Positive Reinforcement

The world needs to operate on positive reinforcement so as a philosophical statement, I totally switched over to clicker training. This is the current experiment. Five rubber feed tubs get scattered in the round pen. I spent a session teaching each critter that they can find horse cookies in the bottom when I tell them "head down". Now they listen for the horse cookie to hit the bottom but I still tell them head down to cue them to get the treat.

Then I taught them (by negative reinforcement; viz. no where else is comfortable) to sidle up to the fence when I have climbed up on it. They work in hackamores without saddle. I get on them bareback.

I pick a feed tub and we ride to it with as light of signals as possible. If they don't listen and wander around, we have to go back to where they were last listening and try again. I use as much body language as possible and as little rein language as I can. I ask for a back after each whoa. When we get to the destination tub, I toss in a cookie and put my hand on their poll asking for head down.

Sometimes we do a whoa/back in the middle of nowhere and then I reward them by putting a cookie in the side of their mouth, leaning down along their neck. Sometimes I pick particular routes, like circle around the west tub to get to the east tub. I decide on my tub before I start out and try to concentrate on it so the horse can pick up any unconscious signals I give out in addition to the cues I consciously provide.

The mule doesn't like to be ridden bareback. We have had to work a lot on getting on and off and he still isn't calm about it. The donkey wasn't ready for steering as he learned to resist in his former home, so he's just been on the whoa/back and little head turns. He improved 100% in just one session. The red mare is going good and working on flexing in the bend. The Wiley Mustang rides like a dream but still needs work on flexing.

The critters like this training. They aren't really happy about the end of the lesson.

Soon I will move the feed tubs into a larger space -- the donkey paddock and then we will get to practice more complicated pathways. First we have to put a bit of trotting into the equation. We will know for sure how it turned out after 30 days of training. Until then, the jury is out.