Relationship Training

The biomass density of the SpotsNStripes Farm was a little overwhelming to me. It's like Dr. Doolittle turned loose in a panel fencing factory. Open-air pens of goats, dogs, cats, pheasants, tortoises, ponies, horses, donkeys, mules, and multiple species of zebras in a very zoo-like habitat. No open range here. But neither is it a place to casually oogle animals. This is one of the most intensive equine training facilities you will ever find.

Nancy pours her heart into teaching her clinics. She is a non-stop, high energy clinician who never stops reiterating her fundamental message. She is totally accessible to her students and she teaches with a patience and concern towards all. She teaches people pretty much like she teaches animals; and she is very good at it.

Nancy has four fundamental concepts:
1. Habituate or desensitize by moving from an accepted touch or activity to a less accepted touch or activity ("from an A spot, to a B spot")
2. Use the "whoops principle" as in "Whoops, I accidentally touched your B spot".
3. Do it with rhythm.
4. Show the animal you will do it yourself before you ask them to do it (Copycat)

She avoids negative reinforcement and punishment, because she says it just doesn't work on zebras. She finds food reinforcement too risky and ineffective to use as her reward, so she has this "zoo" arranged to limit "herd interactions" in order to use social interaction with herself as the main reward. She seeks to become each of her trainees "Best Friend", that is, more specifically, Dominant Best Friend. We watched the two kinship groups of zebras work out the problem of having a small flake of hay tossed in their pens. The kinship group (herd) always has a strict hierarchy and the female animals each have a best friend who she shares her food with. The stallion had his favorite striped mare. With friendship, privilege is conferred. It is this type of bond that Nancy is focused on.

Male zebras will collaborate to protect their herds and will tolerate their sons remaining in the herd. The father of a young zebra mare will fight the stallion that wants to court her, but only long enough to test him and make sure he is strong enough to defend his daughter adequately. Zebras respond with either total panic or total aggression if they have not been trained to do otherwise. Zebras will kill themselves trying to get away or kill their owners when leaving isn't a better option. She showed us how a bottle-fed baby turns into a disrespectful dangerous animal as it matures (usually about 5 years). She convinced me that I am not the kind of person that should own a zebra. She showed the National Geographic video on zebras to give us an idea of what kind of animal the zebra really is. It's a harsh reality that horse-lovers might not like.

I really enjoyed getting to work with Nancy for three days. She has interns helping her train and I think someone wanting to get a broad background in equine behavior should definitely try to spend some time with her at the ranch. Her techniques are very applicable to all equine training, and with relationship as the primary focus, it comes totally natural to women. She accepts qualified interns and she offers clinics twice a year at the SpotsNStripes Ranch. Do not show up uninvited though, it's not a zoo.

More photos of my experience can be seen here

When it was over, I was glad to get home to my own paddocks where my resplendent but tiny herd lives a relatively vast area. I don't think they missed me as much as I missed them. I tried her recommended head-rubbing protocol (me rubbing my head on them)for rebonding after my absence, but they just looked at me like I was out of my mind (or maybe they were just miffed that I had been gone?).

Equine Social Intelligence Tests

I am in heaven!!!!

The links on Peter Bosman's site took me through the Biomechanical Riding and Dressage website into the deeper level of Equine Social Intelligence Tests. Yes, go there now and print out the instructions to give your horse an intelligence test. I suspect you will find out why that animal is so hard to train.

It's really pleasing to see the tight link between Bosman and Nicholson. I feel like I have found kindred spirits. We are from the same tribe of horse people.

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

More thoughts on walking backwards

Today I let Rita run with the herd. She got to leave her 30x100ft paddock and go into the 2 acre paddock system where the others were horsing around. She has been lonely in her small yard, so this was an exciting time for her. Right away Cracker and Chester came to greet her. Chester did not attack, which was my biggest worry, but Rita and Cracker Joe formed a cute little unit. He wanted to mount her and she wanted to follow him around. He is only slightly bigger than her and since they were/are both former residents of the Billy Hibbler Horse Training Ranch, I thought they might be a support group for each other.

When it was time to get them into their personal pens/stalls for dinner, I decided I had to get more organized than usual. I closed the gates and shut them into the common paddock, then I went to each stall and put the hay in. They were waiting just outside the stall gates when I was done, so I let them in, one by one, into their personal space to where Rita was the only one left in the paddock. I think I will adopt this method as it is more controlled than my normal procedure, which is to feed them in order of dominance so they will be in the right stalls at the end.

At the point where Rita was the last horse standing, I had a real challenge on my hand. We had about 100 meters to get to her paddock gate. I had taken the time during the afternoon to get her and Cracker to come up to me for treats, so she wasn't panicked when I called her to me. I started walking backwards and drawing her attention back to me if she looked like she was loosing focus. Twice she started to turn, but I called her name and she kept on coming. At the end she was trotting to come to the gate because she figured out what we were doing.

Klaus Ferdinand Hempfling walks backwards He walks backwards a lot according to his book, "Dancing with Horses". He says their first trips out of the paddock should be done with the trainer walking backwards. I have seen no one else advocate this useful practice in print. The Dancing with Horses book is truely inspirational and has a lot of good information. The down side of Hempfling is that he had only been working with horses for two years when he wrote that book and he dashed it off in a very short time. He must have been inspired by the Goddess of Horsetraining though as it is wonderful. I did not care for his second book nearly as much. I would love to attend one of his clinics or even host one here, but he says that a USA visa is problematic so he would only do clinics in Mexico or Canada. I bet he knows a lot more than just about walking backwards.

Yrs,
Patricia

The Horse Spanker

My Clinton Anderson DVDs arrived last week and I have watched three of the Ground Control Series 1 DVDs. In the first DVD, he desensitized the horse by flipping a rope and a string on a stick. In the second and third DVD he got the horse to turn on the haunches, backup and turn on the forehand by wacking it with the stick that he desensitized it to in part 1.

You are never going to find Mr. Anderson cozy in a sleeping bag under a watchful mare. He perceives his horses as dangerous beasts of little intelligence. I think he cows them into an obedient state. There is some degree of learned helplessness at work. Negative reinforcement is a useful tool with horses, but it is not the only tool. It has its own consequences.

Reviewing Resistance Free Training

I got a package from Winning Ways today containing Richard Shrake's Resistance Free Training. I recognized immediately that my methods and Shrakes have a lot in common. One of the biggest differences in his fundamental approach is that he uses petting some endorphin-releasing spots as the reward where I use food. Knowing what I know now, I would say to NOT use food for simple domestic horses that have never been taught that humans are never to be trusted. Food overcomes a lot of mistrust fast. My spooky rehabs did not like to be touched to start out with, so touch could not be used as a reinforcer.

I would encourage anyone to study Shrakes methods. He is very aware of teaching the reader better horsemanship skills and his choice of drills and practices is brilliant. If someone follows his guidelines, they will become better set up to be a good rider. For example, he says follow the horse on the longe and step in time with its back legs. He never says it, but if you do this, you will have be leaps ahead in your riding ability.

I can't say much for the production and editing of his materials. His writing style is wandering and there are lots of typos, especially in his Manual. The flimsy mailing package had burst apart in the US mail and it was only by the grace of the post office that it arrived here intact. The dvd wouldn't play the last five minutes of the program. But these issues have nothing to do with the quality of the content, which is first class. And hey, he is a nice guy.

My plan is to work through his book with my critters. I think that his methods, since they are based on positive reinforcement, would be appropriate for mules as well. I tried using the circular motion rub on Rita's withers, but she told me she would rather just stick with the sweet feed for now.

Speaking of Rita -- today's lesson was I dangled the halter by its neck strap and she had to put her head under it and move through to where my hand and the halter were at her poll. We (she & I) experimented with getting her to nose her way into the nose part, but it was not easy with a one handed animal trainer and our failure was not because the little mare didn't try. She will nose into it as a result of learning to find the loop in a rope, but I need to wait until I have a different treat that I can keep in my pocket, instead of grain in a can. To her credit, I can set a #10 can of sweetfeed on the bench in front of her and she knows the only way to get it is to please me. Cans are nice because they are just a bit too small for the equine nose. You carefully hold the can while they explore it a couple of times and they will realize there is no direct access and will not bother it (at least while you are paying attention to them).

It's really cold... supposed to get to zero tonight. I feed them extra when it gets like this. Everyone but Rita has a good windblock. I would turn her out with the others but someone would get hurt. At about 10pm, I will take them all a round of hot bran mash. They will know they are loved. Last year we had an emergency plan for temperatures below -20° of bringing everyone inside. I have a large room with a concrete floor. We practiced going indoors until everyone could handle it. BUT this is not something I have even contemplated with either Cisco or Rita. If they can't stand tied outdoors, I don't think they should be allowed in the house. If I were blessed with a huge pile of money coming my way as a windfall, I would buy panels and stall matting, so that coming in would be an easy option. Well, the universe can send me a check when ever it gets ready.

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

Horse Blogs of Note

There are some really nice blogs on horsetraining out there. I started finding them yesterday while I was trying to figure out how to get more traffic on this blog.

Here is my favorite (currently): Bridle Path

Yrs,
Patricia

A Little Dose of a Long Video (but I highly recommend it)

Jerry Tindell, Trainer of Horses & Mules, Teacher of Humans

I bought Jerry's video "Starting over with Rachel, the Troubled Mule" a year ago. Horse training videos are studies of extremely subtle things. You might feel yourself drifting off to sleep if the room is warm. Jerry sticks with Rachel for three hours and she comes out a very improved mule. Don't ask a non-horseperson to watch this epic with you. Video Mike makes and sells the videos. He is great to do business with. He also did Crystal Wards donkey training video.

Jerry's main principle as far as I can tell is this:

Stick With It Until You get A Change:

• Learn to accept progress in little doses or steps.
• Stop while you're ahead. The last thing he did will be the first thing he remembers.
• Do not stop your session with the horse or mule's refusal. Stop on a positive note, no matter how small.

My effort to gain leadership points by keeping my herd away from the feeder is one of those items where progress comes in little doses. Today the only one I had to ask to show some respect before I allowed him to the feeder was Chester, the wiggly mule.