Sketching vs completion
I’ve been working with Fool’r since the very end of April. I’ve needed to have a rotation of behaviors to select from so I wasn’t drilling any one thing, in order to keep him calm and engaged. We have worked on SS/FF (stand still, face forward), but it was initially a challenge as he can sometimes be a somewhat anxious horse. Now that we’ve had some time to learn the game from different perspectives doing different things, we can begin to refine all the things we’ve started in our time together.
You can't rule out pain
I jammed my middle finger a few days ago, and it really hurt. It still does, actually. It changed how I moved, how I used my hands, and even what things I chose to do or not do. I’m a person. I can talk. Had I not complained about it, no one would ever have known I had any pain as I was still able to do all the things I normally do, but with subtle compensations, some hesitation, and in some cases a lot more time. You’d never know to look at it that anything was wrong - no obvious swelling or bruising, just a subtle change in posture that made it look like I was vaguely flipping off the world as I went about my day.
Another podcast! And a short bridleless ride
A few weeks ago I was honored to be invited back to Trudi Dempsey's "Lead a Horse to Water" podcast, and as I’ve mentioned, we talked about bridleless riding. One of the points we talked about was the opportunity for exploration, on a number of levels.
Fool'r - "tap" cue training plan and process
This is a longer video going through a training plan for teaching a cue involving tapping on the shoulder to ask the horse to turn his head to receive food. It's deliberately and unapologetically boring in that it's not sliding stops or jumping huge fences or canter pirouettes, but it is a horse saying "yes" to me asking if he's comfortable with me over his back when he has the option to say "no."
Put it in perspective
I think we get too hung up on Things and Stuff and our desire to desperately cling to whatever Thing is Ours, even if it's Not-A-Thing. What if we can look at all the things, and consider each of them as individual concepts as well as within the larger context of the world?
Distress tolerance
My first ramble on video, just over ten minutes of totally unedited and probably rather unorganized thoughts. And also a cat that just HAD to pick that time to do her thing. But I wanted to address the idea that not everything can or should be formally trained. Some things are better done with the horse leading the way, sometimes literally, and this is how I tried to do that. Some of the stuff I said might be controversial - R+ is my first stop but I don't always use it, don't punish aggressive behavior from the horse, just let the horse do what they want - things like that.
Crunching with a rider
A client and I talked about ways to help her horse feel more comfortable with hoof handling, especially on the right side. Training was going okay, but he just isn’t emotionally confident enough to allow us to ask for cooperation. So, I took a risk and mentioned the @pantherflows work I’ve done with my horses, especially the crunches and matwork.
Did you guys know that I was on a podcast?
I was! I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately, actually. Thank goodness for these people, having the difficult conversations about training, reinforcement, punishment, how they're defined, how they work in theory, and how they work in practice.
Fi, walk/trot/walk transitions
Most of the riding Fi and I have done has been largely led by her, with me reinforcing the things I liked. Trot has been something I’ve heavily reinforced, because a) it’s fun and b) she could use the exercise. Fi takes reinforcement pretty seriously, so after a while, we mostly only had TROT or STOP, which has been mostly fine by me because the only things on my agenda had been fun and play. However, she’s really starting to feel like she can handle a bit of refinement, so I figured I could start trying for a walk somewhere in there.
Chainmail boop
Tango is a delightfully game horse, which is perfect for her job as an equestrian mount in the SCA. However, she has some sensory issues when it comes to sound, and specifically things like bells and metal-on-metal. This doesn’t work well in a setting where many of the participants have bells on their garb, or wear armor and chainmail, and clang swords together.
PB bell target
We wanted to try something new with Princess Buttercup, and one of the things I always do with a horse is a target of some sort. It's always been a visual target - some sort of object, or a hand - but obviously that doesn't work, here. So, I took one of the targets I use for clients and put a Christmas bell on it. Voila! An auditory target!
Anything’s a target!
Anything can be used as a target! Marcy, a long-time horse owner and horsemanship teacher, has asked me for some ideas on helping Whisper become confident at the mounting block.
Impromptu oral syringe session
This time I didn’t ask for a face target in my hand (like I did for a previous mouth handling video), as the syringe was enough of a cue for her to get the game.
Twista, vaccine update
In Twista's previous injection training video, Erin was doing the "injecting," and Twista was in her stall, with a stall guard as "protective contact" so Twista could retreat if she wanted to. We did one practice round out in the barn area prior to the real deal with the vet, and here is the vet actually giving the injections.
What do you want to work on this year?
Is it groundwork, cooperative care, riding (bridled or bridleless), starting your horse under saddle (or restarting), developing your feel and proprioception on the ground and/or in the saddle, working on challenging behaviors, or something else?
Savannah & Stormy, counting game
This was our first attempt at a loose version of a counting game I first saw from Leslie McDevitt. Savannah is very new to R+ (this was our first lesson), and Stormy has had a fair amount of time off. So, I wanted to do a few things:
Cooperative mouth handling
About a month ago, Dr. Judy Batker from Country View Equine Clinic came out to do fall shots, and look at Siri’s eye, which had been weeping for a while (turns out the eye itself is fine, which was a HUGE relief). Fi has a snaggletooth (what I think is a baby tooth that never fell out), and I also wanted to make sure that wasn’t causing problems. Dr. Batker went to look at it, and since Fi is pretty suspicious of anyone trying to put things in her mouth (it could be Banamine!), she wasn’t super cooperative. I’d worked on a little bit of mouth handling with both my horses, but not a lot, and certainly didn’t get to the stage of having someone else do it. So, I took this as a cue to work a little more on it, and maybe by spring have a fairly complete mouth exam behavior. Or I may get distracted with any number of other things. We’ll see.
Anyhow, a few days ago it was cold, I’ve been sick with both a cold and fibro so I was highly unmotivated to do anything really involved, so I thought I’d give this a go...
Mindmap
I love using Mindmeister for initial brainstorming of pretty much any topic. Although just a way to organize thoughts, and not a final form, it allows the opportunity to see a broader perspective as well as make connections I wouldn’t otherwise see. This is a very small subsection of a much larger topic I’m working on. On the surface, it’s about shaping and the training process using R+. But really, it’s applicable to any quadrant, and therefore any conversation.
Variables
Whenever I’m problem-solving a situation, I like to get as much info as I can, and see if there are commonalities and/or differences in different versions of the situation. What is consistent, and what is variable? What seems to have a noticeable influence?
Vinny: baseline video
Vinny was having trouble standing for the farrier. His owner, Kristina, had said he was generally good for her when they were alone, so we decided to try a video review of the baseline behavior to see if there were any indicators as to why.
Loading more pages