Posts Tagged ‘parelli
You can’t learn it from a book
I’ve been clicker training my horses for 5 years now – and I just bought my very first clicker training book a few days ago. Thats really sad. I think the reason I never did it before was because I felt like I knew what the clicker did (it made a sound to signal that my horse performed correctly and would soon be rewarded) so what more did I need to know? I’m slightly stubborn in that I want to feel like I created my own path in training my animals. I’m pretty sure this is why I never really got too involved with the Parelli Method. There is such a HUGE following of Parelli people that it made me feel like I wasn’t going to be anything special if I trained this way and that I was just buying into it like the masses – spending the big bucks on the dvds and special training equipment (this is similar to my reason as to why I don’t go to church – not to mention I’m Quaker).
So instead I turned to the clicker – which seemed very basic to me, and there was no “level program” or training steps that had to be taken. All I really needed was the clicker and some treats and I was good to go. I recently decided to purchase Alexandra Kurland’s new book “Riding with the Clicker” because I felt like she might have some pointers that I could adapt to my own ponies. As I’ve mentioned before I have been training my young Chincoteague, Boomer, how to be a mounted games pony. Since I bought him the end of last summer he has improved with leaps and bounds and responds amazingly well to the clicker training I have been doing with him. I really don’t know much about riding with the clicker – except what common sense has taught me and what I know about horse training. So I finally gave in and bought this book in the hopes that I can turn Boomer into the dream pony I have always wanted (not to say that my previous horses weren’t ever dream horses). I’m looking forward to reading more about how others train – but I still believe the best way to train a horse is by understanding how to communicate with them and then the rest will come. The clicker has helped me create a language with my horses and its up to me what I’m going to tell them.
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
Can’t we all just get along?
So lately I have become obsessed with learning more and more about training horses and the different techniques that are out there. Honestly I like to use a little bit of everything when I train my ponies, which is great because there seems to be thousands and thousands of horse training “groups” and methods to subscribe to. The ever-popular Natural Horsemanship method – which I’m sure all horse owners have heard of is defined by Wikipedia as:
The philosophy of working with horses by appealing to their instincts and herd mentality. It involves communication techniques derived from wild horse observation in order to build a partnership that closely resembles the relationships that exist between horses.
Lately I feel like there has become this cult of horse lovers out there that are convinced that there is only one way to do things – their own personal “natural horsemanship method”. Now I mean no disrespect by any of this, because if I had to peg myself as some sort of trainer I would have to say I was a natural horsemanship trainer as well. But I’ve noticed that the blogs, youtube vidoes, and horse groups have become flooded by comments from people who say things like “you’re being cruel to your animal”, “I don’t like the tone of voice you use to train your animal”, and the ever popular “the way you train your animal is all wrong”. And the interesting thing is these comments are being added to video’s and posts where I can detect no actual cruelty. For example I watched a video of a trainer working with an elephant in which he used a stern voice to tell the elephant to back up, turn around, and so on. There was no cruelty involved what-so-ever, no beating, no physical pain, the trainer simply had a stern tone in his voice. But this video is now getting comments like this is cruel – “I can’t believe someone would train an animal this way”. So I looked a little further and discovered that the trainer uses clicker training, and positive reinforcement methods to train the elephants – so maybe he did have a stern tone in his voice – he didn’t beat the animal did he? Sorry but this kind of stuff is just really getting my blood to boil, because shouldn’t we all be using our energy to chastise the real animal beaters?
(as a little side note I can’t stand when people give trainers flack for using the word “no” – its utterly ridiculous, that word no doesn’t do any harm but tell your animal that thats not the behavior you want. “No” doesn’t mean it comes entangled with a beating! Sorry just one of my pet peeves.)
I’m hearing the “positive reinforcement trainers” chastise the Parelli people, and so on and so on. Its just simply ridiculous because the way I see it, its all Natural Horsemanship (if you want to put a term to it). No one is beating their animal, maybe some sort of pressure is involved (for example asking your horse to move over by pressing on his flank), but is this animal cruelty? I think not!
I’m just tired of seeing everyone turn on eachother when we all have the same end goal – a positive training method that leaves our horses happy and willing to work with us. Anyway thats my rant for today – I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. 🙂
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
Rope Riding
I’m hugely addicted to the website Etsy.com, I used it a ton when I was planning my wedding last year – its a great resource for any and all handmade things. Much like Ebay, Etsy is meant as an outlet for artists to sell their handmade items to the world. They even have a section where you can request handmade things and other artists can bid for the chance to create your dream item. As I hit my usual website searches tonight (craigs list for a 3 horse bumperpull trailer, ebay for playfood for Minnow’s act, and Etsy for Chincoteague Pony items) I came across some pretty neat handmade tack on Etsy. Someone has listed an handmade Indial Bosal that is soooo similar to the bitless bridle I am currently using at 1/4 of the cost ($16.00). I bet it works just as well too! Just had to share it with everyone! Enjoy!
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
HorseFlix
Ok, so I admit I’ve been sort of M.I.A. from my blog the last few days, but I have a very good excuse! I’ve spent the weekend (my weekend counts a 1/2 day saturday thru monday since I hold hours at my shop on saturday from 10-4 and I’m closed sunday and monday) at my family’s new horse farm, Iron Horse Farm. Unfortunately it rained all weekend so while our plan was to finish the fence building we instead hung fixtures and worked on electrical stuff.
But anyway – on to the real topic of this post, HorseFlix. I stumbled across this website that is very very intriguing. Apparently it is very similar to the popular Netflix, which my husband and I use to the fullest as we are huge movie buffs, but instead you can rent horse movies and instructional dvds. The website says plans start at $9.99 a month and it looks like you have 21 days to keep and watch the movie before it needs to be mailed back. This is a neat idea if like me you are a visual learner and really enjoy watching instructional dvds on horse training. As someone mentioned in a blog I came across:
Most training and instructional DVDs cost big bucks and it’s often hard to know before hand if you’re going to end up liking it or not (much less whether you’re going to want to watch it multiple times). I usually end up not buying DVDs that I’d like to watch just because I’m unwilling to invest $50 in a DVD that I might not even end up liking.
The other neat thing is that I found lots of the parelli videos on there – and I personally know how much those parelli dvds can cost, renting them would be much more cost effective. And if you need to go back and review something simply just rent the video again. I might just have to try out horsefilix, perhaps I could get a few friends to go in on it and we can all have “horse movie nights” – maybe I’ll even get my local pony club involved. I just might have to hid this from my husband though, he probably won’t like the idea that I’m taking up valuable netflix time for horse videos. 🙂
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
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.
