>From the clickryder list: Just a little observation I made recently that might be of interest to others. I've recently been having some dressage lessons with an instructor, who is not a CT trainer. She rode Elmo to demonstrate to me the sort of muscle release she was looking for in the horse. Afterwards, she commented how responsive Elmo was to her saying 'good boy!' every time he offered the right sort of muscle release, which made riding/training him easier. He clearly understood that it was a 'yes' signal, and was actively trying to work out what it was she was after.
She knew that I do a lot of CT, and wondered if this responsiveness was something that had developed out this training. I think it probably is - I've spent a lot of time pairing food with a 'good boy'. This was not a deliberate training act, it was just something I often said while feeding him, particularly if I was excited that he'd done something well. Pairing 'good boy' frequently with the food seems to have trained him that it's a 'yes' answer, as well as being somewhat rewarding in its own right (but I know he prefers food). It made me remember back to a horse I owned in the pre CT days - she was quite 'stressy', and I think at least part of her problem was she never quite knew when she'd given the right response. For example, she didn't respond to a 'good girl' as if it meant anything in particular. It made things very difficult, and was one reason why CT appealed to me a lot, when I heard about it. I guess the reason I mention this is that people often worry that their CT horse will not be able to cope in a non-CT home: I think that as long as they've been trained basic manners, they'll cope very well, because they've been given additional tools to understand their human's behaviour. Just musing... Kelly _______________________________ Judy http://icehorses.net http://clickryder.com
