Category Archives: skills

Part 1 of Relaxed Foot Care: Front Feet

Leave a reply

In the photo above, Boots noticed that Bridget has the hoofpick and spray bottle in her hand, so she knows it is foot care time, and offers her foot.

‘All behaviors rest on an emotional ediface.’ I don’t know the source of this quote, but it underpins just about everything.

Our aim is to have the horse confidently lift each foot on signal and keep it up for as long as we need it.

Environment:

  • Work in a space familiar to the horse, where he is usually relaxed; buddies in view but not able to interfere. Horse is not hungry.
  • Horse at liberty or wearing halter and lead (not tied up). Halter and lead allow us to help him stand square. If the horse can’t stand quietly without being tied, that is a skill to work on first. A familiar mat gives the horse a destination spot for standing quietly. See Number 9 in the Blog Contents Quick Links ( at top of page) if you need to establish confident parking on a mat first.
  • Ensure the horse is warmed up a bit so it is easier for him to stand on three legs.
  • Ensure the horse is in a learning frame of mind. If not, encourage activity to use up adrenalin or do relaxing activities he knows well before starting.

It pays to remember that if you are nervous about picking up a horse’s foot, your anxiety pales into insignificance compared with how worried a horse might be if he has not been introduced to foot care with thought to his feelings.  

Some horses may have had a bad experience with a particular leg. Be aware that a reluctance to lift a foot, or keep it up, can be due to pain from an old injury, current sore muscles/joints and/or arthritis. 

Horses know that if their feet are compromised, they are close to death. It pays to teach ‘picking up feet’ carefully and thoroughly and not leave it to other people. By going through all the steps outlined below, we can also overcome our own natural fear and anxiety about getting hurt.

Our first job is to make sure we can rub and massage the front legs down to the heel with the horse able to stand still in a relaxed manner, totally confident that we are not going to hurt him. With some horses, to keep everything safe and low key, it’s a good idea to use a body extension to rub the legs. We can keep our body erect, stay relaxed, and use a high rate of reinforcement. If we are tense, the horse will be tense.

I’m using a pool noodle to get the horse used to having things rubbed on her legs, the back and front of each leg as well as up and down.

The rate of reinforcement must allow the horse to be continually successful. At first it might be a barely touch of the body extension to a front leg. We start where the horse is, and work forward from that point. See Number 5 in the Blog Contents Quick Links (link at the top of the page) for The Four Stages of Learning.

Use advance and retreat. That means start up high and move down a leg until one of you feels uncomfortable. When you reach either you or the horse’s threshold of comfort, retreat by moving back up to the withers, relax, then advance again. This is called a re-set. You know you have reached a threshold if you feel tension in the horse’s body or you begin to feel anxious or uncomfortable.

Every time we do a re-set, we have a new opportunity to clarify our signal and our intent.

The mindmap below looks at the the tasks involved with front foot hoof care. Note that the first stage, rubbing the length of the leg, is omitted – my mistake.

Stand Square: the prerequisite task of stepping forward and backward, one step at a time, ensures that the horse understands our request to stand squarely. It helps if we routinely ask for square halts in a variety of situations. Each square or almost square halt, on request, earns a click&treat.

Using a mat makes it easier because, as the mat-savvy horse approaches the mat, he knows he will halt with his front feet on the mat. In other words, he has time to mentally and physically prepare himself and often halts squarely to earn his click&treat. Remember, he has four limbs to organize!

When asking the horse to square up, slightly tilt his head away from the front foot you want him to move. Moving his head away frees up the shoulder so he can move the leg.

Knee-Lifts to Touch a Target

Always start by asking the horse to stand squarely. This will help him remain balanced when he lifts a leg.

If we touch a target item gently to the front of the horse’s knee, accompanied by a click&treat, most clicker-savvy horses will quickly learn to raise the knee to touch the target. First, touch it to his knee, click& treat. When that is well established, hold the target a little tiny bit above the knee. He will work out that raising his knee touches the target and earns a click&treat. If he doesn’t, go back to touching the knee gently, click&treat until he makes the connection.

A pool noodle, a plastic bottle attached to a light stick (e.g. bamboo), or a light stick with bubble wrap taped around it, are the sorts of items we can use for knee targets.

#89 HorseGym with Boots demonstrates. Work with just the front feet until you are both totally solid with them. More detail about hind feet will be in the next blog.

Front Feet

If you’ve taught your horse to target his knee to your hand when you stand near him, facing him, he will have already shifted his weight so he can lift his foot, and you can catch hold of his foot while it is in the air.

Some people choose to touch the chestnut as a signal for lifting the foot. If you start with your hand at the withers each time, the horse will most likely soon learn to shift his weight and be already lifting his foot when you reach the chestnut.

It can be handy to teach a concurrent verbal signal such as, ‘Lift’. This is also helpful when we ask the horse to step cleanly over a rail, forwards and backwards.

Before we can gain the horse’s confidence about trusting his foot to our care, we must build up our own confidence. The best way is to do it in short, 3-minute segments, working through a series of thin-sliced questions that might look like the list below for the front feet.

As you play with the slices listed below, you will be collecting feedback on how you feel about each slice, and how your horse feels about each slice. You stay with each slice until the answer to the question is, ‘Yes.’

It could take five minutes to get all ‘yes’ answers with one horse. With another horse, it could take a week or a month of brief 3-minute sessions to get all ‘yes’ answers.

Remember, warmed up muscles will find the strain of standing on three legs and holding up a leg easier.

The rate of reinforcement must allow the horse to be continually successful with what you are asking.

  1. Can I: gently & confidently rub his leg & foot all over with my body extension (stick, pool noodle)? If you can, practice on an experienced horse (or practice on a person) to get the feel for it, if this is new to you.
  2. Will my horse: let me rub his leg and foot with my body extensions? Make sure he is already comfortable with being rubbed over the rest of his body.
  3. Can I: confidently rub his leg & foot with my hand? Start at his withers and rub down only as far as you feel comfortable at that time. Over many tiny sessions, you will get the confidence to rub all the way down.
  4. Will my horse: let me rub his leg and foot with my hand?
  5. Can I: get him to stand so he is balanced before I want to pick up a foot? Have I taught him how to line up squarely to target his front feet to a mat, and/ormove forward and back one step at a time? If not, you want to teach that first.
  6. Will my horse pick up a foot when I ask him to target my hand with his knee … OR slices 7.-9.
  7. Will my horse: take the weight off his right front leg when I run my hand from his withers and down his leg?
  8. Can I: confidently ask him to pick up his foot by touching his chestnut?
  9. Will my horse: pick up his foot when I touch the the chestnut?
  10. Can my horse: keep his balance okay standing on three legs?
  11. Will my horse: let me hold his foot for one second before I release it back to the ground? (Click just before you release, then move to his head to deliver the treat.)
  12. Can I: let my hand and arm holding the foot swing freely with any movement the horse makes with his leg until it stops swinging, at which point I click, gently release the foot and move forward to deliver the treat? (I do this only if I’m feeling safe.) If you feel whole body tension in the horse wanting his foot back, I would release the foot and work on earlier steps. The horse has an emotional block somewhere and we need to winkle it out. (All behaviors rest on an emotional ediface.)
  13. Will my horse: gradually let me hold the foot longer and longer (one second at a time) and stay relaxed until I click&treat?
  14. Will my horse:  hold his foot up in a relaxed way for as long as I need it up, waiting for the click&treat?

Boots is targeting her knee to my hand. For the next slice, I would change my body orientation to stand beside her shoulder so when she lifts her foot it is easy for me to ‘catch’ it in my hand.

I build duration of keeping the foot up one second at a time, before I release it gently, followed by a click&treat.

It’s also possible to build duration by reaching back to deliver the treat while holding up the foot. Some people set up a raised tub into which they can toss the treat.

To Make Your Job Much Easier…..

Check out Number 59 in the Blog Contents Quick Links (see top of page), for Counting with the Front Feet. This exercise has the added benefit of developing the horse’s skill of organising his weight to stand on three legs, to a high level.

Reading Ears

Leave a reply

It’s hard for us to understand how much better horses hear than we do. Our sounds or words easily become signals if we use them consistently. Sounds can also become environmental signals the horse adopts according to the routines of his captivity.

  • house door opening if the horse lives near the handler’s house
  • person’s car arriving at the paddock (with special feed, treats or anticipated adventures)
  • rattle of food buckets or pellets in a tin
  • whistle to recall for a treat or a feed

When we use Clicker Training, we refine this response to sound when we use a click or other unique sound to mark the precise response we want.

Horse ears have ten muscles each, which means they can move their ears almost 180 degrees. The shape of the ear allows horses to capture more sound, and from further away, than our ears. On top of that, horses can pick up sounds at higher and lower frequencies than we can.

The shape and mobility of the two ears allows accurate gauging of the direction of a sound. Sound and vision are obviously linked, but sound serves better when vision is restricted. Due to the horse’s ecosystem role as a prey animal, he is wired to notice any sound, especially sneaky, sudden, or unusual sounds.

Horses have strong emotional responses to sounds. Anxious type horses will find the sounds and tense atmosphere of shows and events over-stimulating and problematic. It helps to gradually habituate them to this sort of environment rather than depend on flooding (overstimulation until the horse ‘shuts down’) to get a horse more able to cope with noisy, unfamiliar surroundings.

Ears, it seems, can give us a large range of signals, ranging from curiosity, acceptance, concentration, irritation, fear, dominance and submission. All we have to do is work out which is which – and when – for each horse in our life!

It seems that horses also pick up vibrations from the ground through their feet or through their whiskers and teeth while grazing. No doubt this relates to the ‘early warning’ horses and other animals can give us about earthquakes and other catastrophes. It might also be why they are waiting at the gate before they can see our car. But that could also be a function of their hearing.

Ear postions might be categorized as:

Alert — forward, scanning in observant or anxious mode.

Alert ears. Probably she is watching for someone to appear with treats to entertain her.

Curious/Interested — forward with head movement up or down to focus the eyes.

Because the lens in the horse’s eye does not adjust like ours, horses have to lower and raise their head to get a good focus on an object – like a person wearing bifocal or trifocal glasses.

Attentive — total focus on what she is doing.

She is extremely focussed on the task. It has her full attention.

Back/Sideways – Tension or Anxious — only the context of the situation and the rest of the horse’s body language can tell us if the ears are back due to anxiety (very stiff), or back/to the side because the horse is strongly focusing on a task, causing natural tension (not as stiff). See also, ‘Working Ears’ below.

Ears are sideways and lower lip is a little bit tight, so Boots is putting a lot of concentration into this task which she is just learning. There is some tension, but the rest of her body language does not, which suggests that she is in focus mode, rather than anxious.

Back/Sideways – Floppy — a chilled out, resting, or casually moseying along horse often has the ears half back in a relaxed state. 

Smoky is dozing beside a favorite person. His eyes are partly closed and his lower lip is floppy. His ears would be soft for the ear-bending test described below.

Pinned — truly pinned ears are a very strong signal that all is not well, and other action will follow if things don’t change immediately. Some horses lay their ears almost flat when they are strongly focusing on a complex task.  This can be more like a ‘frown’ of concentration and we must be careful not to presume the ears are pinned and take evasive/inhibitory action that will confuse the horse who was just busy thinking his way through a problem. 

Truly pinned ears. Boots is giving Smoky a clear message that his presence near the treats is not wanted. Her next move, if there wasn’t a fence between them, would be to lunge at him.

We should always give the horse the benefit of any doubt and read the overall situation and body language rather than just the ears. Truly pinned ears are unmistakable, once seen. They are usually accompanied by a very angry face overall and are often followed by snaky-neck movement toward the cause of annoyance, lunging at the intruder, or wheeling around ready to a kick.

Working Ears:  Back or Sideways, – Focused/Thinking — horses often put their ears to the back or side when they are in ‘thinking mode’.

We often see these sorts of ear positions in horses doing their ‘job’ of the moment; e.g., cutting horses, calf-roping horses, dressage horses, horses doing an agility course or a gymnastic routine.

Because they are carrying out a learned pattern in a known environment, their mind is focused on the task at hand and the precise signals coming from their handler.  Their ears often resemble the ears of a dog working sheep. Back and full of concentration on the job.

Such ears may resemble that of an irritated or disgruntled horse, but if the horse is doing his ‘job’ and his overall tension and body expression suggest that he is focused, we are probably seeing his personal ‘working’ expression. 

Often, as soon as the horse has finished a part of his ‘job’, the ears pop forward before the next obstacle or cow or whatever.

It’s helpful to watch video clips focusing just on the horse’s ears. Usually they are constantly in motion and give us an insight into what may be going on in the horse’s mind. Obviously, we can never be sure, but we can get an idea. 

The Ear Test:

The Ear Test: how easily we can bend the tip of the ear is a good indicator of the                        horse’s overall tension or relaxation.

If we can easily bend the tip of the ear, the horse is generally relaxed. If the ear is too stiff to bend easily, it tells us that the horse has tension in his whole body and lacks confidence or is anxious at the moment.

Each horse’s ear expressions will follow the same general pattern, but at the same time be unique, so we should be careful about generalizing too much between horses.

Ear Expression Summary Chart

More about ears

A. Ear differences between mares and geldings/stallions.

It’s interesting to study the ear differences between mares and geldings or stallions.

I watched YouTube clips of the Pignon brothers Frederic and Jean-Francois. Frederic and his wife, Magali Delgado, were the original stars of Cavalia (2003-2009).

Below is the link if you would like to watch Frederic playing with three of his young stallions. It is interesting to note the way they respond to Frederic’s energy levels. He uses a body extension to help communicate with the horses.

https://youtu.be/w1YO3j-Zh3g (accessed 15.03.24)

In another clip, Jean-Francois Pignon played with a troupe of mares.  

https://youtu.be/qncbDfT5KsU (accessed 15.03.24)

I didn’t know they were mares when I first watched, but their behavior was so different from that of Frederic’s stallions, I presumed they were mares. The message was in the ears.

The mares were constantly using their ears to maintain their individual bubbles while performing their routines which often had them very close together.

Mares in a natural herd situation determine much of the social structure of their group. Social order within a group needs a ready language with all sorts of nuances. Mare’s ears have these nuances.

Mares’ job of giving birth and caring for their foals means that they need to cultivate detailed knowledge of their environment when they live in the wild.

  • Best grazing spots
  • Safe water
  • The nature and habits of the local predators
  • Health of the herd stallion
  • Bachelor groups in the vicinity
  • Intrinsic awareness of their present rank in the group of mares

Horses give way to horses above them in rank, and they expect horses lower in rank to give way to them, just like people do in many situations. Mares need to keep track of many things.

Mares have a full complement of hormones and hormonal cycles. In wild herds, their position in the herd is closely linked with survival of themselves and their offspring during the annual hard times of summer drought and winter cold and snow.

We often like to romanticize wild horses, but there is not much romantic about a life lived in the environmental margins of the deserts, plains and mountains where they manage to survive.

Having had mares and geldings, I have found a distinct difference. All other things being equal (which they never are) mares tend to be more independent-minded, geldings more easy-going. That’s a generalization, but it’s not a coincidence that Cavalia uses only geldings and stallions for their shows. 

B: Ears and Horse Character Type

The detail about how a specific horse uses his ears will also relate to the innate character type of the horse.

We can never put horses into labelled pigeonholes, but often it is helpful to describe what we see and create categories so we can communicate our descriptions to each other more easily.

One way of categorizing horse character types is to look at their tendency to move their feet. A strong need to move suggests an extroverted character type. Less tendency to move suggest a more introverted character.

Another way of looking at horse character types is to note whether the horse is innately bold and curious or if he tends to stay out of the limelight and easily becomes anxious.

Quite likely, an extroverted bold horse will want to know where the party is and get going with it. He’ll often show forward, inquisitive ears. If the handler is not providing fun, he is inclined to create fun for himself.

An extroverted but anxious type of horse, who tends to weigh up the cost/benefit of every situation, may have ears moving through many expressions.

An introverted bold, imaginative horse is usually most interested in the next blade of available grass.  He sees little reason to move if his life is not in danger. He is strongly committed to his own ideas. He will learn things readily enough if we make it worth his while.

Such a horse tends to love food reward reinforcement and easily becomes a Clicker Training star. Once he learns something, he likes to make it his idea. He then tries hard to ‘get it right’. His focus during training may often include ears lying back or sideways as he thinks his way through a puzzle we’ve given him.

An introverted anxious type of horse may have active ears regularly checking out all points of the compass. He may appear externally ‘quiet’ but is heaving with emotions inside. Horses like this are more suddenly ‘explode’ with an inexperienced handler, so it is important to identify them and keep a close eye on where they are in relation to the edge of their comfort zone in a specific context.

These are generalizations but generalizations can help give us an overview. Ears are obviously highly personalized for each horse. In new situations horses behave differently than they do at home, just as we do.  

What I want to highlight is that it is easy to simplify how ears should look on a ‘happy horse’ when we really have little idea of what is going on in the horse’s mind and being expressed in his ears.

We should always read ears in the context of the rest of the horse’s body and the specific context of the moment.

A horse in an enclosed space with little stimulation will have different ear expressions than the same horse out and about with a wide view of things going on all around him.

Body Language Awareness

Leave a reply

The main tool we have, to communicate with our horse, is our body language. We instinctively respond to the body language of other people because, like horses, we live in groups. But because people talk so much, we have become less aware of the effect of body language. 

Our awareness is still there, but it’s mostly subconscious. We may reflect on how an interaction with a specific person left us feeling good or not so good. Or we may get a ‘gut feeling’ about a person on first meeting. In these situations, we are tuning in to our instinctive understanding of human body language.

All species that live in groups need to be able to ‘read’ each other’s body language because the resources of the environment are finite and need to be used by all members of the group.

To prevent energy wastage by constant bickering or fighting within the group, animals that live together have invariably developed sophisticated body language communication.

With time and consistency, horses can get highly skilled at interpreting our body language.

In human terms, think of posture and intent:

  • Shoulders back versus slouched/slumped.
  • Head high and eyes focused versus head bowed/downcast.
  • Meeting someone’s eye rather than avoiding it.
  • Standing firm rather than moving away.
  • Striding purposefully rather than reluctantly.
  • Chest expanded rather than shrunken/subdued.
  • Handshake firm rather than limp or aggressive.
  • Offer handshake rather than wait for the offer.
  • Approach assertively rather than timidly.
  • Unsmiling to passer-by versus smiling at passer-by.
  • Ignore group member versus acknowledging him/her.
  • Determined versus dubious.
  • Confidently neutral versus jittery or nervous.

When a teacher and a class of students meet for the first time, the students have the teacher sized up in the first few seconds of visual contact. Horses are the same. As well as visual signs, people (and horses) give off an aura of energy that spells confidence, timidity, or anxiety.

Interestingly, with a few adjustments, the body language we already instinctively know and acknowledge in other people can be transferred to our interactions with other group animals such as dogs and horses. On the other hand, it doesn’t transfer nearly as much to solitary-living animals such as cats and bears.

This is a ‘relaxation’ or ‘no intent’ body language posture. Energy drained out of body, hands crossed over treat pouch, looking nowhere. Boots has learned that this posture means we are having a ‘rest’ and nothing is expected of her at this moment.

Body language postures are similar whether we consider people, dogs or horses. A horse willing to touch our outstretched hand with his nose is willingly ‘shaking hands’. A dog who rolls over and exposes his belly is volunteering a very timid handshake.

This foal is learning to greet a person. We hold our hand near the horse and must be sure to let the horse close the last inch of space to initiate the contact.

Here is a small horse experiment that could be illuminating.  It may be interesting to use with your horses or a horse you are thinking of buying.

  1. Stand in a roomy area or paddock where the horse can see you. Stand very quietly with a slumped and despondent posture. Wait. Observe what your horse does (casually, don’t stare at him).
  2. While the horse is minding his own business in a roomy area, make your body language large and assertive (not aggressive), focus on him strongly and walk briskly toward his shoulder in a straight line. What happens?

Some people may, without realizing it at first, slip from assertive to aggressive. As with horses and dogs, human aggression often arises from fear and is a defense mechanism. This is important to remember when we are around horses. 

What looks to us like aggressive, intimidating horse behavior is often grounded in fear if the horse is contained with ropes or in a small pen. A horse’s only way of regaining a feeling of safety is to move himself away as far as he needs to go. When we restrict his ability to move away, his remaining options are limited.

Some people (and some horses) are naturally on the timid end of a ‘timid-bold continuum’. A person may want to learn to be confident with their horse, but quickly slips from confidence to nervousness. This creates a problem for the horse when he is relying on the person’s clear communication, and it is suddenly fuzzy and incomprehensible to him.

The strength of the relationship we build with a horse depends on how clearly we can present ourselves to the horse as another being who is confident, trustworthy and fair. 

Emotional Neutrality

Our body language is intimately linked with our emotions. The more we can lay aside emotional responses, especially stress-related and negative emotional responses, the more we can be ‘in the moment’ with our horse. The more we are ‘in the moment’, the more open we are to noticing the signals the horse is sending us. 

The more we can be open to his signals, the better we can ‘stay with the horse’ and give him time to work out how he can earn his next click&treat.

If we are totally focused on our own agenda, it is hard to also be mindful of the horse’s signals and take them on board so that we can quickly act in the most appropriate way.

The more negative emotion a horse feels from the handler, the harder it is for the horse to focus on what we are asking. He will either withdraw into himself or seek to escape by looking away and moving his feet away as far as a rope or fence allows.

Emotional neutrality relates to the ‘aura of energy’ mentioned earlier. A horse can pick up our pleasure and joy when he does something well. He equally picks up every hint of frustration or annoyance. By the time we recognize we are annoyed or angry, the horse will have withdrawn from accepting our communication at that moment.

It takes a long time to build the trust of a prey animal wired for flight. A moment of aggression can erase a lot of trust. If the horse is contained with rope, reins or small enclosed spaces, he perceives human aggression as a threat to his life.

Horses don’t have a concept of ‘punishment’. In the wild, a horse always has the option to move away from assertive or aggressive behavior by herd mates. We must never forget that they are prey animals and their key defense is flight. We must accept that nothing a horse does is ever a personal affront to us. What a horse does at any one moment is what he feels he needs to do because he is a horse.

Body orientation, Gestures, Touch, Voice, Intent are all things we an refine to make it easier for the horse to understand our requests.

Successive Approximations and Resets

2 Replies

The photo above shows one of the approximations we use when teaching trailer loading. Navigating a narrow space alongside the trailer, confidently, is a major step along the way to gaining confidence to enter a trailer.

Successive approximations, simply put, mean that we start with what the horse can offer already and gradually direct and reward each tiny move in the direction of the final behavior we want.

In other words, at the beginning of teaching something new, we click&treat for the slightest approximation of what we want as our final result. Each improved approximation is one tiny slice of the overall task.

When the horse feels ready, we encourage him to do a tiny bit more to gain the click&treat. This whole process of rewarding successive approximations is called ‘shaping a behavior’.

Shaping a Behavior: This is our second session of Free-shaping Head-Lowering

Putting a behaviour on signal/cue: In the next clip, you will see me re-setting the task repeatedly as I show Boots that a click&treat will only be forthcoming if I give the signal/cue for this behaviour, which is dropping my head and shoulders forward. We don’t want the horse forever putting his head down.

Putting Head-Lowering on Signal/Cue

A human example of shaping a behavior is teaching a child to write. The child starts with holding a pencil and using it to make random marks on paper. At some point the random marks become conscious curves and straight lines.

When the time is right, we introduce writing letters of the alphabet. Eventually the child can group letters to make words. Words are then arranged into meaningful sentences. Some children go on to write coherent paragraphs, essays, stories and books.

If the child loses confidence with any of the slices of the process, an element of discomfort creeps in, along with typical avoidance behavior. Not enough practice then results in a poorly shaped skill.

When a horse loses confidence in his ability to understand what we want him to do to earn a click&treat, we get typical avoidance behavior. He shuts down, stops trying – moves away if he can. Keeping the learner’s confidence is the essential role of a teacher.

Writing is an interesting human endeavor that starts at two years old and is still being shaped many years later at high school, tertiary education and beyond. There is always room for improvement.

Another way to look at successive approximations is to think of a sculptor starting with a piece of stone. He works in careful stages until the shape in his mind is visible to the rest of us in the shape of the stone.

In the same way, we gradually tease a series of movements (or stillness) out of a horse to yield the task we want. This is a bit harder than shaping stone because horses have minds of their own!

General Key Points

  1. The more quickly you click&treat, and simultaneously stop any signal/cue, when the horse complies, the faster the horse can learn to recognize just what it is you want.
  2. Once the horse understands your intent, refine your signals/cues and be TOTALLY CONSISTENT with them.   
  3. If you keep nagging with a signal/cue by repeating it, you will desensitize the horse and make him disregard the signal. Nagging is an easy habit to get into and hard to break. If the horse does not understand the first time you use the signal/cue, back up in your teaching until he does.
  4. The energy you use to communicate with a signal/cue will change with the situation and what you are asking the horse to do.
  5. To teach with the free-shaping, the horse learns without a direct signal/cue from you to initiate an action because you have set up the environment to make the action you want likely to happen. The horse does the action of his own free will. You mark the action with a click and reward it with a treat. Once the horse offers the behavior reliably, add a signal/cue to it. The signal/cue is usually determined by the nature of the task. It will be unique to you and a particular horse. For the haltering task in the video clip at the end of the blog, I started with the horse’s natural curiosity about the hoop, and shaped the haltering procedure from that.
  6. Just when everything is feeling really good is the time to STOP. Avoid at all costs the urge to do it again to see if we can. Change to something relaxing instead.
  7. One of the key skills of horsemanship is to read the horse accurately to be able to decide on the best activity (or rest) for the moment we are in. It is part of the concept of ‘feel’.
  8. When things go awry (which they will), always go back to where both you and the horse feel confident again, and gradually work forward from there.

When we watch a horse and his trainer perform a complex task, it is not always easy to see the steps the handler took to reach the smooth end behavior. Even if we can find out how the horse was trained, that only tells us about what worked for that horse and that handler.

Here are some questions we have to ask ourselves.

  • What did the horse know already before learning that task?
  • How experienced is the handler?
  • What method(s) of reinforcement does the handler use?
  • How long have the horse and handler worked together?
  • How long did it take them to reach this point?
  • What were the tricky bits along the way?
  • How often did the horse get confused?
  • How often did the handler have to go back a few steps and work forward again?

Seeing a horse carrying out a task that grabs our fancy is the beginning of our own adventure. It gives us the inspiration to teach our horse something new. The starting point for any Individual Education Program we set up for a horse will be unique to us.

Here is the definition of thin-slicing again.

Thin-slicing is a shorthand way of saying: split the overall task we want the horse to learn into its smallest teachable parts and teach each part in a way that makes it as easy as possible for the horse to understand.

Resetting a Task

When we teach something new, we are experimenting with our signals/cues and the horse is also experimenting to work out what it is we want him to do. It’s not unusual for things to get a bit complicated and messy.

If either you or the horse lose track of what you are doing, pretend it was perfect, relax (but no click&treat), pause. Count to ten and rotate your shoulders. Then go back to the beginning of the task and try again, starting with your visualization of how a good effort will look and feel.

The magic about pretending it went well (when it actually turned into a mess) is that it dissolves the natural frustration we feel when our communication is not getting through. Horses instantly pick up on the changes in our body when we are frustrated or angry, and will want to move away from the negativity, so any teaching/learning moment is lost.

If we can smile, breathe out and relax our body before the reset, we don’t upset the horse or make him anxious. We simply start again.

When someone tries to teach me something new on a computer or cell phone, they invariably go so fast that I have no idea what they did or what I should be doing. I think that is what often happens with horses.

The following two clips demonstrate teaching with successive approximations. Our sessions were never much longer than three minutes.

First Successive Approximations for Learning to Put on a Halter

In the next video clip, be aware that to make it shorter for easier watching, I cut out the bits where I reach into my pocket, after the click, so it is a bit jumpy. Everyone’s progress will be different.

From the Hoop to the Halter

Horse Vision is Different from Human Vision

Leave a reply

Shape of the lens

The lens of a horse eye is not able to change shape as easily as the lens of a human eye. Horse vision more resembles looking through a trifocal lens. A trifocal lens supports distance focus in one part of the lens, mid-distance focus in another part and close-up focus in a third part.

This explains why horses need to do so much positioning of their heads to see clearly. They need to raise their head high for clearer distance vision and drop it down low to get a better view of something closer.

Horses need to lower their head to see things up close clearly. Long hair obstructing the eyes does’t help.

Forcing a horse to keep his nose vertical with the ground restricts his visual field a great deal. It is easy to try this yourself. Stand with your head up and note your field of vision. Then drop your head so your nose points to the ground.  Note your field of vision now.

For a prey animal who depends on early detection of danger and a flight response for survival, restricting the field of vision by requiring (or forcing) vertical flexion can cause a lot of mental anxiety and related damaging muscle tension all over the body.

Eyes set in the side of the head

Being set either side of a large head, horse eyes work more independently than human eyes. The positioning of the eyes limits the horse’s binocular vision (being able to focus on something in front with both eyes) to a triangular area in front.

The shape of his nose causes a blind spot that extends about three feet directly in front when his head is straight, so his field of binocular vision is beyond that. So if we are standing directly in front of the horse within three feet, he is not able to see us or any signals we may give. But he can smell us and be aware of our energy level.

As well as his zone of binocular vision straight ahead, the horse can see almost 180 degrees beside and behind with each eye, similar to a person using rear-view mirrors on a car or bike.

Eyes set well into the side of the head allow rear view vision at almost 180 degrees. This peripheral vision is highly tuned to movement. A startle response due to a sudden movement from behind is an adaptation to get a head start on any predator emerging suddenly. In this view, Boots is able to see me on the right side of her body with her left eye.

This side or peripheral vision is not as exact as binocular vision, but it is excellent at picking up motion. That is why horses often jump away sideways first if something moving to the side or behind startles them, then they rapidly sprint away before turning to assess the situation. How far the horse moves depends on the intensity of the adrenalin rush.

When the horse is strongly focused forward using his binocular vision, his mind is busy with that and not linked to his peripheral vision. This helps explain why we need to be careful approaching a horse from the side or the back, as he can be genuinely startled by movement behind, if his full attention was on something in front of him.

It also seems that horses can doze with their eyes open. If you come across a horse looking very relaxed, with low head, floppy bottom lip, relaxed ears and a cocked hip, he may be too asleep to notice a quiet approach even though his eyes are open. It always pays to give a warning ‘nicker’ or say something while approaching the horse.

Light Intensity

With their extremely large eyes, horses have excellent night vision as long as there is some environmental light. I can vouch for this, having once been caught on the far side of a hydro river, when water was unexpectedly released into the river from the dam upstream during a sunset ride. We had to ride in serious darkness on an unknown track to reach the dam and cross over to our home side.

Horse eyes take longer than our eyes to adjust from light to dark or dark to light. It’s important to remember this when we move a horse from a dark building into bright sunlight or from sunlight into a dark arena, stall, truck or trailer. We should allow him to stand with his head in the entrance while his vision adjusts.

Blind Spots

As mentioned, horses have a triangular blind spot that reaches about a meter in front of their nose. That is why they need to lower their head as they approach an object closely to inspect it. You can simulate what it is like, to have a long nose like a horse, by putting your hands in place as in the photo below. Note how it affects your ability to see right in front of your nose.

Colette demonstrates how to place your hands to imitate a horse’s long nose to let you see why horses have a blind spot when they are looking straight ahead. If you spread your fingers wider in this position, the blind spot gets bigger.

They also have a blind spot right behind their tail if their head is straight as well as under their belly when walking across things. 

Horses have a blind spot directly behind if their neck is straight.

If we are experimenting to find the best position to give our horses a visual signal, it pays to be aware of their blind spots as well as how their vision differs from ours.

Depth Perception

A horse’s small range of close-up binocular vision makes depth perception for stepping into or onto unusual surfaces tricky. They again need to raise and lower their head to compare the object of interest with things they have seen before.

This comparison of the look of ‘new things’ with things already in the horse’s memory, helps explain why horses are so sensitive to anything which has been changed – anything added or subtracted to what was there the last time they passed by.

Their limited depth perception explains why horses are often reluctant to step into a puddle. The reflected light and the ‘unknown’ surface’ under the water are both problematic. Dangerous footing compromises a horse’s ability to flee if the need arises.

Horses need to lower their head to investigate unsure surfaces visually. Often they also paw to check the stability of what lies underneath.

The horse eye has a ‘visual streak’ in the retina (sensory screen at the back of the eye) which is the area of most accurate vision. As mentioned earlier, horses must move their heads in order to bring the item of interest into the range of this ‘visual streak’ to improve the depth perception and detail of the image.

If the horse’s head is restricted by tight ropes or reins, his ability to see clearly is compromised. Not surprisingly, such restrictions cause tension that affects the whole body.

Horse eyes appear to magnify objects more than our eyes (maybe up to 50%).  The acuity (sharpness) of what they see is less than 20/20 human vision but seems to be better than that of dog and cat vision.

Training in Both Eyes

The way horse vision works helps explain why it is so important to teach everything we do on both sides of the horse. A horse that is only handled from the left side will suffer from ‘right eye neglect’. Handling procedures will be ‘strange’ to his mind on the right side because the neglect means no nerve pathways have formed to build his confidence with handling on the right side.

This links to all aspects of training and handling. Like us, horses are naturally either left or right-handed. In other words, like us, their bodies are asymmetrical.

Unless both sides of the horse’s body are coached gymnastically, it is hard for the horse to be straight in his body. Which means a saddle will always be misaligned to some extent. A symmetrical saddle on an asymmetrical horse is a perennial problem for riders and painful for horses. 

When teaching a new movement, the less agile side of the body needs at least two or three times more attention than the agile side of the body. Think about how hard it is to brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand.

Environmental visual signals

Horses living within sight of their owner’s house use the lights coming on during a winter morning as a signal that their morning feed is not far away. Part of the year I provided hay in the late evening. The headlamp I wore was a visual signal the horses used to meet me at the shelter.

During groundwork our body language and gestures are visual signals. If we are approaching from behind, the horse is usually able to see us by turning his head.

When my horse’s companion, a large white gelding, went to live elsewhere, her attention was often riveted on a white Charolaise cow in a distant paddock as she tried to figure out whether that was her old paddock mate.

My thoroughbred mare, Gypsy, was super conscious of anything on the distant horizon. A rabbit hunter toting a rifle, so far away that I could barely see him, caught her immediate attention.

Awareness Needed

Horses are genetically wired to pay close attention to anything which looks different to how it looked before, or if something appears that wasn’t there before.

Because their eyes are not the same as ours, it is important to be aware of the following situations.

  • Depending on the shape of the horse’s belly, there is also a blind spot under his hind legs and under his belly. If we ask a horse to back over a rail, he can’t actually see the rail at the time, but is working from memory or feel. Just because we can see it doesn’t mean the horse can see it.
  • When we approach the horse from the front, it is best to be a little bit off-centre, so we are not in his front blind spot.
  • If the horse is focused on something ahead in his area of binocular vision, his mind is not engaged with his peripheral vision. This means that something suddenly moving behind him can result in a startle response, often called ‘spooking’. As mentioned earlier, peripheral vision picks up movement rather than detail, so the horse will move first, then turn and inspect the cause of the spook. How far he moves before turning depends on the amount of adenalin shock he experienced.

If the horse is strongly focussed on distance vision, with a raised head and a concentrated look, his peripheral vision is ‘off’, so sudden movement from behind will cause him to spook. Spooking is a highly effective method for escaping from predators.

  • If we are doing groundwork behind the horse, we need to move between his right and left peripheral vision and teach him to adjust his head so he learns to confidently keep us in view as we move left and right into and out of his blind spot.

Playing the peek-a-boo game from behind. In this photo Boots can see me standing behind with her left eye.

In this photo I have moved to her right, so she is watching me out of her right eye.

I’ve moved back to the left and she tracks me with her left eye. It’s fun to play this peek-a-boo game when the horse has front feet on a pedestal.

When we begin long-reining, it’s a good idea to play a peek-a-boo game from behind, while the horse is stationed on a mat or pedestal, and make sure he is comfortable turning his head to track your movement.

  • When horses negotiate a jump, the jump disappears from their vision as they approach it, so they are jumping from their memory of where the jump was. If the horse was paying attention to something else on the approach to the jump, he will run right into it without realizing it is there. You see this sometimes at jumping competitions.

When jumping or stepping over rails, the obstalce disappears from the horse’s vision and they work from memory of where it was.

Riding – Visual Signals Mosty Disappear

When we move from groundwork to riding, the visual signals the horse has learned suddenly disappear. We need to teach the relevant replacement touch and verbal signals we will use during riding from the ground first. In this way, we make it easier for the horse to navigate the change to riding.

Once mounted, we need to carefully re-teach the replacement touch signals by at first pairing them with the voice and visual signals the horse already understands from his groundwork. 

If touch and voice signals are clearly taught with groundwork, the switch to riding can simply be part of a systematic progression rather than a major change.

When we mount up, the visual cues and signals we use on the ground suddenly disappear. We have to carefully transfer these to voice and touch signals to make the transition smoother.

Thin-Slicing Explained

Leave a reply

Thin-slicing is a shorthand way of saying: Split the overall task we want the horse to learn into its smallest teachable parts and teach each part in a way that makes it as easy as possible for the horse to understand.

As each tiny part of the task becomes ‘ho-hum’ for the horse, move on to the next part. Gradually all of the parts will come together so the overall task is seamlessly carried out with confidence and willingness.

It means starting with the most fundamental lessons and gradually adding complexity, one click&treat at a time, until we have shaped the whole behavior we want.

As each small part, called a ‘slice’, is mastered, we begin to teach the next slice, either separately or as a continuation of the first slice. If taught separately, once the second slice is learned, we link it to the first one.

Proceeding like this, we gradually chain all the slices together until the horse can do the whole task as a continuous movement with one click&treat at the end.

Some tasks, of course, like haltering, saddling or harnessing, mounting up, worming, vet inspection, grooming and foot care, require the horse to stand still.

When we teach these ‘standing still’ procedures, we begin with a release (click&treat) for relaxation during each tiny slice of the overall process. Gradually, as the horse can relax more, we do a bit more before each release (click&treat).

It’s crucial to remember that ‘standing still’ during an unusual situation is not something a horse in the wild would ever do.

Asking a horse to ‘stand still’ while we do all sorts of things to him, is a big ask.

To teach a flight animal to ‘stand still’ on request means we have to actively teach the horse to be inactive.

In other words, the horse learns to be actively inactive. His instinct will be to move his feet if he feels uncomfortable. Good training will give him the trust and confidence to keep his feet still when we ask.

This concept is explored in teaching the art of standing still, or ‘Parking’. It’s important to promptly move to the front of the horse to deliver treat so he doesn’t form the habit of turning toward you. Perhaps start by standing in front of him rather than to the side as in the video clip.

Example 1: Park & Wait

The key to good training of any kind is to keep the horse being continuously successful in his responses to our requests. If the horse understands our request and is comfortable with it, the chances are good that he will respond willingly.

Example 2: Free-shaping standing on a mat.

Example 3: to teach my horse to walk through a square of ground rails filled with squashed plastic bottles (a Horse Agility obstacle that shows up occasionally), I split the overall task into a series of tiny slices. It’s a great exercise to allow the horse to become more confident with putting his feet onto unusual surfaces like tarps, ramps, trailers, bridges, water, balance beams or mattresses.

Example 4: This clip looks at thin-slicing walking through a water obstacle. We start with things the horse is already familiar with. If walking across rails and tarps are new for your horse, that is where you would start and work with until they are ho-hum.

Example 5: This clip looks at free-shaping ringing a bell.

Thin-slicing and consistency are the holy grails of horse training. By using the mark and reward (click&treat) dynamic, we let the horse know what will earn the treat and therefore increase to probability that he will happily do that action (or inaction) again.

ROPE RELAXATION

Leave a reply

ROPES: It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of educating our horses to be totally comfortable with ropes. Our main enjoyment may be to play with our horse at liberty and teach everything using targeting, voice and gesture signals. But sadly, horses in captivity are totally dependent on people for their well-being. Other people may regularly handle our horse or something may happen so that help from other people is needed. In case of fire, flood, or if you are hurt, or your horse must be moved, he will need a solid foundation of rope confidence. If he is sold, we want him to be comfortable with ropes.

If we take our horse out into public places we need him to be relaxed on a lead rope. If we tie our horse up, we have to get him comfortable with that. Rope Confidence includes ropes moving around him, ropes constricting him and ropes touching all parts of his body. The same is necessary if you want to teach your horse long-reining and maybe driving. Sooner or later we are going to drop a rope or rein and it is better if the horse does not see this as a reason to panic, which can lead to running into or over fences, or danger on a road.

#121 HorseGym with Boots in clip called Stick and Rope Confidence shows a way to begin. https://youtu.be/WIpsT4PPiXo

We don’t have to begin with a rope.

There are several elements to Rope Relaxation. #22 HorseGym with Boots in a clip called Rope Relaxation shows some of the elements mentioned in the list coming up. https://youtu.be/6Y34VlUk0Iw

The last part of this clip shows building confidence with dragging ropes.

We want to gain the horse’s confidence to remain parked while we do the following activities.

  1. Swing a second rope (not attached to the horse) near him.
  2. Gently toss the end of a soft rope all over his body, including around behind, under the belly and around the legs. It should feel like horses standing tail to nose swishing flies off each other with their tails. Start with a second rope not attached to the horse, then graduate to using the end of a long lead rope.
  3. When the rope is attached to the horse, make sure you keep a constant drape in the part attached to his halter while you toss the other end around his body. You want to avoid putting touch pressure on the halter.
  4. Toss a coiled rope (not attached to the horse) in the air across him.
  5. Randomly drop a coil of rope (not attached to the horse) onto the ground in various positions around him.

We also want to continue building his confidence with the rope when we:

  • drag a second rope while we walk along with the horse on a loose lead as in the second video above.
  • attach a second rope to the horse’s halter which he drags while we walk with him on a loose lead, including walking curves and corners where the dragging rope may touch the horse’s feet or legs, as in the second video above.
  • If the horse has reason to move when his rope is attached and dragging, we want him to be calm about it.
  • And eventually, with careful shaping, we can leave the horse ground-tied in different situations.

I’ve created a reason for Boots to walk forward dragging her rope on her own, so if she is ever in that situation, it is not unfamiliar.

Eventually we can practice ground-tying in different situations. The dropped rope and the gesture/verbal WAIT signals tell her that staying in place will eventually earn her a treat.

Here is the link to the complete ‘Ground Tying‘ BLOG: https://herthamuddyhorse.com/2019/10/31/ground-tying/

The Importance of Pause and Wait

Leave a reply

In the photo above, Bridget and Boots are at ‘pause and wait’ while I explain the next part of their task.

How does our horse know when we want him to stand relaxed beside us or when we want him to do something?

It is essential that we learn to manage our body langue to make it crystal clear to the horse when we are asking him to do something and when are in pause/no intent/ relaxed mode.

Horse sensitivity to the body language and intent of others is much more refined than ours because it is their primary language. In humans this ‘reading of body language’ has been dulled because we talk so much.

But we can stop talking and become aware of what our body language is saying to the horse. Body Language includes our orientation to the horse, our energy level, our breathing rate, our heart rate, our body temperature – these all communicate our level of calmness or agitation to the horse. To that we add the intent we hold in our mind.

Once we have a good awareness of our body language, we can begin to use its different aspects to communicate more clearly with our horse.

No Intent

In the photo above I am standing at ‘pause’. My orientation is not directed at the horse, my energy is down. I’m looking nowhere. My hands are quiet laid across my belly. My shoulders are relaxed. My breathing is slowed down, which also lowers my heart rate. My mind is quiet, not thinking of the next thing to do. This posture shows the horse I have no ‘intent’, allowing her to also relax into the ‘wait’ time.

Intent

In the photo above, my body language expresses clear intent that I would like Boots to step across the barrels. My focus is where I want her to go. I’m indicating ‘walk on’ with my outside arm and I’m stepping along with her.

Emotion Exercise

Find a stick and an inanimate object you can hit hard with the stick.

First, hit the object as hard as you can three times. Channel a time when you were angry or frustrated and put those feelings into thrashing the object. Your breathing, blood pressure and temperature will go up.

Second, kneel down beside the object and caress it lovingly. Channel your soft feelings for your horse or any other living creature. When you feel nicely relaxed, go back to hitting the object violently three times. Then kneel down and caress it lovingly.

Repeat a few times. Be sure to do this where it won’t upset your horse, dog, chooks, children, friends, partners, passer-byes or and other farm animal in the vicinity.

Take note of how your emotions mirror your actions. Keep this awareness. Horses need us to be calm and collected, especially when things go awry. If we are not calm and collected then the horse has no chance of being so.

No Intent

We can express ‘pause’ or ‘no intent’ sitting down.

Intent

My energy is up, I’ve asked her to walk with me and and while I maintain the increased energy and keep moving, she will move with me. When I come to a halt, I first drop my energy, release a long breath out and drop my weight down into my butt. And because I’m human, I also say, “Whoa”.

Strongly Reward the Pause or Wait Time

It makes sense to click&treat when the horse moves in the way we are asking. It makes equal sense to reward when the horse can relax into a pause/wait. We are not doing nothing. We are teaching active inaction. It can be difficult for horses to learn when most of their interactions with people caused movement or pain or restriction.

If you have already taught your horse to enjoy putting his front feet on a mat to earn a click&treat, use the mat to start building duration of the pause/wait.

Eventually we can incorporate ‘parking spots’ and have the horse WAIT while we stand in different positions around him. I am in my ‘no intent’ pose in a position where she can see me in her peripheral vision. It takes time to build up the duration. In each new spot start again with a few seconds and work forward from that.

Use a High Rate of Reinforcement

If the horse can stand still for 1 seconds, click&treat. Pay attention to your own body language. Start with whatever time the horse can offer, adding one second at a time before a prompt click&treat. Make sure the horse is not hungry and not needing to move to release pent-up energy.

Keep sessions short enough to maintain calm (you and the horse). Do some ‘pause and wait’ every time you are with the horse.

This video clip looks at using a mat to build duration. Number 9 in the Blog Contents List (link at the top of the page) has a number of detailed videos about using mats.

This video looks at staying parked while the handler moves further away.

A couple of more recent clips.

Thoughts about Clicker Training Horses

Leave a reply

In the photo above, we are working on building duration staying on the mat while I move around. Note her ear and eye on where I am and what I’m doing.

Creating resources to help people learn more about training horses is tricky for several reasons.

When we start out with horses we learn from the people nearest us. We tend to absorb their ideas and their way of doing things.

This morning my granddaughter, almost five, excitedly brought two library books about horses for us to read together.

They were about children learning to ride and going to shows, featuring standard British riding paraphernalia and methodology.

She has been riding Boots for over a year and shows great interest in how we clean her feet and she makes a good effort at brushing her.

It was an interesting challenge for me to explain that we don’t put things in Boots’ mouth (other than food). I explained that it is easy to teach a horse to change directions with a halter or bitless bridle using clicker training, body language and words.

She is familiar with clicker training because that is all she has seen. We play games where we pretend to be either the horse or the handler.

Her question, of course, was, “Why do these people do it this way?”

All I could say was, “This is the way they were shown how to do it, but there are other ways too.”

When it came to explaining the picture with the horse who had his mouth tied shut with a cross-over noseband, I found myself lost for words. Yet in the distant past I used one of these – what was my rationale at the time? To keep the bit in place?

Thankfully, the other book she brought outlined gymkhana games that I can adapt for her and her sister to play on their next visit.

For many horse owners, especially those involved in horse sports (sport for the rider) the concept of training with positive reinforcement is still something to be discovered.

It is common for people moving toward positive reinforcement at a traditional horse facility to be mocked, told off, ridiculed, and told not to spoil their horse.

My hope is that my work helps open the door to being with horses in a way that respects their intelligence and willingness to take part in the weird things that humans expect of them.

Writing a detailed plan and keeping track of where we are in the plan, tweaking the plan as we get feedback each session from the horse and ourself, is the way forward. Below is one way of keeping a record with a 5-point outline. It can be used with anything we want the horse to master.

At the end of this blog is a video clip on the importance of setting up the learning environment for the horse.

Spiral Learning with Linear Resources

Another difficulty with teaching and learning is that usually materials must be presented in a linear manner, such as in a book, video, or online course.

However, we don’t learn in a linear way. Learning is more a spiral process. We begin and get side-tracked. As we learn more about one aspect of training horses, other things suddenly begin to make sense.

We leave a difficult task or challenge and come back to it later. As we get better and better at reading our horse, what was once a mystery becomes obvious.

We become more aware of our body language and what it might be saying to the horse, so our signals become clearer.

Realization dawns that what we thought was a simple task for the horse actually has a whole series of mini-behaviors the horse must be comfortable with before he can confidently achieve the task we want.

We move forward with our training but learn to recognize when slowing down and consolidating are more important so we can maintain the horse’s confidence and interest.

A book forces the author to present ideas one after the other. But improving handler skills and good training come about by frequent returns to revise key concepts. We learn continuously as we gain feedback from the horse and our own actions.

Each training experience gives the text of a book, or the ideas in a video, enhanced flavor because we return with different insights.

Becoming adept with this new way of communicating is an exciting business, but it takes commitment to learning new information and letting go of information and habits that no longer fit with what we’re now striving to do. It can require a significant rearrangement of a person’s belief system. 

Change is always a challenge. It is especially hard if we are trying to change against the stream of what the people around us do with their horses. It takes a fair amount of belief and stick-ability to persevere to the point of proficiency when we hear unpleasant comments from colleagues.

But we can also find kindred spirits. There are equine clicker training tribes on the Internet. Facebook groups allow us to share ideas and give support to people new to clicker training.

The science behind clicker training is straightforward. All people and other animals are motivated to do more of whatever makes them feel good or gains them a reward.

However, gaining skill with the mechanics of clicker training and understanding its layers of possibilities are not simple processes.

Once the handler is proficient and the horse is clicker-savvy*, we can use clicker training to build complex chains* of behavior*. Terms with asterisks (*) are explained in the glossary you can access at the top of this blog page.

When it is truly adopted, the click&treat dynamic infiltrates every corner of the relationship and becomes the backbone of the horse’s Individual Education Programs (IEPs)*.

In other words, clicker training becomes the mainstay of a holistic approach to educating a horse to live in captivity.

Mat Madness

Leave a reply

In the photo above, I’ve asked Boots to put all four feet onto our plywood mat.

With so many new people taking up equine clicker training, I will find some of my favorite blogs from years ago when I started sharing them. The first video clip below demonstrates 22 different tasks we can play using a mat as a focal point. A mat allows us to have a specific conversation with our horse. If we have an exact idea of what we’d like, it is easier to shape the horse toward our goal and reinforce him for each small slice toward the goal behavior. Some further relevant YouTube clips are listed at the end.

Different types of mats are best suited to particular tasks. In this clip we use a plywood board, an old bath mat and pool flotation mat. Rubber door mats are good in that they don’t bunch up like the bath mat does.

The challenge for you is to choose one task and create a training plan to teach the horse as seamlessly as possible. When your first task is mastered, choose another one. Some tasks are much more complex than others. Most of them (but not all) require the horse to know the task before adding the mat into the picture.

Hints: Start with what the horse can already offer. Work in multiple mini-sessions. Three attempts are often ample for one mini-session. Stop when you get a good response or ‘try’. Maybe you can fit several mini-sessions into one longer session when you are doing chores other things with the horse. Work on new tasks one at a time.

Experiment until you and your horse agree on a clear signal for each task. Pay attention to your consistency using the signal. I struggle with staying consistent, but when I achieve it, things suddenly get much better.

Some people life to teach everything at liberty. I like to start most things with halter and lead so I can easily give the horse more clues about what will earn the click&treat, causing less frustration.

List of 22 Tasks: The list below is in the same order as shown on the clip.

1. Horse targets mat as his own idea, at liberty. https://youtu.be/xMaZWt5gK2o

2. Use a gesture to send the horse to a mat.

3. Walk together around the mat before asking the horse to target the mat.

4. Person asks horse to wait, goes to stand on the mat, then returns to the horse.

5. Person asks horse to wait, walks to stand on the mat, then asks horse to recall to the mat.

6. Mat moved to a different venue, encourage horse to target the mat at liberty.

7. Short recall to the mat, handler facing the horse but not standing on the mat.

8. Short back off the mat; handler facing the horse.

9. Back off the mat; handler shoulder-to-shoulder with the horse.

10. Back off the mat; handler behind the horse.

11. Handler on the mat, horse circles to the right and left and halt on the circle.

12. Front feet stay on the mat, yield the hindquarters, from right and left sides.

13. Walk across mat and halt with hind feet on the mat.

14. Yield hindquarters off the mat, from right and left sides.

15. Yield hindquarters onto the mat, from right and left sides.

16. Yield forequarters off the mat, from right and left sides.

17. Yield forequarters onto the mat, from right and left sides.

18. Left front foot onto a mat.

19. Right front foot onto a mat.

20. Right hind foot onto a mat.

21. Left hind foot onto a mat.

22. Handler in front of the horse, ask horse to back both hind feet onto the mat.

These clips may also be helpful or interesting.

#9 HorseGym with Boots, Putting the Mat Target on Cue (on Signal). https://youtu.be/eEGayCdECeQ

#10 HorseGym with Boots, Generalizing Mats. https://youtu.be/wdptBQ0EtK4

#11 HorseGym with Boots, Mat-a-thons. https://youtu.be/Lj9xrwVtRUQ

#15 HorseGym with Boots, Parking with Duration & Distance. https://youtu.be/CYJwu-CyIVE

Recall to Heel

Leave a reply

INTRODUCTION

This is a fun task we often teach our dogs. We call the horse toward us, then ask him to walk past our side, turn 180 degrees behind us and slot into the ‘heel’ position on our opposite side.

In the photo above, Boots has walked toward me, passed my left shoulder and is about to slot herself into position standing beside my right shoulder.

In the photo below, Boots has walked toward me, passed my right shoulder and is about to slot herself into position standing beside my left shoulder.

Boots is about to step into position beside my left shoulder where she will earn her click&treat. To make it easier for her I can move forward a step or two.

AIM

The horse walks to us, then past us, turning behind us to end up standing beside our shoulder.

PREREQUISITES

  1. Horse and handler have developed a good WAIT. Number 65 in my Blog Contents List which you reach via the tab at the top of the home page.
  2. Horse responds readily to handler’s ‘recall’ signal. See Number 90 in my Blog Contents List: Recall and Back Up in Rhythm.
  3. Horse understands ‘walk on’ voice and gesture signals. See Number 16: Smooth ‘Walk On’ and ‘Halt’ Transitions and Number 68 in my Blog Contents List: 20 Steps Exercise. We want this in place so we can ask the horse to walk past us and around, rather than coming to halt in front of us.
  4. Horse has perfected the 180-degree turn. See Number 23 in my Blog Contents List: 180 Degree Turns.
  5. Horse and handler have developed clear WHOA signals in a variety of situations. See Number 33 in my Blog Contents List: Willing Response to a Voice Halt Signal.

VIDEO

#274 HorseGym with Boots: Recall to Heel. https://youtu.be/Giut6wim9KE

MATERIALS AND ENVIRONMENT

  • A training area where the horse is relaxed and ideally can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • Horse is not hungry.
  • Horse and Handler are clicker savvy.
  • Horse in a learning frame of mind.
  • Halter and 12′ (4m) light lead-rope to start with.

NOTES

  1. * Have the horse warmed up before asking for 180-degree turns.
  2. * You can also teach this using a target, but as is often the case, phasing out the target can present its own challenges if the horse’s mind is fixated on following the target. I prefer to teach with gesture, body language and voice signals, helped at first with a lead rope.
  3. * Check that your WAIT is in good shape.
  4. * Check that your RECALL is in good shape.
  5. * Check that your WALK ON gesture and voice signals are in good shape.
  6. * Check that your WHOA is in good shape.
  7. * Check that your 180-degree turns are in good shape and the horse knows your voice signal for turning (I use “Around”).
  8. * Devise a signal for asking the horse to walk on past you rather than halt in front of you. Practice this with another person standing in for the horse so you can get it fluent. I adapt my WALK ON arm/hand gesture that I use for walking on when we are shoulder-to-shoulder and that seems to work okay.
  9. * I use a halter and lead to initially teach things like this. I can use the lead rope to indicate that I want the horse to walk past me and then turn behind me. That means he never gets confused about what will earn his next click&treat. Once the horse realizes that the click&treat happens when he shows up on my other side, the lead rope is no longer necessary.

SLICES

  1. Halter and light lead on the horse.
  2. Ask the horse to WAIT while you walk a few steps away in front of him. Turn, pause, then ask for a RECALL.
  3. Before the horse reaches you, signal with gesture and voice that you’d like him to walk on past you. As he does, step forward so it is easy for him to make a U-turn behind you. Then walk a couple of steps forward to draw him into a nice position alongside your opposite shoulder: click&treat.
  4. Teach it consistently on one side and when that is smooth, teach again from the beginning on the other side.
  5. As the horse gets fluid with this task, you can gradually not step forward as he comes around. But if he gets lost, always resume stepping forward so he is not ‘wrong’.

GENERALIZATIONS

  1. Work at liberty.
  2. Work in new venues.
  3. Work on a slope.
  4. Recall across rails or through a gap/tunnel or over a tarp.
  5. Teach moving into the heel position after a recall without stepping around behind the handler.

Dancing the Do Si Do

Leave a reply

INTRODUCTION

Once the horse and handler have mastered smooth forequarter yields and smooth hindquarter yields, we can build the DO SI DO. It consists of asking for a hindquarter yield first. Then, as the horse’s hind end is moving away, we stand upright and move back slightly so the horse brings his head through, and we end up in his other eye.

It is a way of changing sides by the horse doing the moving. Once that is achieved, we add a yield of the forequarters.

If the horse’s lifestyle keeps him supple, this series of movements is a good stretching and bending exercise. If the horse finds it hard, we have useful feedback to use in our planning.

AIM

The horse is able to execute a smooth 360-degree hindquarter yield followed immediately by a smooth 360-degree forequarter yield.

PREREQUISITES

  1. Horse and handler agree on signals to yield the hindquarters. See Number 83 in my Blog Contents List.
  2. Horse and handler agree on signals to yield the forequarters. See Number 84 in my Blog Contents List.

VIDEOS

#270 HorseGym with Boots: Do Si Do. https://youtu.be/EJ2w_sX_uOk

MATERIALS AND ENVIRONMENT

  • A training area where the horse is relaxed and ideally can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • Horse is not hungry.

NOTES

  1. Use a rate of reinforcement (how often you click&treat) that allows the horse to easily work out exactly what he has to do to earn his next click&treat.
  2. As the horse begins to understand the sequence of movements, gradually move the click point along until eventually there is one at the end of the whole series of movements.
  3. Whenever the horse gets ‘lost’, immediately return to click&treat for what he can do and work forward gradually from that spot.
  4. Do a little bit often, as this is hard work for the horse.
  5. Be aware that when we give signals with the non-dominant side of our body, they may not be as clear and precise as when we use the dominant side of our body. We can improve this once we are aware of it. In the same way, the horse may find yielding in one direction more difficult. If you notice a difference, begin teaching using the direction he finds easier. Later, do a few extra repeats on the difficult side.

SLICES

  1. Ask the horse to yield is hindquarters with body language, energy and a gesture signal (and voice if you like – I use the word “Away”) about a meter out from his side. Move along with him, keeping your relative position and using ‘constant on’ signals (body orientation, arm gesture and energy) until you want him to stop (at which point you stand up straight and stop all signals). Click&treat.
  2. Click&treat each single step away at first, then gradually work toward click&treat for a full 360 turn. How long it all takes to get smooth with this part of the task depends on previous training and how clear our signals are.
  3. At some point, stop following the hindquarters around, stand upright in one spot and move back a bit so that the horse can bring his head through the space in front of you, which puts you on his other side – in his other eye. Click&treat. Spend the time (via many short sessions) to get this part smooth.
  4. Teach 1-3 above from the beginning on the horse’s other side. He may find one direction harder.
  5. When 1-3 above are in good shape, gently build and consolidate your forequarter yield by itself until you have a smooth 360-degree turn on the haunches. Start with click&treat for one good step and build from there.
  6. Repeat 5 above on the horse’s other side. Again, he may find one direction harder.
  7. When all the above are going well, after completing slice 3 (and click&treat on completion of slice 3), ask for the forequarter yield. Just a step or two at first, before a click&treat, but gradually work toward the full turn on the haunches.
  8. Work toward a 360-degree hindquarter yield (turn on the forehand) followed immediately by a 360-degree forequarter yield without a click&treat stop in the middle. We can call it achieved when a full 360-degree yield in both directions is ho-hum.
  9. Work with 8 above starting on the other side of the horse.

GENERALIZATION

  1. Practice in many different places.
  2. Practice on a slope.
  3. Start with forequarter yield and morph into hindquarter yield.
  4. Once we have the simple bow, line dancing in place with the front feet, and the do si do mastered, we can chain the three tasks together.

Placing the Feet using a Single Rail

Leave a reply

INTRODUCTION

In the photo above we are using a line of 5-liter containers as our ‘rail’.

This is another exercise that helps a horse with proprioception – knowing where his feet are, what they are doing, and how much energy is required.

Equally, it is a superb exercise for the handler to refine communication skills. All training with a horse is about building a mutual language. If we are consistent with our body language and energy changes, the horse will use these as his main cues for following our lead. For further refinement we add gesture signals and perhaps voice signals.

Sometimes people think, “Oh, I’ll try that”. They do an exercise once or twice and think that it’s ‘done’. They totally miss the point that exercises like this are little workouts for both handler and horse that need to be done often, always stiving for more refinement of handler communication until it feels like magic with the horse at liberty.

For this exercise there are five different basic tasks, but since we do them in the horse’s left and right eyes, we have ten tasks. Then we consolidate the tasks by doing them in two directions for each eye, giving us a total of 20 tasks.

Once the five basic tasks are mastered, there are eight refinements we can add. Doing these on either side of the horse gives a total of 16 refinements.

This series of tasks also makes a good warm-up or cool-down exercise. And they can be stretching and accuracy exercises if time is short to do other things.

AIMS:  

  1. Handler works on using clear, smooth ‘walk on’, ‘halt’, ‘wait’ and ‘back up’ signals using a single rail as a focal point.
  2. Handler uses ‘Intent and Zero Intent’ body language to create short WAIT times between requests.
  3. Horse develops confidence with walking across a rail (or similar).
  4. Horse gains confidence standing with a rail (or similar) under his belly.
  5. Horse practices placing his feet carefully in response to handler signals.

PREREQUISITES:

  1. Horse leads smoothly beside the handler’s shoulder. See Number 68 in my Blog Contents List. The link for my Blog Contents List is at the top of the page.
  2. Handler and horse agree on ‘Intent and Zero Intent’ signals. See Number 10 in my Blog Contents List.
  3. Handler and horse agree on clear ‘walk on’ and ‘halt’ signals. See Number 16 in my Blog Contents List.
  4. Handler is aware of The Rule of Three. See number 46 in my Blog Contents List.
  5. Horse and handler agree on a back-up signal, either with the handler turning to face the horse – See Number 40 in my Blog Contents List, or the handler staying in the shoulder-to-shoulder position – See the first clip in Number 32 in my Blog Contents List.
  6. Handler knows to stay with each small task until it is ho-hum, before asking for a different task.

VIDEOS: 

#267 HorseGym with Boots: One Rail Basics. https://youtu.be/wMwBqiaBruI

#268 HorseGym with Boots: One Rail Refinements. https://youtu.be/L1fdlegEHFo

ENVIRONMENT & MATERIALS:

  • A work area where the horse is relaxed and confident.
  • Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • A single rail or several single rails (or similar) laid out a good distance apart.
  • Halter and lead or liberty. A light, shorter lead is easier to manage.

NOTES:

  1. A little bit of these tasks during one training session is plenty. If it’s all done quietly with no fuss or drilling, the horse will think on it and remember what behaviors earn a click&treat. The Rule of Three can be useful.
  2. Asking a horse to lift a front foot to back across a rail means that he is moving it back against the pressure of his whole body which is not easy. Ignore any touching of the rail at this stage as the horse draws a leg back. Frequent short practices will strengthen the muscles and ligaments so lifting the foot up and back becomes easier for the horse.
  3. To help the horse strengthen, and maintain the strength, to lift his feet easily, we can lay a raised rail or similar in a gateway that the horse uses regularly during his everyday life. I’ve done this with two gates, and it seems to do a good job at helping to maintain suppleness. I leave a small gap for my wheelbarrow to squeeze through.
  4. When confusion arises, it is because we are not clear enough or are going faster than the horse is able to absorb the new learning. Horses working for a food reward are usually super-observant of all our body language as well as carefully taught and executed voice and gesture signals. We must continually strive to ‘speak’ clearly with our body language, orientation and gestures every time we request an action (or inaction). Otherwise, the horse will only ‘hear’ a mumble and be confused, just as a person mumbling to us is frustrating and makes us give up trying to understand.
  5. Once all the tasks are going smoothly, we can mix them up in any order, which teaches us to be crystal clear for the horse and has the horse watch us carefully to pick up the next signal that will lead to a click&treat.
  6. When we use the less dominant side of our body, our body language and gesture signals tend to be less clear until we become super conscious of what we are doing. If you are right-handed and haven’t usually done much on your horse’s right side, there will be a lot of learning going on for both of you.
  7. I find it useful to take written memo cards out with me when first doing a series of moves like this.
  8. In-between moving, build it WAIT time before asking for the next movement. I.e., MOVEMENT – WAIT (x number of seconds) – MOVEMENT.
  9. In the video clips I only show each request once to keep the clip short. When in the teaching (acquisition*) phase, three repeats in a row is usually a good number to work with.
  10. If the horse finds one of the slices difficult, spend as many short sessions as necessary to build his confidence before asking for anything new.

SLICES:

  1. Walk right over the rail, halt a few paces beyond the rail, click&treat. Walk a loop and repeat a couple more times. Or you could have more than one rail laid out in your training area and walk to each rail in turn to get the repeats. I used one rail in the video clips for ease of filming with a set camera.
  2. Halt with the rail under the horse’s belly, click&treat; pause for a WAIT, walk on forward over the rail, walk a loop (or move to next rail) so you can repeat a couple of times.
  3. Halt and WAIT before stepping over the rail, click&treat; pause and WAIT, walk on over the rail and into your loop or on to the next rail.
  4. Halt immediately after all four feet have stepped over the rail, click&treat; pause and WAIT, walk on into your loop or to the next rail.
  5. Halt with the rail under the horse’s belly, click&treat. Pause and WAIT, ask the horse to back his front feet across the rail, click&treat; pause, walk on forward over the rail. Be gentle teaching this. If you have taught a ‘Lift’ voice signal for foot care it can be useful here.
  6. Repeat 1-5 above but this time approach the rail(s) from the opposite direction.
  7. Repeat 1-5 above walking on the horse’s right side.
  8. Repeat 7 above (on his right side) in the opposite direction.

GENERALIZATIONS:

  1. Work in different venues.
  2. Repeat slices 1-5 trotting.
  3. Play at liberty once you’ve built up good communication for each task.
  4. Work on a slope.

ONE RAIL REFINEMENTS

  1. Walk all four feet over the rail and halt. Back only the hind feet over the rail; wait; walk forward again.
  2. Walk all four feet over the rail and halt. Ask the hind feet to back over the rail, then the front feet.
  3. Approach the rail but turn in front of the rail to set up the horse to halt/wait with his hind feet at the rail but not over it.
  4. As 3 above, then ask the horse to back all four feet across the rail.
  5. If you’ve taught sidestepping (see Number 29 in by Blog Contents List), ask the horse to step his front feet over the rail at one end and sidestep along the rail. If you are facing the horse’s ribs ask him to sidestep away from you. You can also ask him to sidestep toward you if you’ve taught this previously. You can also build a signal for sidestepping along a rail while you are face-to-face with the horse.
  6. Straddle the rail. See Number 67 in my Blog Contents List.
  7. Ask one front foot to stand across the rail and WAIT. See if you can do it with either foot. Then either ask the horse to lift the foot back over the rail or walk on forward.
  8. Back one hind foot over the rail and wait in that position; walk forward. Work to be able to do this with either hind foot.

Mainly, HAVE FUN developing your communication skills.

Developing Soft Response to Rope/Rein Pressure

5 Replies

Photo above shows how we started teaching voice signals for turning right and left using a target. When the voice signals were established, I added a light rope touch – creating a multi-signal.

INTRODUCTION:

It’s not uncommon for a horse to have bad feelings or mixed emotions about halters and ropes. My book, WALKING WITH HORSES has a detailed section about developing a horse’s willingness to put his nose into a halter. This is a task that needs thoughtful teaching.

Confidence with halter and lead rope is critical to help horses deal well with life in captivity. Essentially, we want putting a halter and rope on our horse similar to putting on our ‘work clothes’ – an outfit or uniform suitable for the type of work we do. When we work for an organization or with other people, we adjust our behavior to what is appropriate at our job.

In the same way, a horse carefully educated about halters and ropes will recognize that he is wearing his ‘uniform’ and relate it to certain ways of behaving. Mainly, it limits his behavior choices. Ideally it also encourages him to pay careful attention to requests made via messages send along the rope.

We can use the rope to send text messages. But, obviously, we must first carefully teach the horse what the ‘letters’ of our text mean. The lighter the pressure of our ‘texting’, the lighter the horse’s responses can be. In other words, the horse can only be as light in his responses to rope messages as we are light in sending them.

A rope is a way of ‘holding hands’ with our horse, not a tether kept tight to stop the horse escaping our influence. There is nothing so heartbreaking as see a gasping dog at the end of a tight leash or a horse struggling to understand why the tightness of the rope won’t go away, no matter what he does.

The key to lead rope handling is that the rope is always slack except for the brief moments it is sending a message to the horse. The instant the horse complies with our request, the slack is returned to the rope. It is the instant release of rope pressure plus the simultaneous click (and the accompanying treat) that enables the horse to understand which task we are requesting.

AIMS:

  1. To have the horse comfortable standing in a safe corner.
  2. To teach a ‘head straight’ anchor task that precedes our request to turn the head.
  3. Use a target to teach head flexion to right and left; no rope.
  4. Add ‘right’ and ‘left’ voice signals to the task.
  5. Teach soft lateral flexion (turning the head right or left) using gentle touch on the halter via a rope until it feels equally smooth to the right and the left.
  6. Generalize the task to different places and situations.

PREREQUISITES:

  1. Horse is comfortable wearing a halter. (See Number 7 in my Blog Contents List. The link is at the top of the page.)
  2. Horse is comfortable with a lead rope.
  3. Horse and handler are clicker savvy.
  4. Horse understands standing on a mat with duration. (See Number 9 in my Blog Contents List.)
  5. For the early sessions, it’s helpful to have the horse standing with his butt in a safe corner so that backing up and swinging the hind end away are not options. The first slices will therefore involve making sure the horse is comfortable and relaxed standing in a corner.

ENVIRONMENT & MATERIALS:

  • A work area where the horse is relaxed.
  • Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • A safe corner the horse can stand in confidently. A safe corner is one where there is no chance of the horse putting a leg through wire or rails if he steps back or sideways. Hedges, sides of buildings or a corner made with barrels or jump stands plus rails tend to be safest. Even a raised rail or a log behind the horse with a small barrier on the far side of the horse might be enough of a corner.
  • A familiar mat to ‘station’ or ‘park’ the horse.
  • A familiar hand-held target.

GENERAL NOTES

  1. When eventually using the touch signal via the rope or rein, be ready to click&treat for even the tiniest turn of the head at first. If we miss the horse’s first attempt to solve a puzzle, he can think his idea was wrong, and it can take a while for him to try it again.
  2. When we lead, long-rein or ride a horse, it does not take much movement of the head to cause the horse to change direction. What we are doing here is not an extreme flexion exercise. It is an exercise to see how softly we can give what will become our ‘please change direction’ signals once the horse is moving.

SLICES:

A: STANDING COMFORTABLY IN A CORNER

  1. Introduce the horse to each corner in small, easy steps. Thin-slice the process to what your horse needs. Use a familiar mat to indicate where you would like his front feet to be. Three kinds of corners are shown in the videos clips.
  2. If the horse readily yields hindquarters and forequarters we can use these to adjust his position (see Numbers 83 and 84 in my Blog Contents List).
  3. Or we can lead him through the corner and back him into it.
  4. If using a rail, we can walk him over the rail and halt with the rail behind him.
  5. Play with as many safe corners as you can find or set up, to generalize the ‘corner task’ to different situations.

B: TEACH AN ANCHOR TASK

Video clips

Clip 1: on right side of horse

Clip 2: on left side of horse

NOTES:

In the same way that music is made up of notes and the pauses between the notes, we must have pauses between asking the horse to repeat the same task. Because the horse is at halt for this challenge, the anchor task creates the pauses between our requests.

We begin teaching the anchor task once the horse is comfortable standing in a corner, on a mat, with reasonable duration.

An anchor task is what we do to ‘set the stage’ for what we will do next. For example, when I play with targeting body parts to my hand with Boots, our anchor task is lifting a front knee to my hand. It tells her what game we are about to play. Another ‘stand quietly waiting’ anchor task might be to always hang a special nose target in the spot you would like the horse to stand (park) while you tack up.

As an anchor task for this behavior, I’ve chosen to rest my nearest hand lightly on Boots’ withers while she keeps her head forward. It is the position my hand would be if I were to lift the reins in preparation to giving a signal while riding. You might prefer a different anchor task.

In our case, this is a bit tricky because I use the same anchor position I use when we do belly crunches while standing beside the horse. The handler’s body orientation is often a large part of an anchor task.

I decided that Boots is far enough along in her training to learn to pause in this anchor position and wait for the next signal to find out whether a crunch or head flexion is the hot topic of the moment. You’ll see that we have a couple of conversations about this.

SLICES:

  • Stand beside horse’s withers.
  • Lightly rest your near hand on the withers.
  • Click&treat when the horse’s head is straight, or he is in the process of moving his head into the ‘straight’ position.
  • Step forward to deliver the treat so the horse keeps his head straight, then step back into position beside the withers.
  • Repeat until the horse confidently stays facing forward until you click&treat for 3-4 seconds.

C: LATERAL FLEXION TO A TARGET and D. THE VOICE SIGNAL

Covered in video clips 1 & 2 as above. Clip 2 is on the left side of horse.

  1. Hold the target out of sight behind your back and review the anchor task.
  2. When the horse stands reliably with his head forward in the anchor position, bring the target forward so he has to turn his head a little bit to touch it: click&treat & step forward so the horse straightens his head to receive the treat, putting the target out of sight behind your back.
  3. Step back beside the withers and put your hand back on his withers: click&treat for head forward until that is firmly established again (3-4 seconds). Be patient about establishing (and frequently re-establishing) this step because clever horses will want to skip straight from your anchor (hand on withers) to telling you that they know what to do – turn toward you (as Boots does in Clip Two).
  4. Repeat 2 and 3 above until the horse reliably waits for you to produce the target before turning his head. If he turns without your signal, spend more click&treat on facing forward. Make sure you keep the target out of view behind your back. If bending is harder, spend more click&treat on asking for the bend.

D. ADD VOICE SIGNAL

NOTES:

You will obviously want different voice signals for right and left. Voice signals need to be short, clear, and sound different from other voice signals you use. I use “and Gee” for right. I use “and Left” for left. “Haw” for left sounds too much like “Whoa” which we use a lot. The “and” in front of the key word is a bit of a preparatory signal that lets the horse know a request is coming. My voice emphasis is on the key word.

  • Some horses do better if you teach something thoroughly on one side, then repeat from the beginning on the other side.
  • Some horses may cope well with doing a little bit on each side from the beginning.
  • Some handlers do better when teaching the task thoroughly on one side first.

E. RESPONSE TO ROPE OR REIN SIGNALS

Video Clip 3 introduces the rope:

  1. Stand beside the horse’s ribs just behind the withers, facing forward, rope in the hand closest to the horse. Keep a drape or ‘smile’ in the rope. Ensure that the horse can stay facing forward with relaxed body language for 3-4 seconds in the presence of the rope: (click&treat).
  2. When 1 above is ho-hum, say your voice signal and gently use both hands to ‘milk’ the rope, putting light pressure on the halter, looking for the slightest ‘give’ of the horse’s nose toward you. Release (click&treat). Step forward to deliver the treat in a way that has the horse straighten his head again.
  3. Work with 1 and 2 above until the horse waits for the touch signal on the halter and willingly yields his nose. If he turns before you give the rope signal, spend more click&treat time on keeping the nose forward.
  4. If he begins to turn his head as soon as you move back into position behind his withers, also go back to click&treat for a straight head.
  5. Some horses catch on very quickly. Others may need multiple short sessions.
  6. Teaching a horse with no rope experience is usually easier than teaching a horse who has had rough treatment with ropes. In the second case, you must adjust your training plan to help overcome any anxiety the horse carries from previous handling.

GENERALIZATION

Video Clip 4 includes generalizations:

  1. Once the whole task is smooth and ho-hum on both sides of the horse, move away from the corner but still use a mat. Do the task in a variety of different places.
  2. Once 1 above is good in a variety of places, omit the mat and again work in a variety of places and spaces.
  3. Replace the rope/halter touch signal with a distinctive hand signal that can be used to draw the horse right or left at liberty.
  4. Once the horse understands the halter touch signal via the rope, plus the voice signal, the anchor task can morph into just standing quietly together.
  5. Use the touch and voice signals while in motion to change direction, keeping the pressure on the rope as light as possible.
  6. Building a strong history of response to directional voice signals is most helpful if you are planning to teach long-reining and if you take part in Horse Agility.
  7. These five short clips called Soft Rein Response give further ideas about how we can generalize the task further using reins but without being mounted.

Importance of Putting Behaviors On Signal or On Cue

Leave a reply

In the above photo, if I did not have ‘PICKING UP A CONE’ so it happens only when I give the Cue/Signal for picking it up, it would be hard to use cones as arena markers for other activities.

To become an adept and safe equine clicker trainer, it is essential to learn to put learned behaviors ‘on signal’ or ‘on cue’ as quickly as possible. We want the horse to wait for our signal before offering the behavior.

A horse throwing his learned behaviors at us might feel like fun at first, but it can rapidly get out of hand and become dangerous when the horse choses an inappropriate moment. For example, when I taught Boots to ‘spin’, it was quite startling when she wanted to show it to me and visitors all the time, while standing right beside us!

It pays to think carefully about the possible consequences of specific behaviors before we teach them. It pays to be aware that we can get into trouble, especially if the horse is a confident, imaginative and high-energy type of horse. 

The most recent thing you have taught your horse often becomes his favorite move because that behavior has recently been strongly rewarded.

Such horses may perform a learned behavior then ‘demand’ the treat. It’s important to make sure the horse does not develop this option. The treat is always a reward for something you have asked the horse to do. It can’t be demanded.

Reminder, always Click BEFORE you reach your hand toward your treat pouch or pocket. If you don’t, the horse’s attention will be on watching your hand rather than focused on what you want him to learn.

Once you have a strong relationship and your clicker training repertoire is well established, you will have built up a connection that suits you and a particular horse. For example, if I sometimes forget to click&treat a behavior that falls into our list of things I usually/always click&treat, Boots makes sure to remind me with a gentle nudge.

No other training method elicits the enthusiasm and fun that can be had with well-planned and well-executed clicker training. Many horses playing click&treat games never want their sessions to end. Rather than having to worry about ‘ending the session on a good note’, clicker trainers must teach an ‘end of session’ routine to let the horse gently and clearly know that the session is finishing.

Although the ‘marker’ does not have to be the sound of a mechanical clicker, using a distinctive mechanical clicker when first teaching something new has the advantage of greater clarity for the horse. It also helps make the handler extremely observant about where to place the current click point.

Once the horse knows a behavior and your signal for it, it doesn’t seem to matter if a tongue click or a unique, consistent sound/word is used as a bridging signal instead of a mechanical clicker.

Putting every new behavior ‘on signal’ as soon as you can, will gradually reduce the horse’s desire to throw the new move at us as soon as he sees us (much like a child dying to show us his new painting).

Usually, a horse will have one or two favorite behaviors that he pulls out to see if he can get the vending machine to pay attention. Boots’ smile is the one she always tries first. It’s good to develop a few relatively quiet ‘default’ behaviors like this that you can reward when just going to say hello to your horse or generally checking up on him.

Boots using her smile to see if a treat will be forthcoming.

The following two clips are from a while ago. The detailed notes mentioned at the end have now morphed into my books.

Foot Awareness for Improving Proprioception

Leave a reply

Introduction

Proprioception is the awareness of where our body parts are in space, what each is doing, and how much energy the movement is using.

Here is a definition from the Internet:

Proprioception enables us to judge limb movements and positions, force, heaviness, stiffness, and viscosity. It combines with other senses to locate external objects relative to the body and contributes to body image. Proprioception is closely tied to the control of movement.

I’ve collected together an assortment of video clips I’ve made over the years that include ideas we can use to encourage the horse to be aware of where his feet are and what they are doing.

Quite a few of the clips are part of a training series and I’ve chosen just one of the series to illustrate the overall task. By going to my YouTube channel – herthamuddyhorse – you can find my assortment of playlists containing series of numbered clips to show the thin-slicing I used to achieve the final task. Message me if you need help to find a particular series.

Good proprioception relates to all sorts of things, but mainly to overall balance and suppleness.

Horses that grow up in rough hill country develop good proprioception as a necessity for survival. Horses raised in confined areas without needing to move much to find enough food don’t have the opportunity to develop excellent proprioception.

In the same way, athletes become good at their sport by developing the aspects of proprioception that especially relate to that sport. If our lifestyle lacks regular movement, our body suffers the same way as that of a stabled horse.

Video Clips

#88 HorseGym with Boots: Foot Awareness. https://youtu.be/7bEkFk0w_gk

A few tasks that play with improving foot awareness.

#89 HorseGym with Boots: Balance on 3 Legs. https://youtu.be/x1WKppV3N_0

Playlist: Challenges for Clicker Trainers: August 2017 Challenge: Precision with a Single Rail. https://youtu.be/bJzwDq-NvtE

Playlist: Foot Awareness: Thin-slicing the 1m Board. https://youtu.be/pLLqtbQJqMs

#220 HorseGym with Boots: Counting with the Front Feet Clip 1. https://youtu.be/hHpQgsUOINA

#246 HorseGym with Boots: Counting with the Hind Feet. https://youtu.be/rMsRVL_M33w

Playlist: Foot Awareness: Single Obstacle Challenges Hoops 3. https://youtu.be/xc-4yGiWDxk

Playlist: Challenges for Clicker Trainers: September 2017 Challenge: Figure 8. https://youtu.be/QrberCzAO6c

Playlist: Challenges for Clicker Trainers: November 18, Sidestepping Clip 1. https://youtu.be/Joxp9bYzMRc

Playlist: Foot Awareness: S-Bend Final Clip. Click here.

#199 HorseGym with Boots: Unusual Surface with Bottles. https://youtu.be/3LTmUSa0Y1M

#184 HorseGym with Boots: Back Between Rails. https://youtu.be/FGh7_MeFHcQ

#95 HorseGym with Boots: Backing down Slopes. https://youtu.be/M9pEFnDSbwc

Signals versus ‘Cues’ or ‘Stimuli’

2 Replies

This is an extract from my book, Conversations with Horses: an in-depth look at signals and cues between horses and their handlers. Please see the BOOKS tab above to easily preview any of my books.

Defining a Signal

In the horse world, there are several terms used for the signals we give horses. One is ‘aids’ which is commonly used when riding. The term ‘cue’ seems to have become popular with clicker trainers.

Much more about Clicker Training is available in my book, How to Begin Equine Clicker Training. The term ‘stimulus’ comes from animal behavior laboratories.

I prefer the term ‘signal’ because it suggests that a message is sent and the ‘correct’ or intended message is received by the other party.

If a Morse code sender carefully sends his message, but the person at the other end does not know Morse code well enough to decode the message accurately, then the signal has failed. The garbled message may well lead to troubled times.

In other words, if a signal does not relay the desired message, then whatever we have used as a signal is not acting as a signal. By definition, a signal must communicate the person’s message and be received as such by the other party, in this case, the horse.

If it is not working as intended, the signal needs to be adjusted or changed so the message sent equals the message received.

When we are with the horse, he is busy sending us signals about his emotional, mental and physical well-being. If we can’t pick up these signals accurately, then the horse becomes frustrated and misunderstood and often retreats from willing interaction by trying to leave or ‘shutting down’. He becomes reactive rather than responsive.

Cues and stimuli are constantly bombarding all of us. A signal is something we want to stand out from everything else the horse is noticing and everything else we are noticing. We want the horse to easily separate our signal from all the other many cues that are constantly flowing in.

At the same time as we are communicating our intent with our signals, the horse is trying hard to communicate his intent and his feelings with his body language. The more ‘in tune’ we can get with the signals our horse sends us, the better our two-way communication can become.

In this work, I will use the term ‘signal’ rather than ‘aid’, ‘cue’ or ‘stimulus’. I’ll also refer to all horses as ‘he’ for ease of reading, unless I’m talking about a specific mare or filly.

Like the rest of us, horses thrive on clarity and consistency of communication. 

Building a relationship with a horse is like locating a set of keys to unlock a door so the horse’s true nature can come out.

The horse’s total well-being depends on how well we can help him adapt to the peculiar life a horse must live in a human-centered world.

While we are trying to get to know our horse better and understand his emotional, mental and physical boundaries, the horse is doing exactly the same with us.

He is trying to read our intentions so he can be ready to react or respond, according to his perceptions. The more we understand about the signals we are giving the horse, the more we can develop a mutual language.

Boots is reading my body language and gesture signals for stepping onto the balance beam.

The more we realize that much of what we are communicating to the horse is in our unconscious body language, the more we can ‘still’ our body between meaningful signals. 

‘No Intent’ body language tell the horse that all we are doing is standing together quietly.

We would like the horse to respond confidently to our requests rather than become anxious, reactive and bracing against the pressure of our signals. 

The horse would also prefer to respond rather than become anxious, adrenalized and feeling the need to react by trying to escape, push through pressure or mentally and physically ‘shut down’ – hiding inside himself. 

A horse needs a sound foundation of knowledge to enable him to cope with the very strange things people expect of their captive horses. 

To do this we need to:

  • Take the horse through a careful education program 
  • Set up a teaching schedule suited to the individual horse’s background and ability and adapted continually to the feedback the horse gives us 
  • Give him every opportunity to master each small step of a large task, before asking him to string all the parts of a big task together. 

This cutting of a whole task into its smallest teachable parts can be referred to as ‘thin-slicing the task’. 

My book, How to Create Good Horse Training Plans, looks in detail at thin-slicing and writing Individual Education Programs (IEPs).

For each step of the teaching process, we must make sure we are sending a clear message rather than a confusing mumble. Therefore, a key element for the success of any teaching and learning program is ensuring that our signals are consistent and clear.

Horses are so sensitive that if we alter a signal even a little bit, they often think it means something else. The more things we teach our horse, the more carefully we need to think about the signals we use.

We can give our horse the best deal by becoming more aware about:

  • The specific types of signals we can use
  • How we are orientating our body
  • How we can refine our signals as the horse becomes confident
  • How to use a ‘signal bundle’ or ‘multi-signal’
  • When we are ‘nagging’ rather than communicating.

As mentioned earlier, it is the most natural thing in the world to expect the horse to change so it does what we want. However, in reality, it is by changing what we do that yields the results we want. 

There will be variations in horse behavior based on each horse’s innate character type, his personal history, his relationship with the handler and the situation of the moment.

Horses will always be horses and will respond in the way that horses respond. Being prey animals, their main concern is safety.

Before we can cause change in the horse, we must become hyper aware of what we are doing while the horse is watching.

Whenever we are in our horse’s view, he is picking up all sorts of signals from us – our posture, our energy level, our intent, what we usually do that time of day, any specific signal we may be giving and so on.

Once we learn to pay close attention to the horse’s body language, we get better at understanding the signals the horse is sending us.

A signal is a direct, purposeful communication between horse and handler. If we’ve carefully taught a signal for backing up, then the horse will back up when we give that signal. 

Boots understand the ‘raised fingers’ signal to mean ‘please back up’. I may be using a “Back” voice signal at the same time, which means I’m using a multi-signal to be especially clear.

If the horse raises his head and points his ears with strong concentration, we pick up his signal that something in the environment has his full attention. 

The horse’s body language of raised head and ears focused strongly forward tells us that some cue or stimulus in the distance has captured his whole attention.

First, we learn the horse’s language – his signals. Then it is up to us to teach the horse the language he needs to remain safe and comfortable in the human world – our signals.

Since we have taken the horse away from his natural lifestyle and made him our captive, it is up to us to become fluent in Universal Horse Language and learn to use it effectively. To be effective we need:

  • An understanding of different horse character types.
  • An understanding of our particular horse’s character type.
  • Awareness of our body language and the different ways we use signals.
  • Knowledge about horse senses and sensitivity.
  • As much knowledge as possible about a particular horse’s background experiences.
  • To write good training plans which can be turned into individual education programs (IEPS) designed for a specific horse.
  • Adept use of body language, body extensions, ropes, reins.
  • Timely application of release reinforcement.
  • Adept use of reward reinforcement along with release reinforcement.

There is detailed information about using reward reinforce-ment in my book, How to Begin Equine Clicker Training.

The more fluent we are about understanding horse body language and the mechanics of both release (negative) and reward (positive) reinforcement, the better a teacher we can be for our horse.

It is hard for the horse to learn from someone who doesn’t have a good understanding of who and what they are teaching.

Before we head into an overview of the signals we use with horses, followed by a detailed look at each signal type, we need to look in detail at how horses sense and perceive their environment. (The next part of the book delves into this.)

 Once we are conscious of the biological differences between horse and human perception, it is easier to allow horses the leeway they need to feel safer in our company.

Counting with the Hind Feet

Leave a reply

This task is an excellent exercise to work on the timing of our ‘click’ and melting into ‘zero intent’ to wait for the horse’s ‘consent signal’ to do a repeat. The task forces us to focus on the timing and consistency of our On/Off gesture signals. It is also an excellent mobilization exercise for the horse.

Boots and I played with this occasionally for over a year, especially when time was short or the weather was rough, but also as a regular ‘end of session’ exercise. We did this after a year of working on confident ‘counting’ with the front feet as in Prerequisite 3 below.

Aim

When I face the back of the horse and point to his hind feet with my inside hand, using an On/Off gesture signal, the horse lifts a hind foot when I point and sets it down when I remove my hand signal.

Prerequisites

  1. Horse and Handler have developed good table manners standing quietly together. ‘Zero Intent’ and ‘Intent’. Click here.
  2. Horse and handler agree on signals the horse gives when he is ready to do something again. Seeking the Horse’s Consent Signals: Click here.
  3. Horse and handler are already confident ‘counting’ with the front feet. Click here.
  4. Triple Treat: #16 HorseGym with Boots. Click here.
  5. Horse is comfortable rubbed all over with a long object (video clip below).

Videos: Counting with Hind Feet

#246 HorseGym with Boots

#243 HorseGym with Boots. The following clip shows the detail of working with ‘zero intent’ and waiting for the horse to give a ‘consent signal’ that tells us he is ready to try again.

Materials and Environment

  • A venue where the horse is able to relax. Ideally he can see his buddies but they can’t interfere.
  • Horse is not hungry.
  • A long-handled target to introduce the idea of lifting a hind foot to touch a target (which we eventually fade out).
  • A shorter target to accentuate the On/Off gesture signal (also gradually faded out).
  • A mat at first, to help the horse understand that we want him to stand still.
  • A safe fence or barrier alongside which we can stand the horse.
  • A variety of other barriers to use for generalization.
  • Two raised rails (or similar) to stand between.

Notes

  1. It’s important to stay with each slice of this task until the horse is fully ho-hum with it. In other words, repeat each slice a few time over as many short sessions as it takes for the horse to respond smoothly to your ON/OFF signal. If we take the time it takes to establish each slice, all steps of the overall task will be embedded in the horse’s long-term memory, giving us relaxed responses.
  2. Timing of the click is essential at first. It is the only way the horse can understand what you want him to do (lift his foot). Try hard to click as the foot is coming UP. If you’re unsure about your timing, practice by bouncing a ball and clicking when it leaves the ground. Or practice with a person standing in for the horse. Eventually we can relax the timing and click for the completion of one UP and DOWN movement. In the video clip you will notice that at one point I had to specifically wait to click after the foot returned to earth. Each horse will show his own little foibles.
  3. I don’t mind which foot the horse lifts. I prefer if he uses both. If a horse seems to use the same leg most of the time, make a big deal (triple treat / celebration) when he uses the other one. This is a mobilization exercise, so using both legs is good.
  4. When starting with this task, use the same location, same mat, same targets (until faded out) until the horse is truly confident with what you are asking.
  5. Often, it’s helpful to start on the horse’s left side, but we need to build the pattern standing on his right side as well. Spend a little more time on the side that feels harder. I like to teach each slice on both sides as we go along. An option is to teach all the slices on one side then teach them all again from the beginning on the other side. Or teach several slices on one side and then on the other side.
  6. Any time there is confusion (horse and/or handler), return to where you both feel confident and gradually work forward again. I had a terrible time remembering to use my inside hand for the gesture signal. When I used my outside hand I thoroughly confused my horse because gestures with my outside hand already had two different meanings, as shown on the video clip.
  7. Consistently use the hand closest to the horse (the inside hand) for your signal.
  8. A major part of the signal is the turning of our body to face the horse’s hind feet while we remain at his shoulder. As I turn, I add a voice signal, “Counting Rear”, to help differentiate this task from other things I do facing the back of the horse.
  9. It took us a long time (months) to put all these pieces together, with a short practice most days. I started in a consistent place as mentioned in Note 4.

Slices

  1. Stand the horse alongside a safe barrier in a place that you can use consistently for each session. The barrier stops the horse thinking we want him to move his hind end away. Ask him to park his front feet on a mat.
  2. Set the stage for the exercise by asking the horse to count with his front feet – a major prerequisite for success with this task.
  3. Turn so you are facing his hind end. Holding your long-handled target in the hand nearest the horse (inside hand) gently touch it to his hock; click as you touch and deliver the treat as you move the target out of play behind you.
  4. Repeat 3 above with Click&treat for any movement, even a shift of weight off that foot. When first teaching this, remember to click as the foot lifts UP.
  5. As the horse begins to understand that you click&treat when his foot comes up, hold the target near his hock, not touching it. The movement of your arm will become the horse’s clue.
  6. When 5 above is good, use a shorter target to point to the hind foot. Or shorten the target you have been using – or use the same-looking end on a shorter stick (a different-looking target may confuse an extremely sharp horse). Boots did not find this a problem.
  7. When 6 above feels ho-hum, go to an even shorter target and/or introduce the wiggling of your finger along with the target.
  8. When 7 above feels confident, refine your gesture to just lifting your arm and wiggling your finger. Immediately the horse lifts his foot, click, return your signaling hand to its OFF position lying on your belly, feed the treat with your other hand.
  9. When getting one foot-lift is reliable, and it feels right, ask for a second lift before the click&treat. Huge celebration if you get it. Remember we are using an ON/OFF signal, so put your signal hand into neutral on your belly before asking for the second lift.
  10. Vary between asking for one lift and two lifts. I count out loud as the horse lifts the foot: “One, Two” with a voice emphasis on the number I will click&treat if it is more than one. The horse learns that a soft counting voice means a request for another ‘lift’ is coming up.
  11. When 10 above feels ho-hum, ask for a third lift before the click&treat. Again, a huge celebration.
  12. Over time work up to as many lifts as you want. I usually stick with a maximum of five standing on the left and five standing on the right, but I vary the number requested each time we do it and might occasionally ask for six or seven.
  13. Once you have reliable lifts standing alongside a familiar barrier, generalize to other locations where you can stand the horse with a safe barrier along his far side to maintain the idea that he doesn’t need to move his body.
  14. Once 13 above is relaxed, stand the horse between rails raised to gradually wean away from a high barrier.
  15. The task is ‘finished’ when you can easily count your decided number of lifts on either side of the horse without needing any props.

Generalizations

  1. Play with the exercise in different venues.
  2. Play on a slope.
  3. Incorporate it into your WAIT game or your Four Corners Exercise. Click on the Blog Contents List at the top of the page to access these (Number 65 and Number 71 on the list).
  4. Use it as a mobilization exercise when it’s too hot, cold, windy, wet to do much else.

Fitting Head Gear

Leave a reply

Many people know the structure of the horse’s skull, but some people don’t. It’s possible to unknowingly inflict discomfort and pain, sometimes causing severe physical trauma to the soft tissues and nerves that lasts the horse’s lifetime.

We can see that the solid bone on the front of the horse’s nose does not go all the way down. The bone down from where the molars start is thin and precarious. It is surrounded by cartilage carrying the many nerves from the horse’s lips and whiskers.

These nerves of touch, smell and taste enable the horse to graze safely – both the horse’s physical safety in terms of touch and relaying information about smell and taste.

Even if we prefer to play with our horse(s) at liberty, it is essential for their life in captivity that we take the time and make the effort to ensure that they are comfortable having head gear put on and taken off. And be confident with ropes and leading.

It is traumatic to see a young horse who was haltered and the halter left on until it deformed the growing skull. The pain involved is unthinkable.

There are numerous risks involved with leaving halters on. Breakaway attachments can be an option if leaving a halter on can’t be totally avoided.

The following video takes a quick look at making sure that our head gear fits well with minimum discomfort.

It is hard to overstate the sensitivity of the horse’s mouth and muzzle area. While bits cause mouth trauma (physical, mental and emotional), headgear like knotted rope halters, cross-over nosebands or regular nosebands fitted too low also cause discomfort and pain.

It pays to remember that a horse with his mouth tied shut can’t ‘blow out’ freely, or cough to clear his trachea. Rope halters with knots need to be treated with gentle hands. Side-pull halters or bridles pull the inside of the cheek against the horse’s teeth, so must also be used with gentle hands. We all know what an ulcer inside our mouth feels like.

It is the nature of horses to suffer silently. Perhaps if they squealed like pigs it would be easier for us to refine our way of being with horses.

Learning the Mechanics of Clicker Training

Leave a reply
Timing of the click and smooth, prompt treat delivery are harder than it looks at first glance.

Practice with a Person

It’s ideal (perhaps even essential) to learn the process of when/how to click and how to deliver the treat with a person standing in for the horse. The more adept we are with the mechanics of treat delivery before heading out to the horse, the more our horse will buy into our confidence that we know what we are doing.

We want to practice with another person until we have the mechanics of click timing and treat delivery in our muscle memory. Then, when we start with the horse, we can focus more clearly on the horse and the consistency of our actions.

Simulation with a Person

The first step to becoming a clicker trainer with good timing skills is to get our head around how to carry out the click&treat routine smoothly.

We need to practice enough to put the sequence of events into our muscle memory. If we are familiar and confident with what we are doing, the horse will buy into our confidence.

Neither person is allowed to speak.

You can put the clicker on a string around your neck or on a string around your wrist so you can let go of it to use your hand. However it takes lots of practice to smoothly slip the clicker back into position so that ‘letting go’ doesn’t interfere with good timing* of your next click.

Slices:

  1. Have your hand ready on the clicker (if using a clicker).
  2. Present the target a little bit away from the person, so he or she must reach toward it slightly, to touch it.
  3. Wait for the person to touch the target with their hand (be patient).
  4. The instant they touch it, click or say your chosen word or sound.
  5. Lower the target down and behind your body to take it out of play.
  6. Reach into your pocket/pouch for the treat (maybe use coins or bits of cardboard or mini chocolates).
  7. Extend your arm fully to deliver the treat.
  8. Stretch your treat hand out flat so it is like a dinner plate with the treat on it.
  9. Keep your arm and flat hand firm, so your pretend horse can’t push it down as he takes the treat.
  10. When your pretend horse has taken the treat, relax and pause briefly, then begin again with slices one and two (hand on clicker, present target).
  11. Ignore any unwanted behavior as much as possible.
  12. Turn a shoulder or move your body/pouch out of reach if the person pretending to be your horse tries to mug you for a treat (in case you are using chocolate). Your pretend horse must learn that he or she earns the click&treat only by touching the target. If your ‘pretend horse’ is strongly invasive, put a barrier between you.
  13. Multiple short sessions (up to three minutes long) at different times during the day allow your brain and your muscle memory to absorb the technique, especially the finer points of timing.
  14. If your helper is willing, let him/her be the teacher and you take a turn being the horse. Playing with ‘being the horse’ is often a huge eye-opener. The ‘horse’ is not allowed to ask questions or make comments but he can use body language to express his opinions.
Playing with different people will be as different as playing with different horses.

Using Hoops for Foot Awareness – and More

Leave a reply

Hoops are handy obstacles to use for teaching a variety of skills. They are easy to set up and store. We can use them in numerous contexts. They can help us achieve a variety of objectives. For example:

Handler:

  • Identify prerequisites for each exercise.
  • Practice thin-slicing the tasks.
  • Practice writing a training (shaping) plan for each configuration.
  • Hone our timing of the click.
  • Make our signals as clear and consistent as possible.

Horse:

  • Develop foot awareness.
  • Gives a defined spot to learn the ‘wait’.
  • Generalize signals (cues) to new situations.
  • New puzzles to work through – mental stimulation.
  • Flexion exercises.

Boots and I have played with hoops on and off for quite a while, as in the following video clips.  For a 15hh horse hoops about one metre across work well for trotting through, but we also use smaller ones for some of the other activities.

The hoops are made with plastic water pipe with the ends held together either with the right-sized twig pushed into the ends or a stretch of hose either one size smaller to fit inside the ends or one size larger to form a sleeve across the ends. To make them more visible I wound electrical tape around them.

Clip 1

 

Clip 2

 

Clip 3

 

Clip 4

 

Clip 5

Developing Relaxed Food Retrieval

Leave a reply

Photo: Relaxed treat retrieval is the essence of clicker training.

Lunging for the Treat = Anxiety or Assertive Horse Behavior

Some horses are always polite, others not so. Something in their background may have created anxiety around food. But the character type of the horse is also involved. Each horse lies somewhere along a shy ——– assertive continuum. A horse on the assertive end will be keen to follow his nose to the source of the food, which is obviously a helpful survival behavior.

For effective clicker training we have to carefully navigate this crucial aspect of using positive reinforcement in the form of food. The handler must feel safe and the horse must feel safe and have a sound understanding of when a food treat will be offered. It requires us to be careful and consistent and willing to explore options.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of having a way to let the horse know when we want him to stand with us quietly. We need to teach him when our body language indicates that all we want is to stand together in a relaxed manner, and when our body language is asking him to do something which will earn a click&treat.

  1. Be safe. Organize a barrier between you and the horse so you can move back out of range if he gets excited about the idea of food rewards. Depending on the horse and your expertise, you may not need the barrier for long, or you may need it for quite a while.

If your horse is energetic, use the energy by setting up a roomy reverse round pen and teach the horse to follow your target as you walk or jog along.

A reverse round pen is one where the handler stays inside the pen and the horse moves around the outside of it. Or you can do the same on the other side of an existing fence. For this, you want to click for the actual movement, rather than catching up with the target. For example, click after three steps, then five steps, and so on until you get whole circuits or stretches of fence before the click&treat. Find out more about using reverse pens here: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-64e

  1. Make sure that the horse is not hungry. We want the horse interested in clicker work, but not over-excited or aroused by the thought of food tit-bits. In other words, make sure he has ample access to grazing or hay before you start a clicker training session.
  2. Check out your food delivery technique.
  3. Does it take too long to get your hand into and out of your pocket or pouch? Can you find easier pockets or a more open pouch?
  4. Do you move your hand toward your treats before you’ve clicked? This causes problems because the horse will watch your hand rather than focusing on what you are teaching.
  5. Be sure to only feed treats if they have been earned and you have clicked. Ask the horse to do something before giving a treat, either have him touch a target or take a step or two backwards; click for the action and deliver the treat.
  6. Avoid feeding any treats by hand unless you have asked for a behavior and clicked for it. When not clicker training, put treats in a feed dish or on the grass.
  7. Often, we can influence the horse’s position by holding our treat-delivery hand where we want the horse’s head to be rather than where he has stuck his nose.

In the beginning, we ideally want him to have his head straight to retrieve the treat. If he is over-eager, it can help to hold the treat toward his chest, so he must shift backwards to receive it.

This is the clearest way to let the horse know that lunging at your hand for the treat won’t benefit him. It also begins to build the habit of stepping back when you shift your weight toward him, as in the photo coming up. It’s a great way to begin teaching the ‘back’ voice and body language signal.

Video: Encouraging stepping back to retrieve the treat.

In some cases, it can help to have a halter on the horse, so we can take hold of the side of the halter after the click, giving us some control of where the horse puts his mouth. See the section called ‘Developing Good Table Manners’ that is coming.

It can help to run your closed treat hand down the horse’s nose from above, asking him to target your fist before you open your hand right under his lips so he can retrieve the treat.

When you do this, use a bit of upward pressure to stop the horse pushing your hand down. If your hand does not stay firm, it can cause a horse to get anxious about where his treat is and cause him to push down harder or become grabby.

  1. It may also work to bring your fist (closed around the treat) up under his chin and have him target your fist before you flatten your hand (and apply upward pressure) so he can retrieve the treat. Often one of these little intervening steps can help build the habit of polite treat-taking.
  2. A bit of experimentation will determine what works best with a specific horse.
  3. If the horse is overly keen, try using treats that he doesn’t consider quite so yummy. Be sure to set up your routines so the horse has ample time to graze or eat hay before each session.
  4. With consistency and patience on the handler’s part, over-enthusiastic treat-taking usually improves once:
  5. The horse understands that a click only happens when he carries out a request you have made.
  6. A treat always follows the click.He’ll learn that a treat will only follow if there has been a click first. That is why we must be totally consistent with when and how we click&treat.
  7. The horse’s character type and current emotional state will influence how he takes the treat. If a horse who usually takes the treat softly becomes grabbier, he is giving us information to take on board. Alternately, a horse who starts out grabby may over many sessions become relaxed about retrieving his treat, once he understands how the system works.
  8. Prompt, cleanly-executed treat delivery is always important. If things are not going smoothly, the first things to check are inconsistency and sloppy treat delivery. It helps to video what is happening, so you can look closely at your body position, orientation, timing* and treat delivery.
  9. Another approach is to put the treat in a container after each click. It can either be a food bucket in the horse’s pen, into which we toss the treat, or a flat dish or scoop we hold out for the horse to retrieve the treat, then remove again. Some boarding facilities have a ban on hand feeding, which is a little hurdle to overcome. There is a video clip about this here: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-651

What to Check for:

  1. Timing of your click to the action you want.
  2. Smoothness getting the treat out of pocket or pouch while you take the target ‘out of play’.
  3. How promptly you present the treat to the horse.
  4. How you hold out the treat to the horse and how firm you keep your hand so the horse doesn’t push it down.

 

Developing Good Table Manners

A video clip called Table Manners for Clicker Training in my Starting Clicker Training playlist illustrates how we can use the timing of the click to improve politeness around treat retrieval. The clip shows Smoky, early in his clicker training education, with Zoë who had never done it before. Click here.

The method shown on the clip can be improved by not waiting so long to click&treat again. When we begin teaching a horse about keeping his head facing forward rather than toward us, we want to click&treat the moments when the horse remains facing forward and the moments when he turns his head away from the food source.

In some parts of the clip we waited for Smoky to turn toward Zoë and then turn away again before she clicked. Doing this runs the risk of having the horse think that turning toward the handler first is part of what we want him to do. In this exercise, we also want to mainly click&treat the act of keeping his head facing forward.

Summary: to develop good table manners while we stand beside the horse’s neck or shoulder, we click&treat for:

  • The horse turning his head away from us into the ‘straight forward’ position.
  • The horse keeping his head straight, away from us.
  • The horse keeping his head straight for longer, building up duration one second at a time.

Be sure to teach good table manners standing on either side of the horse as well as facing the horse. Begin the table manners training in protected contact, i.e. standing on the other side of a fence, gate, or stall guard.

Or have the horse tied up if that is your safest choice. When it is all going well with protected contact and you feel safe, change to standing with the horse.

It may take lots of very short sessions before the horse is able to relax into the ‘head forward’ position while we stand with zero intent* beside his shoulder.

Do a little bit of this ‘Polite Table Manners’ exercise every time you are with your horse to keep it strong in the repertoire.

As mentioned earlier, I prefer to introduce the idea of click&treat by asking the horse to do something more specific such as touch his nose to a target object.

Whether or not we are using protected contact in the form of a fence or gate, it’s easier to introduce the target if we stand in front of the horse and a little bit to one side.

If the horse is tied up, it may be easier to stand beside the horse to present the target.

Maintaining politeness around food is always part of the clicker training equation. It’s good to teach food manners standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the horse as soon as the horse has clearly made the connection between the click and the treat.

  1. ‘Zero Intent’ and ‘Intent’

It’s hard to overstate the importance of having a way to let the horse know when we want him to stand beside us quietly. We need to teach him when our body language indicates that all we want is to stand together in a relaxed manner.

One way to do this is to stand with both hands laid flat across our belly button, and our energy as close to zero (deflated) as possible, breathing quietly, relaxing our hips. We look down or gaze softly into the distance.

If you do this consistently, the horse will soon recognize this posture as your ‘neutral’ signal when you have zero intent and all you want is for him to stay quietly parked. (See the Blog: ‘Zero Intent and ‘Intent’: Click here.)

My body language is at ‘zero intent’. My stance and hands lying quietly on my belly tell Boots that the task is to stand quietly. My focus is soft and away from the horse. My breathing is quiet.

 Every time we are with our horse, we should spend a few minutes focused on taking up our ‘zero intent’ position with click&treat reinforcement for the horse standing quietly without offering any behavior except standing quietly.

Over many sessions, we build up the ‘waiting quietly’ time, second by second, to fifteen or twenty seconds.

It is hard to overemphasize how important this is as part of our everyday interactions.

Hand Feeding at Other Times

It’s important not to hand feed the horse unless we have asked for something specific which we can click&treat. If we randomly hand feed when we are not clicker training, the horse will be confused, and problems can arise.

As with everything, it is up to us to be clear and consistent all the time. If we visit the horse or check up on him and want to give him a treat, we can put it in a feed bin or on the grass.

20 Steps Exercise

3 Replies

Photo: Our horse walking with us confidently is basic to everything else we want to do.

INTRODUCTION

This is one of my favorite exercises. It is fun to do as a warm-up or a cool-down or if horse time is short. If you are energetic you can eventually do it trotting.

This exercise encourages the horse to walk with us in position beside his neck or shoulder. It is a way of teaching ‘leading’ without the need to put pressure on the lead rope or use a lead rope at all. We can teach this exercise totally at liberty once the horse is clicker-savvy.

The more precise we can be with our body language, the easier it is for the horse to read our intent.

When we invite the horse to walk with us in the ’20 Steps Exercise’ we adjust our pace to the horse’s natural pace, so we can walk ‘in step’ with each other.

When we do this task at liberty, it’s easy for the horse to let us know if he is not in the mood to do things with us because he can peel off in his own direction.

If you have a safe, enclosed area, and protected contact is no longer needed, starting at liberty is ideal.

If the horse is exuberant and protected contact remains a good idea, you can still do this exercise with the horse at liberty by using a reverse round pen (person in the pen, horse moves around the outside of it) or a stretch of paddock fence. If your fencing is electric tape, make sure it is turned off. Lots more about reverse pens here: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-64e

Doing a little at a time keeps this exercise fresh and lively in the repertoire.

If protected contact is a good idea, we can set up a reverse round pen with uprights and fencing tape. The horse moves around the outside of the ‘pen’ while the handler stays inside. We can make it a size that best suits the task we are working with.

AIMS

  1. Handler refines clear ‘walk-on’ and ‘halt’ body language, energy level and voice signals.
  2. Horse willingly mirrors the handler’s energy changes and stays in position with his neck/shoulder area beside the handler.

PREREQUISITES

  1. Handler is aware of using breathing and body energy level to indicate ‘energy up’ before moving off and ‘energy down’ before coming to a halt.
  2. Handler had decided on clear ‘walk on’ and ‘halt’ voice signals.
  3. Handler has developed a consistent ‘walk on’ arm gesture.
  4. Handler uses clear preparatory body language before coming to a ‘halt’, e.g. slowing down, breathing out and dropping weight into the hips.

Optional: These prerequisites are nice but not essential. This task is a way of achieving or improving the three skills below.

  1. Horse walks smoothly beside the handler’s shoulder.
  2. Horse understands ‘Whoa’ voice, breathing and body language signals.
  3. Horse willingly responds to ‘Walk On’ voice, breathing, gesture and body language signals.

ENVIRONMENT & MATERIALS

  • A work area where the horse is relaxed and confident.
  • Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • Horse is not hungry.
  • A safe, enclosed area for working at liberty.
  • If protected contact is the best choice, use a reverse round pen or use a paddock fence, whichever suits your situation best.
  • If there are no other options, use halter and lead, keeping a non-influencing drape in the lead rope. A light-weight lead is preferable.

VIDEO CLIPS

December 2017 Obstacle Challenge: 20 Steps Exercise.

 

#30 HorseGym with Boots illustrates Boots helping Zoë learn the process with halter and lead.

SLICES

  1. Standing beside the horse’s neck/shoulder, do the following pretty much all at the same time:
  • Raise torso and look ahead.
  • Breathe in deeply.
  • Gesture forward with the hand furthest from the horse.
  • Step off with your outside leg to walk one step using ‘draw energy’ to encourage the horse to move with you. The horse can more easily see movement of your outside leg.
  • Halt after one step by breathing out and releasing your energy; click&treat when your feet are stopped. If the horse has moved out of position accept that for now – deliver the treat as close as possible to where you want him to be.
  1. We will click&treat for EACH halt.
  2. If the horse is a bit surprised and moves out of position, move YOURSELF back into position beside his neck/shoulder and start again, raising torso breathing in, gesturing and stepping off to walk on. Slow down, breathe out, and drop into your hips to stop. If you are consistent, the horse will begin to take note of your breathing and posture.

If you are on the other side of a barrier or fence from the horse, walk on and click&treat any indication that the horse is willing to come join you, then start again with 1 above.

  1. If you are not in protected contact, it’s ideal to start with the horse between the handler and a safe fence, so the option of swinging the hindquarters away is removed. I didn’t show this part in the video clip.

If protected contact is necessary and the horse is unsure about what you want to do if you try using a reverse round pen or paddock fence, we can use a lane. A lane can work well because it reduces the horse’s options. The horse walks in the lane and the handler walks on the outside of the lane.

Lanes can be set up with fencing tape and uprights next to an existing fence or made with bits and pieces like the one in the photo below.

We can usually make learning easier for the horse by organizing our training environment so that what we will click&treat is easy for the horse to discover. Here ware are using a lane to initiate walking side-by-side together.

Next Slices

  1. When one or two steps together is smooth, take three steps before the halt, click&treat.
  2. When three steps together are smooth, take four steps before the halt, click&treat, and so on.
  3. Each time you walk on, begin counting at ‘one’ again.
  4. Stay with four-five steps until moving off together is smooth and the horse stays in position beside you for the halt.
  5. Adjust how many steps you add before each halt and click&treat. It will depend on how fast the horse catches on to the pattern, the clarity and consistency of your signals, as well as how the horse is feeling that day.
  6. With some horses you can soon add steps in 2’s, 3’s or 5’s to reach the twenty steps.
  7. If the horse gets lost or seems to forget, go back to where he can be successful and work with a smaller number of steps until you gain true confidence.
  8. Gradually work up to 10, 15, then 20 steps before each halt, click&treat.
  9. Asking for 20 steps before the click&treat, carried out on both sides of the horse, is usually plenty at one time. But there is no reason we can’t do several sets of 20 steps if the horse stays keen.

Be sure to teach this walking on either side of the horse. One side may be easier. Start again from the beginning (along a fence or in a lane) for the second side. Some horses easily transfer new learning to the other side. Other horses find everything harder on one side.

Handlers usually must also focus to consciously produce clear, consistent body language with the less dominant side of their body. If the horse’s and handler’s stiffer sides coincide, everything will feel a bit harder at first.

When a task feels equally smooth on either side of the horse, a big milestone has been achieved.

GENERALIZATIONS

  • If you started with a lane, move from the lane to working alongside a fence.
  • Play the game in an open area, away from a fence-line.
  • Teach, then add drawing the horse into arcs and turns with the horse on the outside of the turn. See also: Smooth 90-Degree Turns: Handler on the Inside: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5VM
  • Teach, then add walking arcs and turns toward the horse (counter-turns). See also: Smooth Counter Turns: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5WK
  • If you can run, play with it at trot. It’s best to begin this in protected contact in case the horse finds it exciting.

 

 

Alternative to Hand-Feeding Food Reinforcement

Leave a reply

REASONS

There are several reasons why feeding the treat from our hand may not be the way forward with either a person or a horse new to clicker training.

For example:

  • The horse is new to people and has no idea about eating from a person’s hand.
  • The person is nervous about offering food from their hand.
  • The horse tends to mug the person once he realizes they have food in a pocket or pouch.
  • The horse is not gentle about taking the food from the hand.
  • Some horses are shy of people’s hands due to experience, or they don’t like taking food from a person’s hand.

In such situations, we can set up protected contact with a handy bucket or dish into which we toss the treat after the click.

We want the container situated so it’s easy to toss in the treats. We also want to use a container from which the horse can easily retrieve the treats.

In the video I’ve put a shallow round-bottomed bowl into the trough that sits on the gate. The depth and corners of the trough make it hard for the horse to retrieve a small strip of carrot or horse pellets.

In the video, I use the word CLICK (and clicker) to stand in for any marker sound you have chosen to use with your horse.

Charging the Clicker

‘Charging the Clicker’ is the first thing we must do when be begin clicker training. We want the horse to relate the sound of our ‘marker sound’ with the idea that a bit of food always follows that sound.

Some horses pick this up very quickly. Others need many short repeat sessions before they make the connection. For horses taught to wait to be told what to do next or get into trouble, the idea of offering a behavior may be a new idea.

This video clip demonstrates just one way of ‘Charging the Clicker’. It has the advantage of using protected contact – a barrier between horse and person. Until we start using food reinforcers with a horse, we don’t know how he will respond to the idea.

Protected contact keeps the person safe and some horses feel safer if a handler is on the other side of a fence. Using a hand-held target means the horse can easily find the YES answer that results in a click&treat.

To me, it feels more meaningful to the horse to ‘charge the clicker’ this way, rather than by waiting for the horse to move his head away from the handler. Using a target gives the horse a tangible destination for his behavior. Asking him to keep his head away from the treats goes totally against the nature of how horses find nourishment. It requires a ‘no’ answer rather than the ‘yes’ answer provided by touching nose to a target.

Once the horse understands the click&treat dynamic, we can work on keeping the head facing forward rather than seeking out the treat pouch.

We can also use this set-up when things are not going well. The horse may have developed the habit of mugging for the treats – pushing his nose into the person. It is totally normal horse foraging behavior – to follow their nose to a likely food source.

By using a bucket or dish, we separate the location of the retrievable food from the person’s body. That alone is a good reason to begin with this technique. Once the horse understands the concept and we understand how the horse is responding to the idea of working for food reinforcement, we can work toward offering the food in our outstretched hand. We can make the switch to hand-feeding while still in protected contact.

Video Clip

Reverse Pens

Leave a reply

Photo: using the fence around a grazing area as a reverse pen.

A reverse pen is set up so the horse moves along one side of a barrier and the handler moves on the other side. People come up with all sorts of ways to make reverse pens. Larger is better for reverse pens so that the horse is not working on a tight bend. It’s important to change direction often. The video clips coming up show several ways of setting up a reverse pen.

Any fence line that allows delivery of the treat across or through it can be used for reverse pen exercises. In a couple of the video clips I used the fence around the area Boots is grazing so I had nothing extra to set up. If the horse is comfortable working across electric fence materials (not electrified) we can easily set up (and take down as necessary) pens of any size or shape.

Reverse pens are useful for:

  • Keeping ourselves in protected contact while in motion.
  • Some horses also feel more secure if the handler is on the other side of a fence at first. 
  • Working without halter and rope.
  • Discourage the horse moving his shoulder into the handler.
  • Encourage the horse to develop muscles that help him stay on a circle and not ‘fall in’ with the shoulder or to navigate corners elegantly if we use a rectangular or triangular reverse pen.
  • Using a hand-held target to encourage walking with us, gradually morphing into a hand gesture.
  • Consolidating ‘walk on’ and ‘halt’ multi-signals (also see https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5TT).
  • Creating duration – maintaining a gait for longer.
  • Playing with transitions: halt to walk to halt; walk to trot to walk; trot to canter to trot.

Often reverse pens are round, as in Connection Training’s ‘Around the Round Pen’ exercises. But they can also be rectangular or triangular, giving the horse the different challenge of organizing his body to negotiate the corners effectively.

Using a Hand-Held Target to Encourage Walking with Us

If we are going to use a hand-held target and a reverse round pen to encourage the horse to walk with us, we want to click&treat for the movement, not the catching up to and putting nose on the target. We don’t want to turn it into a chasing game. We present the target to encourage forward movement, click for the number of steps we decided to take before moving off, put the target down behind us out of sight, then deliver the treat.

 Building Duration Walking with Us

#210 HorseGym with Boots: Reverse Pens Clip 4; Duration Walking Together

Details

We must decide how many steps will earn a click&treat before we begin. That is:

  1. We present the target.
  2. Walk ‘X’ number of steps (previously decided – kept within the horse’s present ability)
  3. Click.
  4. Remove the target while we reach for a treat.
  5. Feed the treat.

Start with one step; click&treat. Add one more step at a time as long as the horse shows interest. Stop to do something else if his interest wanes or wait until your next session. Start each session with a few steps and gradually add more.

Keep the sessions short and as you present the target, also use your body language, big breath in, energy raised and your voice ‘walk on’ signal.

Fading out Hand-held Targets

While targets are a great tool to initiate all sort of behaviors, it is important that we teach voice, body language and gesture signals once each behavior is established, so we don’t need to rely on carrying a target.

By consistently using your ‘walk on’ and ‘halt’ multi-signals, you will soon be able to fade out using the target, keeping your hands free. Your voice, energy and body language tell the horse what you would like him to do. Voice and body language ‘halt/whoa’ signals (as well as the click) tell him when you would like him to halt.

Using Foot Targets

If the horse has a strong history or reinforcement for putting his front feet on a mat, we can use that to work with a reverse pen. Using a mat target has the advantage of leaving our hands free. This clip looks at using mats after the first minute.

In the following video clip, I began with the horse on a lead because that can be another way to start. Not everyone has the facility to work safely at liberty. The video clip explains the process: #162 HorseGym with Boots: Introduction to Liberty Circles.

Once the horse understands our body language, gesture, voice and breathing signals, we can use them whenever we lead the horse. For walking side-by-side at liberty, we can develop the Twenty Steps Exercise: https://youtu.be/xYYz0JIpZek

The mat idea works with riding as well as with groundwork.

Some More Reverse Pen Clips

In the next two clips I’m using the fence around the area that Boots is grazing, so there nothing extra to set up/take down.

Over and Between Things

Other Shapes of Reverse Pens

Movement Routine 6 – Rags as Focus

Leave a reply

INTRODUCTION

This routine has us alternating frequently between the left and right sides of the horse. The objective is to develop our ‘walk on’, ‘halt’ and ‘turn’ signals to make them as clear and precise as possible.

AIM

To improve handler precision by linking a series of tasks into a sequence.

PREREQUISITES

  1. Smooth ‘walk on’ and ‘halt’ transitions staying shoulder-to-shoulder. (Smooth Walk and Halt transitions: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5TT)
  2. Smooth 90-degree Turns: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5VM
  3. Horse understands a signal for sidestepping. (Sidestepping: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5RL)
  4. Handler has developed a clear ‘Zero Intent’ signal so the horse knows when standing quietly is what is wanted. (‘Zero Intent’ and ‘Intent’: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5RO)

ENVIRONMENT AND MATERIALS

  • A work area where the horse is relaxed and confident.
  • Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • The horse is not hungry.
  • Halter and a lead long enough so we can keep a nice drape in it but not so long it gets in the way.
  • Six or more rags marking out a roomy circle. Have an even number of rags.

NOTES

  1. For this routine, it helps if the rags are a different color.
  2. Make the circle as large as you like. It is small in the clips for ease of filming.
  3. I like to memorize the sequence of events by walking the pattern without the horse and then visualizing the sequence often (a good substitute for counting sheep to go to sleep!) If you have a human friend, take turns being the horse or the handler. Usually, as handler precision improves, horse precision improves.
  4. Walk should-to-shoulder with the horse for all the tasks except the last two.
  5. The aim is to keep the rope with a nice drape or loop as much as possible, so the horse is getting his signals from our body language and signals rather than rope pressure.
  6. Click&treat at a rate that keeps your horse being successful. As a horse learns a pattern through frequent short repetitions, we can gradually ask for a bit more before each click&treat.

VIDEO CLIPS

#196 HorseGym with Boots: Routine 6, Rags as Focus: https://youtu.be/tqmY4RPKLrc

 

#197 HorseGym with Boots: Routine 6 at Liberty: https://youtu.be/KnXk8WEhXiA

 

#198 HorseGym with Boots: Routine 6 without Rags: https://youtu.be/ZSfK3i2Zq04

 

TASKS

  1. With the handler nearest the rag and on the horse’s left, stand together beside one of the rags.
  2. Walk a full circle around the rags (anticlockwise).
  3. On completing a full circle, turn into the middle of the circle and halt. Move to the horse’s right side.
  4. Vary how long you stay at the halt each time you halt in the circle’s center. Be clear with your ‘no intent’ body language during the standing together, and your ‘intent’ body language when you want to walk on again.
  5. Walk forward and curve around to circle the rags in the opposite direction (clockwise). Handler walks closest to the rags.
  6. On completing one full circle, turn into the middle again, halt and change to the horse’s left side.
  7. Walk forward and curve into an anticlockwise circle, but this time halt at every second rag. Vary how long you stay parked at the rags.
  8. After one circuit halting at every second rag, turn into the center of the circle again and change to the right side.
  9. Repeat 7 (stop at every second rag) but walking a clockwise circle.
  10. On completing the circle, turn into the middle of the circle and halt.
  11. Ask the horse to back up between two rags, halting when his belly is between the rags. In the clips, I face Boots to ask her to back up, but we could back up shoulder-to-shoulder.
  12. Ask the horse to sidestep either right or left so that one of the rags passes under his belly.
  13. Large Celebration on completion of the sequence.

GENERALIZATIONS

  • Practice in different venues.
  • Change the size of your circle.
  • Add more rags to your circle.
  • Build in walk-trot-walk transitions.
  • Repeat each task before changing to the next task.
  • Add walk-trot-walk transitions.
  • Add halt-trot transitions.
  • Add trot-halt transitions.
  • Play with it at liberty.
  • Carry out the sequence of tasks in an open area without marker rags. For the three halts along the circle (tasks 7 and 9), halt after each quarter circle.
  • Practice on a slope.

 

Movement Routine 3 – Fence for Focus

Leave a reply

Photo: Walking concentric circles is part of this routine.

INTRODUCTION

For Movement Routine 3 we are back to using a fence as a focal point to initially build the routine. A fence helps the horse maintain straight movement. It also makes it easy to establish beginning and end points for each circle in this sequence of tasks.

AIMS

  • Transitions from walking forward into finesse back-ups.
  • Walking concentric circles.
  • Stay and Wait.

PREREQUISITES

  1. Smooth ‘walk on’ and ‘halt’ transitions staying shoulder-to-shoulder. (See Related Resources 1 at the end of this post.)
  2. We have taught the finesse back-up. (See Related Resources 2 at the end of this post.)
  3. Handler has developed a clear ‘Zero Intent’ signal so the horse knows when standing quietly is what is wanted. (See Related Resources 3 at the end of this post.)
  4. While walking shoulder-to-shoulder, the horse follows the movement of the handler’s body axis away from the horse to move into a circle. (See Related Resources 4 at the end of this post.)
  5. We have taught the horse to ground-tie. (See Related Resources 5 at the end of this post.)

ENVIRONMENT AND MATERIALS

  • A work area where the horse is relaxed and confident.
  • Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • The horse is not hungry.
  • Halter and 10′ (3m) or longer lead.
  • A safe fence or similar. A safe fence or barrier is one the horse can’t put his foot/leg through if he suddenly steps back. Tape fences can work well with some horses – NOT electrified.

VIDEO CLIPS

With halter and lead:  https://youtu.be/BHSztrpA8oo

 

At liberty: https://youtu.be/O0dpTo6mXSs

NOTES

  1. Memorize the sequence of tasks by walking the pattern without the horse and then visualizing the sequence often.
  2. The number of steps you take walking forward is not important. I tend to not take many steps when making the video clips to keep the viewing time short. I sometimes suggest a number of steps, but please suit that to your horse and your environment.
  3. However, the number of steps I suggest for moving backwards is significant. Horses don’t naturally do a lot of stepping backwards. We want to stay with only 2-3 steps at first, and gradually, over many short sessions, build it up one or two additional steps at a time. We want to avoid making the horse sore.
  4. While teaching this routine, or revisiting it after a long time, I generally click&treat for each part of each task. When the routine feels familiar, I move the click point along so we are doing more before a click&treat. Each horse will be different and each time doing the pattern will be different. I like to move the click points around a bit to stop the horse anticipating a treat at a specific point every time.
  5. The key to all these tasks is to keep a continuous drape in the lead rope, using halter pressure via the rope only momentarily for additional guidance. Most of our guided shaping comes via our body position, gestures, breathing, energy level and voice signals.

TASKS

  1. On the horse’s left side, with the horse nearest the fence, walk forward maybe ten steps, halt for a second or two, then turn into a finesse back-up – asking for 2-3 steps back. Repeat two more times (three times in total).
  2. Walk a large circle (handler on the inside). At the point along the fence where you began the large circle, switch to walk a medium-sized circle. Reaching the same spot again, carry on walking a small circle. The circle sizes will depend on the space you have and how flexible your horse is. Start with large circles and gradually make them smaller as indicated by the increasing suppleness of the horse.
  3. Ask the horse to HALT alongside the fence, either ground-tied or put the rope over his neck/back. Then ask him to WAIT while you walk away about ten steps with your back to the horse. Turn to partly face the horse and take up your ‘Zero Intent’ body position for x number of seconds. Then walk back to the horse; click&treat. Gradually (over lots of short sessions with this routine) work up to a WAIT of ten seconds or more.
  4. Walk forward shoulder-to-shoulder with the horse, then turn into a finesse back-up without a halt first. With practice this can get lovely and fluid.
  5. Repeat the whole sequence of tasks walking on the horse’s right side.

GENERALIZATIONS

  1. Practice alongside different fences/walls/hedges if you can.
  2. Once the horse shows that he knows the pattern, play with it at liberty along a fence using the same signals you have used all along.
  3. Once the routine is smooth along the fence, play with it out in the open first with a lead rope, then at liberty. Alternate on which side of the horse you begin the routine.

Note that during backing up, horses usually push harder with one hind leg, so their hind end tends to veer away from the stronger leg. You may want to teach a gesture signal that allows you to regain straightness.

Experiment with how your position to the right or the left of the horse’s head affects his backing up.

RELATED RESOURCES

  1. Smooth Walk and Halt transitions: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5TT
  2. Finesse Back-Up: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5XL
  3. ‘Zero Intent’ and ‘Intent’: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5RO
  4. Smooth 90-Degree Turns: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5VM
  5. Ground Tie: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5WX

 

 

 

Finesse Back-Up

2 Replies

At one point a friend and I came up with 29 different ways of backing up a horse, including groundwork, long-reining and riding. This Finesse Back-Up is one of my favorites when I am leading a horse and we need a prompt back-up.

I learned the essence of this process from Alexandra Kurland, a true pioneer of equine clicker training. I’ve added the idea of using corners to teach because it arranges the environment so that stepping back makes sense to the horse right from the beginning.

PREREQUISITES:

  1. Horse understands putting his nose on a target results in click&treat. (See Related Resource 1 at the end of this post.)
  2. Horse walks confidently between the handler and a safe fence or similar barrier.
  3. Horse understands ‘Walk On’ and ‘Whoa’ voice and body language signals. (See Related Resource 2 at the end of this post.)
  4. Handler easily slip into and out of ‘zero intent’ so the horse easily knows when he can relax in a ‘wait’ and when he is being asked to move. (See Related Resource 3 at the end of this post.)
  5. Horse understands the handler’s body axis orientation as a signal for bending. (See Related Resource 4 at the end of this post.)

ENVIRONMENT & MATERIALS:

  • A work area where the horse is relaxed and confident.
  • Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • A safe fence or barrier which leads into a safe corner.
  • Halter and lead.
  • Mat (optional). A mat can make it easier for a mat-savvy horse to settle into standing in a corner.

AIMS:

  • Handler uses clear, consistent orientation, body language and voice ‘back up’ signals.
  • Horse smoothly shifts from walking forward to stepping backwards on request when the handler turns to face him.

Clips:

https://youtu.be/6YYwoGgd_0Y

https://youtu.be/safxxu90lkA

Notes:

  1. Once the horse readily parks calmly in the corner, we can begin to teach the Finesse Back-Up. I call it that because it requires gently running our hand or fingers up the rope toward the halter, until we reach a point of contact to which the horse responds.
  2. Each horse will be different. I had trouble having Boots demonstrate clearly because she knows the task so well that she reads the very beginning of my body language sentence and steps back right away. If we teach this well, the horse will step back as soon as we begin to turn and use our voice signal, so that even our hand on the rope eventually becomes redundant.
  3. This is tricky to explain in words. Hopefully the video clips and still pictures will make it easier to understand.
  4. Two terms explained:  Outside hand refers to the hand furthest away from the horse. Inside hand refers to the hand nearest the horse. These obviously change depending on which side of the horse you are on, and whether you are shoulder-to-shoulder with the horse, i.e. both facing the same direction, or you are facing the horse front-on.

SLICES:

A: Getting Comfortable in a Corner

  1. Walk with the horse and halt in a corner set up with a gate or a barrier. The handler is on the open side of the corner. It the horse finds it hard to stand relaxed in the corner, and you have taught him to love standing his front feet on a mat, use a mat for your ‘halt’ position. Click&treat for the halt.
  2. Relax into zero intent and ask the horse to ‘wait’ for a little while in the corner. Click&treat the ‘wait’ task a few times.
  3. Turn the horse 90 degrees toward you so he can walk forward out of the corner. Walk a loop and come back to park in the corner again. Click&treat the halt. (This bit is not on the video clip but when first teaching this, we want the horse totally comfortable standing in the corner. It’s helpful to generalize the task to several corners if you have them available or can build them.)
  4. Teach relaxed standing in the corner on the horse’s left and right sides.

B: The Back-Up Maneuver

To ask for the back-up, you are going to smoothly pivot 180 degrees, so you face the opposite direction to the direction the horse is facing, but you are a bit to one side of him.

BUT: ***In the moment before you pivot…*** 

  1. Gently reach across your body with your ‘outside hand’ and slide it quietly up the rope to a point of contact to which the horse responds.
  2. At first, this may be right up to the snap on the halter (or if using a rope halter, even beyond the snap to hold the bottom of the halter) so you can give the horse a very direct backwards feel on the halter.
  3. As you pivot to face the horse, what was your ‘outside hand’ becomes your ‘inside hand’ — the one nearest the horse.
  4. Then simply keep a ‘hold’ tension on the rope and bring up your energy and intent for the horse to step back. This stance causes the horse slight discomfort by making him feel unbalanced. We want him to work out that he can regain his balance/comfort by shifting backwards. Our first click point is the moment he thinks of moving back. Because he’s in a corner, his easiest choice is to step backwards to regain his balance.
  5. When first teaching this task, release your ‘hold’ and simultaneously click&treat at the horse’s smallest inclination to shift his weight back. After the treat, walk a circuit, return to the corner, and ask again.
  6. When you can feel the horse readily shifting his weight back, release the rope pressure, but then, right away, slide up the rope again and ‘hold’ a bit longer to get a whole step back. Drop your signaling hand off the rope as soon as you get backward movement. Walk a circuit, return to the corner, and ask again.
  7. As he begins to understand, eventually ask for two steps, then three steps and so on, before the click&treat. The horse will soon know that when you relax your intent and take your signaling hand off the rope, he can stop backing.
  8. Ask for two or three back-ups (of several steps each) in a row, with release, click&treat for each one. Then ask the horse to step forward into the corner again; click&treat.
  9. Build a little dancing rhythm of movement: back up = click&treat. Forward into corner = click&treat. Back up = click&treat, and so on. After about 3 of these, go away for a bit of relaxation or doing other things.
  10. Gradually, over many short sessions, ask for more steps back until the horse willingly offers as many as you like.

Generalizations

  1. Move away from the corner and use just a fence on the far side.
  2. Move away from the fence and use just a low raised rail on the far side.
  3. Repeat with just a ground rail along the far side of the horse.
  4. Check to see how well the horse can back with this signal (turning to face him) out in the open. If you lose straightness at any point, return to using a fence or rail on the far side. If the horse begins to swing his hind end away from you, you can straighten his body by touching his neck to move his head away, which will straighten his body.
  5. Back through increasingly narrow spaces; e.g. two barrels, gates, into and out of stalls, always being careful that the horse does not catch his hip on an upright.
  6. Back through lanes set up with higher sides.
  7. Back along a track or trail.
  8. Back down slopes and up slopes. Start with gentle inclines.
  9. Back into a trailer or trailer simulation.
  10. Weave backwards (you need to create signals to direct his butt to the right, to the left and to keep it straight). If you are asking the horse to back up while you face him front on, moving his head a bit to his left (your right) will cause his butt to move to his right (your left). And vice versa if you move his head a little bit to his right, his butt will move to his left. If you want him to back straight, ask his head to stay straight.
  11. Back an L-bend.
  12. Back a U-bend.
  13. Back a Z-bend.
  14. Back in a circle.

Related Resources:

  1. Using a target: https://youtu.be/IfbdNme5UQA
  2. ‘Walk On’ and ‘Whoa’ Signals: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5TT
  3.  ‘Zero Intent’ and ‘Intent’: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5RO
  4. Body Axis Orientation: https://youtu.be/mjBwyDsVX6Y

Movement Routine 1 – Fence

Leave a reply

Photo: Standing with ‘no intent’ at halt is part of these five chained tasks.

INTRODUCTION

This is the first of a series of movement routines we can do with only a fence and an open working area. The routines put together many of the individual skills and movements that my resources have looked at so far.

The key purpose of these routines is to encourage handlers to work on the precision of their signals in a relaxed manner.  The routines require the handler to pay close attention to refining his/her signals to improve timing, clarity and softness. A horse can only be as precise as we are precise. A horse can only be as soft as we are soft.

Each routine has five elements that are chained together into a pattern of movement. Horses are pattern learners and, like all of us, like to know what will happen before it happens. We tend to forget that horses living natural lives in the wild are totally in control of all their actions.

We can increase the positive feeling of ‘certainty’ by teaching these routines in a light-hearted but methodical way. Boots usually picks up a new pattern after three-six repeats over three days. Some horses will be quicker, and some will take longer.

Other reasons for playing with these routines:

  1. They are a way to keep skills we have already taught current in our repertoire.
  2. They give a way of interacting with our horse when time is short, we don’t have time to set up objects and obstacles, we don’t have access to objects and obstacles, or we are past the point of lugging around heavy rails and other objects.
  3. They include movement tasks we can do between working on stationary tasks, so giving the horse a good mix of activities.
  4. They make excellent cool-down routines after energetic riding or groundwork.

I’ve called them ‘routines’ because gymnasts first learn the individual elements of a performance and then form the elements into a ‘routine’. First each element is mastered emotionally, intellectually and physically. Then the routine is put into brain memory. Then it is practiced until it is also in muscle memory.

All this is a little bit tricky because doing a routine with a horse involves two brains and two sets of muscles.

After jotting down a plan for a possible routine, I try it out with Boots multiple times. The feedback I get from Boots and myself always shows that the initial plan needs a lot of changes. Most of the changes concern my body position plus when and how I give the signal for each part of the action.

AIM

Smooth execution of a series of five individual tasks chained together:

  • ‘Walk on’ and ‘halt’ repeated three times;
  • Change of direction and side of horse (so horse remains nearest the fence);
  • ‘Stay’ while handler backs away from the horse to the end of rope (keeping a drape in the rope);
  • Horse Waits for ___ seconds;
  • Recall.

PREREQUISITES

  1. Smooth ‘walk on’ and ‘halt’ transitions staying shoulder-to-shoulder. (See Related Resources 1 at the end of this post.)
  2. Handler has developed a clear ‘No Intent’ signal so the horse knows when standing quietly is what is wanted. (See Related Resources 2 at the end of this post.)
  3. Change of direction plus changing side of horse the handler is on. (See Related Resources 3 at the end of this post.
  4. Horse and handler agree on clear ‘stay’ signals. (See Related Resources 4 at the end of this post.)
  5. Horse has learned to ‘wait’ until handler gives a new signal or clicks&treats. (See Related Resources 5 at the end of this post.)
  6. Handler and horse agree on a clear ‘recall’ signal. (See Related Resources 6 at the end of this post.)

ENVIRONMENT AND MATERIALS

  • A work area where the horse is relaxed and confident.
  • Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • The horse is not hungry.
  • Halter and 10′ (3 m) or longer lead.
  • A safe fence line to work alongside. It can be straight, curved or the inside or outside of a round pen fence.

VIDEO CLIP

https://youtu.be/HqyJA_E7waY

NOTES

  1. Since I don’t find memorizing a sequence of tasks easy, I use a ruler as a fence and practice the movements with my small toy hippopotamus. Then I walk the sequence outside by myself, practicing the signals I will use, accompanied by an invisible unicorn.
  2. While working out the plan with Boots’ help, I’ve usually managed to confuse her to some extent, so once the plan feels right, I wait a few days before starting to do the final version with her. Meanwhile we have been practicing the tasks separately.
  3. For the first task, walk as few or many steps as you like. I walked only a few steps in the video to make it easier to film. Vary how long you stand at halt before asking for the next walk transition. Work to get the ‘walk on’ transition with raising your chest, breathing in deeply plus your voice signal. Work on refining your body language and voice signal for each halt.
  4. How often you click&treat depends on where you are with each skill. I always begin with click&treat for each portion of each task. As the horse gets the hang of what we are doing, I move the click point along so the horse does more for each click&treat. I like to eventually be able to do the whole chain with one click point at the end.
  5. As with everything, we keep the sessions short in among other things we are doing. I often do it just once, sometimes twice and rarely three times in a row.
  6. There is no need to rush through the chain of tasks. Walk slowly. Give the horse time put the pattern into his mind and from there into his muscle memory.
  7. Stay’ means that the horse understands that you can walk away while he stays put. ‘Wait’ means that the horse is able to keep standing still for a specific length of time until you click&treat or give another signal. They may appear to be the same at first glance, but teaching/learning ‘Wait’ with duration is a skill set that goes beyond the idea of ‘stay’ for a short period.
  8. For the ‘wait’ task, gradually work up to ten seconds, but be sure to stay well within the time the horse is comfortable with. Better to recall sooner rather than after the horse moves. If he moves, go back to working on the ‘wait’ task by itself for several days. In the video clip, you will note that on the day we filmed at liberty, Boots found it hard to relax into the ‘wait’. There was a lot of commotion including a huge noisy hedge clipping machine working close by.
  9. The more time we spend playing with exercises like this, which look relatively simple on the surface, the more positive spin-offs there will be to the other things we do with the horse.

SLICES

  1. Memorize the sequence of tasks.
  2. Play with each of the skills separately until you and the horse feel fluent. This might take one session or a long time if some of the tasks are new to you.
  3. Walking with the horse nearest the fence, chain the first two tasks together (3 x walk & halt plus change of direction and sides).
  4. When 3 is smooth, chain the last three mini-tasks together (stay plus wait plus recall).
  5. When both 3 and 4 are going well, chain it all together.
  6. Always adjust your rate of reinforcement (how often you click&treat) to what the horse is able to offer on the day. If he seems unsure, click&treat more of the slices. If he is showing keenness and understanding about what comes next, use your voice to praise and move the click&treat further along the chain.

We can’t expect our horse to be the same every day, just as we are not the same every day. Good training adjusts what we do to what the horse is telling us. Some days it will feel very smooth. Other days parts will feel sticky. This is normal ebb and flow.

The day will come when you do it all with one click and treat at the end, but it may not happen again the day after that. Horses read our tension or relaxation in a nanosecond. Often what is happening with the horse relates to ourselves, our emotional state, and how the horse perceives us that day.

Other times, the horse may be tired or anxious due to rough weather or other changes in his external and/or internal environment.

GENERALIZATIONS

  1. If you usually start walking on the horse’s left side, start instead walking on his right side. Be aware of keeping your signals equally clear on the side you use less often.
  2. Practice alongside as many different fences as you can.
  3. Once the horse shows that he knows the pattern, play with it at liberty along fences using the same signals you have used all along.
  4. Once the routine is smooth along the fence, play with it out in the open, first with the lead rope and then at liberty. Alternate on which side of the horse you begin the routine.

RELATED RESOURCES

  1. Smooth Walk and Halt transitions: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5TT
  2. ‘Zero Intent’ and ‘Intent’: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5RO
  3. Changing Sides in Motion: https://youtu.be/3oqPs4LM5AM
  4. Park and Wait (Stay): https://youtu.be/UvjKr9_U0ys
  5. Wait Duration: https://youtu.be/jVn3WBuqpno
  6. Recall Clip 1: https://youtu.be/XuBo07q8g24     Recall Clip 2: https://youtu.be/5BQCB2Fe5RE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One Step at a Time

Leave a reply

Photo above: Boots gained the confidence to step up on this balance beam by being rewarded for venturing one step at a time. After many short, successful sessions, she felt secure enough to target individual legs to my hand.

INTRODUCTION

The skill of being able to ask your horse to move one specific foot at a time is worthy of time and attention. It is a task that can be used and refined when riding or doing groundwork, including Horse Agility competition. It starts with being able to visualize the pattern in which horses move their feet.

Carefully observe the footfall sequences when horses walk, back-up, trot and canter. Reviewing slow motion video is best. Learn the footfall (foot-rise) for walk and trot, one gait at a time. When they are clear in your mind, add the canter.

Get down on all fours so you can mimic the pattern with your limbs. That helps put the patterns into your deep memory. Once you can easily replay the memory tape for each gait in your mind, you can give your horse much clearer signals.

Perfecting this helps to build the feel you need in order to time your riding or leading signals to the horse’s feet.

This is a great task for teaching us to carefully note the horse’s intent and time our click&treat to the moment a foot is lifting. The ability to see and feel footfall (foot-rise) is a huge bonus in a horse training kit.

It is actually the moment of foot-rise that we need to learn because it is only when the foot is lifted that we can influence where it goes next. Therefore during this exercise we want to click&treat as the foot is lifting.

Directing our horse’s feet one at a time has many uses. For example:

  • Cleaning/trimming feet.
  • Positioning for mounting.
  • Backing into stalls/wash bays.
  • Breed and showmanship classes .
  • Leading through narrow spaces.
  • Trailer loading and unloading.
  • Precision riding or long-reining/driving.
  • Placing a foot for an x-ray.
  • Precise mat or hoop work.
  • Pedestals.
  • Bridges.
  • Water obstacles.
  • Horse Agility obstacles
  • Getting out of tricky situations on the trail.
  • Stepping up and down a pedestal or balance beam or bridge.

PREREQUISITES

  1. Horse and handler are clicker savvy.
  2. The horse responds willingly to light pressure on the halter via the lead rope. (See ‘Related Resource’ 1 at the end of this post.)
  3. We have taught the ‘finesse back up’. (See ‘Related Resource’ 2 at the end of this post.)

ENVIRONMENT AND MATERIALS

  • A work area where the horse is relaxed and confident.
  • Ideally, the horse can see his buddies, but they can’t interfere.
  • The horse is not hungry.
  • Halter and lead. A shorter lead is easier to use for this task.

AIM

To create signals for asking the horse to move either front foot one step at a time, both back and forward.

VIDEO CLIP

https://youtu.be/http://A6RUNijvf18

NOTES

  1. Ensure the horse is in a learning frame of mind.
  2. Keep each session working with short – three minutes is plenty. Three minutes of focused work over many sessions will get you the result without lapsing into human or horse frustration.
  3. To lift and move a front foot, the horse must first shift his balance to take the weight off that foot.
  4. Unless the horse is pacing, the hind feet move in unison with the diagonal front foot.
  5. I’m not good with left/right or 3-dimensional thinking so it took me a long time to get these moves firmly into my muscle memory. I had to learn to carefully note where the horse’s feet were and how he was balanced before I asked a foot to move. Then I could decide which way I needed to tilt the horse’s head to move a particular foot.
  6. Remember to click&treat the moment the foot is lifting during this exercise.

SLICES

One Step Back

In order to lift his right front foot, the horse must shift his weight to his left shoulder and slightly back.

  1. Face the horse, slightly to the right side of his head and orientate your belly button toward his nose (when his head is straight).
  2. Hold the rope about an arm’s length from the halter, lightly draped, in the hand nearest the horse’s shoulder (rope hand).
  3. Reach across with the other hand (sliding hand) and slide it gently up the rope toward the halter. If you’ve taught a ‘back’ voice signal, use it as well.
  4. At some stage, you will reach a point of contact to which the horse responds.
  5. When you reach the point of contact tilt his nose/neck slightly to the left and put a bit of backward pressure on the halter. Release immediately when you feel his intent to move back (click&treat). Relax, then ask again.
  6. When you get a whole step, release (click&treat), relax. Maybe rub him if you are not using Clicker Training and he likes to be touched. If you get more than one step, accept it, reward it, and then adjust your signal so it has less energy.

Some horses may at first respond by leaning forward into the backward pressure you are putting on the halter. They are not ‘wrong’ because moving into pressure is a natural horse response. They are also not wrong because they don’t yet understand what you want.

If your horse leans into the pressure:

  1. Take up a power position (feet shoulder-width apart, one slightly ahead, hips dropped).
  2. Hold the rope in the hand nearest the horse, about 2’-3’ from the halter with a bit of slack in it.
  3. Reach across with your other hand and softly run it up the rope toward the halter until you meet resistance from the horse.
  4. At that point, simply ‘hold’ just strongly enough to make the horse feel unbalanced.
  5. The moment he shows the slightest tendency to shift backwards to regain his balance, release the pressure (click&treat).
  6. Repeat. If you are clear and consistent and release (click&treat) promptly, the horse will soon read your body language energy and intent and step back before you can even slide your fingers up the rope.
  7. During multiple short practices, also introduce a voice ‘back’ signal.

When you reach a reliable response as in 6 above, you have created a gesture signal you can use at liberty to ask the horse to step back. Keep the gesture exactly as it was, i.e. running your hand up an imaginary rope.

When you have one step back at a light signal, ask for two steps back. It’s important to ‘release’ the halter pressure slightly after the first step, then increase the pressure slightly to ask again for the second step before a bigger release (click&treat).

Once that is smooth, ask for three steps, then four, and so on until you have as many individual steps as you like. Release the pressure at each step, then apply it again lightly to ask for another step. The horse will soon read the intent in your body language and will step back by reading your ‘intent’.

Pressure on the rope will no longer be necessary except maybe in unusual situations of high stress. In such situations the horse will have an advantage over horses who don’t understand this part of the task because he will remember what the rope pressure means and how to respond to it.

To move his left front foot back, tilt his nose/neck slightly to the right, i.e. always tilt the nose away from the foot you want him to move.

If the horse tends to push forward into the handler, it can help to have a rail in front of the horse or start in a blocked-off lane, so that stepping back is the easiest and common-sense thing to do.

When backing from the halt feels easy, we can expand and generalize the task by walking along beside the horse, halting and smoothly pivoting into position to face the horse and ask him to back up. Teach this first along a safe fence to encourage the horse to back up in a straight line.

One Step Forward

To move one step forward, tilt his nose slightly away from the foot you want to move (to take the weight off it) and put gentle forward pressure on the halter.

GENERALIZATIONS

Be sure to teach ‘one step at a time’ standing on the horse’s left side and on his right side. If he finds one side harder, work at bit more on that side.

Most people find giving signals with their less dominant hand harder as well. When each side feels the same, you’ve reached a big milestone.

When we can use a light signal to ask the horse to glide from walk into a halt, then as we turn to face him, we can ask for an individual step back or forward, we have achieved our task.

Eventually, get him to put a specific front foot on things. Start with a largish item like a doormat or a piece of carpet. Work toward smaller things like paper plates, Frisbees and leaves, then higher things like stumps, steps, pedestals, ramps, balance beams, hoof stands if he doesn’t already know all these things.

Be aware that once the horse is close to the object, he can’t see it, but is working from memory. The area directly under his head/neck is a blind spot.

Be particular but not critical. Always relax, pause and reset if the horse gets confused. After a good effort, go away from the site and do other things the horse already knows.

Then come back to moving one foot until you get another good effort. Don’t drill. After you’ve had two or three good attempts, stop and come back to it another time.

The essence of this teaching is that you create mutually-understood signals that communicate to the horse about moving individual feet.

This clip shows some possible generalizations.

RELATED RESOURCES

  1. Blog: Soft Response to Rope Pressure: https://wp.me/p4VYHH-5Sq
  2. March 2018 Challenge; Backing Up Part 2; FINESSE BACK-UP https://youtu.be/safxxu90lkA