Clicker and Target Issues

Is Hand-feeding a Problem?

This is always a been a hot topic which brings up some valid concerns. Here is a response posted on The Horse.com. Dr. Sue McDonnell is the founding head of the Equine Behavior Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. She offers some sagely advice.

Here is a link to the article:  Hand-feeding Treats

I posted this in a group discussion but decided I wanted to share it here as well:  From the article I think it is apparent where I stand on the topic. I want to reiterate that it is not feeding the treats/reward that is causing the problem. It is all about our timing. What were they doing when the treat is delivered? What ever behavior the horse was exhibiting at the time is the behavior will see more of. We have, in effect, said that is what earned you the reward. We are training this behavior.

The mere fact that this hand feeding issue exists supports the effectiveness of positive reinforcement training. Horses, or ponies, are quick to remember what resulted in a reward…even if us humans aren’t making the connection, they are figuring it out. The trick is to learn how to use this incredible motivator for good purposes. To improve performance, motivation, our relationship and to solve problems. I hate to see people throwing out the baby with the bath water. It is not so hard to learn how to use positive reinforcement correctly. However, it is not a part of traditional horse training,,,yet. The behavioral principles are at work whether people are aware of them or not. The more people learn about them the more effective they will be as trainers. All that being said, I would rather not have my horse fed treats by people who were not aware of the relationship between treats and the resulting behavior. I look at any type of reinforcement as a training tool. Would anyone let a child, or adult for that matter, use a riding crop on a horse, all willy-nilly, with no education? Certainly not. I think it is the same with treats. Both reinforcers (the stick and the treats) are changing behavior. I think education is the key

How is Clicker Training Different then “Whoa”?

I try to address Vic’s question regarding positive reinforcement training and training “Whoa”.  It is a basic question and it may be very helpful for those that are unfamiliar with how it all fits together.

QUESTION:  What does your training do that teaching the command “whoa” does not?

RESPONSE:  Hi Vic and thank you for the opportunity to address your question.  The training, which is based in proven behavior principles, teaches a horse so much more than “Whoa” that it is hard to even know where to begin.  I imagine you are talking about the sound of the clicker vs the entire training.  Depending on how it is trained, generally “Whoa” asks them to stop.  While the clicker does end a behavior, more importantly, it tells them they have done something correctly and have earned some sort of a reward.  It is a “Yes” signal.    The click also draws attention to a particular moment in time.  They remember what earns them the click.  So, if I like a canter depart or a flying lead change I can draw attention to that particular action.  I may not be able to deliver a reward at that point in time but I can bookmark that moment in time.  Technically speaking, the sound of the clicker is called a “bridge signal”.  This is because it bridges the moments between the correct behavior and the and the moment when I can deliver a positive reinforcement.   Another example of the clicker at work happened with a women who was teaching her filly to lift her legs.  She had the idea to use carrots as a reinforcement when she was good.  She did not use a bridge signal (the clicker).  Instead she just fed when she was done holding her leg up.  The women reported that her horse seemed to be pulling her leg out of her hand and placing it back on the ground.  I asked what her horse was doing when she got her carrot.  She told me that it was when her leg was back on the ground.  The horse had made the association that her foot back on the ground equals reward.  We fixed the problem by introducing the clicker into the equation.  That way she could click when her foot was in her hand and communicate that this is the behavior that has earned the reward.  I think it is important to note that she was still feeding the filly when her foot was on the ground but she now had a way to communicate which part of that equation she was rewarding.  She quickly and easily changed the behavior.  Better yet, she opened up a new way to communicate with her filly.  I hope this answers your question an clears things up a bit.  If you have more questions please let me know.   This barely scratches the surface.   If you would like to learn more about positive reinforcement training there is a lot more information and even some video sessions on this blog.  A good place to start might be a clip that Rick Lamb did for his television show.  If you are interested you may go to this link:  http://shawnakarrasch.com/blog/2011/11/08/the-horse-show-with-rick-lamb-2/ or enter “Rick Lamb” on the blog’s search bar.

Teaching a Foal: Starting Them off Right

Stephanie posted a question about her colt. When to start training and behaviors to work on to prepare him for adulthood. I, as usual, have a ton of ideas and I am know I am just scratching the surface!

QUESTION:

Hi Shawna,
I’ve just purchased your Despooking DVD’s & am excitedly pouring over them. As yet I have not used clicker training with any of my horses although I have fun playing with it with my rescue dog. My 2 questions are , at what age can a horse be introduced to clicker training as we have now have a7 day old colt & what are some examples of uses for a youngster?

RESPONSE:

Congratulations Stephanie! What an exciting time for you!

I am a big proponent of handling them from the moment they are born. There is a lot of conditioning that will help them to get comfortable with people. However, I start a positive reinforcement training plan as soon as they are weaned. After Bridge (clicker) conditioning and target training I teach them to lead. I tend to start with the target so they get the concept to stay with you. Stop when you stop, turn when you turn, etc. Then, I introduce the the halter and lead rope and teach them how to respond to the pressure. You can also incorporate the target at this point so it helps them to know what to do instead of the resistance/fear that most babies exhibit. I teach them anything they may need to do as an adult. Certainly teach him to accept being touched everywhere including the sheath, ears and mouth. You can teach him to accept oral syringes (wormers). Lifting his legs and letting you move his feet to and fro. Prep him for the things they farrier will eventually be doing. You can do de-spooking work with tarps, bridges…whatever you can think of to expose him to. Teach him to soak his foot in a bucket of water. You can teach him to put his head in the halter. This concept carries over to the bridle/ bit when the time comes. You can teach him to be clipped and trailer load. You can teach him to walk with a saddle pad secured with a surcingle. This helps with blanketing and certainly saddling later. The more consistent you can be the better. It would be good to teach him to be comfortable away from other horses and to be in a stall. I know there will be periods of time that his training will take a back burner while he is growing but if you can, set a bit of a schedule for him to have some training exercises on a consistant basis.

The best part of a baby is you can plan ahead and circumvent a lot of issues that tend to come up in adulthood. You may not have a need to do a lot of these tasks yet (clipping, soaking his foot, trailer loading etc). However, teaching him these things now will pave the way for him to progress seamlessly down the road. I also recommend keeping some sort of journal so you can keep track of what he has learned, how he responded. As time passes you may forget some of the details.

These things all serve a practical purpose but they also set him up for a lifetime of learning. You are going to find that he enjoys learning and he will learn much faster then the horses who were not trained with positive reinforcement. He will be more sensible mature(mentally) beyond his years.

I have found that the babies are not too spooky when they are young. They are just full of curiosity and they don’t seem to know enough to be fearful yet. This is a big bonus for the training process. They seem to go through a more reactive phase between one and two years of age. If you play your cards right he will sail right through this without letting spookiness get a foothold. Granted he will still startle at things but his reaction will be minimal.

Keep in mind babies have a lot of energy. Teaching him to be patient and still is harder for the rambunctious little horses. I incorporate some retrieving and targeting further away between the standing still type behaviors. This willl give him an outlet that you get to initiate. They can run after a ball a few times and expend some energy in a safe and controlled manner. It is a reinforcement for them and helps to set them up for success when you get back to standing still. Because you initiated the behavior it strengthens your relationship. This will help to keep his attention from wavering. Start with short sessions. Their attention span is short at first. You can build up the time in between and pretty soon he will be able to stand patiently for long periods of time.

Another thing to keep in mind is they learn quite a bit vicariously. This means he will learn socially, by watching the others around him. His biggest role model is going to be his mom. Things that mom does well, I would make a point of exposing him to on regular basis while he is young and soaking up mom’s reactions . If she is good with clipping expose him to her being clipped (or just the body of the clipper touching as if you were clipping). The more you can do the better. He will emulate her reactions to everything. Including how she reacts when people are around and when they approach her in the pasture. If there are things that she is not so good at, I suggest you try to minimize his exposure to those things.

This is important too! Don’t forget he will also need healthy boundaries as he grows. Babies (both equine and human!) like to test their world and everything in it. I have found if you give him lots of time to play and be a horse he will learn to keep that play for his social situations and not with you. Babies are cute. The ornery little things that they do when they are young are often overlooked or excused because they are such cute little guys. They are learning right away. Young horses are hard wired to play and learn the skills that they will need as adults. This means sparring with one another. It is reinforcing for them. At some point he may try to engage you in this game. Do not fall pray to this by reacting and sparring with him.

I got a little horse who was weaned at four months. At less then five months old he went and did his first clinic with the big horses. He was too small to cross tie so we had to push tack trunks in front of standing stall. He just curled up on the floor and slept! He came right out of the trailer at the clinic with no halter, went right to the ring and stayed with me the whole time. He couldn’t have been cuter.

Okay those are some ideas and food for thought. I certainly don’t have all the answers but I hope this helps you out a bit. Please don’t forget I am here if you ever want some input. What an exciting journey that lies ahead of you! :0)

Target or Mat Training, Attitude is the Most Important!

Video answer. The real take-away from this question is the importance of a horse’s attitude during the training process. A good demeanor gets you a relaxed, focused and responsive horse. Positive reinforcement goes a long way towards building a good attitude and work ethic in your horse. Training is not only easier but your horse becomes as interested as you are in making progress. This carries over to every interaction that we have with our horses. What could be better than that? A sour attitude about training also spills over to our every interaction. As trainers we can and should focus on this as much as we do on training a specific task.

The Horse Show with Rick Lamb

This was featured on The Horse Show with Rick Lamb (RFD-TV and Rural TV in Europe). It ws great fun and Rick was a natural with Mint and free jumping. He did great with the clicker training and he is not too bad at the interview either! Rick is curious and always learning so it made it a ton of fun. I received a lot of great feedback and requests to post it here on my blog. So if you haven’t had a chance to view it, well, now you can. Mint seemed to have fun…He always does. Enjoy!! As usaual, I love comments or questions.

The Great Debate: To Feed or Not to Feed?

I was re-reading my blog post and I realized I have misspoken. My head filled in my line of thinking but my words didn’t express it correctly. I shared a video and blog post called: Should I Reward Every time I Click?. My point wasn’t about rewarding (reinforcing) every click, it was about using food (primary reinforcement) every time I click. I reward every behavior either with a primary reinforcement or what is known as a conditioned or “secondary reinforcement”.

I know this can be like a foreign language to a lot of you, so let me back up and elaborate a bit. Here we go with psychology 101, but stay with me as it will help you to better understand your horse. You will become a more effective teacher both on the ground and under saddle.

First what is a reinforcement? In operant conditioning, reinforcement occurs when an event following a response causes an increase in the probability of that response occurring in the future. It is how we all learn. It sounds technical but it is pretty simple. It is going on all the time in our lives as well as in our horse’s lives. We are either seeking something we want or avoiding something we don’t want. In this post, we are focusing on positive (reward) reinforcement which is seeking something we want.

Next, what is a primary (unconditioned) reinforcer? It is a consequence, such as food or water, that fulfills a primary, unlearned drive, such as hunger or thirst, and thereby reinforces a behavior without dependence on prior learning. These are the things needed for survival. Primary reinforcements are: food, air, water, sleep and procreation (for survival of the species)

Okay, now what is a secondary (conditioned) reinforcer? Secondary Reinforcer refers to a stimulus that gains reinforcing properties because it is associated with a primary reinforcer. That means that pairing the “new stimulus”(clicker) with a “primary reinforcer” (food) results in the “new” taking on the value of food. Think Pavlov’s dogs. The bell brought about the same physical reaction as the presentation of food even with no food present. Are you still with me? This is where the bridge signal(clicker) comes in. You can use any stimuli you choose to condition as a reinforcer. There is nothing magical about the clicker. In fact, with the marine mammals at Sea World we didn’t use clickers. But for this post I am going to use the clicker as the example.

By the way, did you know that we also have a conditioned reinforcer in our lives? It is money! It is just paper. We don’t react this way to all paper. We have come to associate money, the special paper, with the things it can buy us. These are things we need to survive, which are primary reinforcers. If we were to be transplanted to a desert island would we want to take money? No, we would be focused on food and water. Do we work for only enough money to survive or do we go above and beyond and keep trying to earn more money? Of course we could survive with a lot less money but we choose to have more money than is absolutely necessary.

As we now have some basic working definitions, let’s go back to my previous post. I stated in that post that I don’t always reward the behaviors. I misspoke, I do reinforce, I just don’t always use food as a reinforcement. I also use conditioned reinforcements quite a bit. For example I have conditioned patting my horse as a reward. Some horse like this intrinsically but some do not. We humans have a tendency to think they all like it but it is not always the case, as with some horses it is just a little above neutral. I always try to strengthen it’s value by doing some conditioning (pairing it with a food reinforcement).

Let’s consider what serves as a conditioned reinforcer in our horse’s lives. Of course, I am talking about a horse who has been trained through positive reinforcement. In this scenario the horse would have been conditioned to the sound of a clicker or some other “yes” signal. The horse has learned that the clicker itself is a conditioned reinforcer, that is the strongest because that is where we have focused our attention, we conditioned it as a reinforcemnt. But by exposure we have conditioned our presence to be a conditioned reinforcer since we bring the food (primary reinforcement) to the training sessions. Our presence means there is a chance for reinforcement. It is not as strong as the clicker but it is conditioned. Toys and turn out time are also things I have conditioned to be reinforcers. And as stated in the video in my last post, the signal(cue) itself has been shown to have a very reinforcing value. It releases dopamine which was previously thought to occur when the food reward was delivered. Instead they have found it occurs when the signal is given. This seems to indicate that the signal is also a conditioned reinforcer. It has a very strong reinforcement history, it has been conditioned through the pairing of a primary reinforcement. That actually makes sense since the whole process of training with positive reinforcement has been conditioned, an association has been made. That is the beauty of it!

Now back to my last post. There is a big debate on feeding after every click or not. I have heard for years that some people feel you should feed after every click otherwise it is a lie to the horse. I refer to a horse here because this is not the practice with marine mammals. I have found the use of conditioned reinforcers to be a valuable tool for training. I always reward but sometimes it is with a secondary reinforcer. In the previous post I cited why this is so effective. I may use pats, verbal praise, another signal or toys just to name a few. In fact the clicker IS a conditioned reinforcer. That means it has reinforcing value on it’s own. Just hearing the click serves to reinforce them just like a pat. The clicker is like our money. We conditioned the clicker right off the bat by pairing it with a primary reinforcement, something that has an innate value to our horse’s and need to survive, food. The horse’s are getting all of the food they need, yet they still choose to work for the food reward just like we continue to work for more money than we need for minimal survival. The clicker will maintain it’s value as long as we follow up the click with primary reinforcement more often than not. Moreover, the same holds true for other conditioned reinforcers. As stated in the video, the question of what the reinforcer might be has a profound effect on our horse’s behavior. Anyway, thanks for letting me set the record straight as well as bearing with me through psychology 101. There will be a test on Monday.

Should I Feed Everytime I Click?

Robert Sapolsky on the Dopamine and Pleasure by 5minKnowledge

This video has great information for positive reinforcement/clicker training. The findings are really enlightening. These findings show that the release of dopamine comes at the time of the signal for a previously trained behavior instead of at the time of the reward. That is an important distinction. It also talks about how the dopamine level rises significantly when the reinforcement (reward) isn’t delivered for every performance of a behavior.

We used this all the time with the marine mammals. There is a bit of resistance to this concept in the dog/horse world. I have successfully used it to raise criteria and focus for 27 years now. This is where the secondary reinforcer (a clicker, another signal or patting) is great tool, which allows for offering the primary reinforcer (food reward) a little more selectively.

Dr. Sue McDonnell, the head of the Equine Behavior Program at University of Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center School of Veterinary Medicine, (that is a mouthful) told me that she has found that reinforcing (with food) one in ten times maintains behavior with the Icelandic herd she works with at the school. She adopted these methods quite a while ago. It must have been 2001. I tend to reinforce more often then this but I think that this is a good statistic to keep in mind. The various schedules of reinforcement are amazing tools.

I start teaching them about this pretty early on in training. If you have been quite predictable up to this point, it will take teaching your horse to accept the new routine. You will actually have to reinforce them for their good attitude when they don’t receive a reward following a click. I suggest you start with a simple and well established behavior. When they perform correctly click and then give them another signal for the same behavior. Reinforce well when they respond willingly, even if it is after a hesitation. I find that they can develop a sense of entitlement and can get frustrated with change if we are too routine. It is important to me that the horses be easy going, flexible and attentive. I want them to see change as a good thing.

Just as the video describes, the dopamine comes when the new signal is offered not when the food is offered. The signal itself (with a familiar behavior) is actually a “conditioned reinforcer” as there is a reinforcement history associated with the behavior. We used it ALL the time at Sea World. It was the norm, not the exception. I have found it to be equally as effective with horses. This is a principle not widely embraced during the early years of dolphin training but is now used universally, with marine mammals as well as other exotic animals. It is important to remember that conditioned or secondary reinforcers, such as the clicker, need to be maintained to hold their value.

This is an invaluable tool for raising criteria with an established behavior. For example, say you ask for a behavior such as having your horse lift his legs. He then does what he has been taught to do. He earns the click (secondary reinforcer) which is a reward, but then doesn’t get a food reward (primary reinforcer). He has a history with this task and knows he is doing the right thing. You offer another signal and ask him to lift his leg again. He gets a rush of dopamine from the signal itself and he tries even harder to earn the food reward. This is how simple it is to get them to raise their own criteria. It also helps in establishing a good work ethic.

By using less primary reinforcements you can raise the criteria of the behavior as well as sending the dopamine levels “through the roof”. You can see how useful this is in the training equation. This principle is also at work with something referred to as “Extinction Burst”. In a nutshell, this is when you ask for a behavior that is familiar and has an established reinforcement history, then you quit reinforcing them for their effort. They start performing the behavior with more and more enthusiasm before they quit trying altogether. You may use selective bridging (clicking) to establish this new, higher criteria. It is good to use a generous food reward (primary reinforcement) for this increased effort.

If you were to study schedules of reinforcement, you would see that it has been shown that reinforcing a behavior every time will actually cause the performance of the behavior to diminish somewhat. Conversely, variation in the schedule of reinforcement will raise criteria and effort.

Okay, I hope this didn’t get too technical for anyone. Apologies if this sounds too much like a textbook, but I think it is important to understand these principles. They are always in effect whether or not you are aware of them. By gaining a better understanding them, you can become a more effective teacher for your horse, dog or dolphin!

Ask Shawna: Bolting? Teach Your Horse to Turn and Face it Instead.

Video Ask Shawna answer. Sabine’s horse bolts when he is spooked. A lot of them do! This is unsettling whether you are mounted or on the ground. I address how to change this behavior. The good news is that as you progress through the exercise on the video your horse will soon be applying his new lesson to objects he has never seen before! It is a concept that they learn and practice over and over. Through the use of positive reinforcement (clicker training) he will develop a new association with new objects/sights/sounds. Instead of fearing them he will start to see them as a potential for reinforcement. Your horse will actually begin to seek out new objects on his own. Also, it was tested and shown that through de-sensitization (de-spooking) your horse’s heart rate will stay lower in the face of “scary” new things. That’s huge! It shows that he will feel calmer which allows him to make better decisions about what to do when he is exposed to new objects/ scenarios. With the positive reinforcement your horse will actually WANT to be better about new things. When he is dealing with his fears from an internal place it is way more effective than us dealing with it from an external place. One more perk is that once you start using the clicker training under saddle they want to pay more attention to you and they are way less interested in what is going on around them. This is particularly effective for the horse who is spooking as a way to get out of work. Anyway Sabine, I hope this answers some of your questions and gives you some good ideas of how to progress. Thank you for submitting your question to Ask Shawna!! Enjoy getting your horse On Target!!

Here is a link to the free video series in case you you haven’t seen it yet.
CLICK HERE: Is Your Horse Spooky Under Saddle?

Ask Shawna: “Dropping” While Clicker Training

Okay, I guess I’ll go there! I have seen (and heard of) horses who “drop” during positive reinforcement training sessions. I have tried to find out what other “clicker trainers” have noticed in regards to this behavior and no one really seems to address the subject so I thought “someone should!” I got an Ask Shawna question about a gelding just before I released a short video series on de-Spooking your horse. William, the horse who is featured in this de-spooking exercise has dropped. Actually,he has more of an erection. It is not sustained and everything…well…goes back to normal. I thought the timing of this question was fortuitous. It is a good time to address the subject. Then I received a comment/question about William’s “willie”. Horses dropping during clicker training is the exception and not the rule. I know that dropping is an indication that your horse is relaxed. Okay, so what does the erection mean? I don’t know! I got to say I don’t really care for this behavior but sometimes I don’t even notice at first. Let’s get to the questions and I’ll elaborate as we go.

Question #1:(Cara)
“Hi Shawna,
I was so excited to learn about your website and your new video series yesterday. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s release!
I do have a question. I’ve been clicker training my horses for several years and love it. I do have one horse that concerns me. He’s a big Arabian gelding that I’ve had since birth. He was gelded right at a year old. He’s a very, very smart horse and also very playful.
My concern is he gets really excited during clicker sessions to the point that he is nickering a lot and even dropping out of his sheath. Usually I just stop when he gets to this point because I’m not sure what it might escalate into. He just started this really excited behaviour about a couple of years ago and he’s 13 now. Because of one thing and another he’s been mainly a pasture pet his whole life. He doesn’t get worked with daily or even weekly but I’m wanting to do more with him. He’s not studdish in general other than this. Even around mares he couldn’t care less. Anyway, can you PLEASE tell me how to handle this behaviour?”

It is funny, I have seen it in geldings but never in stallions. I haven’t even heard of it in stallions (that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened) I haven’t even seen it in studly geldings. That makes me wonder the origin of the behavior. Anyway, I had a horse who would sometimes drop and occasionally have an erection. This was so long ago (17 years) that the clicker training community was not in existence and there was no one else to confer with.

I had never seen this in any of the horses I had worked so I assumed it was an isolated case. I would do demonstrations in front of hundreds of people at expos and I didn’t really want this to be a part of my demonstration. Me, being the trainer that I am, decided I would address it with behavior modification.

I used three tools to manage his dropping/erection behavior. First, my big criteria for all sessions is an attentive and responsive horse. I want the sessions to feel like a 50/50 interaction with the horse as involved as I am. I want to see him trying and putting out energy when I ask for a behavior that requires energy and watching patienly all the while. My horse, Hershey (he is in my book and original DVD from way back when) would give me a pretty big clue that things were askew. His focus and energy would fall below the criteria I felt was acceptable. I wasn’t going to beg him to participate, therefore I would put him home. My horses know this means they have lost the opportunity continue this session. This has proven to be quite effective. I would then go back in about 10 minutes and try again. They usually returned to the sessions fully focused and ready to go. The decision to take him home was based on attitude and not the act of dropping. But these two things often go hand in hand. This helped quite a bit. This was tool #1.

Pretty soon I recognized that when he was starting to drop it was because of his focus. This leads to tool #2. I would ask him to trot off to another area, in a cirlce or even just a few steps. As soon as he decided to trot he drew himself back up. I had to focus on teaching this bright response to trot with a high ratio of reinforcement for a while. But this worked great for preventing this awkward behavior. Preventing is always easier than correcting. Tool #3 was to draw attention to the times when he was doing something requiring low energy without dropping. These three things really helped to manage this behavior.

So Cara, If he gives you any indication he is getting wound up(it could be that he nickers before he drops) I would address it with one of the first two tools.. Try to prevent it by moving onto a higher energy behavior. If he loses focus put him home or leave the paddock. This will take little bit for him to recognize that you are ending the session and then to figure out why. So you need to be consistent…very important! Plus you have to be paying attention to the little nuances if you can detect them, if you can’t than keep an eye on “things”. The third tool is more of an add-on. I feel it is a little muddled and may not be as clear for them. I hope this gave you some ideas. I have limited experience with this problem but this is what has worked for me…now onto William…

Question #2:(Valerie)
“Am I the only one who noticed this horse has dropped. My first reaction is to think, he is sedated…but he doesn’t’ act sedated. I would have liked to have seen Jen mounting the horse. Now, he is walking but still dropped. What is that all about? Ok now he is t rotting and has pulled up! It did have me concerned when this video started but I do look for minute details in everything. I wish I knew about this training with the horse I had years ago. This William horse has the most amazing markings! He looks as though he has star bursts on him. I have ordered Shawna’s book and am eagerly awaiting it. I will be taking the clicker training method out of the paddock in the next few days…weather conditions pending…thanks so much for these great and simple techniques!”

I am really glad that you brought this up. He is not sedated. William drops quite often, somtimes partially sometimes all the way, It doesn’t seem to have a pattern that I can tell. He has done it a couple times in our relatively small number of sessions. I am still getting to know William and figuring out what is “normal” for him. Another thing is he isn’t my horse so I don’t work with him consistently. In this video clip, when I am asking him to come forward and he doesn’t really move at first…That will be a red flag for me from now on. I couldn’t see what was going on down below so I didn’t put the two together. I thought he was just being a little apprehensive because of the milk jugs. Now I can start to recognize this type of behavior and double check. If he has dropped and has choses not to respond I will ask him to do a new higher energy behavior which does not seem so compatible with dropping. I will have to build a strong reinforcment history with this behvior when he is not dropped and is more apt to give me the correct resonse. Ultimately, he will have a decision to make, stand here unresponsive or put it away and trot on with me. The early stage is when I might need to put him home if he chooses to remain unresponsive. After a few trips home he will get the idea. With the correct training he will decide that the trotting on is the more rewarding of the two behaviors. Down the road he will readily move on and kind of break the habit and it will turn into more of a non-issue. Well, I certainly don’t have all the answers to this situation but I am sharing what has worked for me so far. I hope this helps!!

Is Your Horse Spooky Under Saddle?

Hey Everyone!!

YAY!!! The last FREE video on de-spooking your horse is up! Today William goes under saddle with the cluster of milk jugs. He is getting bolder with every session.

This next video will really help you tie it all together. You are well on your way to having the bold horse you always wanted. I love that so many of you have jumped right in with this exercise. Thank you for sharing the stories of the success you have had already!!

Enjoy getting your horse On Target!!

P.S. If you know of someone that could use some help de-spooking their horse or building boldness and confidence, please feel free to pass this link onto them too!

CLICK HERE: Is Your Horse Spooky Under Saddle?

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