Gathering of the Clickers
Katie Bartlett and her horse Rosie
So on Sunday I went to my first group get-together of some local clicker trainers. I brought Minnow along as well so we could show the group what we were doing and have some fun with him. The first hour or so Katie Bartlett (owner of the farm we were at) showed us some of her horses and what she had worked on with them. Most of her horses did fun tricks, but she had also done a lot of ground work with them. Her one mare actually cantered collected on the bit while Katie walked next to her – it was pretty impressive.
Katie's horse Willy learning Spanish Walk
I then brought Minnow out and went through his little repitoire of tricks. I got some helpful suggestions from a lot of people. One suggestion was about Minnow’s trick involving rolling out the blanket. He’s really good about rolling it out all the way, but when it gets to the last little part he tends to leave it folded over. So Katie suggested I work backwards (which I had never thought about before), start with the hardest part of the trick (unroll the blanket and leave the last bit folded) – ask him to unroll that part and then when he has that mastered move onto unolling the whole thing instead of just the end piece. It was a neat concept I had never thought about before.
The other thing I learned was about cues. It was suggested that you don’t add a cue to your trick (or exercise) until your horse has given you that final product you want. So if for example I am trying to teach Minnow how to bow…as I go through the stages I would not be saying “BOW” at all (which is what I want my final cue to be) I would only add the verbal cue BOW when he successfully placed his knee on the ground like I wanted. If had said bow all along then Minnow may end up giving me different versions of the bow that he had done while he was learning it instead of that final polished bow that I wanted. I had never thought about it this way, and I admit I think when I taught Minnow to bow all along I continued to say it. Anyway now I know and I can put this to use with everything I do from now on.
Katie and her miniature horse, Buster
The final tidbit I took away was that it may be beneficial for me to teach Minnow a cue to do “nothing”. Katie told me about another trainer that taught her horse the “grownups are talking” cue (taken from Alexandra Kurland’s training methods). Where the horse learned when she folded her arms that it was to stand there quietly and still. This is a great cue for performance work because if I need a minute to gather my props I could give Minnow the cue so that he knows to stand still and not “perform” on his own while I get ready. Minnow has a tendency of offering tricks when I don’t ask for them because he gets over excited.
Later I brought out my big tuff ball so that Katie’s horses could play with it. I found it really interesting that they were willing to go up and touch it, but all of her horses opted to push it with their noses. In contrast, when I first introduced the ball to my ponies their first reaction was to kick it with their front feet. I’m not sure why, but it was neat to see the different reaction her horses had to it.
Overall it was a fun day and I hope that I can attend another monthly meeting in the hopes to learn more.
Photos courtesy of Katie Bartlett
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Very nice article! If you have any videos, let me know and I’ll link them up to the ClickRyder blog.
I have a bunch of clicker training videos – unfortunately none from this day. You can see all of my videos on my Youtube page by clicking here.