Different Strokes for Different Folks

Today Donna and I worked with the young mustangs and then set up "grooming clinic" in an empty stall. The young mustangs have to allow themselves to be haltered and led to a different pen for each meal or they could go hungry. This is the second day and already they are a lot more interested in having their halters put on. They lead better than most broke horses, following on a slack lead, matching their pace to mine. On the trip back to the Ox Pen after lunch, we stopped on the patio to work on hoof handling. I asked for hooves and Donna handed out rewards. Chaco Bay knows the drill of offering up his hooves and is happy to comply, but Sparky did something very interesting in terms of how he reacts to life.

A few days ago we let Sparky out to kibitz with the big mustangs since he was being a little bit cheeky with us. He weighs about 750lbs and each of them weighs about 1250lbs. We expected him to have some arrogance kicked out of him, but instead he and Jemez Dancing were soon playing stallion games rearing and biting at each others forelegs, then rocking back to a kneeling stance to protect their own forelegs. Pretty soon they were both wandering around together like old friends. On the other hand, Chaco high-tailed it to the forest where he hid behind the compost pile.

So what Sparky did today was respond to me as if I was playing the leg-biting game. He nipped me on my backside and kneeled down in that playful/aggressive gesture. Of the two of the little mustangs, Sparky is the most clear about humans being dominant as a result of a small session of roundpenning when he tried to kick me off his feed bucket one day. Since then he has been totally respectful, waiting until I give him permission to eat. Today I responded to his challenge by shortening my hold on the lead rope and putting a rope around his foot so I didn't have to bend down. He quit his game and tried harder to please me.

I have this theory that training with positive reinforcement totally messes up the equine innate sense of social relationships. They believe that I wouldn't be giving out treats if I was a dominant animal, would I?? I believe it takes a long time of interaction to build a new sense of social relationship that allows for food gifting from the dominant animal.

Sparky responds better to pressure/release training than to positive reinforcement just because his cheeky personality. Chaco Bay, on the other hand, is naturally a very shy animal (though he is the only fully functional male on the property and the mares are quite enamored of him). He is easiest to train using positive reinforcement. I can get him to do most anything with little trouble if he thinks I will reward him. He has learned the meaning of the bridge signal (me saying "X!") and I can use it to tell him he is doing right even when I don't have a treat.

Is this just personalities at work?? Or does it have something to do with me starting Chaco with positive reinforcement and starting Sparky with pressure/release? What is really clear to me is that training them both using the same methods would be the least efficient choice I could make.

We finished our training session by currying and cleaning the feet of the other 9 animals. They crowded around the gate for their turns in the grooming parlor. I pay them for holding their hooves up for me. Then we gave each one a dollop of molasses from a worming syringe, and an alfalfa cube as an unhaltering gift. Lightening Bug, the visiting gray mare, is the only one that showed any confusion (pinning her ears) about the significance of human benevolence. In time, I am sure she will sort it out.

Spring Training with Mats

Spring has been a tish wet, which is abnormal for this desert environment. It's brought a whole new level of green-ness to our world.

Non-riding houseguests have kept us somewhat grounded this spring with the result that the critters got a lot more groundwork and little saddle time. We spent many days developing the equine mind with labryinth training, mat training, and coming when called. I will describe the mat training since it only took a few session and has turned out to be very useful.

We used a big rubber mudflap from a semi truck for our mat. It's about 2ft x 2ft so it is large enough to be a good target for their front hooves, but not too large to move easily. I introduced them to it in the confines of a stall by picking it up and putting it down and telling them to "go to mat". I started out reinforcing for anytime a hoof touched the mat and by the end of the first session they were getting the front hooves to the center of the mat consistently. It helped dramatically to pick it up and make a show of placing it for them between each cycle of them being on it.

In the second session I started asking them to go to it from a few steps away, which quickly evolved into asking them to go to it from anywhere in the stall. I would have them follow me away from it, then point to it and ask them to go to it.

In the third session I took it outside the stall and used it in the yard. Only a few sessions and I can now ask them to go to it from anywhere we can see it... with me either on the ground or mounted. I use it to "ground tie" them when I am brushing or saddling.

I am thinking about putting it back in the stall and training for more duration by getting two friends to wave lunging whips around every time the animal starts to step off after I request them to "go to mat". It will be interesting to see if a little negative consequence will be effective to extend a positively reinforced behavior.

On another note, the highline through the cottonwoods has been very effective with the mustang's tying problems. I catch him and feed him there everyday. He doesn't fight it at all.

I hope to be more regular in posting our progress here. Also, the links to my critters (long dead links) will soon be going live to Picasa web photo albums. Enjoy!

Patricia

Clicker Training on YouTube.com

There is a treasure trove of clicker training videos on YouTube.com

Here is another inspirational piece.


I think Shoki would be more comfortable if Kim added some verbal cues, but she is doing a great job and you can see how the horse wants to perform for her.

Homo Caballus: arte ecuestre

Homo Caballus by Peter Bosman ... I posted a response to this website on the ImagineAHorse discussion group.

What a great website!!! The author makes such wonderful case for positive training methods. I was intrigued by the neck rope and will have to try it on my horses and mules.

I like what he said about getting the horse to really be looking to you for leadership. That is one of the things that really interests me currently..... how can you inspire the horse to see you as their safe haven and wise leader? How can you engineer circumstances that naturally give them this perception. One of the things I have tried, with some success is stashing a bucket with feed, out in the landscape, and taking them to it. They know they wouldn't have found it on their own and by the second trip, they are pretty interested in finding out where it is you want to go. All the resistance to leave the paddock and follow your guidance melts away.

As soon as our landscape dries out a bit, I plan to try a new related method. Right now, with a sea of slush, we have been doing a lot of small movement training on the porch or in a stall. They love this and will fight for their turns.... well, we are going to move small movement training to destinations out in the landscape.

In rehabbing these horses, sometimes I feel ashamed that I can't just "cowboy-up" and ride it out, but Peter Bosman's website, with its theme of using your intelligence, gives me a lot of comfort that I'm using a good approach.

Yrs,
Patricia

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

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

Gee & Haw

I spent the afternoon teaching my equines gee (right) and haw (left).
I sequestered them (one at a time) in the chute of the stocks and
started by tapping on the rails and saying the word. It did not take
long to shape the neck bend but I couldn't really tell if it was less
confusing for them to just start getting both commands or if they did
better when I taught one, got a good consistent response, then taught
the other. Infact when they were allowed to get a little bit TOO
CONSISTENT, then they really got anxious about the change to the other
side. The donkeys picked it up just as fast as the horses or mules.
None of them took longer than 15 minutes to start getting some
discrimination between the commands. The targets were the rails of the
sides of the chute.

This has really showed me something about the equine mind. They are
very aware of right and left. You always have to train both sides, but
I didn't realize that they were conscious of the difference.

Secondly, I wasn't sure that
equines were capable of discriminating verbal commands well enough for
it to be effective. This proved they can more than I thought possible.

My short term goal with this is to have them all tied along a fence
and have them facing one direction, then turn their heads on cue in
synchrony. I will make a video of it when it happens and post it here.

Cisco the wilder mustang did not get this training because he would
not be comfortable working with me confined in the chute. Instead he
just got to go in the chute and eat some grain. He'll probably be
ready for it in a week.

Yrs,
Patricia

Footie, please.

The Cisco Kid doesn't like me to try to pick up his back right leg. It always sets him off. Today we were in the roundpen, I would step toward the leg, he would step away, just side stepping with his back legs and letting his front hooves make round holes in the dirt where spun around. I kept walking toward that leg, but he kept stepping. Pretty soon we both got dizzy and he stopped. He almost lifted it for me, then he was spinning off again. If I turned my belly toward him, he would stop and I could rub his rump and his leg, but if I turned towards his back we were back to rotation. I didn't give up until I had a small measure of success.

This evening though I made great strides. He was in his personal pen. I put his hay in the feeder, then drug it under the fence so he could see it, but couldn't get to it. I had a half full #10 can of sweetfeed. He was hungry. I asked for the front foot and rewarded him when he gave it to me. I asked for the back foot and he started into the rotation. I turned and walked away. He went and looked at his hay, then he came back to me. I had to ask and walk away about four times before he decided we could compromise. He started lifting his foot up when I asked, at first just a tiny bit, then almost up to his belly. When his willingness to try was crystal clear, I poured the grain in his grain pan and pulled the hay trough back in.

When I first got Loretta, she was the same way about both of her back feet. Three weeks of daily hoof treatment using positive reinforcement got her to the point of being really good about what ever I wanted to do with them. Loretta wasn't quite as athletic and not so prone to panic, so she wasn't as dangerous as Cisco. I am predicting we will have this problem solved in another two weeks. I have to get a shoeing stand and get him interested in putting his hooves on it. It won't be long before the Kid realizes that his human is relentless and resistance is futile.

Yours,
Patricia

Seeing Eye Horse Training

There are so many people that believe the only way a horse can be trained is negative reinforcement (pressure/release). Watch this video to see some clicker training in action.

At Liberty on U-Tube

There are a number of at liberty demonstrations on U-Tube.

This is one I really liked:


Yours,
Patricia

Look, Ma, no bridle!

I spent a couple of hours in the round pen on Monday. I ran all the horses in... I hearded them in, no lead ropes. Then I asked them to "Walk-on". They didn't like it, especially Ms. Paisley and Cracker Joe. We kept reversing and walking around and around. JD was the first one to calmly accept the task and walk around with his head low and one ear tuned on me. I called him into the center, asked him to follow me, and lead the way out of the round pen. He was free to go and for a moment he was confused at his liberation.

Paisley and Cracker Joe had no humility in their hearts so they kept dashing around the back side of the pen. Around and around. If they just walked calmly I asked them to whoa and to follow, but it took another 30 minutes before Paisley quit looking to Cracker for guidance and she listened to her conscience. Several times she did the whoa and the comeup just fine, but she wouldn't follow. Around and around, reverse, reverse... reverse. Finally she gave in and consented to follow. She followed out the gate.

Cracker was a hard nut. He wasn't going to just walk calmy around, but we just kept at it. I drug a tire to the backside of the roundpen that he would have to go around so I could force him to travel near the rail. He started working it out after 45 min. The slow down was all it took. He is a good follower.

Tuesday, I ran all the donkeys out of their run and used it as an equine grooming parlor. One by one they were allowed in for brushing, hoof care, and fly spray. They stood just outside the gate waiting their turns. After grooming they got three circuits around me on the lead rope, a turn and three circuits the opposite way. I made a big deal out of compliance by lavishing praise and cookies on them.

Today (Wed) we did a repeat grooming session and then a refresher on back up. The rules had changed. If they took two backward steps when I said "back" they got an X and a horse cookie. If I had to wag the lead rope, they didn't get a cookie, but I stopped as soon as one foot moved. If I had to wave the stick at them, I just swung it back and forth between us and let it wack them if they didn't get out of the way.

My plan is now to reinforce total compliance with cookies and just use negative reinforcement as their second opportunity to respond. Hopefully compliance itself will become the reinforced behavior.

After the backing each one got to do what they do best. Joe and Paisley got to do the circle and turn dance. Paisley did so well, I let her get up on the pedestal, which she always really likes. I sat on Cracker Joe for a few moments and fed him cookies. Then I rode JD bridless.

YES!! The wiley mustang allows himself to be ridden with nothing more than a string around his neck! Maybe the bad ride with a resistant hinny put me off on positive reinforcement, but riding that mustang in total trust and with excellent control of his speed and direction is living proof that positive reinforcement builds relationships worth having.

The lesson I learned from this is 1) get the critters respect by controlling its movement; then 2) train for relationship using positive reinforcement. Find a balance between using the natural dominance hierarchy and operant conditioning. The critters all benefited from their time in the round pen, and once they were giving me the respect I wanted, it was easy to work with them again.

Something negative about positive reinforcement

I finally figured out why positive reinforcement can't be used exclusively. You are training the animal that it has a choice and it can choose to perform and get the reward. But with horses sometimes you want them to not make a decision, just carry out orders. For example, the mules aren't too keen about carrying us up Ice Canyon in the heat of the late afternoon. But we don't see it as a choice they get to make. They are used to thinking they can choose, but then we strip their right to choose away without notice. They get a little pissy.

It doesn't seem to be so detrimental if you have already established authority over the animal and the animal has learned to accept it, but if the animal is still trying to decide how much authority to "give you", choice is not something the animal can handle.

Case in point. Cracker Joe, the white hinny that I traded Loretta for, has a history of bossing around his owners. The girl who sold him to Billy was getting bucked off and could not control him. Billy took authority, but only with constant reminder to Cracker that Billy was his boss. I get Cracker and start him on positive reinforcement.... pretty soon Cracker thinks minding me is merely an option since I do not push him. Things start to disintegrate quickly.

Well, clearly Authority must be established, so it's out to the roundpen. He's a hard case and it will probably take three days before he gives up and consents to be governed by a mere human female. Chester took about that long. How do you know when you're good to go? When the animal cares about pleasing you enough to try to get along. In Cracker's case, when he obeys the voice commands he knows and comes up when requested. He started doing that tonight after two hours in the round pen. He got a glimpse how relentless I could be, just refusing to give up asking for compliance. We'll eventually get back to positive reinforcement, but not for a while.

Yrs,
JRW

Little bits of progress

I worked with the three horses today.

Paisley is learning to put the bridge of her nose into my outstretched hand instead of putting her lips on my hand. We worked on this quite a bit last week and she would spend the first 15 minutes of training time trying to nibble my hands instead of putting her nose down. Today I tied a rope to her halter and looped it around the fence and back through the halter ring to keep her head from straying into my space. Then I put a chain across her nose and through a side ring of the halter. If she nibbled and didn't stop when I said "Quit", I gave the chain a quick jerk. She quickly quit trying to nibble and got very focused on getting the nose into the hand. Jerking the chain is punishment because it follows an action which decreases in frequency through the process. I think it helped her get focused on doing the right thing quicker.

She is going to be a very large draft horse sized mare and this nibbling thing is not acceptable. I was hoping that it would just go away by not being rewarded, but it's been several months and it hasn't decreased a bit. Time for a different approach.

When you want a behavior to stop, you have to make sure that you cease to reward it. Then you can either train for a behavior that precludes doing the unwanted behavior, or you can punish the behavior. Horses are quite adept at learning from punishment.... just watch how the mule tries to get out of the way of the red mare, who will kick the stuffings out of him if he doesn't.

The red mare, Loretta, got training from her back today. I can't really say "under saddle" because we are still working bareback. We worked in the roundpen. I drew a circle in the middle of the pen and then went around to each fence post and numbered it from 1 to 16. First we walked around the pen on the rail three times with a reward at the 17th post we pass (one farther than where we started). I got off and showed her this pattern: pick a fencepost number, go to the center of the pen, rotate by turning the haunches until you are facing the number, then walk straight to the chosen fencepost, stop take onestep back and collect your reward. I don't think she learned to read the numbers, but she picked up the pattern right away and executed her manuevers like a well trained horse.

JD, the Wiley Mustang, had been so difficult yesterday at the back of the donkey paddock that we started there. I walked him through the pattern three times which was simply walk to each of the 3 far corners, stop facing the corner and back one step. He doesn't feel very safe out there on the edge, but he did it with me on his back with no problem. We marched between corners for about 15 minutes then adjourned to the front of the paddock where we practiced neck-bending. He did just fine. Whatta guy!

What I like is that they come over to the fence and pick me up. They could just decide not to play, but they want to work so they pick me up. I feel loved.

Later this week, I want to set up a line of markers to weave in and out of (all the riding animals) and I want to see if JD can trot in the roundpen without freaking out. Riding bareback makes it easy to slide off and I do that frequently to show them something from the ground or to solve some minor problem for them, like they dropped their cookie. They are used to me just popping off. Of course baling out will be on my mind when the mustang gets his feet moving.... but then again we might go back to that training I did where I was jumping out of the saddle and rewarding him for coming back to me where I was laying or sitting on the ground.

Let's cross our fingers for good weather.
Yrs,
JRW

No escape: small degrees of progress

Another week's gone by and I am still ambivalent about this positive reinforcement thing. One one hand, I think it has solved my worst problems, but I don't know how permanent the solutions are. I've been riding my Wiley Mustang in the half-acre paddock. Last summer he would have been bolting here and there, but now I am just sitting on him bareback practicing our "whoa" protocol which involves one step back to be complete. Would he "whoa" if there were really reason to bolt? I don't know, but at least he is not busy inventing reasons to bolt.

We need wet saddle blankets and lots of miles, but until I have someone to ride with, it has to be training in the paddock.

I started reading a book on Coersion and it's Fallout. It is pretty much of an eye-opener. The author is railing about how coersive culture is and what a waste of life it is to live in a coersive world. When was the last time you got some positive reinforcement yourself?

In the chapter on negative reinforcement, which is how most horses are trained, he talks about the one option that you can't let a animal trained by negative reinforcement have... that is the option for escape. Yep, the Wiley Mustangs problems all stemmed from him learning how to escape training by bolting. Now he doesn't try to escape... nope, these animals now will follow you out to the round pen and wait for their turn. Escape is the last thing on their minds. In that regard, this method of training is really great, but I have to admit I still don't have a horse I can just get on and go anywhere. I don't have a horse that I can aim in some direction and get a nice steady canter. We haven't got that far yet.

I spent 18 months trying different protocol for negative reinforcement and punishment and flooding on this critter.... none of it got me on the critter's back so we have come a long way, I have to keep reminding myself of this.

Yrs,
JRW

Syn Alia Training - X education.

I stumbled into an exciting website the other day. Syn Alia Training (SAT) is positive reinforcement perfected. It encompasses a few other ideas like intermediate bridging and conditioned relaxation leading to perception modification. I got really excited when I started reading Kayce Cover's articles, so I immediately had to order the book and join the BridgeAndTarget yahoo discussion group. Ms. Cover's sense of humor appeals to my own so I find her totally delightful.

One of things she recommends is NOT using a clicker. She says using your voice is better, which is true because you don't need an extra hand to operate it and you always have it. She recommends the sound of X since it isn't an over used sound. I don't know, I would guess anyone that hears me training my animals with that sound is going to assume I am saying "sex", which may be hard to explain. Well, I started using X and they seemed to transition over to it quite well. We were targeting a basketball. The grown animals figured it out quickly, but poor young Paisley was too caught up with herself to even realize that there was a ball being held in front of her nose. She finally started getting the idea right at the very end after she had exhausted all the other tricks she has learned.

I am using the conditioned relaxation on my hyper housepets. I would say half of my housepets are behavior disordered by being frantic for my attention. I probably have "trained" them to be this way by petting them to calm them down, thus rewarding them for being agitated. I hope they get over it.

Yrs,
JRW

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.

Clicker Training

I've spent a good part of my training time recently with a tin can full of horse treats in my pocket and a clicker between my fingers. The clicker is just a little metal thing that makes a little snapping sound. You use it to signal the animal that it just did what you wanted it to do. You make it a positive experience for the animal by pairing the click with a reward. In effect the clicker sound comes to mean "Yes!".

All the horses have been getting clicker trained. Today it was clicker reinforcement for them letting me walk around them, lifting and cleaning each hoof, while they were unhaltered or otherwise restrained. Chester seems to learn by watching the other animals as he usually has it figured out before we even start.

The donkeys are much harder to motivate. I need some oatmeal cookies to get their interest.

What I don't like about clicker training is that it makes any nipping problems worse, at least for a while. I've been combining it with a little bit of respect training, where if they are disrespectful, they might have to run around the round pen for a few minutes. I used it yesterday to get them to practice loading in the horsetrailer. They were rewarded for their progressive efforts to get in the trailer, but I also tapped them on the hips with the whip to encourage them to try and I whacked them with the whip if they came into my space (shoving me up against the trailer). They all got in, despite initial reservations.

Special Clicker Projects:

• Loretta: to let her hooves be handled, to yield her feet to me, and leave them where I ask her to put them (like in a bucket or on a shoeing stand);
• Paisley: to yield in the four directions and whoa by standing with her front hooves together and unmoving;
• Chester: to yield in the four directions from cues on the ground or in the saddle;
• JD: to disengage his hindquarters and bend his neck, both necessary for a one-rein stop.

The tin can I have found is very good to keep them from spending much effort at trying to snatch the reward. I use one that is too small for their muzzles and keep it in the leg pocket of my military style pants.