This message is from: Starfire Farm <starfiref...@usa.net>
plumg...@pon.net wrote:
ONe of the downsides of the clicker is that the
horses are so enthusiastic and excited about the
control it gives them that they can get a little
exuberant.
I came across this problem when I used a reward based system to teach
Obie to bow. Once he figured it out, all he could think of was how to
get that carrot! He still thinks about getting a carrot, even though I
have not rewarded him with one for over a year. I would love to play
with this system, if it didn't take so much time. Maybe I'll do it when
I'm too feeble to get on a horses's back.
The clicker requires a good eye and good reactions
clicking with tongue or clicker.
This is also VERY true with "normal" or "ordinary" styles of training,
yet is often missed. The ability to be able to recognize and reward what
the horse is offering, in order to shape a behavior, is the key to
elevating training to art.
Ordinary horsemanship requires physical skills with rope
handling and body movement. Those skills help with
clicker training, but they are not as essential.
Yes, depending upon what you are trying to help the horse to learn (or
unlearn!) but this next statement is the KEY to really successful
training, ordinary or otherwise:
All you really have to do is learn to break the behavior
down into tiny steps and then learn to carefully
observe what is happening.
I often tell people who are working with their Fjords in "natural
horsemanship" (or other disciplines, for that matter) that they have to
take the steps that they have learned to use with other breeds and break
them down into even smaller steps to be successful with their fjords.
This is true for other breeds as well. If you really study the works of
the classical masters, they also rewarded "baby" steps in teaching their
horses. In order for the work to enter into the realm of art, the horses
had to be happy and confident in their exercises and their work. If it
was forced, it showed in the horses' performance and was not beautiful
to behold.
The correction based training does work, after a
fashion, but there are horses that do not adapt well
to it, and it does not produce as clear an
understanding nor the same enthusiasm. I had a horse
that had problems cantering. He was afraid to
canter.
I suspect, especially after reading your description of the confused dog
in the clicker video, that your horse may have received conflicting
"reward and punishment" messages during his initial handling in the
canter. Our Fjords can be very stoic about some things, which can serve
to hide their sensitivity - and they are extrememly sensitive. Not
everyone who is teaching a horse to canter -on command- (I say that
because they already know how to canter on their own) can recognize the
initial thoughts -or "try"- and reward simply for that. They end up
trying to push the horse into what the human recognizes as the desired
response and, in the horse's eyes, have inadvertently punished the horse
while attempting to achieve that response. Therefore, the horse becomes
confused and sometimes frightened about performing a specific task.
Correction based training does work, and it can work
faster than the clicker for some things, but it has
downsides, as was evident in the video I saw.
A mix of both can work well with many horses.
One way to try out the clicker would be to take a
Chicken Training class. They are also prey animals,
so that dispenses with that "objection" to clicker
training...as in...unlike with dogs which are
predators, it will not work with horses, which are
prey animals.
I recall reading an account of a young college student who was
accustomed to, and successful at, training horses being humbled by
learning how to train a chicken during one of her behavioral psychology
classes. She had thought it was going to be a piece of cake....not so!
She learned a LOT about pressure, recognizing it, releasing it and
rewarding desired behavior. You really can't force a chicken! I do
remember messing with training my aquarium fish when I was a kid.....
(didn't have access to horses at that time) guess it was just in my
genes........
Beth
--
Starfire Farm
Beth Beymer and Sandy North
http://www.starfirefarm.com
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