Why can't I be Gods favorite? It's not fair.

I'm kind of on a John Lyons kick after I heard Alexandra Kurland talk about him as having a focus on conditioned behavior. I can't afford his manuals or to go to his $18,000 certification class, but I started taking a second look at his materials.

Hmmm... it's a mixed bag. John Lyons says that the horse is "God's most favorite creation". I kind of hope that's true because I have seen a lot of people antagonizing God's personal favorite in ways that Hell would a fitting consequence. I don't know, though, what if the wallaby is Gods favorite animal? What if the banana slug is? I just don't think we can safely say that God has a favorite. If he is a good God, he wouldn't have a favorite, would he?

Well, be that as it may. I've been working on a little conditioned relaxation in the right hind foot of my favorite BLM mustang. That is a pretty good protocol and remarkably effective in unlearning a post-traumatic response. Okay, Cisco, tip your foot up to a full relaxed posture, collect the reward. If you un-relax, you have to step two steps sideways. Tip your foot up again, little mustang. Stay relaxed during a cycle of petting and I will come back with your reward: face, neck, shoulder, ribs, hip, gaskin, cannon bone, fetlock, hoof, adding each body part to the cycle sequentially as you relax. Is the foot actually tipped up? I merely look at the leg joint just below the stifle to tell for sure.

Cisco's hoof is resting on my knee now. Just targeting the foot up and into my hands wasn't enough to break through his learned barriers and fear. When I changed over to requiring his leg remain relaxed, then things started to fall into place.

John Lyons talked about this recently on Rick Lamb's The Horse Show. Of course his "reward" was just petting and he declined to mention conditioned relaxation at all. Instead he said, "I don't know why it works."

That is the thing, right there. You can't possibly say you use scientific methods around most horse people. They are traditionalists and it doesn't even matter that it's fake tradition, invented like some Santa Fe style. John Lyons couldn't risk being perceived as a behavior modification technician, but he knew very well why it works. I have an old-ish tract from the American Quarter Horse association published in the 1960's from all appearances. It's about starting colts as done on four of the largest ranches in the west. It's the inception of today's Natural Horsemanship. Three of the ranches used (hold your breath here) positive reinforcement to get the colts thinking positively about humans and being led. On the King Ranch, "a little sweet feed or sugar is a big help in building friendship." "On the third day," at the 6666 Ranch, "the foal or weanling is lead by the man who pulls him lightly first one way and then the other, giving him a taste of sweetened feed each time he responds." It's a similar story at the Lippan Springs Ranch where, "As soon as he even takes two steps toward the man, the pull eases up, he is petted and given a taste of grain."

Here in the bastions of traditional Natural Horsemanship, we find positive reinforcement in the toolbox. Hey, if you have a death wish, just show up at a Buck Brahannaman clinic with a clicker in your hand... he might not care but the traditionalists in the crowd are going to kill you.

The American Quarterhorse Association had some good things to say way back then:

The qualities of a superior horse trainer are keyed to the following: kindness, patience, firmness, consistency, courage, consideration, intelligence and determination. When you have developed these traits to the extent that you have become a good trainer, you will also have become a better, more understanding person.

May it be so!

The Wet Hinny Experience

The professor has an assignment for you:

1. Read the Equitation Science Symposium proceedings and write an essay on how these results will affect the way you train horses.

Of course, that is all good news, but let me introject a little cold hard reality here. I was up on Cracker Joe, just intending to do some stopping and turning, when he got agitated by my request to walk-on. He wanted to just do neck bending, I suppose. Well, it was wet and his back was wet. I hadn't put a saddle on him and I just had a halter with slobber straps on the side-rings. He took a notion to duck out, hump up his back, and run across the paddock. We were in the little paddock with tight corners and very high IRON PIPE RAILS. I knew he was going to duck out from under me and I didn't want it to result in my face impacting the iron rails, so I reached over and grabbed the fence. You can stick to a wet hinny better than just about any equine in the world, so my legs kept traveling with Cracker until my back had stretched to its limit and I snapped back to the ground with a thump. I collapsed to the ground and laid on the muddy paddock dirt until my habitual physical inventory told me that no serious damage had been incurred. Then I got up and was just a little hot under the collar.

I went to the tack shed and got a lunging rope and a lunging whip. Cracker got to learn to do half circles up against the rail. No mercy. No horse cookies. It was pure negative reinforcement and intentionally more negative than usual. He got release for good behavior, but he had knocked all the "nice guy" stuff out of me. I gave him all the commands I groundwork into my horses.... then I notice that just across the paddock fence Paisley is intently carrying out every one of my commands. Back, forward, gee, haw.... she is just working herself into a frenzy in hopes of getting a reward. Of course I had to start bridging her and rewarding her. She is such an awesome horse; I can't wait until she is old enough to ride.

Cracker Joe has dumped me a few too many times. I keep thinking that because I am training with positive reinforcement, he will maintain a more level head, but he gets really excited and is borderline disrespectful in his enthusiasm. One of the papers presented at that symposium showed that counter conditioning to a scary object (targeting the object) was less effective for desensitization than systematic approach/retreat. That is so to the point of what I am working on.... where will positive reinforcement give you a good result and where will it set you up for failure??? I think to maintain control over a hinny one needs to insist on absolute subordination.

Before I let Cracker go to his stall for dinner he had to let me handle his ears. Normally he is okay with that, but I knew that because he was mad at me, there would be resistance. I just stood by the gate and told him he had to put his ear into my hand. He knew what I wanted and finally made a tiny attempt to comply. I bridged him and opened the gate. There was two more gates he needed me to open, so by the time he got to eat dinner, he really didn't care if I touched his ears or not. He just wanted some alfalfa.

I have made a vow that from now on, I will wear my helmet and use a saddle. My shoulders and lower back are really going to be stiff tomorrow.

Yrs,
Patricia

New Mare in the Corral: Rita Mae

There is a little liver-colored mustang mare in the ox-pen corral. She arrived this afternoon with Billy Hibbler. He has had her for a while and not had the time to get her past her wildness, so she is a resident in therapy now.

We started out with a little work towards conditioning a terminal bridge. I edged up to where I could feed her some grain while I was standing facing the other way. She was snorting, but she must have had grain before because she sniffed toward me like maybe I wasn't a mountain lion after all. I said "X" in my normal voice and she bucksnorted and hit the pipefence on the other side of the corral, falling down in the process. Next time I managed to get close enough to feed some grain, I merely whispered "x" and gave her a handful. Pretty soon she was standing and waiting for me to say X and dip her out some more sweetfeed. Good start.

She is going to be my experimental animal for ESCT (Equine Stress Control Therapy). My new manual arrived today and we are going to see what it will do.

The good part about this mare is she is really little. Cisco the mustang came over to sniff her across the fence. He is 16 hands tall and starting to fill out. He looks like a monster compared to her. Her old name was Bugsy..... that just isn't going to do it, no wonder she acts like she is buggy and bug-eyed! I think I want to rename her after my best friend, who sometimes goes by the alias Rita Mae.

More tomorrow,
Patricia

The Equine Voice

In his article, "Going Beyond Cues and Conditioned Responses to Engage In a Deeper Level of Communication with Your Horse", Clay Wright talks about a deeper less asymmetrical level of communication than cues and conditioned responses. I think I understand what he means, but I wonder if he is including training by positive reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement can give a horse a voice. It's a lot easier to translate, "I want to do what your asking, but it scares me," than it is to try to figure out if they don't understand, they have a bad attitude, or they are scared, which are the range of possibilities with pure pressure/release (negative reinforcement). For sure, animals trained with positive reinforcement go through a period of bad attitude when they resent the humans who won't pay them just because the animal wants the food, they sull up and walk away, but patience on the part of the human and desire on the part of the animal always brings them back, freshly willing to make a deal for the carrot. If you do your job as an animal trainer, you will hear their voice.

Kayce Cover gives her horse an additional tool for communication. She teaches it to target differently for a "yes" answer than a "no" answer. I have seen her videos of communication with her horse, amazingly, she can ask it verbally about what it thinks. Perhaps there is a level of subliminal cueing at play, but I think if I started asking my critters, they have opinions as well.

My equines, all eight of them, love to be invited for training. They struggle to figure out what I am asking for and they want to please me (if only to earn the reward). Most of them only resist when I tell them it is time to go back to the paddock.

I admire Clay and Carolyn. To want to really communicate is the foundation of unity, but I think discounting operant conditioning as a tool for opening dialog is short-sighted.

Yrs,
Patricia