fritz and the Beautiful Horses, by Jan Brett), galloping her little pony gallop and kicking up her heels with glee. Percy varied between his mummy's TB gallop (which he could only do about two strides of before running out of room) and his father's impressive warmblood trot. But he's still growing and when he came screeching up to halt in front of me, his head was way up in the air and his eyes and nostrils were wide open.
So, time for a little calm down cue! Rumer was dancing around me and Percy was tense as stone. I had their halters but before even putting them on, I needed Rumer to stand still and Percy to bring his head down to where I could reach it. I placed my hand on Rumer's poll and she backed away. I stayed with her and the little pony light bulb went off as she dropped her head a couple inches. Click! That click snapped Percy out of his racehorse reverie and he dropped his head to say "me too! I can play, I can play". I took turns between the two of them as they have experience being worked together. One at a time, the heads went down lower and lower until both noses were in the dirt and they would leave them there for a few seconds.
At that point I held out the halters and had them each put their noses in them- this was a volunteer task. I wasn't about to wrestle anybody into a halter and blow the cooperative attitudes. Percy still has enough colt in him that anything touching the crest of his neck can be an invitation to play fight and even the halter on his poll brings his energy level back up. He tries SO hard to put his head down in these situations but it's as if there is a bungee cord pulling his head up that he has to strain against when he puts it down. The slightest wobble and the head shoots back up again. Keeping myself as quiet as I could, I reached up to just rest my fingertips on his poll, and he'd struggle to lower it a bit for a CT. Thankfully, Rumer had recovered her pony self by this time and was perfectly calm but wanted to be played with also so I had to keep her busy behind me as Percy and I worked through his gene pool of anxiety. I had to keep an eye on her for the "no unrequested forward" as she'd creep up to get my attention and I would have to calmly back her away and be consistent about it. Two at once is not easy but we all had lots of experience with it. The thing was, we were all getting calmer as time went by, as opposed to more wound up which frequently happens when making horses wait for something they want.
Once Percy could put his nose to the dirt again with his halter on, I decided we were ready for the construction zone. Before we reached the exciting part, I clicked once when they were both at my side and walking calmly. ("Games still on guys- don't forget I'm here") Both ponies had their eyes on all the equipment ahead when the tractor rut puddles appeared at their feet. There were clicks for putting their heads down to look at the water, and then clicks for steps toward it. This eliminated the desire to back away or leap over it. Instead, they were reinforced for putting their feet in it a little at a time. In a matter of seconds, we were over that hurdle. They know they get reinforced for approaching scary things so they didn't hesitate to march up to the thick of things. Percy's neck was arched like a swan as he looked at all the new things while Rumer just kept her head up high and tight. Before entering the narrow way between plastic and skeleton-shed-full-of-holes, I stopped for some more head down practice. I was between these two and did not want to get squished as the one on the right jumped left and the one on the left jumped right. I gave them plenty of time to look and plenty of reinforcement for heads down and calm. Then we tiptoed forward. Because they were calm, they did not scoot through, but walked with polite manners, if not total relaxation. Once through there, it was only another 15 feet to the gate where I could let them loose to graze in belly deep grass- the biggest reinforcer of all!
I finally took a video of working with Stowaway's feet. It was a winter project and I worked at it in fits and starts so it isn't as solid as I would like it to be but we'll keep plugging away. The history- Stowaway came to me having been a camp pony and he was horrible about his feet. He wasn't aggressive- no kicking or anything, just impossibly uncooperative. Using all the traditional methods, you could pick them out: grab his cannon area, pinch the tendon, shove all your weight into him to get his balance over, then physically haul his foot up...he could even resist bending at the knee! I worked with him the first winter and he got much better: a little lean on him, and I could pick up his foot and pick it out. His hind feet required a lot of muscle to lift them and he occasionally pulled away.
Over last summer, I discovered two things: lesson students were completely inconsistent with the way they approached and picked hooves; and his behavior deteriorated rapidly as a result. I could still do it, but I hadn't done much to improve his behavior with students. I resorted to letting them wrestle with his front feet but I would do his hinds for them. I like to work on these things in the winter so that the ponies get consistent messages. I decided I needed a two-pronged approach. First, I needed him to pick up his foot on his own, not merely allow someone to pick it up. Second, I needed to establish a very clear cue that I could teach the students and teach them to be consistent in the way they asked.
The initial steps took a long time. Stowaway isn't the quickest study and while he loves to hear the click (and responds with an endearing little nicker), it requires a lot of repetition to sharpen him up. I began by asking him in the normal way- running my hand down his leg and grabbing his hoof, but as soon as he would begin to shift his weight off to lift that foot, I would click. I repeated this a LOT without asking for anything more. And while I didn't increase my criteria, he simply began offering more. (at some point, I need to investigate the difference between clicking tiny movements as a beginning step and clicking tiny movements as a way to get tiny movements). Pretty soon I could click when he lifted his foot, then when he really bent his leg and picked up it up, etc. In the accompanying video, his hind feet are at a more beginning stage than his front feet so you can see how it began and where it progressed to.
While I didn't work on this over a lot of sessions, I did make sure he got a lot of reinforcement for the easy steps every time I did in order to keep this enthusiasm high. Frequency of work depended on my schedule, the weather, etc. Right now, I would be very happy with his performance if he was my personal horse. He lifts his leg promptly when I reach for it and holds it 99% of the time while I pick it out. However, being a lesson horse requires more. He will need to hold it up while tentative students are slower to take it. Some folks want to grab that hoof like it's a lifeline while others leap back in fear when the horse picks it up. So he will need to be patient while the tentative ones get brave. The grabbers will need to be taught the correct cue and a gentle touch.
The hind feet are a different story. I don't really want him yanking his hind feet up because that is too similar to a kick (students should be defensive if a horse snatches a hind foot up), yet I would like him to carry a bit of the weight himself, rather than feeling like I'm holding up a tree. At this point, he will lift his hind foot a couple inches off the ground and I like that. That requires him to think about bending it enough so that the handler doesn't have to wrestle with him. At the same time he isn't yanking it up rapidly.
I will use TAG teach to help the students learn the cues (which are full body cues, not just hand cues) to get him to lift his feet. I will also use a gradual process to teach both Stow and students duration. Rather than focusing on the students' getting each hoof completely clean, I will count to a number and have them put the hoof down. We might practice a couple counts each week but I will be the one responsible for keeping his feet clean. Hopefully week by week we can increase the duration that students are able to hold a foot as well as the length of time Stowaway has to be patient and hold the feet up.
I got the cart out for the first time a couple days ago- I sure hope we don't get any more snowstorms! I had stored it in the horse trailer for the winter and didn't want to get it out until Spring. I put it in the round pen to continue working with it with Rumer. I have never taught a pony or horse to drive before so I am going very slowly and carefully. My goal for this lesson was to have her back up to it until she bumped it with her hind legs- I thought that having her initiate that feeling would be preferable at first to bringing the cart up to bump her. I did have the shafts pointing up in the air, so she didn't have to back between them. I just wanted her to get comfortable with feeling the cart against the back of her.
Well, she wanted no part of it! Rumer knows how to back and step over and all the things I wanted her to do but she did not want to back directly toward that cart. So that's when I had to back up in my training and really determine how well she knew my cues. What I found was that yes, she knows how to back and will back as many steps as I ask for. She also knows to step over from a touch on her hip. What we do not have is accuracy. And this was the problem in my session with the cart. As far as she was concerned, she was doing what I asked as well as doing what she wanted when she backed up crooked. She was backing- my request- and avoiding backing up to the cart- her concern. When she ended up crooked, I could ask her to step over, and she would....several steps so that she was now crooked the other way.
I got very frustrated with this experience but could see it was my fault. There was no way for her to "know" what I wanted. I had never before asked her to back into something scary and she was protecting herself. She was doing what I asked so I couldn't fault her there. Instead I had to back up in my training to teach her the subtle difference between one step over and more steps over, backing up straight and backing up any which way. I had to teach her in a way that it was in her own self interest to figure out how many steps to take.
I did this by using the plywood mats. She is very good about standing on a mat so we reviewed that- and I left her completely at liberty so that I couldn't be tempted to force her somewhere. I had her put her front feet on and then her back feet. Then I pulled out a second mat and placed it behind the first one. We worked on having her walk up to the first one, CT for putting her front feet squarely on it, then step forward and put her front feet on the second one. She got a CT for that but left her hind feet trailing out behind her like a park horse so that the back feet didn't have to be on the second mat. Interesting. This was where the subtle cues came in. I need to teach her to step forward with her back feet onto the back mat, without stepping over it or walking off completely with her front feet.
Again, I couldn't, nor did I want to, force her somewhere. But I did need a more accurate way of communicating so I put a lead rope on her halter. I wanted her to figure out what the puzzle was and get rewarded for accomplishing it. So I kept reminding myself to ask with a light rope cue and if she responded at all, release the rope cue. But the only time she got a CT, was if she made progress toward putting her hind feet on the second mat. So if she inched forward with her front feet, but left her hind feet where they were, I released the rope cue and asked again. There was a tiny reward in the release of the rope pressure, but not the click she was looking for. If the hind feet moved forward a bit- CT. Pretty soon she learned it was about the hind feet and she tried various things-
toe on > CT
step over the mat > release but no CT
step sideways with a bump of the back foot on the mat > CT
wiggle completely away from the back mat > release but no CT
So she had options. She could do what she wanted- avoid stepping on the mat with her back feet- and there were no negative consequences, but also no reward. She could do what I wanted, and she'd get a CT. I decided to quit when she had one hind foot on the mat and the other resting. We had made progress in communication. I was becoming more clear with my cues. A touch on the hip doesn't mean just step over however far is convenient. I need to be more precise with my requests and expectations and she is also learning that there are subtleties involved.
I have since watched Peggy Hogan's youtube clip on teaching her mini to drive and I think it's quite brilliant (as much of her training is) so I will use the wheelbarrow next time!
I've been tossing this topic around in my head for a while now but have been having trouble pinning it down into anything resembling organized thought. So I'm going to try writing it and see what happens!
The various pieces that are trying to come together are:
- In TAGteach, we need to be careful to separate praise from information.
- Using a Keep Going Signal (KGS...see previous posts for detail) in clicker training requires a specifically conditioned KGS, as opposed to verbal diarrhea (thanks to Amanda for that lovely descriptive term)
- In all training we have to be clear in our requests, both in our minds and in the horse's mind
First off, when using TAGteach, I have a hard time letting the marker signal do its job without also adding verbal commentary. Since one of the advantages of tagging is the objectivity of the auditory marker, I am taking away from the benefits by muddying things up with "good job", or "excellent". At the last seminar, I learned that I don't necessarily need to stop the verbal praise, I just need to separate it from the tagging, and put it in later if I want to. So it is more like
skill > tag > skill > tag > skill > tag > > > praise
That keeps me quiet while the tagger is doing the work to its full potential.
Verbal diarrhea- yuck, right? But how many of us know people, ourselves included, who chatter away nonstop to horses? We keep up this continuous babble and the horses of course have NO idea what we are saying so they are just hearing blahblahblahblah. It's just background noise- it has no meaning, so, here is the critical part, it gets tuned out. Therefore, if we want any verbal communication with our horse to be effective, we need to learn to shut up unless we are giving important information, whether a cue or feedback. While practicing at the seminar, my own TAG point became "duct tape"...which to me was a reminder to tape my lips shut. Focusing on that TAG point enabled me to be quiet and just use the marker until it became habit.
Likewise, our horses are going to be able to hear and understand "walk on", a lot more easily than they understand "c'mon Trigger, keep going, you can do it, walk on, keep marching, it's ok yadayadayada". And yes, that means we have to TRAIN them what "walk on" means, as opposed to relying on the nagging voice or leg or seat to maintain that forward. Taking this into the concept of a KGS, many of us use "good girl", but is that a real KGS that means "keep trying and a reinforcer is coming"? Or is it sometimes accompanied by kicking legs and driving seat which we may see as encouraging but in fact the horse finds unpleasant and so the "good girl" is conditioned to mean nothing at all, because sometimes it's accompanied by reinforcers and sometimes by punishers.
These are really just examples of many situations where we think we may be clear, but the horse is not at all clear on what we mean. The same is true of all our aids and responses. If we are not consistent and clear, it is unfair to get frustrated when the horse does not interpret and respond the way we want.
The photo was taken at our March TAG seminar here in Vermont. Theresa McKeon of TAGteach Int'l is on the left and Sarah Memmi of Equiclick on the right. The exercise was about trying to learn with distractions but excess information is also a distraction!
The day after I posted last, I tried the same loop from his back. While he was still hesitant to step off the mat (so I need to work on that more), his willingness to trot was much better than previous. Previously, I wasn't sure which cue would be most effective, and when he did trot, it was grumpily. This time I only used a voice cue and each time he trotted right off because he was headed for the mat. He didn't always maintain the trot (he tended to break into a walk when we reached the ground pole) but would willingly jog off again when asked.
I think I might experiment with a Keep Going Signal (KGS). Someone wrote a response to the blog on a list I am on and asked why I wasn't using one. She explained how she uses it with duration behaviors such as going over trotting poles and also for something in a series of behaviors like a canter depart or flying change. The reason for using it with going over fences or a flying change is that you don't want the horse to slam on the brakes when he hears the click. Many times that is acceptable because you then can ask again, giving the horse several repetitions of successful behavior. But slamming on the brakes when landing from a jump is not good for the structure or performance...so a KGS would mean "good job but keep cantering until I ask you to stop or you hear a click". To use it to keep the trot going, I would first condition a KGS by using it right before the click and primary reinforcer (treat). Ande would then learn that the KGS (I'm thinking of using the verbal "gooooood" which just kind of oozes out of me when a horse is trying hard) means that a click and treat is coming and he needs to continue what he is doing to get it. That is why it's called a "keep going" signal. Rather than getting frustrated and quit because he isn't reinforced, he would know to keep trying. I looked up KGS on Karen Pryor's website and this is what it said:A signal, verbal or otherwise, given in the middle of a behavior to tell the dog he is doing the behavior correctly and should keep doing what he’s doing. Keep-going signals add an unnecessary level of complexity in training.
So, obviously some consider KGS to be unnecessary and complicating. I think the reasoning is that simply withholding the click has the same affect. Has anyone else experimented with them and found them to be helpful or complicating?
Yesterday I tried a somewhat complicated loop of behaviors with Ande. I'm not sure the serious behavior people would justify the way I did it, but it was a fun process and he seemed to enjoy it, as well as benefit from it. It also became a bit of a behavior chain.
He did know all the individual behavior pieces and so my process was simply to connect the pieces and see where I needed to click and where I could use the next behavior in the loop or chain as a reinforcement for the previous behavior. In the round pen, I laid out one ground rail and about one horse-length beyond that, I put the plywood mat. Ande loves the mat and sometimes when I ride him we get stuck on it...he willingly goes to it and stands on it but does not want to leave it (not at all uncommon with horses who have done mat work). So one of my goals was to lighten him about leaving the mat. But I also wanted to use the mat to encourage him to go forward over the pole. I did a fair amount of longeing and riding him over ground poles last season and in the process, he found he got clicked for stepping over...and he would anticipate the click and slow going over the pole. Initially, I thought this was fine, having ridden many Thoroughbreds in my day who quicken over ground poles! I want him to learn to do rails and then on to jumps with a quiet and careful attitude. But I didn't love the way it took the forward out of the picture.
A third criteria and the weakest of them all, was his ears. I have written before about my frustration with the way he seems to go around with his ears back so much of the time. He is so much more attractive with his ears up, as I guess all horses are. He just hasn't really embraced the ears up thing so I continue to peck away at it. If that is all I focus on, he will do it. But when I am trying to work on something else, the ears go back and I have to choose between the new behavior or the ears. Grrr.
I began by simply walking next to him (he was wearing a bridle and longe line; I was carrying a lashless longe whip). The first time around, I clicked when his front feet went over the rail (this was the first time with rails this spring). He stopped, took his treat, and then we proceeded directly to the mat where he got clicked and treated for stepping onto the mat. Oh- a couple more criteria I was working on: staying out on the longe line and responding to voice cues...both of which he does well, but I wanted to be sure that I paid attention to all the pieces as I built this loop. So after our first trip around the pen, I stepped back one large step and cued him forward with "walk on". Since he was on the mat, he did not want to go forward and I followed the voice cue with pointing the whip at his hip. When he stepped off, I CT'd. Leaving the mat is hard for him and I wanted to initially reward any leaving of it even if it took the two separate cues. So we went around again but this time I was doing more of a parallel longeing technique: walking with him but about 3 feet to the inside. I CT'd a few times when he was right next to the rail because I wanted him to know that he was doing the right thing by staying out on the rail, rather than staying at my shoulder, which is also something that I expect at times. This time when we got to the ground pole, I waited to click until his back feet had gone over the pole. So he had to keep going beyond the point of success the previous time and he did this without needing further encouragement.
After the treat, I stepped back again and expected him to stand still until he got the cue to go forward. The mat was right in front of him so it was hard for him to stand there and wait for the cue! I can't honestly remember which times he did it and which times he tried stepping off at this point, but it was excellent self-control practice. If he stepped forward before I asked him to, I simply put the whip in front of his chest which he knows is a cue to back up and in that way, I re-set him, waited a moment, gave the "walk on" cue, which immediately put him on the mat where I could CT.
Then I stepped back another large step so I was now about 6-10 feet from him, and sent him forward. If he stepped off the mat with a voice cue only, I CT'd immediately. If it required the whip pointing at his hip to walk off, no CT. But he did get clicked for staying close to the rail and flicking an ear forward at the same time. So there were reinforcers coming when he left the mat. I wanted him to keep this loop going and be willing to go from one piece of it to the next, never wanting to get stuck at any one place. This time around, I held out on the click for the ground pole until he was on the mat. They were close enough and the loop was set so that I thought he could see stepping on the mat as reinforcement for going over the rail. This set him up so that the next time around, I had him trot over the rail. Seeing the mat right there in front of him kept his trot forward as each foot went over the rail.
My next step was to move the mat out further from the ground pole until it was about 2 horse lengths from the rail. Using the mat as a reinforcer for the rail meant that he would trot over the rail in a nice forward trot in his enthusiasm for going to the mat. This worked well so I threw in a change: I clicked right as he went over the rail again....meaning he stopped and showed self control by not going right to the mat. And he had to again wait while I backed away (and by this time I had graduated to the center of the round pen), not going forward until I gave the voice cue.
All in all I was really pleased with the session. Giving him lots to think about minimizes the ears back and keeps him guessing. Not guessing in the sense that he's frustrated or worried, but always working to figure out what will earn the click...trying to figure out what I want and being happy when he gets it right. That's a pony I'd like to train.
This and other variations of this question are things I hear frequently with people new to clicker training. "He's only doing it for the food", "I don't want to carry treats with me everywhere", "but he knows there's a cookie coming", etc.
The important thing to remember here is that clicker training is training process. All good training should progress from one step to the next, and not get stuck in one place. However, I do not believe in timetables for training. All horses and handlers are different and so each pair will progress through different stages at different rates of time. Sometimes we think we "should" have this horse going better by now...or that another person in the barn "should" be doing more with their horse. But we are all individuals. Safety first, happiness second (I didn't think that through very far, but I think it will hold up), and who cares how far you get how fast? If my horse and I are safe and happy, that's a good day!
Once we let go of the "shoulds", then we can focus on each step and be sure we are clear in our requests, reinforcing in our responses and take the time to solidify behaviors by repeating them many times to get consistency. We want to make sure that the horse has really learned, and not just been lucky a couple times. Think about driving a car. When you drove around the school parking lot the first time, or even several times, were you then ready to hook up to a trailer with a horse in it and go out in traffic? Of course not. You graduate from the parking lot to back roads (although I pity people in urban areas...how do they do it??), then slightly busier streets, then highways, etc. You progress steadily but you don't leap from one stage to the next without practicing a fair bit at each stage. Similarly, just because our horses can walk, trot, canter quietly in the ring doesn't mean they can do it out on the trail...or vice versa. The environment presents different distractions and physical challenges (hills on a trail, tighter turns in an arena).
When we learned to drive, we had someone else in the car with us explaining what to do. That doesn't mean that we needed someone doing that for the rest of our lives. The same is true for the clicker. I use the clicker to train something new, refine it to the stage I want it, use it for lots of repetitions to gain fluency and consistency and then I can fade it out for that behavior. I don't just drop it completely.
Sometimes I need to even remind myself to drop the clicker out of things. Because I use it so much, with so many horses, it becomes a habit for me to click when a horse does something well. But it can become like the parent who says "good job!" to a child for every little thing. Pretty soon it loses it's effectiveness and/or when you neglect to say it, the learner thinks something is wrong! They become a "praise junkie", constantly needing that feedback.
I have found that the change of seasons can be a good time for me to reassess where the different horses are in their abilities. Poor Ande, who is the oldest of my homebreds, is the guinea pig. I think I tend to err on the side of babying him along rather than pushing him too fast. Last summer, I decided I was no longer going to click him for standing still while he was on the cross ties. Once I saw how easy it was, I did the same with both Rumer and Percy who were much younger! I had taught them to stand...job done! Sort of. I do keep an eye out for any backsliding in behavior AND respect the huge effect that distractions have on behavior.
Rumer has ants in her pants. That little girl in pink has graduated out of kindergarten and is in 1st grade now but she's still a very busy little girl. She knows the rules (four feet quiet on the mat) but a guest in the classroom (like the farrier coming) and oh boy, let's see what he smells like and what's in his toolbox and watch what he's doing and pretty soon she's doing the hootchie cootchie all over the place again. So I bring out the clicker and we do a little remedial work as a reminder. I hush that little voice in my head that says "she knows better" and instead use it as an opportunity to show her that she will be reinforced for behavior she knows in challenging situations.
This Spring, I decided that Ande really is proficient enough in his basic ground work exercises that I can drop the clicking for that. He walks off promptly from a voice (a cluck), hand (drawing forward lightly on the rein or rope) or whip cue (simply pointing a dressage or longe whip at his hip). He bends to a very light touch on the rope or rein and is quite adjustable in that. He willingly continues his forward motion while bending. He steps under himself with his inside hind to come to a one rein stop at the lightest touch. He will do all these things from both sides. So I have checked them off my list and am now working more on his longitudinal flexion. I am still shaping this behavior so I am still clicking for it and will continue to do so until he becomes proficient at it.
So am I STILL using the clicker with these horses? Yes, I am teaching new behaviors all the time. Am I still using it with the same behaviors I did at the start? No, all three babies are expected to lead quietly from either side, stop from a rein or body cue (stop when I stop) and stand quietly on the cross ties. None of them get clicked regularly for any of this. Once we have good grass, and they start getting led out to distant pastures for the first time in the Spring, I will not be surprised to see that I need to use the clicker as a reminder to any of the three. Yes, "they know better", but it's Spring! I won't need to use it all summer...just for the first days of turning out.
I do continue to click some old behaviors randomly, depending on how much I appreciate them and how much the horse gives up in return. When I go to a pasture gate, and a pony leaves green grass to come put his or her nose in a halter, that is greatly appreciated by me and I reinforce it regularly!
The photo above is Ande, last summer at age 3. He is standing on his mat, with his head down, long enough for me to walk away and take a photo! Anybody want to buy a nice little Quarter Pony?
