Toy Box

 We have moved.  It's been a crazy summer but we are finally relocated.  Someone recently asked about toy recommendations on my Facebook page so I'm going to jump right in and discuss that.  

When Percy and I visited Alex last fall, she had a wonderful toy storage area. Moving into our new barn this month, I realized that was something I had thought about but never resolved.  We had an old boot box which had been in our previous sheep/cattle barn and been used to store cat food, bird food and miscellaneous things.  It was stinky and gross but it got moved along with everything else.  Somehow it ended up in my barn aisle, with the lid propped open to air.  I had vetoed bringing it into the house.  

Frustrated at not having a tack room big enough to store everything, I started to eye

the box hopefully.  I did a sniff test and decided it had recovered well so I pulled out the shop vac and whisk broom and decided it was my new toy box.  At least for now.  The box is in the front left of the photo above.  It also makes a nice seat!

So what is in our toy box?  Cones for one thing.  Various shapes, sizes and colors.  The biggest are in the arena and the middle sized ones are currently waiting to go to the arena but in the box is one little very sturdy orange one that makes a great target, as Percy is demonstrating here.  Personally, I have not reinforced retrieving cones because I find that it becomes such a default behavior that it's problematic if you want to use the cones for anything else, like marking a circle.  The other cones currently in the box are the flatter "soccer" cones.  I have a large stack of them in many colors.  These are the ones Alex used to teach Percy his colors 2 years ago.

 Percy loves to retrieve and it was a great outlet for a mouthy little boy when he was younger.  We have a jolly ball in the smallest size, his "loopie" toy which is washable fabric and has lots of places to grab onto and some "dumbbells" for dogs.  Dog toys make great horse toys much of the time!

We also have a pinwheel in our toy box- the cheap kind from the grocery store.  It's shiny and whirly and potentially scary which is why I bought it.  The first day I presented it, he tentatively reached out to touch it, got clicked and I immediately turned it into a target to get him on the trailer.  In no time, he was following that scary thing right into the horse trailer.  It was such fun to see two potentially scary things become simple tools for a fun training session. 

Other scary (or not) items are blue tarps- a smallish one for easy tucking under an arm or holding down with rocks on a windy day, and a bigger one for walking over.  I also have some plastic chain, frequently used around dressage arenas.  It's light, really not dangerous and good for desensitizing.  

I have many tennis ball targets- a tennis ball stuck onto a dowel is a very workable toy.  We also have empty plastic jugs to use as targets which hang nicely from a fence to send a horse to.  They also get retrieved.  Different horses have different targets so they can go to "their" station.  

We have a beach ball and a large blue ball.  I have kept my eye open for a child size basketball hoop as I drive by yard sales but haven't found one.  Oh, and we have mats- wood mats of all sizes and pieces of rubber mat and a door mat.  Mats can become teeter-totters and ramps and all sorts of fun things.  I have a hula hoop for fetching and standing in, and though I've not taught anyone to fling it over their head, I know others who have.  I have tires for rolling and hanging and standing in.  

As far as  toys go, we are only limited by our imaginations.  And even then, our horses can help us!  Some of Percy's favorite things are things found around the barn.  He loves leading Mariah in by her lead rope.  Unfortunately he also loves the electric fence.  He frequently taunts me by playing with it with his nose..."see, it's not on right now".  He'll even pick up the gates by their handles for me.  

And he loves to play the game where he gets to choose the grooming tool.  If he is cross tied, I choose the tools.  If he's loose, he picks out the brush he wants me to use and I use that until he hands me something different.  He's partial to the grooming mitt- especially during buggy times of year!  But he has handed me the hoof pick.  It's hard to put something down when I'm only half done with it but the rules of the game are that when he hands me something, then I have to move on.  When he's done, he picks up the entire brush box by the handle and then we're done with that.  

And of course, I am the biggest toy of all.

Webinar Preview

I am very excited to have been asked to do a webinar for TAGteach International on TAGteach for the horsey crowd.  I wrote a blogpost to introduce it.  Here is the link:

Confessions of an Equestrian Instructor in the Pursuit of Excellence

This webinar will include examples of using TAGteach for physical skills and cognitive skills.  Join us!

Rumer and tires

Rumer in harness a year or two ago

On Sunday, I wanted to demonstrate to someone how working with a horse at liberty can be eye-opening to what our horses are really thinking and feeling.  I put Rumer in the round pen with lots of obstacles but she was quite comfortable with all of them and willing to investigate, step over or on, etc.  I was looking around for something new when I spotted a couple tires (advantage of living on a farm- we use tires to hold a lot of things down so there are always some lying around).  

Rumer has an unhappy history with tires.  When she was about 2, I got one out to familiarize her with it because several people recommended using tires as a good thing to pull to acclimate a horse who will drive.  I neglected to think carefully about how Rumer investigates new things which is by pawing them.  She has learned that at times (like on the cross ties), it is more reinforcing to stand with her feet still, but when she comes across something new which involves her feet, she paws first.  When she pawed the tire, her foot got caught in it as she pulled it back and the tire went underneath her and jumped up and hit her in the belly.  Ever since then, she has labeled tires as Not Safe.  I have worked with her off and on but know that she'll want to paw them again and I didn't want to go to the work of nailing one down to something to ensure we wouldn't have a repeat performance.  

So on Sunday, I brought two tires into the round pen and set them down several feet apart from each other.  She eyed them suspiciously but came over and targeted them a couple times for a click and treat.  Before she could start pawing, and with no halter on, we began using a target stick to see if she would walk between them.  After a few successful trials, I moved them a little closer together.  That made her uneasy.  At first she chose to touch the target by going around the tires rather than between them.  I pointed out that she still got a click and a treat for that- the presence of the target is a cue to touch it- no specifications on how she gets to it.  After a bit, she was willing to follow a person through, but not go herself if the person stood and just moved the target.  Then she went herself.  She was a perfect demo for my purposes.  I could have put a halter on her and led her back and forth a couple times and said- "all done".  But Rumer was showing us that, given complete freedom, she was still uneasy.  

Observing her carefully, we could see signs.  First was the speed with which she walked between the tires- she sped her steps as she went through.  Then even when her tempo became consistent, she would continue on through after I clicked.  Any other time I clicked, she'd stop dead for her treat.  But for several trials, she'd hear the click, hustle on a couple more steps and then stop for her treat, turning around to retrieve it if I had stopped.  What a super little demo pony :)  

Sometimes I'd target her right back between them and sometimes we'd make a little circuit around the pen for a break with some fist targeting as an easy behavior.  Rumer is purebred PONY so she has the uncanny ability to sense grass beneath the surface of the earth this time of year.  And she'll dig down to get it...another use for her pawing abilities.  So another way she communicated was by walking away and "grazing" for a few minutes.  That was ok- this was about her telling us the way she felt, not us imposing a lesson on her of "you must get used to these tires".  

Eventually we got to the point where she would stop when she heard the click even if she was right between the two tires.  At that point, sometimes I would target her on through and sometimes I would click her several times in a row for just standing there.  To a casual observer, we were done.  I decided to take it to the next step for demonstration purposes.  I gave her a break and went and got her bridle out.  Her little driving bridle has blinkers.  I haven't decided whether I want her to have them or not and I can't take these off without cutting them off permanently so for now, she wears them.  I did not put the surcingle on but just ground drove her around the pen with long lines.  Any time I steered her toward the tires, she would veer off one side or the other.  I didn't press her- she was telling us she still wasn't comfortable with those tires!  

I went to the front with her and again she followed me through.  I decided that was enough for one day.  Whether it was the fact that I was behind her and she wasn't comfortable leading or because she wanted to keep an eye on them and couldn't with the blinders, I'm not sure. Another day, I might put the long lines on her halter and try it.  I will be behind her but she'll be able to see better. 

The next day I took the mat, which she loves, and put it between the tires.  I also put a line of cones extending out to the side.  I had noticed she was a bit bargy with our guests on Sunday so some tutoring was in order on polite leading manners.  The exercise was to weave between the cones, bending politely in each direction.  When we got to the end, she got to take a break on the mat...between the tires.  I thought she was comfortable enough with the tires that this was a sensible next step.  I did have her in a halter now, so I didn't want her conflicted, following because she was supposed to in a halter if she wasn't comfortable.  But she happily marched onto the mat and stood between the tires.  They were now beacons for the mat and she loved getting there.  Interestingly, I found she bent much better to the right, than the left.  I can only guess this is because I tend to lead her from the right when I lead Ande and her together.  By the end of the session, she was bending back and forth between the cones nicely with no cues from me other than my presence.  And happily standing between the tires.  The tires had become part of a bigger lesson.

Side trip

I'm going to step away from Percy and his Hyena Project for a minute.  But, everything is everything else, so I'm sure this will be relevant in any case.

I've been loosely following a friend's progress all winter as she worked with getting one of her horses to back onto a pedestal.  Her blog is here.  She's been amazing at videoing her progress almost daily- I will admit I have not watched all her videos and don't want my own experience related here to be anything other than "this is/was my experience".  

Last winter I played a lot with getting Rumer to back in various situations.  I still haven't actually hitched her to the cart because I'm too chicken to do it alone and don't have anyone to help me.  But as part of the process, I wanted to teach her to back between the shafts...not that I'd necessarily ask her to do that for being hitched, but I thought it would be a good experience for her to be aware of them, be touched on both sides by them, be willing to back into them, etc.  

I can't even remember how I started at this point, but I learned that trying to free shape backing when it involves an obstacle can be very difficult depending on how you set it up.  First off is their eyesight.  Most of us are familiar with that arc that is drawn around a horse which shows they can see everything except a tiny space in front of their nose and a larger pie slice right behind them.  So unless you have a really wide obstacle behind them, they can't see it.  Furthermore, horses are protective of their hind ends.  They use their sense of smell and sight to check out everything they come across, then the front feet test it out.  If the front feet decide it's not safe, the horse can either rock back on his haunches and lift himself off it, or push off with the hind end and leap over it.  In both cases, the hind end is firmly attached to solid familiar ground.  I found that Rumer was much more willing to back over or onto an object if she had JUST stepped over it going forward.  I think in that case she knew what it was, where it was and that it was safe so she was comfortable stepping backward over it.  So I would do a little circle of stepping over or onto something, then turn my body toward her as a cue to back (although initially this bit was shaped with guidance) and she would back over or onto it, then we would go back over it forward, circle around (taking turns left and right) and do it again.  

When I say shaped with guidance, I mean that I stood still and clicked for movement backward but if she got out of line, such that she was backing but not in the right direction, I would either ask her to step over to get straight or we'd circle around and step over forward again to get her lined up right.  True free shaping would have been if I'd sat in a chair with Rumer loose in an area with an obstacle, giving no hints and simply clicking for her backing toward the obstacle.  Quite a feat that would have been!

So today I put three obstacles in the round pen: a rail (a short one, probably 4-5 feet long), a mat (plywood probably 2' x 3') and two cones (the tall pointy kind, spaced about 6 feet apart).  I'm pretty sure she could see the rail and both cones when they were behind her because of the length/distance.  The mat I'm quite sure she couldn't see so I put that along the fence as a guideline...she'd walk over it first and the fence was a landmark.  Granted, it also physically prevented her from swinging in one direction, but not the other. 

I set up a "training loop" which ended up including more than I originally intended.  We've just lost our snow so I haven't done much with her in a while and she was very excited to have a training session again!  This meant very forward marching right to all the obstacles, not exactly using her body well or being respectful of the person on the other end of the rope!    I have to try hard not to collapse into giggles when little ponies are so determined.  So we did a few reminder steps of bend-toward-me, step off to the outside and calm steps.  I set it up as 3 steps like that and then C/T.  Oh, with a verbal "walk on" to mean step forward.  I use verbals a lot with her as I want her to be very familiar with them for work in harness (some day).  

So the loop was: walk in 3 step increments to an obstacle, step over it, back over or onto it, then forward over it again to the next obstacle.  The cones were in the middle of the round pen and I did a figure 8 switching directions when she backed through the cones.  The clicks at first were after three steps, then I built to 6 steps.  If there was an obstacle directly ahead, I created a chain whereby 3 or 6 steps was reinforced by the opportunity to go forward over an obstacle which was reinforced by the opportunity to back over an obstacle which was clicked and treated.  I had checked first to be sure she still enjoyed both forward and back over an obstacle before using them as reinforcing behaviors.  I also clicked for every step back at first to give her confidence but then dropped to either all four feet over the rail or through the cones or both hind feet on the mat.  

3 (or 6) steps -> CT -> repeat to the ground rail -> step over rail -> I turn as cue to ask her to back -> she backs over rail with all 4 feet -> CT -> "walk on" -> 3 (or 6) steps bending left -> CT -> repeat to cones -> forward through cones -> turn toward her to ask for back -> she backs all four feet between cones -> CT as I switch sides so I'm now on her right -> "walk on" -> 3 (or 6) steps bending right -> CT -> repeat to mat -> she walks over mat (no stopping) -> and I turn to face her to cue back -> she backs two hind feet onto mat -> CT -> "walk on" ->3 (or 6) steps bending right -> repeat to cones where I switch sides and go back to the beginning at the ground rail. 

She remembered quite well and in short order we were progressing around the obstacles smoothly.  Only twice did she swing out of line.  Once on the cones and once on the mat.  Both times I was on her left and she swung her butt away from me.  Both times I simply turned and walked forward (no click) on to the next obstacle.  She didn't repeat the error.  And when she did it on the mat, she swung her butt into the round pen panel.  To me that means she wasn't afraid of hitting it and it didn't really physically prevent her from swinging out of line.

"ouch" duration

Percy's Red Cross

I decided to make Percy a special target for this project of standing still for veterinary procedures.  What better than a red cross?  I also introduced a new cue "ouch".  Things like this help me remember just what cue and target I've used for something when I put it aside and don't use it for a while and then need to dust it off again.  "Ouch" sounds enough like "touch" that he may not have distinguished the two but at this point, I think that's ok.  When I first introduced it, I asked for other things between the targeting- back, head down, etc and when I said "ouch", he went right for the target so he definitely knows what it means.  

Yesterday, I did some more work on duration on the target.  This time I didn't use any distractions such as moving around.  I simply started increasing the amount of time I asked him to stay at it.  I have made up a spreadsheet of the different criteria I have for this project which includes the component parts, the cues and the specific details I am looking for in each behavior.  Percy loves to play with things in his mouth and I knew one of the difficult parts would be to get him to simply stand with his nose on the target rather than playing with it, tearing it off the fence, chewing on it, etc.  I decided my criteria was that his nose had to touch where the two red lines crossed.  That way, he couldn't bite it.  We worked on that, with no clicks for touching the target unless the nose touched the specific spot.  That was successful although he showed me he can still LICK the target like that.  

In this video, he does move his nose around a bit but I have relaxed the criteria of specific nose placement while I increase the duration.  I vary the time before the click, sometimes clicking immediately, sometimes after a few seconds and once I work up to 15 seconds.  I don't want him to think this will always be a long boring process and clicking for short duration keeps him guessing and keeps the rate of reinforcement up.  I think I should make up a chart of how many seconds to do each time because I want to know what the average is and want to keep my expectations increasing regularly.  Because of my own personal dislike for this process, I tend to go easy and not ask for enough.  But there are a couple times you can see him stand still and I can see he knows not to move. Occasionally he loses contact with the target but again, I've relaxed that criteria while we work our way up in time.  On the shorter durations, I do require a full contact with that specific spot. 

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.