Month: May 2010

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Dragon offering his “hug” behavior

Obviously horses don’t hug one another like primates;)  However, I like to hug my horse and thought it would be nice if he knew how to hug back, so I decided to teach him using the clicker. I started with him putting his head over the fence and allowing me to hold his nose in place, c/r. Once he had that he naturally arched his neck a bit more and I slid my arm over his nose, c/r. Then I built duration by extending the time a few seconds or so that he left his head in the loop of my arm, c/r. And voila! I have a solid hug behavior that I now use everytime I leave the farm. I used to just throw a few treats in his bucket as I left, but now I can ask for a mutually reinforcing behavior and pay him for it.

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Glasswing learning to back up

Here is a short video of Glasswing learning to back up. She is still not positive about wanting to work with me but is becoming more confident. Her mouth is so tiny that it quickly gets full with treats, so I am going to have to try tiny cut apples or maybe a pelleted hay based feed which she can chew more quickly.

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Conversations under saddle

Dragon and I have been working on the ridden WWYLM game for the past three weeks, and the exercise has really opened up our “discussion” while riding as well as pointing out to me the flaws in my riding. The exercise is simple enough: ride your horse forward on the buckle while steering him only with your weight and your core. If  he deviates from the frame/guide provided from your body, pick up the rein with your buckle hand, slide your rein hand down the rein so it is taut between the two hands and anchor your hand to the saddle. When your horse offers a smooth turn, picking up your seatbones, click/reward and release.

Before this exercise, let’s just say Dragon wasn’t the most intuitive or sensitive horse when it came to my core/weight. But to be fair, I  de-sensitized him A LOT by not being precise enough in my riding in the last 4 months before I re-started him using the clicker. However, I can confidently say, he is now more tuned in under saddle then he has ever been in the past. He expects a constant conversation and is consistently relaxed with soft muscles and a long topline. For the first time he feels like the same thinking horse under saddle that he is on the ground.

As for me, this exercise has allowed me to practice engaging my core every time I treat my horse. I click, lean down to treat him, and think about “kneeling” – a great image from Mary Wanless to help riders sit correctly and open up their hip joints. As I sit back up I make sure to engage my core and “bear down”. Consequently I feel much much stronger in my seat and very connected to my horse. The repetition of the clicking and treating gives me a chance to check my physical sensation of whether or not my core is engaged over and over in a session, and at the walk where I have time to think about it. I love how this lesson serves both the horse and rider so completely. It also makes me completely aware of the moment he chooses to push through one of my legs with his barrel or loses track of my seatbones or , the opposite, when he is perfectly in tune with me. Click/reward.

Below is a short video of our progress:

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Back to basics

Fig has been inconsistent in her emotional state while training lately, so Sara and I decided it would be best to take her back to basics and make sure her foundation skills are solid. I had been working with her outside a lot, in the lane where all the paddocks are, because she was uncomfortable in the arena. But she is also very crabby about other horses in her space, or even them watching her with interest from the other side of the fence and that anxiety manifested as just a general tension in her body, high headedness, and ears back consistently, although not quite pinned.

She has been making beautiful progress in the cross-ties though, with almost no pawing at all, and offering lots of relaxed body posture with a lowered head. She offers her feet completely relaxed and LOVES having her face brushed and touched.

Today we groomed her first and then took her into a stall to review targeting.

She remembered targeting effortlessly, so we moved on to  “backing in a square , an exercise that teaches the horse about maneuvering their bodies in a tight space and how to yield their shoulder, a particular problem for Fig. She did a beautiful job and was able to quickly learn how to yield backwards in a square, calmly and with precision. Success.

Fig is going to practice these lessons for a couple more days, and then we are going to add a walk into the arena for some “mat” training where she will learn to target a mat and stay there until released.  She is doing well with head lowering and can do a 30 second to 1 minute version of “the grown-ups are talking” lesson easily. Over the next three weeks we will refine these lessons and assess her learning and emotional control. Today, Fig felt lovely, like a calm, clicker-wise horse. A glimpse of things to come.