Clicker Training
Christening the Ring
Blitz and Boomer take a visit to Iron Horse Farm
Yesterday my mom and I trailered out two ponies (Blitz and Boomer) to our new farm, Iron Horse Farm. We plan to move the horses in this coming weekend, but we just couldn’t wait any longer to try out the ring (we’ve gone for so long without one its like a brand new toy). So we practiced some of our games for an upcoming show we have on Saturday. I then introduced Blitz and Boomer to the new Tuff Ball that I had purchased for them. Anyway I won’t go into much detail about it – because you can see for yourself by watching the videos below. Its funny even though Blitz and Boomer have the same father, and they are both left brained horses, they both reacted differently to seeing the ball for the first time. Blitz was very nervous about it and Boomer walked right up to it and began biting and kicking it.
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
Clicker Training Community
Today I stumbled across a yahoo group for clicker training horses. And as if I don’t have enough e-mail already – I joined the group. I was surprised to see that this group is over 10 years old and currently has 3,098 members. Wow! Thats a lot of clicker trainers.
Gotta love a good pony roll. Chincoteague Minnow
Upon skimming some of the most recent messages I have found that this group may end up being a great wealth of untapped knowledge. People are posting videos of training their horses, asking questions and finding answers, and even discussing new techniques.
There are zillions of messages I could comb through, but one in particular caught my eye today.
I’m not sure when to click when riding. I’ve realized I started a habit
of doing it like this. Theres all kinds of little bits and pieces I
want to reinforce but what I’ve been doing is little behavior chains.
For example: Go forward, soften to the bit, move your shoulder away,
follow the rein, step your hips over to stop. Click! Each piece is being
rewarded by the release of pressure and the click comes at the end.
Each piece has been reinforced with the clicker individually in earlier
sessions. I’m wondering if I should avoid clicking for the completion
of each behavior chain. It seems she will start to think the thing I
really want her to do is stop if I always click at the end. Maybe not,
I don’t know??
I spent a good year clicker training Minnow to keep moving when I vaulted off.
As I mentioned before I don’t proclaim to be any sort of expert on clicker training – I consider myself a hobbyist and I do it for the pure enjoyment and to make learning a better experience for me and my horses. That being said – as I’ve admitted before – I really haven’t read any clicker training books. I’m not really a “book” learner, I would much rather learn from life experiences, the occasional article/video online, or watching demos. So when I read this question it hit home because I have been contemplating the same thing lately – when is the right time to click when riding? Now I could of gone out and bought every book off the shelf to find the answer, but personally I think its better to find what works for me and my horses. I’ve been experimenting with it myself on Boomer (Chesapeake Boomerang) and I think I’ve discovered that its different for every horse/rider combo and every task at hand. I think for Boomer it was important in the beginning to click and reward him for small simple things, like moving away from my leg pressure even the slightest, but now as he is understanding the concept better he’s not going to get rewarded until he leg yields completely to the rail like I wanted. And as we continue his training I may be racing him through a set of poles and as I ask him to yield to my leg pressure by each pole – he won’t get rewarded until he completes the entire pattern being completely responsive to my leg pressure.
Minnow moving away from leg pressure as we round the bucket.
Who knows if I’m doing it the “correct way” – but is there really a correct way? I mean isn’t training an animal about creating a language that you and that animal can understand? So what if I do it the total opposite of the way its meant to be done – if I can get to the end result that I wanted in a positive way then I think its a success. Thats what I think is so great about clicker training. There doesn’t seem to be a “this is the way its supposed to be done” method in my opinion, its about utilizing a simple “click” to take the place of a “your right” and how you get to the end result is completely up to the trainer – there is no one right way.
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
P.S. you may notice that I accompany all of my posts with videos and/or photos – this is for all you visual learners like me out there. I don’t think I could read anything unless it had a picture 🙂 enjoy!
Confidence Building
My sister and her wanna be race horse, Jet
On Sunday morning I took Boomer out for his second trail ride with the clicker. I had mostly talked about Blitz and how my mom and I were trying to teach him to control his emotions on our first ride with the clicker, well Boomer also came along for this training session where he learned to stand quietly after racing up a big hill, as well as how to walk home quietly. This time I went for a ride with my sister and her speed racer pony, Jet (you can only imagine how she got her name). Jet gives off a constant adrenaline that I think all the other horses can sense – she walks with urgency all the time and she only knows one speed and its FAST! Now this is perfectly fine for my sister, infact she can’t stand going slow – so they make the perfect pair, but for the rest of us we usually dread trail rides with Jet. Not only can our horses not keep up with her, but the adrenaline she puts off catches most horses off guard and prompts them into bucking and rearing fits when we begin moving with any sort of speed. Its like they feed off of her energy and they don’t know how to handle it – so most of them “explode”.
Boomer in his bitless bridle
Anyway, the point is that now that I have begun riding with the clicker, Boomer did not “explode” once, infact he remembered each and every spot that we had stopped (and waited) the day before and began halting on his own. (I of course made him move onto a new spot of my choosing so he learned that it wasn’t about a specific spot, it was about listening to me). I can’t say I’m surprised at how quickly he caught on – I know he’s smart – but later he did actually surprise me at how much confidence the clicker training had given him in just one short ride.
Now if you read my earlier post you probably saw that on my trail ride I had lost my camera in the woods and had to go back for it – well this time it was the cell phone (From now on I am riding with a trail bag). After about 20 minutes of my sister and I riding up and down the same hills I couldn’t find it. So my sister decided to head back to the barn to get her phone so we could call it. I was a little nervous about having her leave me and my young Boomer alone in a wide open field, but it made more sense for only one of us to go back while the other kept looking. So as Jet rode off in the distance I was amazed at how Boomer just stood and waited for me to tell him to walk away from the direction of home. (If I had done this with him a few months ago I would of most certainly had to get off of him and it would of been highly probable that he would break free of my grasp and run home). It seemed the clicker training was helping him to build confidence – we proceeded to ride up and down the hills alone until my sister returned and we were able to find my phone. I was very proud of how Boomer handled himself in this situation, most horses wouldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes on their own. I’m going to continue to work with him using clicker training, and I’m sure we are going to be able to accomplish amazing things together.
Controlling Emotions
Yesterday I set out working with my mom and Chesapeake Lightning (Blitz) with clicker training. Blitz is an extremely left brained horse – click on the link to learn exactly what this means. Taken from the Parelli site:
LB horses are not afraid of people, they are self confident, brave, are relatively insensitive, playful, mouthy, exuberant and dominant. At minimum, these horses can be pushy and disobedient, and at worst they are aggressive. Keep in mind, these horses can be dangerous when they don’t like or trust people.
LB horses need you to become a lot more interesting. They need things to do. They are usually quite playful and are easily bored by riders who are fixated on perfecting a maneuver, and that’s what makes them act up. Because they are so confident they are fast learners.
Blitz shaking hands with me
This describes Blitz’s personality EXACTLY! For months my mom and I have been taking natural horsemanship/Parelli lessons with our two Chincoteagues, Blitz and Boomer (hence how we learned about the different horsenalities). We started taking these lessons because the ponies began acting up due to the fact that we had to ride/train them in a wide open field with no structural boundaries. I’ll save Boomer’s problems for another day – but Blitz had developed a spin and bolt maneuver when something upset him. Mainly he was using rustling in the woods from deer, or a passing car as an excuse to act up – more simply he didn’t know how to control his emotions. What we learned at our lessons improved Blitz greatly – we were giving him alternatives to his spin and bolt, and we began placing “hidden” treats on barrels in our “riding area”. The treats were a big motivator for Blitz as he soon began seeing this scary field as something that produced food for him. Until yesterday I hadn’t really introduced my mom to the Clicker Training way – I had already taught Blitz about the clicker with ground work – he successfully targets objects as well as numerous tricks (shake hands, kiss me, say no, play fetch, lay down). But I hadn’t yet helped my mom with working him using clicker training under saddle.
Blitz attempting a buck when I first bought him
So after convincing my mom that Clicker Training would change Blitz’s attitude (old school training habits are hard to break) we set out to our “riding area” with treats and clickers. Now being left brained Blitz can be a notoriously sluggish pony (a common trait). So we started out rewarding him for moving forward off of leg pressure – within a few minutes Blitz had a nice forward moving trot, and he was actually excited to be working. We noticed he was even tuning out the sounds coming from across the street (which typically would of sent him into his spin maneuver). After working with him some (really just introducing him to idea of being clicked and rewarded while under saddle) we decided to test him out on the trail – where a lot of him bad habits for controlling his emotions seem to kick in. On the way out Blitz spooked at a rock – after remembering the video I had seen about trail riding with the clicker – I instructed my mom to have him touch the rock and when he did he got rewarded. (see the video below). This quickly calmed him and he began to associate the scary rock with a good thing.
So then out to the trail…we typically have hills that we let the ponies race up (being in mounted games training we are trying to teach our horses to be competitive – I don’t recommend this unless you have a reason for your horse to want to race) and usually after our race Blitz has a difficult time controlling his emotions and excitement. He won’t stand still and he most of the time jigs all the way home. So this time after racing up the hill (Boomer beat his big brother this time I might add – go Boomer!) we asked Blitz (who was jumping and jigging around I might add) to stop and stand still. Once he stood for a few seconds he got clicked and rewarded. All of a sudden his body relaxed and he seemed to ignore his emotions. We asked him to stand longer and he got rewarded again, and when we saw he was calm we asked him to walk off slowly towards home. Now let me say at this time my mom is now completely convinced that clicker training is going to help Blitz improve, she was even more convinced when a jogger came out of the woods and scared us and the horses to death – yet promptly Blitz stopped and stood and waited to be rewarded. A HUGE contrast from his typical spin and bolt for home.
Rewarding Blitz for laying down
I wish I had gotten more videos of our training session – but I dropped my camera in the woods after our race up the hill – needless to say the ponies got 2 training sessions on the hill as we had to go back to look for it. Luckily its safe and sound now – phew!
Anyway, Blitz had a successful learning day on how to control his emotions – and my mom is now in love with Clicker Training (as I am too). We’re going to continue working with the ponies and I hope to post more about their training soon. I’m looking forward to having some great training sessions this weekend as its going to be gorgeous here in Eastern Pa.
Beach Training
Two great videos of a trainer working with her young 3 year old at liberty in the ocean with clicker training. I have always dreamed of riding/taking my horses to the beach and running along the ocean. I hope that someday we will be able to experience this together! Until then I will continue to dream.
