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.
Flying Lead Changes Made Simple
Watch these two videos about clicker training a horse to do a flying lead change. I find sometimes when wanting to clicker train a horse to do something specific while being ridden its hard to envision the steps it might take to get there. But with the help of the internet (and trusty youtube) I’ve found lots of great clicker training videos that can give inspiration – I find its very helpful to watch someone else first. Also I didn’t notice until watching the second video that the rider is actually using a bitless bridle on her horse. Very cool – breaks the stereotype that you can’t get a horse round without a bit!
Clicker Training Under Saddle
I found this neat video about training horses under saddle using clicker training. I love how it addresses the “scary goblins” horses typically find while out on the trail – luckily for me my Boomer is unflappable when it comes to “goblins”. He’s never once batted an eye at anything, quite impressive considering he’s only 5 and doesn’t have many miles on him yet. He’d never been trail ridden when I got him either, and the very day I bought him I took him out on a trail to “test” him before I made the big purchase. Boomer very calmly went through the woods with me where he crossed a bridge, went through a horse “car wash” and galloped up a dirt road – all with a rider he barely knew. If that doesn’t make you buy a horse, what will? It was quite a contrast from my start with Minnow who was terrified of everything I encountered with him, but if it wasn’t for Minnow I would have never discovered clicker training in the first place. Minnow is the pony I credit for teaching me how to teach horses.
Anyway, watching this video makes me scheme more about all the things I want to work on with Boomer using clicker training. I’m sort of waiting until our big move to Iron Horse Farm to get officially started, because a lot of what I would like to work on would be easier to accomplish once I have a ring to use. I can picture it all in my head though, a pony very light on his forehand that moves gracefully off of slight leg pressure only, very collected without much rein pressure, amazing turns and spins, a killer stop, and FAST! I know its all possible with the help from my trusty clicker, I’ll just have to be patient and take it one small step at a time.
Me giving Blitz a kiss for a job well done
As I think about my “ideal mounted games pony” I can’t help but think about many of the horses that we compete against on a regular basis. In a sport that has such parallels to horse racing I see a lot of pulling and pushing on the ponies (not that they are all like this). Some people seem to run their horses into the ground all for the sake of crossing the finish line first and the answer to my “my pony won’t stop” is to always bit it up. I have been slowly seeing a shift in “horse humanity” lately though. Rulebooks are eliminating teams for any sort of hitting of their pony (even with the flat of a hand), whips are most certainly not allowed as well as spurs, bits are slowly moving towards bitless as many riders are now in favor of the hackamoore. These changes are all great, but I still rarely see any of the “top” horses in the sport brake to a stop without rein pressure – something that seems so basic to me. Not to be critical of everyone but it seems in a sport where stop and go is so critical, that trainers/riders should have that AMAZING stop with just a shift of the seat before speed is ever factored into it. Deep down I sort of hope that by training Boomer the right way (basics before speed) that I can show some of my competitors what can be achieved when a horse is started on games correctly. Maybe I can start a movement within this very young sport about the importance of proper training for our mounts. I’m excited to be “starting all over” again with Boomer, after I trained Minnow for 5 years when he was suddenly diagnosed with ringbone I definitely did not want to start over. But now I see this opportunity as a way to do it right from the beginning, Minnow was such a learning experience for me and I’m so glad he found me and I was able to learn from him, but now I have a better understanding of the proper way to train Boomer. I’m very excited to create my “dream” horse. 🙂
