The Evolving Equestrian

08/02/2024

The pony I was riding in lessons when I was around seven or eight was named Yankee Doodle. Yankee was the gentlest, most kind pony I had ever sat astride. I was in a group lesson with two other kids around my age and we learned two point. Our instructor explained that we needed to get our butts out of the saddle and we laughed because she said "butt".

She showed us how to get into two point and told us to grab mane. We asked where, and she showed us. It was a half crest release but she didn't overwhelm us with such terminology. As we took turns popping over tiny cross rails, she would call out to us to grab mane just before the jump and keep our chin up. Yankee stepped dutifully over the small fences and I held onto his mane.

I learned it was ok to hold on to keep my balance. I learned that just staying on and keeping my chin up was all I could do sometimes and that was enough. I have learned that life is a lot like riding horses.

So, grab mane, horse girl. And remember, keep your chin up. 🐴

01/02/2024

Boy has there been some DRAMA!

Let me lay out this scenario. If you were in the subway, and someone came down the steps sweaty and out of breath and laid down on the subway floor to "rest" would that be normal? Even if they didn't collapse, they just laid down.... that's someone who is not ok.

Hopefully you would think something was seriously wrong because that's not normal. That is not a place a person of healthy mind and body would choose to rest. I don't need to know the specifics of what happened leading up to that, but I know someone sweaty, laying on the subway floor is not ok, and I would help them. I would talk to them, get them water, and ask them who I could call for them, and if they couldn't respond.... I would call for help!

The same goes for a horse. If a young horse with a saddle on for the first time, in front of a huge crowd, with lights, and speaker systems, lays down recumbent, that is not normal. A prey animal's nervous system would not allow it to do that unless it was way over threshold and giving up it's will to survive.

I am truly disapointed by the number of people who thought that was ok, and that she "did it to herself", "threw a fit", "was being disrespectful", "laid down on her own", "took a rest".

We've been desensitized and lost empathy. Call me a "tree hugger", a "snowflake", that's totally fine and does not bother me in the least. But I just hope that if I didn't have a voice, and was struggling, someone would help me, as opposed to make up reasons to blame me for the situation.

12/01/2024

My phone went off while I was riding, letting me know I had a notification and the horse I was riding marked on the chime, stopping and preparing to receive reinforcement. It's not the first time one of the horses has mistaken the wrong sound for my bridge signal, but each time it happens I can't help but think of what a beautiful mistake it is.

How beautiful that my horses are so closely tuned in to me, that they are listening so intently? How beautiful that they are waiting, working, to hear that sound? A far cry from the days where the only reinforcement for them came from avoiding me in some way. I much prefer these beautiful mistakes.

11/11/2023

Look who got her teeth done! Ms. Mustang June! The vet was wonderful to work with and let me give her some sedation IM which she handled like a champ. I had done a little prep for shots for this and I knew she would stand there for me to do it and she did and never flinched. Then she was relaxed enough for him to give her some IV and we got her teeth done without a hitch. I have had some really bad experiences with mustangs and sedation and the last thing I wanted was for this to go badly. We all agreed that if it didn't go smoothly we would would not try it and wait till she had more training. It is so nice to work with professionals who want the horse to have a positive experience as much as I did.

June does have some wolf teeth that we left in because of their size and location. We elected to leave them in until when she's better trained and when the vet can come back with his X-ray machine to see the roots. But other than that her teeth are all taken care of and she handled the process beautifully.

She did pin her ears even under sedation when the vet put the speculum in her mouth and I thought it was kind of funny that she was still protective of herself even drugged so much! Mustangs are definitely survivors and she wasn't a cheap date! Glad we got her teeth taken care of!

13/10/2023

You have to learn how to train your horse yourself.

It is not enough to ship your horse off to a trainer and then expect the behaviors the horse was taught to remain in place, especially with such a huge context shift.

Your horse learned a new skill set in a different environment and with a different trainer. It's unrealistic to expect that training to carry over perfectly when you bring the horse home and you're the one working with your horse again. You have to learn what to do yourself.

Trainers can help you with the initial shaping process in training new behaviors, but you still must be able to maintain the behaviors on your own with some type of reinforcement schedule and you must also understand shaping to some degree in order to rebuild behaviors in the event there is a decline due to things like a context shift. This goes for any type of training either R+ or R- based.

It's not as though once taught that behavior is in place forever. Horses are not machines that you can just program. "Training" is just a set of behaviors that are systematically taught. All behavior requires some maintenance. It's not enough to get your horse (or dog for that matter) training if you don't learn how to train yourself.

07/09/2023

June is just so pretty. 💕

07/09/2023

It is not a competition. Or a race. You don't have to prove anything to anyone.

Take your time. Enjoy the process. Don't compare yourself to anyone else. There is no horse/human pair that is exactly the same as you, so it is unfair to yourself to compare your journey to anyone else. You don't have to keep up with or be as good as anyone else. You just be you. You're unique.

It's not up to you to show anyone that what you are learning or doing with your horse works. The science is on your side. Many great trainers and behaviorists have gone before you and have given us evidence that shows why you have chosen this path. Do not feel pressured to prove anything. Anyone who doubts or criticizes you has already formed their opinions and nothing you do is likely to change their minds anyway until they are ready to embrace something new. So don't sweat it and don't set out to prove s**t to them.

You will get where you are going at your own pace. Focus on you. It is more fun that way. 😉

05/09/2023

🧠

Comparative neurobiology

The size of the brain isn't what determines the intelligence of the animal, the amount of wrinkles do!
If it was the size of the brain that determined the intelligence, then a German Shepherd would technically be more intelligent than a Chihuahua, which we know is not the case.

The more socially complex the animal is, the more wrinkles they have. We know dogs are socially complex, they have social skills that often challenges human emotional fitness.

Now compare the dog brain to the horse brain!

We all know how intelligent dogs are, maybe we're not giving horses enough credit for their intelligence?

Why is it then that horses don't often offer us cognitive behaviours like dogs, such as problem solving, reasoning, impulse control, etc?

Because, for the brain to access these areas, the individual needs to FEEL safe. If the brain doesn't feel safe, all brain functions will be carried out automatically using the deeper structures of the brain. These deeper structures are subcortical, meaning they're under the wrinkly stuff (neocortex) you see in this picture, and their role is designed to help the individual stay safe and alive.

This area of the brain is called the limbic system (AKA primal brain, survival brain, flight/fight brain, emotional brain).

I refer to it as the primal brain. This brain is automatic and unconscious. It doesn't require thought process and is not concerned with responsiveness. It's job is to react and it is best friends with the sympathetic nervous system (stress response nervous system).

When you, your horse, or your dog receives sensory input or a memory and perceives it as unsafe, ALL behaviour, movement and body language will be coming from the primal brain, NOT the wrinkly stuff you see.

We expect our fellow humans, horses and dogs to be operating out of the wrinkly thinky stuff, but that can ONLY happen when the brain feels safe.

Most humans, horses and dogs in today's world are suffering with chronic stress, which means their brains are not only perceiving their world as unsafe, but they are in this state for the entirety of their waking hours.

This has major physiological, mental and emotional repercussions.

How can we help downgrade this chronic stress and start accessing the wrinkly stuff in ourselves, our horses and our dogs?

🧠 Consciously communicate in a way that creates a calm brain 🧠

A calm brain will downgrade the sympathetic nervous system and stress response hormones and allow access to all the juicy cognitive performance areas of the brain that we ALL want access to!

Happy brain training 🧠
Charlotte 😊

30/08/2023

When you can see the brand on them light colored mustangs 😍

21/07/2023

Happy Friyay!

21/07/2023

20/07/2023

What is a tactile cue?

There are many different kinds of cues. We have audible cues, so cues our learners can hear like verbal/voice cues, clucking, and kissing. Visual cues, which are cues our learners can see like hand signals, body positioning, or presenting a target. And we have tactile cues or touch cues, and those are cues our learners can feel.

Since most of us are coming to R+ from an R-/P+ background we have a tendency to categorize tactile cues as pressure and pressure as aversive. Before filing anything a learner can physically feel as aversive pressure in your mind, I would challenge you to think on it. If you are having a hard time wrapping your head around how cues that can be felt can be non aversive, this post is for you.

Not all touch is inherently aversive. Each learner will perceive different stimuli as benign/non-aversive (neutral, feels neither good or bad), appetitive (feels good), or aversive (feels bad). If I tap you on the shoulder, it might not feel particularly good or bad to you, it is benign.

Touch can be a neutral stimulus like the click. Before we condition the clicker, it is a neutral stimulus. It has no meaning to the horse. It is not good or bad. They don't work to avoid it or to make it happen. They are indifferent to it. Through the classical conditioning process, we pair this neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus-food and the click becomes a conditioned stimulus which means it takes on the value of the food and now it means something good to the learner. Touch that is benign or a neutral stimulus can be conditioned as an R+ cue in the same way.

In this video, you see me riding Ziggy at the walk and she performs a short behavior chain. Cue walk on, cue stop, cue head down, click/feed. I am using verbal and tactile cues for all of these, but let's look at the head down cue. I am not using my reins. I use a touch on her shoulder to cue the head down. This is a cue we brought from the ground into the saddle. She learned head down with a target on the ground. I would touch her shoulder or neck lightly and then present the target down low and as she lowered her head to touch it I would click. Eventually, she began lowering her head as soon as I touched her neck, before I presented the target and I clicked that and we faded the target out.

However, if I cued this same behavior with the reins, some would argue that it's not a non aversive, tactile R+ cue, but that it is aversive pressure and R-. Just because a tactile cue is given with the reins or legs does not mean it is aversive or R-. We have just categorized reins and legs as aversive because that is how they are typically used.

How do we know if a tactile cue is R+ or aversive pressure and R-? Two ways.

1. How was the cue trained?
R- cues can also begin with benign pressure, which is why we have that tendency to categorize all touch as aversive pressure. The difference here is in the way they are conditioned. As opposed to pairing this neural stimulus with an appetitive unconditioned stimulus, it is paired with an aversive one. For example, Little Albert.

"For the experiment proper, by which point Albert was 11 months old, he was put on a mattress on a table in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, Watson and Rayner made a loud sound behind Albert's back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer each time the baby touched the rat. Albert responded to the noise by crying and showing fear. After several such pairings of the two stimuli, Albert was presented with only the rat. Upon seeing the rat, Albert became very distressed, crying and crawling away. Apparently, the infant associated the white rat with the noise. The rat, originally a neutral stimulus, had become a conditioned stimulus, and was eliciting an emotional response (conditioned response) similar to the distress (unconditioned response) originally given to the noise (unconditioned stimulus).".

Classical conditioning works both ways. So, if the touch initially being used was non aversive, but the trainer then escalates the pressure to a level the learner feels physical discomfort or pain, and then removes it following the correct response, the touch cue is a conditioned aversive and the learning is happening through R-.

If the trainer uses other means, shaping with R+, luring, or targeting to get the behavior following the application of the touch cue and reinforces that behavior or correct response with an appetitive, it's a conditioned reinforcer and a R+ cue.

2. How does the horse perceive the cue?
Is the horse working to avoid it? If the horse is seeking relief from the touch we are using, it is aversive and its removal can be reinforcing and therefore constitutes R-. If the horse is relaxed and unbothered by the cue and is working for a click/feed then the removal of the touch cue is not what is maintaining the behavior. R+ is.

What some horses may be indifferent to, some may find aversive. Different personalities and levels of sensitivity exist among horses and we can't say that one particular stimulus is neutral or aversive across the board. Look at the horse in front of you and see how that individual feels about that stimulus. Gentle rein aids may very well be aversive to a traditionally trained horse and we may need to counter condition them before we can use them as a tactile cue or we may choose to use a different cue all together for steering.

Touch isn't always aversive. Pressure isn't always aversive. We have to challenge the way we categorize things in our minds because nothing is ever so black and white.

If you are interested in watching the entire session with Ziggy, the full video is available on The Evolving Equestrian Patreon.

www.patreon.com/theevolvingequestrian

19/07/2023

God I just love how hard horses try when you use R+. It's just so easy. They literally try harder to give you want you want so they can get what they want. Like everybody wins. I'm so here for it. 😂

19/07/2023

Rainy day training! 🌧️

28/06/2023

I have taken horses too seriously from time to time. It's easy to get caught up in trying to learn everything there is to learn and be a better rider or trainer that you start to feel the burn out. That's when I know it's time to take a step back and just have some fun and just coast along where I'm at. It's no race. There's no finish line. It's ok to coast on the knowledge and skill you have and when you're ready to do more work to learn more and get better, guess what? You can start doing that again.

Life is f*cking stressful. Horses are our escape. Don't let the thing you love become something that adds more stress to your life. Learn and grow and evolve, but that process has to be something you enjoy and if it starts to feel like stress, you need to go have some fun where you're at because look how far you've come. I hope your summer is incredible. ☀️

25/06/2023

16/04/2023

"Some doubters argue that clicker training is by no means free of aversives. During clicker training, some of the dog's efforts go unrewarded: isn't that aversive? Clicker sessions end; that's aversive, too, the arguers say. The chance to earn treats is over, and the dogs hate that! They point out that clicker-trained dogs wear leashes and collars and get shut in crates, all of which at least initially might be aversive to the dogs. These arguments that clicker training involves aversives are generally put forth, I think, to justify the arguers inclination to keep using his or her favorite corrections.

The flaw in the assumptions is this: while all punishment is aversive, not all aversives are punishment. Life is full of aversive events. It rains. You stub your toe. The computer locks up. The train leaves without you. These things happen to all of us, and to our pets. Even the best caregiver cannot spare an animal or child from all of life's little aversives. ***What we try to avoid is deliberate use of aversives to train behavior.***"

-Reaching the Animal Mind by Karen Pryor

28/03/2023

It's that time of year lol

23/03/2023

The success of our learners is dependent on our ability to break down the behaviors we are trying to teach. Ultimately, we are responsible for setting up the learning environment in a way that enables our learners to find success, so if they don't... That means we need to change something. We should not blame the learner for their struggle and we shouldn't allow them to continue struggling or failing, but take that as information and use it to make a change.

I was working with a rider who was pulling the reins to his chest when he asked the horse to stop, so to begin teaching him how to use correct rein aids we used a clicker. I asked him to stop at each cone and gave him the tag, hands to hips. If he met the tag criteria, I clicked and he knew he had done it correctly. If he did not meet criteria there was no click and the absence of the click was information to the rider that he had missed the tag and did not meet criteria.

The first cone the rider picked up on the reins, bringing his hands towards his hips rather than his chest, and I clicked. But the at the second cone, he brought his hands up to his chest, so I did not click. I said, "No click that time, but try again at the next time and remember, the tag is hands to hips." At the third cone, he missed the tag again, pulling his hands to his chest.

At this point, it was time to make the tag easier. Missing the tag twice told me that I needed to change something because the rider wasn't getting it. As the teacher it's my job to break things down in a way that is easy for my learner to understand and execute.

"I'm going to touch your coat where your hip is and you're going to bring hands to hips for this next one." I walked alongside the horse and when we got to the cone I repeated the tag, hands to hips and touched the rider's coat where their hip was. They brought their hands towards the hips, and I clicked. We repeated this two more times with me following alongside showing them exactly where hands to hips meant.

Then, I asked the rider if they could try hands to hips without me beside them for the next cone. They got the tag.

It would have done no good to continue letting the rider try and miss tag after tag. It's not their fault they didn't understand what to do, it's my job to help them understand. The same goes for any learner: human, horse, dog, fish. Just because we think our instructions were clear doesn't mean they were clear enough for that learner. If it's too hard, make it easier. Break the behavior down smaller. Don't leave your learner struggling to get it right on their own. Their success is dependent on our ability to shape behavior and shaping involves breaking the behavior down into manageable, doable pieces and building from there.

21/03/2023

When you use R+ on yourself and students. 🤣

20/03/2023

Stunning fella with R+ training available!

15/03/2023

Arkansas area therapy barns!

"Did you know that The Masterson Method offers certification for people involved
in Equine Assisted Services? Here’s just one of several courses coming up!

“The Masterson Method Equine Specialist course is for equine-assisted service professionals or volunteers who wish to learn a new skill and activity that benefits both horses and participants.”

4 White Socks Integrated Equine Performance Bodywork

The Masterson Method Equine Specialist course is for equine-assisted service professionals or volunteers who wish to learn a new skill and activity that benefits both horses and participants. You will learn the basic principles and techniques of The Masterson Method bodywork, as well as best practic...

10/03/2023

"The way to overcome the pull of punishment is to use methods that work better."

There's a few things we know about punishment.

Its effects are temporary- it does not affect long lasting behavior change.
Its side effects are damaging to the learner.
It is reinforcing to the punisher.

We know these things, but knowledge alone is sometimes not enough to change behavior.

How is that word has been going round about more effective, more positive methods of teaching our learners whether they be horse, dog, or even human learner, yet people continue with punitive based teaching methods?

Because they have not experienced the reinforcement that is success using positive reinforcement.

"The way to overcome the pull of punishment is to use methods that work better."

Positive reinforcement is a specialized approach that requires knowledge and skill. Punishment is a lot easier. If something happens you don't like, make the learner feel bad. It does not involve a well thought out and executed shaping plan with timely reinforcement for successive approximations. Punishment does not require skill, but the reinforcement of the brief cessation of unwanted behavior is what maintains the person's use of punishment.

So in short what I'm saying is, those who stick with punishment have yet to experience the reinforcing quality of success with R+. It may take a long time to realize that the reinforcement they receive from administering punishment does not equate to success. If you must continue to punish the same behavior that means it's not decreasing and your training is not actually successful. You're just interrupting unwanted behavior with punishment. R+ is much better at training replacement behaviors and you will actually see a decrease in unwanted behavior as a result. But knowing these things and actually altering our behavior are two different things.

Don't give up punishment then if you are hooked on its reinforcing properties, but I encourage you to pick up a clicker and start shaping behavior just to practice and get better with it. Don't worry about changing over all the way. Just see what this R+ stuff is all about. I invite you to simply play with it. Chances are you'll be reaching for it more and more as you begin to build a competing reinforcement history. You'll be able to resist the pull of punishment once you experience the success of well applied R+.

28/02/2023

Pro tip: Get your sh*t together.

Literally! Get everything you need for your training session before you bring your horse into your training area. This isn't just about being organized and efficient, it's about minimizing disconnection, confusion, and frustration in your training.

If you are cueing one behavior after the other and then realize, oops forgot my target and have to walk away from your horse to go get it mid session, this can lead to confusion and also frustration.

If I'm not cueing a behavior, I throw food into a bucket to keep the horse occupied while I get refills, change out tools, etc. This way the horse always knows what they should be doing and it cuts down on confusion. It can be aversive for the horse when you suddenly leave to go get something you need in the middle of a session. Removing their opportunity for reinforcement can be a from of negative punishment and at the very least cause a break in connection and engagement which isn't what we want. When the horse is suddenly and unexpectedly unable to access reinforcement they can experience frustration/RAGE, which is a negative emotional system.

Since we're all about keeping it positive, we want to reduce the chances this will happen and one of the ways we can do this is by being properly prepared before we begin training. Gather all of the tools you will need, including the type of food reinforcement you will need and keep extra handy nearby for refills. Throwing a pan down on the ground is also useful for tossing some reinforcement into to keep the horse occupied while you get different tools, refills, or even just give you a chance to regroup and decide what you are going to do next or how you want to proceed with whatever behavior you are working on.

In short, get your sh*t together. Your horse will thank you.