Horse Play

"When can I stop using the clicker?"

Viv — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 05:32:00 GMT

One of the initial questions that many ask when thinking about or starting clicker training is ‘When can I stop using the clicker?’ or perhaps even ‘When can I stop using food treats?’

It is an interesting phenomenon that one of the first things we think about something new, is that this is a chore. Something to be added on to everything else, and dropped as quickly as possible. Yes, we see the results and can see it will solve a certain problem but we'd like to get back to normal as quickly as possible please.

I say this is a phenomenon, because it only seems to apply to certain aspects of training. I have never heard a rider ask when can I stop using a saddle, bridle or lunge line. The tack shops are full of people constantly adding ‘stuff’ to their training and riding gear. All of it more cumbersome than a small plastic clicker and a couple of carrot pieces I might add! We like to add stuff, but having to change our thinking or our training style seems so much harder.

Fortunately there are some out there who do aspire to riding and training without all the 'stuff' that seems to go along with horse riding. These people, who aspire to riding aids that communicate invisibly to a willing and responsive horse, are the ones who come closest to answering the 'when can I stop using the clicker' question. They understand that the tool(s) are not what its about. It's about the training, the stuff you use shows whether the training is correct (or even if you have trained or not).

Using a clicker indicates that you are still in a training phase, so the answer to 'when can I stop using the clicker' is 'when you get the behaviour you want'. During the initial phases of training with the clicker, it is important that students (trainers) gain a real understanding of what operant conditioning is. The trainer needs to understand how important the signal of that ‘good’ behaviour is. For many training feats, being able to accurately mark or signal exactly when the behaviour occurred is vital. However, I believe that one of the biggest things that new clicker trainers get is the opportunity to see how many great things their horse does (or can do).

Because we use positive reinforcement (and negative punishments) so rarely, it can take some time to change our mindset. Take notice of all the good things our horses do and reward them, instead of only nagging at the bad. It is very common to meet a new student who lists all the terrible things they do not want their horse to do. Then as we begin to work, it is plain to me that the horse has a lot of good behaviour that the owner simply ignores. If the only thing the horse gets attention for are ‘bad’ or annoying behaviours, it is not surprising that the horse continues to do them. Just like children, horses will choose to get ‘bad’ attention rather than no attention at all.

Clicker trainers must turn this on its head, looking only for things they can reward. Doing so takes time for many owners; it is a total shift in how they view their horse. It is also a change in responsibility. We, who are supposed to be the smart humans, finally have to take responsibility for all the horse’s actions. If the horse is doing something we don’t like, surely it is because we haven’t trained the horse correctly. Did we tell the horse the thing we want it to do?

Turn around the question 'when can I stop using the clicker?' to 'how effective am I as a trainer?' Effective trainers, train a simple behaviour in just a few clicks. However, the number of clicks (and rewards, of course) is not what drives them nor does it distract them from their goals. Different animals and different behaviours take different amounts of time to train. The clicker is just a tool, not the focus. The focus is solely on, 'do I have the behaviour I want?' Am I rewarding all the things the horse is doing well? Have I taught this in an efficient way; teaching in small chunks that the horse can easily understand? Have I set up the horse to succeed?

Effective trainers stop using the clicker for each behaviour quite quickly. Not because they don’t like it, but because they are effective trainers. What the casual observer might see, of course, is that the clicker is always on-hand because the trainer has so many behaviours on the go at one time. Good trainers are very aware that the perfect horse doesn't just magically appear, so they are always training something. Instead of being reluctant to carry a clicker around, the judicious use of just one or two click\treats can achieve some quite outstanding results.

Understanding Self Reinforcing Behaviours to Resolve Common Vices

Viv — Sat, 05 May 2007 09:54:00 GMT

Most vices just like all other behaviours are built up over time through reinforcement. Generally, these behaviours are very strongly embedded (learned) by the time we start thinking of them as vices. In fact, I often wish I could capture the exact reinforcement schedule used when building vices in order to use it when building other behaviours!

First lets take a look at a few of the most common vices we face with horses. Pawing, fence-walking (or worse!), weaving and cribbing or wind-sucking. There are many common themes here. For the horse, stress and frustration (or high levels of excitement) are the ones that immediately come to mind. Also, a lack of emotional control. The inability of the horse to cope with the stress\frustration in a calm way pops out as a physical vice. The behaviour that results is not random though, it is wholly predictable if you understand reinforcement and in particular self-reinforcement.

For instance, let's look at fence-walking. Why has the horse learned to fence walk? There must be something in it for the horse to repeatedly waste it's energy walking a fence-line, we simply need to identify the reinforcer(s) at work. With fence-walking the reinforcer is usually the return of a buddy or buddies, occasionally (like pawing) it is being fed. A typical scenario is that the horse's buddy is taken out of the paddock, and our fence-walker begins patrolling the fence-line. In some cases, neighing, bucking and stampeding around or even threatening to knock down or jump over the fence in a tantrum. To 'calm the horse' it may either be taken out of the paddock and taken to its companions or a companion is brought back to the horse. Voila! Reinforced, the horse now repeats the behaviour each time it is concerned about being left alone. Every time it is reinforced the behaviour gets stronger. If it isn't reinforced a couple of times, the horse makes the behaviour different (worse) in order to 'make' the reinforcement happen. Sound familiar? Sounds like a Variable Reinforcement Schedule, that we use to train our horses to have very strong behaviours doesn't it?

Now we know how the horse learned to fence-walk. In order to correct the behaviour we must remove any and all reinforcement, this is know as extinction. Killing off a behaviour that has been taught through reinforcement. Extinction can be a long and painful process (for the owner!) and one of the problems with extinction is that the behaviour will get worse before the animal finally gives up. This is usually when owners and trainers give in and the horse gets one more bout of reinforcement - making the behaviour even stronger! It will, however work provided all reinforcers are removed, from now on - forever.

However there is often a double-whammy with vices. We humans are reinforcing the behaviour, but also the horse adds in its own self-reinforcement. A self-reinforcing behaviour is one that doesn't require outside influence. It's something that provides some form of comfort to the animal, or person, performing it. These are also called 'superstitious behaviours' and you will see them all the time around you in other humans. Nail biting is a common one, touching parts of the body or clothing. Take a look at any sportsman - see all those funny movements they make before taking an important penalty shot or preparing themselves for competition. Those are self-reinforcing behaviours, superstitious behaviours. They have absolutely no effect on the action that they need to perform but they comfort the participant and become so ingrained that they don't even know that they are doing them. For horses, like many animals, one of the most highly self-reinforcing behaviours is movement. We humans do it too, pacing back and forth or even rocking when stressed. For horses, comfort is gained through movement, the ability to escape! So the very act of racing or pacing up and down the fence-line becomes reinforcing for the horse. It can draw comfort from monotonous walking, or pacing and adrenaline\endorphin rushes from frenzied activity.

Simply removing the reinforcement that we are providing will not be enough to stop this behaviour. We need to recognise and remove the horse's ability to self-reinforce too. In the case of our fence walker, this may mean that we need to change the fence-line in someway. For some horses, simply putting some obstacles in the way or changing it's ability to view horses walking away from\to the paddock will be enough. For others you may take a more 'cold-turkey' approach, building a totally bullet-proof fence and simply leaving the horse to it's own devices - let it walk the fence for days if need be, but only return its friend when the horse is calmly grazing (and repeat the exercise). If this is not practical, you may need to restrain the horse from performing it's self-reinforcing behaviour. Simply tying the horse (to a strainer on the fence) in the paddock can be a good remedy. Of course, you need to ensure that they horse is safe. It must not be able to break free but you don't want it to get tangled, nor should it be left for long amounts of time without water or food or being checked. However, being restrained from movement will immediately eliminate the self-reinforcer and speed up extinction immeasurably. Don't worry if the horse becomes a digger, pawing will not be as satisfying as walking and if it is never reinforced it will not take hold - the horse will give up easily on this new behaviour.

As you can see, just from this one example vices are not quick to fix but the process is quite straight forward.

Identify what reinforcer(s) have created the behaviour
Remove the reinforcer(s) and let extinction occur.

Well, that sounds easy but, of course, in practice you often need nerves of steel while you outlast your horse. You may also need to be a lateral thinker both in thinking about the reinforcers at work and in strategies that will enable you to stop self-reinforcement.

In a future article we will look at others methods that can help you to get rid of behaviours you don't want - such as distraction and counter conditioning (replacement of behaviours). In the meantime I hope this has given you some insight into why some behaviours are so easy for your horse to pick up, and so hard for you to get rid of!

Rider Confidence - Part 3, Dealing with SetBacks

Viv — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:18:00 GMT

In our first two parts of the Rider Confidence series we looked at goal setting and later at the practical 'tools' you can use when riding to boost your confidence. In part 3 of this series we are looking at how to deal with the consequences of bad experiences and complete this set of articles on rider confidence.

No matter how thoroughly you plan your goals or practice your mantras there are going to be days when something unexpected happens that scares you, perhaps a fall or near fall or perhaps a bad comment from a judge or unkind remark from a competitor. A temporary loss of confidence can be caused simply by a mood swing or incident in our lives outside of riding and is common during a physical recovery from illness or injury or a return to riding after some sort of break.

In the first year of production only 400 bottles of Coca Cola were sold; Albert Einstein's Ph.D. dissertation was rejected; Henry Ford had two bankruptcies before his eventual success; Rodin was refused entry to art school on three occasions yet became a great sculptor. All highly successful people have numerous failures and setbacks to their confidence throughout their lives so what helps them continue?

If we have previously been having success with our confidence building routine to hit a slump can sometimes seem worse than when we started, as if somehow we have been let down. However, it is when you have a setback that continuing to adhere to the habits of a 'confident' person - physiology, positive self-talk and visualization - is most important .

We have talked before about the roles of positive self-talk and storing good experiences in your memory banks in order to raise confidence. These techniques also apply when things go wrong.  There are almost no situations where there isn't something good to take away from even the worst disaster. Look for the parts of the experience you can feel good about and bank them. A very common scenario for horse owners is taking their horse to a new place, a show or out on a hack and the at some point the horse spooks or blows up in some way or perhaps even someone else's horse makes the ride a misery for all. Find the parts of the ride that worked. Did you stay on even though you felt scared? "I stayed on" is the self-talk to store in your memory banks, remember no ifs, buts or maybes when you are storing the good stuff away. If you didn't stay on, did you remount or was there a portion of the ride prior to that when you felt good? Use that, grab hold of the good. Always look at every experience as something learned, something valuable and feel good about having learned that lesson.

Now let's deal with the bad memories before they turn into anxieties. Let's use our 'mantra', our silly song, whenever you find yourself thinking about those bits that make you feel bad, anxious or worried or even embarrassed.   If you are somewhere you can't sing out loud, at least play your silly song in your head.   If you are a visual person and you find that visual replays of a bad incident keep popping up in your head - close your eyes and picture it getting smaller and fuzzy until it disappears into a blue sky - sing your silly song at the same time!

These techniques are designed to take the power out of the experience, to trivialize it, before it grows and becomes an anxiety that could stop you from trying to fix the bits that went wrong. They're common hypnotherapy techniques and can really help to get control of the emotions that so often stop us from making physical progress in horse riding.

It is vital to be very aware of your body position. If you are feeling a little vulnerable immediately after a setback you may find that your body slumps over a little. Reset your physiology. Walk confidently, head up, shoulders relaxed.  Slow down. Think about slowing down your movements just a shade - when you are stressed everything seems to speed up, be a little more jerky and tense. Slowing down will help you to relax. Imagine yourself walking on a beautiful hot summers day on your way to your favourite activity, or to meet your favourite person. Visualise your 'best\most confident rider picture' frequently and make your body match that position when you sit in the saddle.

Frequently picture yourself doing all the things you do well and also picture yourself doing all the things you want to do well.  Picture yourself as that ideal rider you think of.    First thing in the morning when you wake up is an excellent time to practice visualisation. If you have had setback, put aside a little time just before you go to visit or ride your horse. Just a few minutes somewhere you wont be disturbed, sitting in your car after you arrive may do. Close your eyes, breathe from the bottom of your lungs and perform your visualisations. Replay all the really positive moments and the achievements you are proud of prior to this latest incident. Say\think to yourself things like - On to the next step, moving forward, today we are working on... use self-talk to focus on todays riding and tomorrows progress rather than dwelling on the past. Move on! A failure can be a gift, an opportunity for you to learn, to improve your technique and remedy problems that you weren't even acknowledging were there, if you let it be one.

Finally, let's talk about something that no other sports person has to deal with when it comes to confidence or sports performance, your horse. Often when we are in a state of having little or patchy confidence or have had a bad experience or two, we owners may start to relate the horse's behaviour to feelings of being unloved. In short, we take it personally. "My horse hates me" or "I'm not good enough for my horse" or "He's being wasted with me". We invest so much time, energy and love into our horses that we often find it difficult to separate emotional, physical and behavioural aspects of the relationship.  We may even start to avoid the horse, making excuses not to ride or even to see the poor animal.

Hopefully, you will now have the tools to understand how to look at your problems more rationally, to understand that you can tackle whatever the problem you are facing, if you do so in small enough steps and look to the future instead of dwelling in the past. It is actually doing the work that creates success and with it more confidence, not simply imagining or wishing for it. Some believe that 'if my horse truly loved me, we would have a magical relationship and could do anything' . Perhaps even that if they just search long enough there will be the one tool, the one type of training, the one magic formula that will resolve all problems in a single session. If you are waiting for this I have bad news. Everything, including magic, takes time and effort. Each day is a new opportunity to take the first step toward your next goal - why not take it?

The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do - Thomas Edison

Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe - Sumner Redstone

Success isn't permanent and failure isn't fatal.

The Deadly Sins of Horse Training – Part Two

Viv — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:23:00 GMT

In our previous article we looked at the most basic of sins: not releasing correctly - releasing pressure too early or too late and too little repetition, today we'll take a look at some more extremely common training sins...

1. Training Sessions too long.

Here the maxim seems to be "more must be better" and the horse is put through endless repetitions until it 'gets it right'. This seems to operate on the basis that the horse knows what is required but is simply refusing to get it right, rather than the notion that perhaps the trainer\rider has not taught the behaviour correctly, the horse doesn't know what you want and is therefore unable to comply. If the horse isn't performing a movement, or at least providing a very basic attempt (see running before you walk) of what you are asking, within 5-10 mins you probably need to reassess whether he understands what you want at all.

On a physical level, try to imagine yourself starting a new activity - muscles will take time to acclimatise to the new requirements - would you start out by going for a full hour? Or perhaps you would need to get the hang of it with shorter sessions to learn the basic skills and then work your way up.   As with many things in life - less can be more! Top international riders know that 15 mins of good concentrated effort is better than an hour of mediocrity or conflict.   Repetitions should be built up over many sessions.  You will get much better results by repeating your exercise or behaviour over many days, weeks and months in small lots rather than trying to get your horse to do 100 repetitions in a single session.

2. Running before you can walk. AKA Expecting too much, too soon.

This sin is really about impatience and inability to plan for goals with achievable milestones and potential setbacks along the way. It's also about understanding how important creating solid foundations are and that in order to have reliable and solid foundations, these behaviours must also be practiced most often no matter how basic they seem. For each behaviour you should begin by rewarding the tiniest of attempts to do what you ask, gradually building up to excellence.

Having been on the bit nicely for a few minutes one day, many riders see no reason why the horse cannot achieve this forever more from then on.  They then move on to something more interesting. As time goes on the contact is still inconsistent but importantly every movement that is dependent upon it is also unreliable. Strangely it often never occurs to many riders and trainers to return to basics.  Building basic behaviours like going forward promptly from the leg, or when asked by the lead rope may not be sexy but it is vital to have the most boring and fundamental behaviours correct before moving on.

3. Not being consistent.

Let's face it, we're impatient, plus we judge horses by our own standards instead of as horses. No matter how much we love them and think that they are the world's most intelligent horse, they do not have the same sort of intelligence and reasoning as a human and to think so is unfair to the horse. One of the most important areas where this difference should affect our training and interaction is in the consistency of our training.

If you are inconsistent, ask yourself this - how does the horse know when it does or doesn't matter? If you are inconsistent with your aids, how does the horse learn what you want? Quite simply he doesn't. If you let a horse run out from a jump in practice - he will do it in the arena. If you let him ignore your aids when riding in your home paddock, or on a hack, he will do the same in other situations too. If you allow him to tug on the lead rope and eat grass when he pleases, he will do this no matter what hurry you are in and feel free to make his own decisions about loading on the float or truck too!

We all want the best for our horses and generally try to do the right things. If you consider just these major sins when you are training (or when you have problems) then you will have a fairly good checklist of good training practices. Let's review them again: When using pressure (bit, whip, leg, leadrope) am I releasing correctly? Not before I get what I want and not too long after. Do our training sessions provide enough repetition for the horse to understand what I want, without individual sessions taking so long that the horse is bored, annoyed or sore? Does the exercise get broken down into small enough chunks for the horse to learn and do I provide consistency so that the horse knows what I want every time.

copyright HorsePlay Limited 2007

Using the clicker while riding

Viv — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 04:50:00 GMT

Happy New Year everyone, hope you are all having fun with your horses and coming up with great new training ideas and projects as part of your New Years resolutions.

Thought I'd pop a link in to Karen Pryor's Click Flicks website. I found this nice little video clip of riders using the clicker while on their horses. It's often something that I get asked about - can you use the clicker while riding, and then immediately I'm asked 'How?!'.

I hope you enjoy the clip and take a good look around Click Flicks - there are other horse clips (free ones too!) and its always interesting to watch other people train.

Rather than embed the video link which may cause your mailboxes to fill (for those who subscribe),  here's the plain link to the clip for you to follow
   Click Flicks! Trail Video

The Deadly Sins of Horse Training – Part One

Viv — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 01:19:00 GMT

In this series we'll take a look at the most common problems that afflict many horse trainers and horses, whether they use negative or positive reinforcement techniques or a mix of both. Of course horses are learning all the time, so when I say trainers I mean anyone who has any interaction with horses but most especially riders. As a rider, it is important to consider what we are teaching the horse each and every time we ride. Are we strengthening a consistent message and therefore making our horse more enjoyable to ride each time or are we being inconsistent and making our horse more confused and worried?

In this first article we will look at 3 very common and very basic training sins.

Sin Number 1. NOT RELEASING.

AKA: Releasing late, Not shutting up once you have got what you wanted or nagging.

How often have you heard "leg on", "push him forward" and similar instructions? But there is very little emphasis on releasing the leg aid, rein aid or of rewarding the horse for doing what was asked. Frequently, a horse will be asked to move forward, when it complies, the rider instead of releasing the aid and therefore confirming to the horse that this was correct, decides that it wasn't straight\fast enough\ from the hindquarters or a myriad of other things and keeps the leg on, constantly changing the criteria on the horse and therefore constantly confusing the horse about what was requested. The horse gives up in frustration and is blamed for laziness, stupidity or bad attitude.

TIP - the key to negative reinforcement is the RELEASE! This release should happen immediately upon the horse complying to the initial request. When you release the pressure NOT when or how much you put it on, is what tells the horse what you want.

Sin Number 2. RELEASING TOO EARLY.

AKA: Not getting what you want when you ask or giving up.

We're dealing with negative reinforcement here, of course. The trainer\rider simply 'gives up' asking the horse while it's performing the wrong behaviour (or hasn't started the correct behaviour). Frequently the leg or rein pressure is released, if a horse bucks or kicks out due to the fear of the rider. Unfortunately, this confirms to the horse that this is what is required - because the signal to the horse of the correct action is 'release of pressure' - and so it will continue bucking or kicking thinking this is what the rider is asking for. However, even simple behaviours are subject to this - trying to handle a horse's ears or wash its face can quickly become an almost impossible task if the horse raises it's head and the handler releases.

TIP - You must only release pressure when you get the behaviour you want. If you are releasing because of fear of bucking, rearing or kicking seek help from a more experienced rider or try retraining the behaviour from the ground.

Sin Number 3. TOO LITTLE REPETITION.

When learning, repetition is first required in order for the horse to 'guess' what is wanted. Only by repeating the aid\behaviour\reward pattern will the horse learn what you want reliably. Additionally repetition will establish the correct muscle development and establish the correct neural connections. Having established what is required, it is all too common for riders and trainers to go on to the next phase and the next phase and the next in the training programme without much thought for repetition.

TIP - Whether using negative or positive reinforcements you must make sure that the horse understands the basic requirements first. This means that you must have established that the horse will respond correctly for many repetitions before you attempt to move on to the next criteria. Get a basic response correct first and only then add the 'frills' of straightness, lightness, speed or any other criteria.

In the next articles we will look at other sins such as; training session length, consistency, emotional involvement and progression...

Discussion Forums changed to Google Group

Viv — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 01:48:00 GMT

I've swapped the discussion forums over to Google Groups to enable us to discuss clicker training (or equine behaviour) via email. These groups give us greater flexibility, you can choose to receive individual emails and replies, a digest of the days discussions or if your prefer no emails and view the group on the web only.

I also have greater control over membership. I had noticed several 'strange' accounts joining the old forums and was concerned that there may be attempts to spam members. Unfortunately the old forum didn't allow for any sort of admin monitoring of new memberships but the new email groups do, so we should be able to enjoy talking to one another without a bunch of suspicious internet characters lurking around.

If you'd like to join up please visit http://groups-beta.google.com/group/ClickerNZ For those who had already joined the forums I have transferred you to the new group and you should have already received your confirmation email.

Back to Math Class – Understanding Positives and Negatives in Behavioural Training

Viv — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 03:11:00 GMT

In a previous article on Clicker Training we touched lightly on the terms positive and negative when referring to reinforcers and punishers. There is much general confusion about terminology of behavioural training and the number one issue is probably the use of the words negative and positive to describe consequences. In today’s article we’ll look at why it is necessary for us to really understand these concepts and why it does matter if we are doing the right thing but don’t understand the ‘scientific’ terminology.

...the terms negative and positive are only correctly used, when they are applied as if we were back in school solving a math problem.

On one level you could say that the ‘doing’ is much more important than the terminology. If you only ever trained your own horses and were doing everything correctly this is fine.

However, for most of us we do more than that. We talk to others about our horses and training programs and we learn from others by watching demos and clinics or going to seminars and reading articles or books on how to get the best from (and for) our horses.

This is where the significance of understanding the terminology comes in. If we are going to talk to one another then we need a common language. This is particularly important when the things we are going to talk about have rules that go along with them in order for them to work as expected.

We commonly use the word negative to mean bad and positive to mean good. This in itself means that people are subjective about how they use the words. What is good and fine to one person may be totally unacceptable to another, so you can immediately see how this rapidly becomes a problem for communicating ideas.

So let’s clear up this confusion now. When we are discussing behavioural modification (training) the terms negative and positive are only correctly used, when they are applied as if we were back in school solving a math problem.

- Negative means remove/subtract/take away/minus.

+ Positive means add/plus.

Recently because there is so much confusion about the use of negative and positive, many people in the training world have started to replace the word negative with removal i.e. removal reinforcement or removal punishment. Others have devised a symbol system using the math symbols plus and minus e.g. R+ (or +R) for positive reinforcement and R- for negative reinforcement and so on.

Okay, so now we know that negative and positive refer to removal or addition of ‘something’, but it still may not be clear why we should know this or how it helps us to train better and problem solve if we do know. This is where our rules come in. Behaviour changes over time because of the consequences that occur to the animal as a result of that behaviour. The rules for each type of consequence, the things that will cause animals to change their behaviour over time, are quite different from one another.

We must be able to identify what is causing behaviour in order to change and then apply the right ‘rules’ in order to either correct it (if we don’t want that behaviour) or encourage it (if it’s something we do want). Perhaps most importantly we need to understand the rules for each type of consequence because it’s when we break them that we tend to get the wrong behaviour entirely or unwanted side-effects. By having the ability to strip anything behaviour to its most basic elements and say ‘what is happening here’, instead of labeling the horse naughty or stupid or disrespectful, we have a much better chance of spotting problems and sorting them out.

Let us then, take a look at the four major consequences that we use when training animals (or indeed humans).

1. Negative Reinforcement R- Negative = Remove something, Reinforcement = Increase Behaviour

This is also known as removal reinforcement or pressure-release. This is the most commonly used method of training.Both traditional and ‘natural’ horsemanship use Negative Reinforcement.

The rules for a negative reinforcement are:“Something the horse doesn’t like is removed when it does the thing you want” or you can turn it around to “Something the horse doesn’t like is applied until the horse does what you want (when you must immediately remove it).”

The most important part of negative reinforcement is the RELEASE. The pressure IS NOT what teaches the animal what you want and this makes this the most misunderstood training method.
Example: A leg aid is a negative reinforcement. You apply something the horse doesn’t like,in this case the pressure of your leg\spur, then release it only when the horse moves forward.
Common Problems – Incorrect release timing (too soon), No release or release is too late. E.g. Removing the leg prior to the horse moving forward or not removing the leg when the horse has moved forward.
2.       Positive Punishment P+ Positive = Add something, Punishment = Decrease Behaviour

Positive punishment is also often used with horses and other animals.

The rules for positive punishment are: “Something the horse doesn’t like is added when it does something you don’t want” or “You add something that (you hope) will decrease behaviour”

Example: A smack with the whip after refusing a fence is a positive punishment.
Common Problems: Timing and easily becomes abuse – refer to article on ‘problems with punishment’.

3.       Positive Reinforcement R+ Positive = Add something, Reinforcement = Increase Behaviour

Clicker Training uses positive reinforcement.

The rules for positive reinforcement are: “Something the horse likes is added when it does something you want” or “You add something that the animal wants at that particular moment in order to increase a behaviour”

Example: The horse enters a float calmly and is rewarded with a haynet on entry.
Problems: Incorrect timing & rewards are provided instead of reinforcers i.e. we assume that rewards are reinforcers but this is not necessarily so.
4.       Negative Punishment P- Negative = Remove something, Punishment = Decrease Behaviour

Negative punishment is also often used with children but frequently forgotten with animals.

The rules for negative punishment are: "Something the horse likes is removed when it does something you don’t want” or “You take away something to (you hope) decrease a behaviour”

Example: A timeout (removal from friends or interaction). It is very important to understand that a timeout for animals can ONLY work, if you are REMOVING them from something they want or are enjoying. This is NOT the same as a timeout for a child which involves letting them cool down and then explaining what they did wrong. A good example would be removing a dinner bowl if the horse insists on pawing, or removal of the human in a clicker session if the horse begins to nip. NOTE: This type of punishment is most likely to be effective if done swiftly and without any further interaction - it must SURPRISE.
Same problems as positive punishment, especially if the trainer believes that negative punishment is automatically ‘not as severe’ as positive punishment.

The four consequences listed are not the final word on how behaviour changes. We must recognise that not all consequences are equal. Punishers are unreliable at changing behaviour in the way we think they should and “No Reinforcer” is also a consequence. If we ignore or more accurately ‘don’t reinforce’ a behaviour, that will also decrease behaviours (more reliably than punishment).

In conclusion, being able to speak a common language to one another will help us in our understanding of how different methods of training operate and whether to expect various techniques to work for us long term, without unwanted side-effects or not. Understanding the correct usage of the terms; positive and negative, reinforcement and punishment, gives us a universal foundation upon which we can discuss behaviour and training with one another, confident in the knowledge that we are all talking about the same things.

Why Punishment doesn’t work

Viv — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 02:48:00 GMT

Punishments are meant to decrease behaviour, yet in all studies of punishers used in training animals (or humans) it has been found to be very unreliable at changing behaviour at all.

So why do we punish and do we even understand what punishment is?

If we look at the simplistic depiction of the ‘four consequences of operant conditioning’ used in most textbooks, reinforcers and punishers appear to have an equal effect on modifying behaviour.
However, like most simplistic depictions this is far from true.

In fact, while this picture is suitable for introducing beginners to the concepts of operant conditioning, there is a whole section missing from this picture. The opposite of any reinforcer is really more likely to be ‘lack of reinforcement’ and punishers, particularly positive punishments, are not only highly unreliable at decreasing behaviours but also highly likely to create alternate behaviours, i.e. side-effects.

So first let’s clarify what punishment is*, recap on our negatives and positives in relation to punishment and then move on to looking at some of the problems that make it such an ineffective training tool.

A punisher could be described as anything that the animal doesn’t want and that it will change its behaviour to avoid in the future. Now, you may already see that this definition also applies to negative reinforcement – a leg aid is something the horse doesn’t want that the horse will change it’s behaviour (by moving forward or sideways) to avoid in the future. So the line between reinforcement and punishment can be a fine. What makes the difference is timing and application.

A positive punisher is the addition of something that the horse doesn’t want, such as a smack with the whip, after having done something we don’t like. A negative punishment is the removal of something the horse does want (which makes this something undesirable), such as removal of dinner or a timeout from play with us, after it has done something we don’t like.   Remember positive and negative don’t refer to good and bad, they are like the maths symbols and refer to add or subtract (remove).

Why is it so important that we really do understand what outcome or consequence we are using? Because there are different rules to using them successfully.

This is particularly important with punishers because they are so very ineffective for training. We must be able to identify punishers quickly and also recognise that often when we think we are using a punisher to discourage behaviour, we may not be, or we may be causing side-effects (completely new unwanted behaviours) and blaming the horse for this. We must also be able to recognise when a negative reinforcement has slipped into punishment (for the behaviour we are wanting) because we are not applying it correctly, usually through bad timing and the lack of release (removal – the bit that makes it a NEGATIVE reinforcer).

So let’s take a look at the big problems with punishment – in particular positive punishments which are the ones most used by people with horses (and many animals) and the consequence that is most ineffective in changing behaviour. The more we understand about punishment though, the more sparingly and correctly we tend to use it, so that instead of being something to ease our frustration or the tool we use when we don’t understand any better way to change behaviour, it can become an effective training tool.

So here are the major reasons that punishments are ineffective:

Inappropriateness. One of the biggest problems with punishment is that it can be so rewarding to the punisher. We apply punishment, more often than not, not because we believe that it is the best way to train or because we have applied it in a thoughtful way but because it is satisfying to us at the time. We are scared, frustrated, annoyed or angry at the horse for doing something and we lash out.

Timing. Just like rewards, punishers must be applied within a very short period of time of the behaviour occurring for them to have the desired effect. We talk about a three second window in which to reinforce the horse for wanted behaviour or punish for unwanted behaviour. Three seconds is actually quite a long time and you can still not ‘tell’ the horse what it did wrong. Frequently punishers are applied too late to be associated with the behaviour.

Stress and Learning. Learning cannot and does not happen effectively when the horse (any animal, including us!) is under stress. This may be fear, anxiety, anger or other emotional states that cause stress hormones to release and interfere with the brain's ability to reason and importantly to lay down memory. Punishment tends to cause stress. Animals that are frequently punished will be in a high state of anxiety (stress) whenever interacting with the person that punishers - quite simply the more punishment applied the less likely it is that the animal is ever going to learn what is required.

Inconsistency. Punishers are often applied inconsistently. We like to ‘give the horse a chance’ and may only punish when the behaviour starts to annoy us. Because we don’t apply the same punishment each and every time, the horse does not get sufficient information about the behaviour that causes the punishment. Anything we use to modify behaviour relies on repetition in order for the horse to understand the connection between behaviour and consequence.

Lack of Focus. A punishment doesn’t tell a horse what to do instead. This may not sound like a big problem but it usually is. If the horse is stopped from doing “x” through punishment it may simply start doing “y” which is equally or even more annoying or destructive. We then begin a cycle of punishment until the horse ‘finds’ something it can do. During this the horse can become more and more frustrated and simply become averse to the trainer instead of learning what the right behaviour you want is.

Aversion to the Trainer. The cycle of punishment mentioned above or the type\level of punishment can cause the horse to dislike the trainer. This is reasonably common; the horse makes the association of the punishment with a person rather than the behaviours. This can make the horse wary of the person and while it may ‘behave’ in some instances, making the humans believe the punishment has worked, then the behaviour may reappear with other people or the horse may not trust the person anymore making it unreliable in its behaviour.

Habituation\Desensitisation to the Punishment. Another big problem with punishment is that the horse gets used to it.  In order to dissuade the horse you then have to up the level of punishment and the horse may then get used to that level and so on.

Aggression or Increased Timidity. A side effect of punishment can often be increased aggression or increased timidity. If a horse perceives that it is being attacked, because the punishment is not clearly linked to the behaviour (delay in timing or inappropriateness) or the punishment is out of proportion to the behaviour or even because the horse has come to dislike or mistrust the person due to previous punishments, then this may lead to the horse defending itself – increased aggression.   A more naturally timid horse or one that has tried aggression and been ‘defeated’ may respond with increased timidity – head shyness, hard to catch, increased likelihood of bolting or escape behaviours.

Learned Helplessness. Learned Helplessness is a term often used for people (particularly humans that have been ‘desensitised’ using the controversial flooding technique) however it also applies to animals. It is more commonly referred to as ‘shut down’ in animals. It may also correspond to what was referred to as ‘broken spirited’.   This is where the animal simply gives in, submits, or shuts down to the point where it appears to do what is required but in truth the animal is no longer really participating or responding in a willing way. Importantly, the submission tends to only last in familiar situations – the horse will suddenly freeze completely or react violently when in an unfamiliar setting or when pushed beyond its limits to cope.

Reward or Punishment? – The Trainer as a problem. A consequence is only a reward or a punishment based on how the animal perceives it. When judging whether ANY interaction we have with the horse is either a reinforcer or a punisher we should look at whether the behaviour increases or decreases.

If the behaviour is being maintained (staying the same) or increasing then a reinforcer is at work.
If the behaviour decreases then either a punisher or a lack of reinforcement is at work.

Lack of understanding of how learning occurs in animals is a huge reason why punishment fails. Simply using punishment infers that the trainer probably doesn’t understand what is causing a behaviour or how to teach the horse correctly.

Some common examples:

If a horse kicks and rattles the stall gate to gain attention then we may think that yelling at, smacking or throwing things at the horse are punishments because we are angry or unhappy when we do these things.   The horse on the other hand may view any or all of these actions as a reward because it is the attention that it is seeking in the first place. So rather than decreasing, this behaviour increases in response to our ‘punishment’.

A horse that nips or threatens to bite, it is quite common for humans to flick the horse’s nose or use some other mild rebuke.   The horse may or may not see this as a punishment at all! Even a fairly substantial thwack with a hand is often not terrible to a horse – it may get a surprise but if it is determined to perform the behaviour it will quickly become desensitised to such punishment. It may even see this as an invitation to have some rough and tumble play – who hasn’t seen a pair of horses standing inches apart, biting and kicking at one another but not moving because they are ‘playing’?

Finally, what about this common scenario? At the end of a work session the horse does some particularly nice work. The rider immediately jumps off the horse and returns it to its stall. Is that a reward or a punishment? Well, that depends on how the horse views this development. If the horse views being worked as something unpleasant and being returned to its stall to rest as something pleasant, then this is a negative reinforcement – the removal of work. Does it associate this with any particular behaviour – who knows?   If the rider’s timing is impeccable and he leaps off immediately following the required behaviour – maybe. On the other hand if the horse enjoys the rider’s company and is happy doing the work then this could be a negative punishment – the removal of something it enjoys and being placed back in the stall where it is bored.

So when punishing an animal we have a lot of things to get right and an awful lot of things that can backfire on us in a very short amount of time. Even if we get our timing and appropriateness right, we have no way of actually getting into the horse’s mind and understanding how they perceive it. Is it even a punishment or is it making the horse simply avoid, dislike or distrust us?

Punishment is a very tricky thing that should only be applied cautiously, if at all. If you need to make a behaviour go away, make sure you never reinforce a behaviour you don't want and do reinforce (train) a replacement behaviour. This will be quicker and more reliable than any solution obtained using punishment.

*
Strictly speaking all consequences are reinforcers. Appetitive reinforcers (things the animal wants and will modify its behaviour to get) and aversive reinforcers (things the animal doesn’t want and will modify its behaviour to avoid). We refer to aversive reinforcers as punishers to make life a little simpler for all concerned.

© Horse Play Limited 2006

Visual Training Journal

Viv — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 01:28:00 GMT

We've talked a little about training journals before in http://horseplay.playwithhorses.com/2006/06/16/training-journals.aspx but I've just seen a fantastic example of a visual training aid demonstrated by Steve White at the last Clicker Expo as part of his K9 training regime to ensure that trainers are getting reliability.

Steve refers to this as a 'taproot' because he uses the analogy of a tree with a strong and deep root system (a taproot) . Simply training the behaviours you want to be the most reliable, the most often seems obvious but it is incredibly easy to be taken off on a tangent by more 'fancy' or fun behaviours and leave the ones that you really do need to be totally be dependable.

Anyway, I am quite smitten with this type of journal as I am quite a visual person, and this is a great visual aid. It is also very fast to do and you can instantly see what you have been training. If you are the sort of person who doesn't find it easy to keep a written or detailed journal, do try this. It is the bare minimum you should be keeping and really will pay off. It won't track how you are training a particular behaviour or any of the details that more detailed journals will give you but it is a fantastic summary of how often you are training a behaviour in order to achieve reliability.

I've put an example below, but the system is very simple. Get yourself some graph paper, steal a sheet of the kids maths book, or even just rule up some vertical grids on normal lined writing paper. Now at the top (or the side it doesn't matter whether you go vertically or horizontally) and write down the behaviours you are training.

Start with the most important. The most basic ones that you must have the most reliability in. In order to get reliability you must train these behaviours the most. I've put 'attention' (where you are training the animal simply to pay attention to you) first and then look away\wait and so on. You may have some different behaviours but I would hope to see your 'good food manners' behaviour right at the top of your list somewhere. If you want you can start in the middle of the sheet and work outwards - this would give you a nice symmetrical 'taproot' picture on your page as opposed to the triangle you see in my example below.

Now - simply fill in the boxes as you perform a training session. I've just scribbled in each box, but you could put a cross or tick if you prefer. If you are having more than 1 training session per day you may like to use different colours for different days but you don't have to. As you progress you should get a visual reference on how many sessions you are spending on each behaviour. Your 'taproot' or base behaviours should ALWAYS be taller\longer than any of the others and this will give you an instant reference on them.

You can get a sample templates of two different types of behaviour templates by visiting the ClickerNZ google group site. The MS Excel spreadsheet gives you an example of a complex training sheet as used by Great Houston Search Dogs and a sample of a visual template - a simple version of Steve's 'taproot' (although I this one will look more like half a taproot!).

About Steve White

More than half of Steve White's 30 -year law enforcement career has included working with dogs. He was handler and trainer for one of the largest police K-9 units in Washington State. Accredited as a Master Trainer in 1993 by the Washington State Police Canine Association, Steve is also a past Executive Board Member of that body, and past Vice President of the Certification Council for Pet Dog Trainers. He is an instructor for the K-9 Academy for Law Enforcement and has taught at police K-9 seminars in the U.S. Canada, Mexico, and the U.K. His articles have appeared in police K-9 and dog training publications in the U.S. and Canada. He has been an invited presenter at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Plume Tracing Symposium and the Mountain Rescue Council of the United Kingdom.

Steve specializes in teaching behavior modification, tracking, and scent work through the use of positive reinforcement-based operant conditioning.Steve has been recognized as an expert witness by Washington courts in police K-9 and dog behavior matters.

To learn more about Steve you can visit his website here.

Rider Confidence – Part 2 Simple tools to take with you while you ride

Viv — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 03:38:00 GMT

In part 1 of our rider confidence series, we looked at goal setting to ensure that you build a history of successful events. In this article we will look at a number of strategies you can use when you on a ride, to create a more confident you.

First, let’s look at the link between your physical (physiological) and mental (emotional) states. When you are anxious or fearful or stressed there are certain physiological things that tend to happen. For instance; your muscles may tense up, your breathing may shallow and\or increase in rate, your heart rate may increase as a result of this, your stomach may churn, you tend to hunch your shoulders and lean slightly forward (as a result of the muscles tensing) and you certainly don’t smile.

Many people believe that they must ‘calm down’ in order to change these things, and spend all their energy on trying to get their mind to overcome their physiological responses to anxiety.   This in itself can be quite stressful, since we want our ‘logical’ mind to overcome an emotional state that is controlled by a much older and more basic part of our brain.

However, while most of us understand that your mental state can and does change your physical state, it is much less well known that the reverse is also true. Change your physical state and you can influence and alter your emotional\psychological state.   It is this ability to change how you feel by changing your body position or actions that we are going to use to make us more confident riders and more competent riders, since these two things are also intertwined.

1. Faking It. Do you have a picture in your mind of what a confident rider looks like? If not, get one. Look at photos in books or on video or around you as you compete or ride. Look at the people you want to emulate and carefully note down the characteristics that make them look like they haven’t a care in the world when on a horse’s back. Now – do the same thing. For me, there were certain characteristics of huntsmen and cowboys – the casual seat, a hand on one hip, the loose reins in one hand, that denoted the ultimate in confidence. For you, it might be something else but whatever it is – do it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t ‘feel’ confident – do it anyway.   Your body will quickly tell your mind that you ARE confident and calm because you ARE physically in the same position as the picture in your mind.

You mind does not know the difference between fake and reality when it comes to physical posture, so use this as much as you can.   Remember, that our ‘little successes’ rule still applies. If you are doing the ‘cowboy pose’ for confidence, do it in small doses frequently and tell yourself when you are doing it. Mentally noting these times when you are in your ‘confident pose’ will keep adding to your success history.

2. Smiling, whistling and Singing. We’re aiming for a physical effect that will alter your mental state. Smiling is one of those basic things. When you smile it almost immediately alters your mental state a little. Even when it is a totally fake smile, your brain registers it and starts to crank back on the anxiety brain chemicals. Better yet, when you smile with your mouth, there is a physical effect that runs down your spine and loosens up other muscles that are involved in riding. So Smile!

Whistling and Singing are even better than smiling! Why? Because they affect your breathing and your mental state.    When you are anxious you tend to use only the top of your lungs. In order to ‘calm down’ you need to change your breathing to use the bottom of your lungs – under stress this is hard to do unless you have practiced this technique. Singing does this for you automatically.

The trick here is to maximise the effect. Don’t just whistle or sing any old tune, create a mantra. A mantra is a short, repeated phrase. Using a mantra has a physiological calming effect. We won’t go into all the physiology and psychology of mantra’s right now, just trust me on this one. Now, just to really get the best value out of our calming mantra we’re going to be really specific about it’s content – it must be ridiculous. Yes, that’s right – silly.   I’ve always liked ‘Flick the little fire engine’, but choose any silly song that has short repetitive phrase. So the aim is not to remember and sing ALL of ‘Flick the little fire engine’, instead we create our mantra ‘I’m a little fire engine, flick is my name. I too small to put out fires, isn't that a shame?' (repeat, repeat, repeat rather than singing all the verses). You may even change your mantra depending on what pops into your head - try not to use tunes from the radio - ear viruses - they aren't silly enough for the effect we want.

Okay, so now we are riding, singing our chosen mantra and two major effects are occurring – our breathing is correct and so the physiological calming effect (our muscles relax – our horse relaxes under us) is taking place PLUS our higher mental faculties have taken note of the fact that we are singing a child’s song in public. The brain begins to shut down the anxiety chemicals – how can there be danger if we’re singing Flick the fire engine in public? If you are doing this right, you should get a true smile and perhaps even some giggling. All these are GOOD things – muscles relax, breathing relaxes, horse relaxes … good spiral of confidence occurs rather than escalating spiral of anxiety.

3. Lessons in being a passenger or getting rid of your inner control freak. My last tip is perhaps one of the hardest to do. If you keep to our initial goal setting rules – a little that you CAN do, often – then you will succeed at this too and it will be a revelation to you and help your confidence to soar.

One of the big reasons that we lack confidence when riding is because we feel out of control, we fear the unknown. Yet, control on a horse is not created by hanging on to the horse’s mouth or gripping with knees or any of the things we tend to do when we feel out of control. So what we have to do is gain real control. Control by being as one with the horse, having true balance and therefore being able to halt the horse through a balanced seat and calm it through our own relaxed attitude.

So now we are going to practice, in little steps, NOT being in control. We are going to become passengers on our horse and in doing so we will gain true confidence, a better seat and the trust of our horse. This trust is what gives us true control of the horse, he will say – I trust this rider and am happy to let him\her be the leader.
What are the practical steps? At its most basic – you are not allowed to touch the reins. You will ride on the buckle, the horse will choose the direction and the speed and you will concentrate on being in balance and going with the horse at all times.

Now, remember all the advice given in these articles so far? I can already hear some of you thinking that this is a recipe for disaster. Not so. Did I say that you will do this for an hour or a day or even 10 minutes? No, your brain added that because you have reverted to old ways of thinking. At first, you are going to set a little goal. You will have practiced your smiling, whistling and singing. You and your horse will already be feeling relaxed and happy.   You will have set yourself up for success by carefully choosing where and when you are going to have your first little passenger ride and then you are going to do it and store that in your memory banks.   It may be as little as 3 or 6 strides. You can then take back your reins, review your feelings, take stock of your position and perhaps readjust yourself. Then you will repeat again.

To give you a better example. If you are riding in the forest or over a farm. Look for areas where your horse will be happy to walk on a loose rein and simply go along for the ride. If you get to an area where your natural reaction is to shorten the rein – don’t. Resist for at least 2 or 3 strides longer than you normally would. Okay –well done! Just like everything else, we are going to build up slowly, but we have to start somewhere.

Look for little hillocks that you can trot up. Instead of shortening your reins – leave them on the buckle and prepare to trot up the hill. Just before reaching the top the horse will naturally slow a little, plan to use this to take your reins back and ask him back to walk. Well done!

Don’t forget to place each of these successes in the memory bank and to take your time to review what went well and what you would change for next time. The point is to work on going with the horse instead of constantly thinking about stopping the horse (being in disharmony with him). Yet, you are still doing it on your own terms.   If you can include each of these exercises in your planned riding sessions then you will be well on the way to becoming a truely confident rider.

In part 3 of this series we will look at how to deal with the consequences of bad experiences and complete this set of articles on rider confidence

Who's Training Who?

Viv — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 09:01:00 GMT

Prince, is immediately released when he is returned to his paddock. His halter stays on, because it is quicker to unclip the leadrope than undo his halter and his owner steps back quickly to avoid any flying feet as he charges back to his companions.     Red's dinner is placed in his stall prior to his arrival. No one may enter his stall while he is eating and even being in the vicinity may cause him to angrily lash out at the walls or stall door.    Jack cannot be left in a paddock on his own. Convoluted movements of horses are performed to ensure that this never happens despite the inconvenience and disruption to all the other horses and owners.

These are not unusual stories. Every day there are people who are managing problem behaviours rather than resolving them and often expending a great deal of effort in doing so.  Initially, an animal may have a minor quirk or 'vice' that the owner or rider is too busy, too indulgent or too naive to address. More often than not the behaviours become more entrenched and more extreme, the more they are managed. Why? Because they are being reinforced. Managing behaviours, usually means reinforcing them. Reinforcers create stronger behaviours. This creates a bigger problem, the owner now has a pretty valid reason for avoiding dealing with it - its getting harder and harder to extinguish with every day that goes by.

But hang on, what stupid owner would reward behaviours that are annoying you might say? Food rewards and praise are not the only reinforcers. Anything that causes behaviour to increase over time is a reinforcer. Put it another way, if a behaviour is being maintained, or increased in intensity or duration over time - it is being reinforced by something. No ifs, buts or maybes. Something or someone is causing the behaviour to remain or increase by rewarding it.

So let's look again at one of our examples. Perhaps Red was excited and aggressive when he received his dinner. This may have frightened the person in charge of feeding him or maybe they just didn't have time to deal with it and thought ignoring the issue would make it go away. This led to them deciding to put in his dinner bowl first and then quickly send in the horse and leave the area. The horse's reinforcer - he wanted to have his food bowl all to himself and he got it. The more he acted fierce, the more territory he got. The people thought that by leaving him to it they were avoiding a confrontation and letting him 'calm down', in reality they were reinforcing his anti-social behaviour, teaching him to be more aggressive.

It's always important to remember that anything that the horse wants at any particular moment in time is a reinforcer. Being with friends, running around, being scratched, having a roll, being left alone, anything that your horse may want can be a reinforcer. So it is important to be aware of the potential to reinforce behaviours that you may or may not want every time you interact with your horse.

Here's another example. You are leading a horse back to a paddock. The horse that has been left in that paddock has been walking the fence line since this his friends left. By bringing the horse back while he is still walking the fence line, you have just reinforced the behaviour of the horse in the paddock. In the horse's mind 'If I keep doing this behaviour my friends will return', and we make it true each time.

These are all perfect examples of how positive reinforcement can build very strong behaviours indeed.   We do it without thinking, or worse, thinking that we are doing the opposite. In the fence walking example it is perhaps easy to think that bringing the horse back to the fence walker is a way of ending the behaviour but instead we are strengthening it. If you are prepared to never allow this horse to be on his own again then you would not see the behaviour but it would still be there, waiting until needed (by the horse) again, the horse would not forget this lesson or grow out of it.

In any and every interaction between animal and human, one is the trainer and one is being trained. If you aren't doing the training, then you are being trained. So, who's training who at your place?

More Practical Tips for Clicker Training

Viv — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 08:43:00 GMT

When you are starting out with clicker training it's easy to forget that this is a practical skill as well as a mental one. It's easy to get into bad habits with the clicker and your training but is also just as easy to fix them if you pay a little attention to what you are really doing when you are training. Here's some more practical tips to help you with some common issues.

How often are you clicking? Not often? Then your horse isn’t learning much. When you start an exercise the rate of reinforcement MUST BE HIGH. If it isn’t, check if your criteria are too high? Make it easier and\or look for smaller ‘chunks’ to get your horse started in the right direction.
Don’t do the work for the horse. This is not the same as making it easier.
Your horse is not an appliance, your clicker is not a remote control – watch out for the habit of pointing your clicker at the horse when you Click!
Can you see the behaviour? If not, move, so you can. You can’t click correctly if you can’t see the exact moment the behaviour happens.
Don’t have your hand in your pocket or treat bag. It is distracting for the horse and draws attention to your hand and the food not the clicker.
If you haven’t clicked yet – why are you thinking about treats? Click, THEN get the treat. The delay will make the click! stronger.
Be quiet with your body and your voice. Your horse doesn’t need verbal encouragers and will not appreciate ‘no reward markers’ (NRMs). Think, when you are solving a puzzle do you like someone constantly hovering over your shoulder telling you where to put things or when you are wrong?
Pay attention to your horse, but don’t intimidate him\her. Adopt a casual and friendly body stance – try not to stare down your horse, lean in to him or hover over him.
Always look for the small tries – don’t miss them. Remember you need to have a high rate of reinforcement in order for the horse to work out what you want.
Be careful of inadvertent corrections. If you are leading with a lure or target – don’t let the lead line pop him on the chin or nose if he’s a little slow or wide. Train without a lead line and halter if you can (get’s rid of this problem and gives your more free hands)
If you need to have a lead rope – tuck the end into a belt or your pants if you find it difficult to handle plus the clicker and controlling your horse. It will also help you to refrain from using to control or modify the horse's behaviour.
You have two hands – one for the clicker, one for the lead rope or target. If you are finding that there are ‘other things’ in your hands, examine what they are. If you have one hand in your pockets or treat bag – take it out, it shouldn’t be there. If you are constantly using the lead rope to move your horse , or juggling the target – examine whether you are working, or the horse is. If you are having difficulty with too many tasks for your hands – you are probably doing too many things you shouldn’t be.
Breaks do not have to be long but they do need to be there. Take minor breaks between training different behaviours and even between changing criteria.
Don’t work too long. Look for progress but don’t set goals for each session, work at your horse’s pace.
Only train for one criteria at a time. A criterion is what you judge the behaviour by, so if you want ‘head down’ – then start by clicking ANY downward movement – down is you ONLY criteria – not how much or in what direction sideways or why he put his head down – just that it went downwards…!
Have you accidentally captured a secondary behaviour? Don’t worry – clean it up later. Train one criterion at a time.

Developing Confidence - Part I, Goal Setting for Success

Viv — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 07:30:00 GMT

People often mistakenly believe that having confidence is something that you are born with, a personality trait that you either have or don't. Worse, there is sometimes an embarrassment about being anxious or fearful or having lost confidence. For those who are starting to ride later in life it is sometimes easier to cope with riding fears than the rider who was confident as a youngster and now finds, often with some horror, that it is not at all as carefree as they remembered.

Fear, is a response to perceived danger and on a physiological level it prepares our body to cope with what may come. Fear is ok, fear is a valid physical and mental reaction to things that are happenning to you. Anxiety is more insidious, even when there is nothing specifically to be feared, anxiety is the mind constantly nagging us with apprehension about what MIGHT happen or even constantly reliving a previous fearful moment (in the case of most riders – falling off).

Unfortunately, the additional factor when dealing with animals is that pick up on our levels of confidence. The horse that strides out calmly and is apparently bombproof under a relaxed rider, can become jumpy and unpredictable under a novice rider who lacks confidence. This additional aspect of riding can be hard to deal with if your only support is from non-riding friends or family.

Regardless of the cause of the anxiety, lack of confidence can in itself hinder your progress and put you into a downwards spiral of anxiety, causing bad riding (including making your mount more anxious), causing a fall or scary incident which leads to even less confidence and so on. Breaking this cycle is within the capacity of every rider, if only they treat their confidence levels in the same way as any other skill. It is something that can be learned and it easiest if you have a plan and tackle it step-by-step.

First, let's take a look a few of the things that people who lack confidence commonly tend to do:

You focus on what is not working and notice every mistake
Bad experiences are generalised and any good experiences are denied or trivialised
You compare yourself to others and assume that they don't have any problems with confidence. You often compare yourself to people regardless of your comparitive experience.
You constantly look into the future and see how far away an end result or your 'ideal' might be.

If we flip even these simple examples of the habits you currently have on their head, we can see how we might begin to modify your confidence levels. In particular the habits of not acknowledging progress made and good experiences or trivialising them are deeply entwined with lack of confidence.

In order to be a confident rider, we must have a bank of good experiences. Each success will build your confidence levels up. Riders who lack confidence, tend to ignore their successes. They wait for giant leaps in ability or feedback from others to validate any success.

So let’s stop that particular habit right now. If you lack confidence, stop comparing yourself to others and take note of YOUR progress. Don’t look back into the dim dark past and torture yourself with what you used to do when you were 12 or 17. Instead, look at what you can do right now and set yourself achievable goals. By achievable, we mean a goal that you can work towards in the foreseeable future, preferably with 1 month.

Now, I immediately know that a bunch of people reading this have just set themselves a ridiculously far fetched goal to achieve. You think you SHOULD be able to achieve them but subconciously you are repeating old patterns of measuring yourself against expectations and setting yourself up to fail. So, try again. Set a goal that you CAN achieve (easily) within 1 month. It is IRRELEVANT how easy this goal is. It is IMPORTANT that you can achieve it and that when you do you say to yourself – “I achieved that”. Only by working in this way will you work step-by-step towards being a confident rider.

Your goals can and should be small, even tiny. If you currently have anxiety about riding your horse out on your own, start by riding to the back gate of your property and then return home. Success!! Celebrate – ok so maybe champagne is a bit over the top but you absolutely MUST say to yourself – ‘well, done that was really cool. We rode out on our own and everything went really well’. Do not add any ifs or buts about where you got to or that it was a small goal. Take the success and put it into your memory, then move on to the next goal. Tomorrow, maybe ride 10 yards down the road – bank that success too. Remember it is the successes that are important NOT the size of them.

Follow these simple rules and you will begin to recover your confidence

Be specific about what causes your anxiety and tackle each thing as a specific project.
Plan your actions to overcome your anxiety in just the same way as you would teach yourself a new physical skill.
Take Small logical steps that work toward your final goal of eradicting your anxiety.
Set each goal and plan each action so that you will succeed.
If you have a little hiccup along the way - look at what you learned from the experience instead of taking it as a personal affront. Move on - don't get hung up on it.
Acknowledge each success as you go along. What you say to yourself does matter!
Only ever compare your progress to yourself. If you find this difficult, keep a diary and write notes after each ride. You will be able to look back on this diary and see how you have progressed.

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

In part II we will look at some simple tips to help you relax and deal with your anxiety while you ride.

Feedback, Comments and Questions

Viv — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 20:57:00 GMT

Just a quick note to help readers who may not be completely familiar with blogging. Did you know that you can ask questions and put feedback onto published articles?

On this blog you can place comments onto any article. This may be general feedback, your own personal take on the article, additional information you wish to add to help out fellow readers or even questions.

The comments feature allows me to see any questions you may have regarding an article and I can reply to you personally via email or by posting a reply to that comment (so that others with similar questions may also see the answer).

For those who subscribe to the blog, each article that arrives in your mailbox will have a 'comments' link at the bottom of the page - or you can use the comments feature on the blog itself. All comments are moderated to ensure that spammers or unacceptable content is not published.

Getting Behaviours without Commands

Viv — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 07:24:00 GMT

I recently received the following question from Sharon B in Taranaki

"With the requests for a particular Action from your horse do we give the horse a voice command to accompany the Action we want the horse to take, or is it a random action that we reinforce i.e. 'look away'. e.g. do we say "Look Away" when we want the horse to do that or do we just reinforce the looking away action?"

It's is a common question from those new to clicker training. It is almost inconceivable to many novices that we can create a behaviour apparently out of thin air but the only alternative appears, at first, to be that we clicker trainers must be hanging around for hours on end waiting for a random action from our horses.

With negative reinforcement training we are ingrained in the dominance based and\or pressure based systems which rely on us physically directing our horses. We know that we must see the behaviour before we can Click! and reward it. However, in the initial period of introduction to positive reinforcement we often find it hard to think how we might get our horse to do anything if we do not use pressure or punishment or at least some command.

So let’s address this. Even tied quietly, the average horse is looking around him, swishing his tail, changing the angle of his ears, sniffing things, sometimes nibbling things and often changing weight distribution on his legs, or perhaps even taking a step or two to relieve the boredom or to check out what's going on in different directions around him. Any of these actions can be reinforced in order to encourage them and turn them into what you want.

This is exactly what we do with the foundation exercise 'look away'. We know how a horse normally behaves and we simply reinforce the bit that we want. In this case, we know that a horse will look around him and so we begin to reinforce this when it happens and end up with a behaviour that counter-conditions* the horse in order to produce good food manners.

Here, then, we have created a behaviour without commanding the horse to perform what we wanted or physically manipulating him in any way. This can be a revelation to new trainers. It is not however, random or accidental. We can do this because we understand how horses behave and are willing to pay attention, to be observant of our horses and see individual actions. By being observant we can also be predictive. We can know what our horse is likely to do and use our clicker to precisely capture the piece of behaviour we want, as soon as it does occur.

This seems simple but it is a significant change in the way you may currently think and can take some time and practice to get used to. At first the seeming randomness puts many novice trainers on the back foot. It seems too long a process, too hard too….. something that they can’t quite put a finger on to work, to be useful. Yet, this ability to see what the horse already does, to wait, to watch, to understand how the horse naturally behaves is perhaps one of the greatest gifts that clicker training can give the trainer.

This is why we try to start novices clicker training using simple exercises that use shaping and free shaping (starting a behaviour from ‘nothing’) instead of simply adding the clicker on top of negative reinforcement. It enables the change in mindset required to really take advantage of positive reinforcement instead of muddling it with traditional command based training.

We overcome our human trait of commanding and in effect, doing everything for the horse, in favour of directing the outcome – a far more subtle approach- and allowing the horse to do the work himself. Later, if we perhaps do use the clicker in conjunction with negative reinforcement we are much more thoughtful about it and can use greater finesse than if we had not been through this journey of discovery and changed our mindset.

* counter-conditioning is a term that means we teach a behaviour that is the opposite to (or at least cannot be performed at the same time as) a behaviour already in existence. In the case of 'look away' the normal behaviour for a horse would be to look toward or even move toward a known food source - he gets rewarded for doing the opposite, looking away. He cannot both look away and look at or move toward the food - counter conditioning.

Yes, You can train your cat!

Viv — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 06:50:00 GMT

Train Me? I don't think so...

Cat Training anyone? Yes, those most inscrutable of animals are trainable and for those interested in positive reinforcement and clicker training they will present you with a few challenges that aren't present in a lot of other animals, thereby improving your overall training knowledge and practical skills.

Cats in some ways are just like dogs and other animals that we have domesticated. They're small predators that have teamed up with humans for their own survival and benefit and we have derived some benefit from having them around.

However, as we are all very aware, cats are very, very different from dogs. For a start, cats teamed up with humans very much on their own terms and along the way it was not unusual for cats to have been either deified as gods or reviled as devil-ish. Very rarely have they been thought of in the same light as other domesticated animals - capable of being trained and doing a days work. Unlike our other domesticated animals, they're solitary by nature rather than pack animals that understand a hierarchy and just to confuse things further, the manner in which we keep cats means that they are permanently retained in a state of kittenhood (or at least adolescence), reliant on us as substitute mothers.

But cats can be trained. Not just toilet trained or introduced to the bare basics of polite behaviour with humans but actually trained in a number of behaviours that make them more enjoyable to be around, more entertaining and to give them a more stimulating life.

As you can imagine, cats rarely respond to punishments or negative reinforcements well. They do not have the sort of hierarchical nor physical attachments to humans that really respond to these sorts of training methods and will generally move on and find themselves a new home if their current owners don't suit them. Positive reinforcement and therefore clicker training does work well with cats, provided you recognise a few minor eccentricities when working with cats.

Generally speaking cats prefer a non-startling noise for their clicker. Classic plastic tabbed clickers are often quite loud in an indoor environment so you will either need to get a quieter version, such as the i-click or some of the fancy variable clickers or simply muffle the sound by clicking from within a pocket or similar.
Cats will impose their own personality onto training. Many will look upon you with complete indifference during the first few sessions. You may feel like they simply aren't getting it - don't be fooled, it's a cat thing. They get it, they just don't want you to know they get it!
Get the right treats! Very important. Don't assume that cat biscuits will cut the mustard. Get to know your cat's favourites and be prepared to pander to their whims on any particular day. Try sweetcorn kernels, cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, yoghurt as well as the usuals. Warm is usually preferred by cats.
Keep treats very small!! Cats vomit very easily - its a built-in mechanism to help them deal with furballs and various 'problem' foods that they normally eat. If you over feed you'll get some great displays of this in action. If you are using cat biscuits - find ones that you can break into small pieces (vitabites are too large unless you have very short sessions). I usually use treats about 1/4 the size of the average cat biscuit.
Start training before dinner time - sit is the easiest behavior to start (use luring). But also recognise that your cat may be distracted if its too ravenous.
Have thick skin!! We worry about horses nipping but in my personal experience, its cats that have the worst manners. They can be VERY insistent about simply being given the treat and have no guilt about chomping a finger in order to get tiny treats - in the nicest possible way, of course! If you work standing up (with them on the ground) you have the best chance of retaining all your fingers but this is one gotcha with cat training. You could put food down for them, but this doesn't work well if you are using a liquid food like yoghurt and part of the reward for many cats seems to be having you personally feed them (peel me another grape, human)
Keep sessions very short. You have to, to avoid satiation (filling up) anyway but also cats get bored easily - they like the treats and the interaction but won't hesitate to remind you that they are felines and suddenly look upon you with that 'you are so beneath me' look and refuse to acknowledge that they have ever performed anything before.
Plenty of praise! Cats love to know that you have finally realised they are the most wonderful creature on the planet. But if your cat isn't overfriendly be careful about too much contact - it's meant to be a reward, that means they have to like it (not just you like to pat them).
Try to make a little routine. Cats don't generalise well, so train in the same place each time - at least until they begin to enjoy the training sessions and actively participate (after a couple of sessions they can't help themselves and the whole 'indifferent' cat facade tends to drop away).

Cats can learn many behaviours, including targeting, sitting on cue, coming when called and tricks such as shaking hands, high-five or sitting up (begging)

© Horse Play Limited 2006

Is My Horse Sore?

Viv — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 04:42:00 GMT

We can't ask our horses how they're feeling or where they hurt, we can't even see something that is obvious on our bodies like a bruise because of their skin colouration and coat. Diagnosing whether a horse is sore, naughty or grumpy for some other reason can be difficult. Even highly experienced veterinarians can find it difficult to pinpoint many injuries without extensive tests that basically eliminate potential areas until there is only one place left.

To find muscular pain, the massage therapist's hands must become their eyes. During the initial phase of any therapy on the horse the masseur will palpate the entire body of the horse. By running the hands over the muscles and then pushing and prodding the muscles in a variety of directions, the therapist can feel how the muscles react. Are they hard and tight or do they roll smoothly under the hands? How does the horse react as you palpate and is the reaction consistent each time? What do the muscle fibres feel like are they taut like strands of rope or wire or are they smooth and plump, are there any lumps or bumps within the body of the muscle?

This is a skill which can be learned through studying anatomy, physiology and massage technique. It will be continuously improved by paying attention to each of the horses that are dealt with - individual horses will have different muscle tone according to their breed, natural musculature and fitness and by keeping tabs on the progress of horses treated, to verify how effectively the treatment provided relieved the problems presented.

For most horse owners, however, there are some fairly simple tips to help you to understand whether your horse is sore or not.

Back Pain

Back pain is the number one cause of grumpiness and non-performance in horses. Recent studies have shown that as many as 50% of horses may be suffering from some form of back soreness at any time. However, just like us, how they react to that pain is up to the individual. Some stoic types seem to be almost unaffected whereas others are severely limited by even minor soreness.

A common mistake is to rapidly run the fingers down one or both sides of the spine. When the horse dips away, this is diagnosed as back soreness. On the contrary - this is a perfectly normal reaction and the opposite reaction, lifting and extending the back, can also be caused by running the fingers up the middle of the stomach in a similar way. On the other hand if you run your fingers down either side of the spine and the horse doesn't react - this can be a problem. It can be a sign that the horse is sufficiently sore that it is now unwilling to move it's back at all.

So can the horse owner do anything to check whether their horse is in pain or just grumpy? Yes! There are a number of fairly simple things that will give most owners a better idea of whether their horse is in pain or not.

First, your horse should never flinch from the pressure of your flat palm. If it does this usually signifies serious bruising or muscle tear injuries.
When you run your hand over your horse, do so at a medium to slow speed, in the direction of the hair. Going too fast or against the grain of the horse's hair will tend to cause irritation which can be misread as pain.
As you pass you hand over the horse, pay attention to the feeling under your hand - is the spot you are passing over warmer or colder than the surrounding area? Heat may indicate inflammation, cold usually indicates lack of blood flow (common with muscles that are chronically in spasm or withering from injury)
When you are grooming your horse, look for things like whether the muscles move and wobble nicely under your brush strokes. If they seem solid and the horse is also making faces at you in this area then this could be a sign of problems.
Stand your horse square. Look from the back - are his hips and the top of his pelvis level? If not this may indicate a strain or injury to the sacro-iliac.
If you are concerned about a certain area because your horse constantly makes faces at you when you go near it, check by approaching the area at least three times from different angles. If there is muscle soreness there you should get a reaction each time you hit the same spot rather than random grumpiness for being in the general area.
If you apply a little pressure as you pass over the area - do you notice any other areas of skin jumping or twitching?
Look for asymmetries. Can the horse turn it's head with the same freedom to either side? Do the hind legs track behind the front feet or does one swing under the body, heading toward the opposite forefoot? If you lift up the tail and look at the hind legs, are they evenly muscled? Even though it is natural for all beings to be a little asymmetrical, many such differences are signs of problems.

Although this is by no means a comprehensive list of diagnostics, these are some simple ways that you can start to become more attuned to your horse's physical well being.

Training Journals

Viv — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 06:57:00 GMT

Training Journals are considered a vital piece of equipment for serious clicker trainers and any organisation that trains animals for a living will generally have complex templates to ensure that trainers know where any particular animal is at in its training.

For the casual owner\trainer it still can be very useful to keep some sort of training journal with notes about the behaviours you are working on, the prompts and cues you are using, any issues and successes. This can just be quick notes that might include items like your ride notes or impressions of how interested\worried the horse seemed during that session. These can be very helpful to look back on and see progress, to diagnose problems and even to help train new horses later on if you see where you had problems or successes in the past.

It doesn't even have to be a diary that you keep religiously with each session. I myself am a bit sporadic with my training journal entries. I use it when I start a new behaviour, for a new horse, when I start to find problems or if I have really exciting sessions. I also tend to use it to keep 'stock' of where I am - every so often writing up a total summary of all the current behaviours - cues and where we are at as far as performance or reliability of the behaviour. However it is still highly useful as I found at a recent seminar. I was asked to describe how I trained a particular behaviour and my mind was a complete blank - I could think of several ways in which it could be done but not how I had trained it the first time around. A quick look through my journal quickly revealed that I had not used any of the methods I had thought of and reminded me how valuable keeping notes can be.

Keeping a journal, no matter how brief, can also help you to sort out what sort of training style you have and whether that style is getting you the best results or not. Do you plan your training sessions and then go out and complete that behaviour before moving on to the next? Or are you more creative\reactive? Starting out with a plan and then getting sidetracked when the horse offers something new? Neither is necessarily right or wrong but each has advantages and disadvantages.

If you need to train a particular behaviour by a particular date (or even as fast as possible) then having a plan with all the steps along the way and sticking to it will get you there as quickly as possible. On the other hand you may miss some wonderful creative behaviours from your horse that you won't see again if you don't take the opportunity to reward them then and there. Keeping and reviewing a training journal will help you to recognise your natural training style and change it if you need to for a particular purpose.

© Horse Play Limited 2006

Shaping, Seeking and Off Cue Behaviour

Viv — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:43:00 GMT

One of the major differences with positive reinforcement is the eagerness of the animal to work out what the handler requires. During many training sessions the handler\animal interactions may seem much more like a game of twenty questions, than more traditional training sessions. Instead of the handler being actively involved in ‘making’ the animal do what is required, the trainer is almost a spectator, allowing the animal to find the answer. The animal however, is actively involved in the session, working hard to find out what the handler wants this time.

When working in this way, the animal actively seeks the reward using all his reasoning and memory skills. When starting a new behaviour or improving a current one, the animal will try many different behaviours in order to see if any of them are the one that the handler wants. This is commonly known as seeking. Seeking is most often seen when the handler is focused on the animal but offering no known cue or when using a new prompt or cue that the horse does not understand yet.

The animal will tend to run through all of his repetoire of known behaviours. A clicker savvy animal will often do this very rapidly, trying each potential action only once or twice before moving on to the next. To the casual observer this may look like uncontrolled behaviour but it is actually a very effective and clever strategy for the animal to work out what you want. The animal knows that you will signal the behaviour you want, as soon as it occurs and not punish any wrong guesses, so he will try as many things as he can think of, listening out for the one that gets the click!. This tells him he's on the right track - it's like playing the hot and cold game.

Some handlers may not like this sort of seeking behaviour or don’t feel comfortable with anything off-cue. For those who feel worried by this apparent lack of control, this doesn't mean the end of clicker training or using positive reinforcement. It does mean that you probably won't be using shaping, and particularly free shaping, as part of your clicker training (positive reinforcement) repetoire to 'get' behaviours. Instead, you will use more dependent learning methods such as targeting, modelling or negative reinforcement. These require the handler to show the horse what is required each time and even physically guide the horse. Alternately, you may wish to restrict your training to one behaviour at a time and ensure that each is put on cue quickly and securely before moving on to any other behaviour to minimise any off-cue moments.

In either case you will be less likely to receive off-cue behaviours or see seeking behaviour. The downside is that you don't really get to see your horse turn into the type of creative genius that so enthralls most avid clicker trainers.

You will however, still see many great results from encorporating clicker training into your regime.