This horse is so much fun. He’s been in long-term once-a-week training with me and just keeps improving. So much talent. 💕 I remember when he was heavy and pushy and couldn’t stand still, and now he is soft, light, easy to move, and so, so willing.
I sat and observed for part of a training session this week. It was fascinating.
The horse is presenting with aggression in several different circumstances. Aggression is a highly complex group of behaviours, the goal of which is to protect a resource necessary to life such as food, companionship, even liberty. It can be caused by pain or fear, and can be reinforced accidentally very easily. Finding the cause is key to finding the solution. I suspect that for this horse there are different causes in each situation.
So I sat and watched.
What do you see? Do you notice that every time the handler moves as if to go away, the horse threatens? Do you see that the horse does not maintain his own immobility? Does not step back when he encounters the pressure from the crossties? Flinches when the brush approaches his hindgut area? Each of these observations are key to my treatment plan for the aggression presented when being handled directly.
Lots of learning to be done as I work with the owners on this one! Thankfully, some brilliant minds have done excellent research on aggression in horses. I’m excited.
#equitationscience
Lowering the horse’s head lowers heart rate and aids in relaxation so it is an excellent training tool to help keep a horse below threshold while learning. Here, Ben is learning a cue for ‘head down’ that makes it convenient to use, even from the saddle. If he gets tense while riding, I will have a ‘relax button’ to push!
#creativetraining
#equitationscience
#classicalconditioning
#relax
#clairetyhorsemanship
Piaffe training doesn’t have to involve ropes, pulleys, and whipping. Shaping the steps with combined reinforcement from the very first lift and hold of one leg at a time to multiple strides in cadence, which is what Tesla is practicing now. There is still more shaping to do before it is truly correct.
Training according to learning theory is more pleasant for everyone involved.
Here’s Hunter, working on ground riding. This way the go, stop, and turn cues are all pre-trained exactly how they will feel to the horse when I get on.
#stepbysteptraining
I love my riding lessons. They are so picky!
Tesla and I have been working on upward transitions since our last lesson in November. It was slow going, but there is significantly less hollowing in the upward transitions now. The clip is part of what I sent to my instructor.
Now what we have to work on—I kid you not—is having Tesla’s front feet take off sooner. Currently, as you see in the clip, her front feet go behind her girth before they lift off, so despite her much nicer posture, she is still on the forehand. My homework involves walking as slowly as possible and moving one foot at a time to increase Tesla’s stability and ambidexterity.
Pretty cool stuff, am I right?
Case Study—Trailer Trauma
This is a longer post, but worth it if you’ve ever had trailer issues. Fear based experiences are subject to spontaneous recovery, meaning that even if a new, wanted behaviour is trained over top of the old, unwanted fear based behaviour, the fear behaviour can pop up again for no apparent reason. This is what happened with Merlin. A year ago, I trained him to enter a horse trailer after he’d had multiple negative trailering experiences including being hurt while loading. The training was successful, and even after some short trailer rides he would still load and the new behaviour persisted for a couple of months. The training was ended.
Then my clients got a different trailer. When they tried to load him, spontaneous recovery occurred and Merlin was back to pulling backwards away from the trailer and rearing. When I assessed the new hyper reactive behaviour, it became clear that my usual trailer training toolbox, which I used and then some during the first trailer training endeavour, was no longer going to work. Spontaneous recovery was so complete that he was stressed anywhere near the trailer, so much so that the normally food motivated horse would not eat in its vicinity, so the strongest reward I could offer was unusable. The fear was all back and stronger.
It’s generally accepted that fear memory is indelible (cannot be forgotten), but there are trauma treatment modalities that have been attempted in humans and mice that have shown fear memories being ‘rewritten’. A researcher at UCDavis tried this on a horse in the context of trailer loading and had success, as have a couple of other trainers in other parts of the world. I told the horse’s owners and their vet about it and all parties were willing to try the experiment. So we did.
The results were staggering. The training session using the trauma treatment exhibited an obvious turning point, from agitated and untrainable to calm and trainable. Less than two minute
Using Clucking in your Training
I used to use clicking as a cue for ‘go’. But that vastly underestimated the power of the cluck! Clucking works like whip taps. It is a very mildly annoying stimulus that can motivate a response when used in proper timing. Since learning this in a fabulous lesson with Andrew McLean, I’ve used it successfully for: trailer loading an incredibly difficult case, approaching and touching a mustang, and improving Tesla’s recall (video).
I’m curious! How do you use clicking right now with your horse?
It feels good to act like a little kid sometimes and just go bombing around on Tesla bareback. Pretty pleased I finally figured out how to do this!
Max the Pony graduated yesterday 👨🎓 Try not to laugh when you see me riding him 🤣
He had learned that bucking got his riders off. Research has shown that bucking (when not caused by pain) is correlated with dysfunctions of the stop and go responses. I refrained these over 6 sessions, once weekly, and proofed the responses in various situations over three more. He’s ready to go back to work!
#equitationscience #smartpony
When I was 2, I told my parents I wanted to ride a horse. They took me for a pony ride on lead line. When I got off, I said, ‘I want to ride a HORSE.’ Little did I know that I’d be having pony rides as a routine part of my career a few years down the road 🤷♀️🤣 I guess I’m not so picky anymore.
Wow, that last lesson launched us ahead. I was riding unevenly in my hips, especially the left side, causing all sorts of hollowness and crookedness issues (mild, but annoying!). Look at her trot now! More good things to come....
