It was trimming day and Seymour finally got his back hoof trimmed for the first time! (This is a donkey who came to me very frightened, head shy and hadn’t been trimmed in years!). For non donkey folk – donkeys are very good at kicking and can even kick sideways and forwards!
All my patience, clicker training, desensitisation and counter conditioning to pretty much everything – being touched, bending over his feet, voluntarily offering to lift his hoof, having strange scary people touch him and ask him to lift his hoof, like my wonderful trimmer Tanya French. A big thank you to Tanya, I couldn’t have done it without you on Seymour’s team! She listened to me and to Seymour and she trusted that I’d done the training to be safe to bend down and ask Seymour to give her his back hoof (and not kick her head in!) We got it done and I am so thrilled and Seymour is so much more comfortable now, he was very sore on that foot.
His fronts got trimmed too and he just gets better and better every time with them.
It’s been such a long road with him and he is really starting to bloom. He even let me give him a really good scratch and massage all along his back and he relaxed into it and let his head droop all the way down to the ground. That’s probably another first for him, to really let himself enjoy my touch.
I think he’s turned a corner in his trust of people, thanks to Tanya and myself showing him that people can help him feel better. He feels so much better with 3 beautifully trimmed little donkey feet.
Onward to that last tootsie and he’ll be like a brand new donkey!
Separation Anxiety is one of the most common problems that horse owners face. It is a natural behaviour for horses – millions of years of evolution have taught them to be very scared if they find themselves alone and to rectify it immediately. Being alone is how an animal gets attacked easily by a predator and being alone means you are in danger and vulnerable to attack because you don’t have the safety of numbers to protect you. A horse cannot rest or sleep or eat properly alone and their goal will always be to re-join their herd as soon as possible. When you observe a horse experiencing separation anxiety, there is usually lots of running, pacing and weaving as they work hard to return to the safety of the herd.
The first experience of separation anxiety for domestic horses is usually at weaning. Many abrupt and sudden weaning practices cause mare and foal much distress and fear. Experiencing this kind of fear and trauma in their formative years, can affect a horse for the rest of their life and make them more susceptible to severe separation anxiety later in life.
Many training approaches that deal with the behaviours associated with separation anxiety focus on Punishment. Popular approaches are ‘making the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy’, ‘working’ the horse near other horses, circling and causing discomfort, fear and pain when the horse gravitates towards other horses. Keeping horses living in isolation to prevent them bonding or forming relationships with other equines is another popular approach.
The problem with these approaches is that they are working against the nature of the horse – against their basic instincts and biology that have been developed and successful for the horse, over millions of years.
Instead, we can work with the horse and teach them! Oftentimes we have to undo a lot of fear and trauma that they have already experienced, so we need to be patient to begin with. But as we help the horse to learn and never trigger their fear response, we will be rewarded with a horse who’s able to leave their friends or have their friends leave them without fear and stress.
Humane force free approaches to separation anxiety utilise Desensitisation and Counter Conditioning.
In order to do this, it’s important to note the point your horse starts to go over threshold ie shows subtle fear responses, or hypervigilance and hyperarousal and plan your training to start well before this point.
Training literally involves very small steps and we pair each step with food to create a good feeling/association with leaving the herd.
I found yet another fantastic blog from Eileen Anderson that discusses fear and how Desensitisation and Counter Conditioning can help you overcome it in yourself, your dog and this also applies to your horse. There’s some great examples of how small and detailed the exposures/steps need to be in a DS/CC program, to give you an idea.
Finally, if anyone gives you advice that seems to work against the horse or tries to change the horse’s feeling of wanting to be with other horses via some kind of discomfort, then smile and thank them and walk away.
Do you have a horse or donkey that is really “in your face”? For example, are they always first to greet, even hunt you down, sniff, nibble, even push on you? But by the same token, they don’t seem comfortable when you try to touch them, they nip and guard themselves and there’s something about them that makes you feel not quite comfortable or safe?
I’ve got a donkey called Dorothy and at first, she seemed like the most friendly “in your face” asking for scratches type of donkey.
But I’ve learnt otherwise since that first impression.
I’ve learnt that she doesn’t like or trust people and a lot of her behaviour seems to be learnt and reinforced through what I imagine was a lack of choices and control. For example, if she can’t remove herself from people and situations, perhaps her behaviour can make the people go away??
When she first came to me, she seemed reasonably friendly, once she got over her initial fear. She would solicit scratches, but try to touch her outside of her soliciting and it was a big kicky “no!”
I think we need to be careful that we don’t just assume that if a horse or donkey comes to us, that they necessarily like us or want attention or to be touched. I think this concept is similar to the post I did earlier about being able to train a horse to move towards something they don’t want to go near, by using Negative Reinforcement. Moving towards something gives them control or an attempt to control the removal of an aversive stimulus (in this case us). I feel an animal can find ways to make things go away, by moving towards them, pushing, nibbling and generally being aversive and annoying.
The problem is that people think that a horse moving towards them is wanting to be with them and engage with them. I’ve even seen a video of one of those cowboy trainers saying a mouthy horse wants to engage, so we should engage! That’s a pretty big assumption and interpretation of behaviour. But what I saw happen and what supports what I suspect, is that the “engaging” involved smothering the horse’s muzzle and face with touches and rubbing and guess what happened? The horse “engaged” ie. mouthed and tried to bite the human less or stopped altogether, as that was the plan as an antidote for a mouthy horse. But hold on, if a horse wanted to engage and we engaged with them, wouldn’t the behaviour increase ie. be positively reinforced and therefore increase? But it didn’t, it lessened or stopped, therefore the horse’s mouthy, in your face behaviour was punished.
So next time you think a horse wants to engage, is friendly and doesn’t carry any fear, worry, anxiety or distrust of humans, think again. Just because they move towards us, try to interact with us, doesn’t mean they like us, it could well mean they want us to go away and that’s how they try to do it. It most likely works with their equine friends, but us humans tend to think that it’s all about us and our horses always love us and want to be around us and that’s not always the case.
Check out gorgeous Dorothy, she’s very vocal because she loves to train, BUT she still has reservations about a lot of the things I want to do, like trimming her back hooves. I’m giving her the time she needs, because I realise that although she seems joyful, there is an unhappy history to overcome as well.
I think it’s important to show real life training, rather than carefully edited, scripted and captioned training. I also have to live up to my own encouragement to everyone to be brave learners, be prepared to make mistakes and that ‘the animal is always right, so how can behaviour be wrong’. I think various trainers have said different iterations of this message, from Skinner to Bailey to Ramirez.
There isn’t really mistakes in this video, but it may look like it to some people. I’d like to explain and if you watch til the end you’ll see a rather funny blooper I’ve left in there.
Firstly, note there are 3 points in this post and video, the first is regarding Mercedes’ behaviour, the second is about being mindful of how you deliver your reinforcers, look after your body and your horse’s body and straightness and also how you deliver the reinforcer affects whether your horse is more or less ‘in your face’ and ‘muggy’. Thirdly, I wanted to talk about and demonstrate Feeding for Position and that learning happens after the click.
In regards to Mercedes behaviour, let me say that horses need to move, they are designed to move and domestic horses don’t move enough generally. Many domestic horses are often overweight or prone to becoming overweight, understandably. Therefore when I started R+ training, I was focused on movement and exercise, not standing around and giving a lot of food. This hopefully explains what’s happening with Mercedes’ behaviour in the video. She has a long and strong Positive Reinforcement history with movement, with doing things. She doesn’t do standing still very well in certain contexts. She’s very happy to stand still for certain things, but overall my training is about movement and I like that and I think it’s good for my horses. But if I want to do explanatory videos like these, you can see where this becomes problematic if you watch Mercedes’ behaviour.
The first point I’m demonstrating in the video is about HOW you feed. Looking after your back and your horse’s back requires some attention to detail and practice. Think about being ambidextrous and feed from both sides, both hands and in a way that is cleaner, smoother and easier for both you and the horse. You’ll notice how much straighter Mercedes is when I feed from my left hand on her left side and also how I’m not twisting my back. These small details can make a big difference.
This leads into what I also wanted to demonstrate and talk about and that’s the subject of Feeding for Position and more precisely, Bob Bailey’s famous words “The Click doesn’t end Behaviour, learning keeps going ie. Click for Action, Feed for Position.”
I often explain it as these glowing dots in space that the horse can see, they are places where there is R+ history, where the horse has been fed, reinforced for a behaviour specifically. The horse, any animal, gravitates to places of value where they’ve been repeatedly fed. They can also be super specific about the place, the body part, etc. You’ll see that in my video, I think it took about 2-3 trials and Mercedes kept her head at the ‘red dot’ ie. the place where reinforcement was last delivered repeatedly, down low and then up high.
This is exactly why it doesn’t worry me if she’s a fidget head and can’t stand still (such as in the video), because it would take very little for her to learn that standing still has value and she will quit asking, “when are we going to move??”.
Feeding for Position can be a very useful tool in your force free tool box. I feel that is where the art comes into the science of what we do. Some examples might be when we are teaching a behaviour, but then also using the food delivery to ask the horse to move away from you or to go somewhere else to get the reinforcement. This can be a way to teach a ‘go to a station/hoof target’ behaviour, where you would feed on the station, but then start to offer food away from the station, so that they learn to leave and go there and eventually on cue. Another example might be in Reverse Round Pen training, in order to encourage movement and really hammer home the message of voluntary movement. We would click for behaviour ie. more speed or a nice head or body shape, you might then offer the food/reinforcer ahead of the horse. Although you clicked for behaviour, the horse has to walk (another behaviour) to acquire the reinforcer.
Can you think of any times you’ve clicked for action and fed for position?
I hope you enjoy the video and I’ve given you some food for thought.
I had a wonderful time with Seymour tonight. All clicker training was done, dinner was delivered via training and hay nets were hung and there was a lovely warm low lying autumn sun that Seymour was snoozing in, that he was glowing in, his hair was shining like fine expensive silk. Everyone else was busy.
I pulled up a stool to admire him from afar, watch the others and soak up the general ambiance of the last bit of the day and lowering autumnal sun.
But Seymour believes in admiring up close apparently and strolled up to me slowly while I was admiring the others. I felt eyes on me and found Seymour parked right in front of me.
I alternated between admiring the view, (he is pretty handsome) and poking out a finger to see what he thought of it. He let me touch his face, his eyes and even his nose and lips. He even started to play with my fingers and mouthed them with his lips and teeth, that’s a first. He lifted his head and I could literally see his incisors and his tongue and touch them, another first. He must be a mind reader, because the dentist is coming tomorrow!!
I looked away for a while and I was watching Dorothy lying down to give her sore foot a rest, when Seymour stepped forward and was even closer to me. It was nice and companionable and I loved it, because I love him.
I was then engrossed in watching Kaspian and Paddy graze and felt a warmth on my shoulder and realised Seymour had stepped sideways to get closer and was leaning in to me. He then brushed my shoulder with his cheek and neck, another first. I twisted around to see his face and saw a sleepy half closed eye.
I didn’t dare touch him and break the spell and he stood there, leaning lightly against me. It was like a gift, a donkey magic gift! He was showing me he trusted me, that he wanted to be with me and that he felt safe with me. I don’t think there’s a greater gift from an animal that was scared of people and actively disliked people, who would drive them out of his paddock! He wanted to be with me, he chose to be with me and he actively touched and engaged with me. I did nothing and he gave me something, something special.
I admired the sun shining off his fluffy hair that was preparing for the cold weather. It shone like silk and was velvet to my touch. I admired his beautifully trimmed hooves, all neat and tidy, not quite perfect thanks to years of neglect, but a shining example of a lost soul resurrected. I admired his legs and ran my hands down to feel his muscle and bone and the silky hair that had regrown over his previously scab infested legs. I stroked and tickled him in the soft spots between his legs, in his elbow and the soft underbelly, where the hair was so soft and fine and so special, only to be felt by the most trusted of friends.
I looked back into his eyes again, into the depths of those deep brown eyes, into those imperturbable depths, into one of the wisest creatures I have ever met. One of the most communicative and yet secretive and emotional and yet he has the potential to be so distant. But not anymore. Now he is like a magnet to the flame. He wants to connect, to touch, to be with and to breathe together. I let out a lot of deep sighs and let go of a lot of the burdens I was carrying and Seymour was there with me, to witness and to help me release the worry and pressure of the world. Not to carry them of course, but to ease their passing and bear witness.
Seymour helped me instead of me helping him. Yet another gift.
There is one really important message I’d like every trainer to burn into their brain.
If you are dealing with fear, trauma, phobias, worry, reluctance, avoidance, escape, “lack of motivation”, or any kind of difficulty around your horse training, consider Classical Conditioning, rather than Operant Conditioning (Positive Reinforcement).
Basically, if there is any kind of perceived emotion involved, your ‘go to’ needs to be Classical Conditioning, not Operant.
This is because, as my meme states, Classical or Respondent Conditioning involves how our horses feel and react (without thinking/instinctively) to things.
Whereas Operant Conditioning, as the name suggests, is how we operate on our environment. We (hopefully) have choices and control over outcomes, we behave in a certain way based on our learning history and preferences and we manipulate either our behaviour or the environment, for valued outcomes or to avoid aversive outcomes.
Therefore, if we want to help a horse with something they are concerned about, we don’t get out our target stick or our mat, we sit down and work out a Systematic Desensitisation and Counter Conditioning (SD/CC) plan.
Classical Conditioning is also about the pairing of stimuli. As I’ve said in previous posts, there is always Skinner on one shoulder and Pavlov on the other. Therefore, whilst we may be actively training a behaviour via Positive Reinforcement (Operant Conditioning), there is always a Classical component. This could be the pairing that we have worked on whereby the click = food, or the prompt to get the behaviour is then paired with a cue, or simply that repeated positive emotional experiences in the training means that we ourselves have been paired and coloured with Pavlov’s brush, to become a walking talking appetitive stimulus to our horses.
The danger of using Operant Conditioning for things the horse is scared, worried or previously traumatised by, is that we create Approach Avoidance Conflict. This means that although we are trying to get behaviour, we have forgotten that we need the horse to FEEL ok about the thing. It is less about *doing* and more about how they *feel* about the thing.
I can see how people become unstuck with this, because it’s easier to *do* than to see how the animal feels. That can take a lot of skill and also to take the time it takes for our horses to feel ok. Behaviour shows results, feeling better about something can be much less tangible to many people. We need to hone our observation skills to be able to see when our horses are worried about something and when they feel better about something, rather than see when they are doing something.
I’ll share a link about Approach Avoidance Conflict, but bear in mind that it is written in relation to humans, who have much more choice and control than animals. It basically means that there is a conflict between what is scary to the animal and what they can gain or the human is offering for them to approach the scary thing ie. “click and treat” for approaching the scary (or potentially scary) thing. Rather, we can feed for only just noticing the thing, staying under threshold and progressing in teeny tiny steps.
Operant Conditioning is for modifying/training behaviour when the horse feels safe, has their needs met and has no problems or issues whatsoever with everything in their environment and that we ask them to interact with during training. Classical Conditioning (SD/CC) is for changing how the horse feels, helping them cope with stimuli and pairing stimuli.
Finally, we can change an emotional response during a R+ training session. But it takes careful and mindful shaping, allowing the horse choice and control over reinforcers and most importantly teeny tiny approximations, much like we would do in a SD/CC program. We don’t say to the horse, “do this and you get that”, instead we say, “here’s some food no matter what you decide and if you decide to offer more, great, here’s even more food”. In this way we can avoid the Approach Avoidance Conflict, because they get something of value to them and the freedom to choose, no matter what they decide. But it’s an extremely fine line to walk.
Here’s an example of where we are shaping behaviour, but allowing room for the horse to go at their own pace, choose what they want to do (or not) and have no restraint (or compulsion) if they choose to do something or not. There is also other reinforcement available literally at their feet (grass). We are not offering a target to entice them towards the scary thing, in order to get the food, we are asking a question, whilst being super generous with the food.
There is a 3.3.3 rule that applies to rescue dogs and I thought that we need something similar for horses. Obviously the ideal would be that horses are not continually changing homes, but the reality is very different. Therefore I feel that it needs to be acknowledged and recognised what a traumatic experience moving homes is for horses, so that we can make the best out of a bad situation for the horse. The source of this concept is from Dr Patricia McConnell and Dr Karen London, in their book, Love Has No Age Limit, Welcoming an Adopted Dog into Your Home.
I love this concept and I feel this can equally be applied to horses and probably many other pets and animals. I would go so far as to say that horses would need a lot more time than some dogs, but it’s most definitely meant to be a guide, not a rule and needs to be adjusted accordingly for the individual.
When a horse changes homes, it’s important to remember that this will be one of the most stressful events in their life. Just as it is recognised that moving is one of the most stressful things a human can experience, it is even more so for our horses.
This is because they have no warning, no preparation, no choice, it happens suddenly and worse, usually everything that is familiar to them is gone forever.
This can be completely de-stabilising, disorienting and quite frightening. It’s amazing most horses handle it as well as they do.
Imagine a complete change in diet, everything from the grass you eat, the taste and smell of the water, the hay and hard feed are different, the containers you eat out of look and smell different and if you had to protect your food from being taken away or stolen by other horses or animals. Imagine then experiencing digestive upset, cramps or you have trouble eating the food because it tastes so strange from what you are used to, or just tastes really bad.
What if you came from a small handkerchief sized paddock with just dirt and were thrown into a vast expanse of grass and trees and water and hills, or vice versa, it could be so overwhelming. What if you lived in a herd with plenty of room to run and was forcibly moved to life in a stable or stall. Everything would sound different, the wind, birds and other animals, machinery, traffic and even surrounding human sounds. What if there were obstacles in the paddock you’d never encountered before, what if you hurt yourself.
Imagine leaving all your friends behind, forever. You probably don’t know what a family is, having a mother and father or siblings or aunties and uncles. This is because you were suddenly removed from your mother and lived your whole life with strange horses and tried to get along as best you could. Some of them acted quite strangely, were over friendly, or aggressive, some were calm and some were fun, so you got by the best you were able.
Imagine starting afresh where you don’t know anyone and they don’t know you and you were desperately missing all that you left behind. What if you happily lived in a big herd of friendly horses and then found yourself all alone, not even another (strange) horse in sight. What if you’d resigned yourself to living alone, was pretty depressed about it, but got food and water regularly and were then thrown into a herd of completely strange horses. A herd who all knew each other and had their friends and knew where they fit and didn’t particularly appreciate you being thrown in the middle of their settled and organised herd.
Then there is this strange human who wants to interact with you, touch you, brush you, put gear on you and ride you. How very unsettling and scary would that be, especially when they seem to speak a completely different language with their bodies and their gear, compared to the previous human you had known.
Think about it for a moment, what we do to horses and what we expect from them.
We can’t “train liberty”, because liberty is a state of being, with choices, control and freedom to express and to leave.
Liberty:- The quality or state of being free: – the power to do as one pleases – freedom from physical restraint – freedom from arbitrary or despotic control – the positive enjoyment of various social, political or economic rights and privileges – the power of choice (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
Often when we transition horses over to Positive Reinforcement training and attempt to remove as many, if not all aversives from our horse’s lives, we hit a very big bump!
We can decide that we have turned into a butterfly and everything will be rainbows and unicorns from now on – but our horses don’t actually know or understand this yet.
As far as they are concerned, the world continues to be the confusing scary place it always was and they’ve been conditioned to see humans as things to be feared.
We start to give our horses choices and let them find their voice and all of a sudden our horses are either afraid, angry, out of control, confused, unco-operative or just downright not fun to be around anymore.
This is because we have turned their world upside down. Often the reason horses end up being Learned Helpless and shut down is because they are sensitive, they react to things and being trained and handled in the traditional and adversarial way creates more fear and reactivity, not less. People often don’t actually teach horses, they just expect them to do and be what they want them to be. What people then do is escalate what they are doing, they escalate the aversives, the punishment, what they expect the horse to do and put up with and of course, they prevent escape. Instead of escape and avoidance of unpleasant stimulus (aversives), the horse has no escape and no choice and they shut down.
When we transition them over to force free approaches, they are expected to respond, offer behaviour and just well, learn stuff. Never have they been asked to do that before around humans – it’s very confronting, confusing and just plain frightening!! They must surely feel like the ground has crumbled under their feet.
All the fear, worry, anxiety, lack of control and escape comes bursting out of them in a big surge of emotion and behaviour. It’s important we take things slowly, get experienced professional help and most importantly from someone who understands Respondent, as well as Operant Conditioning. Our horses literally need to learn how to learn all over again. Their brains are musty and cobwebby and their emotions have been bricked up behind a wall. It’s going to take the time it takes for them to learn and feel ok about it all, about everything.
This might mean we give them some down time to just be a horse, it might mean we do some simple basic training such as training behind a barrier and dropping some fibre pellets in a bucket and each time our horse looks up at us expectantly, we click and drop some more pellets in the bucket. Do that over and over and don’t think they are not learning anything, they are learning lots. They are learning you are a good and safe person to be around, you bring nice things and that their behaviour matters. They learn that they can control their environment, such as you, and the outcome of their behaviour, they learn that when they look at you, they hear a noise and they get food. That’s pretty cool and pretty fun and it’s easy. You get to admire their beautiful face and they get to learn to like you and learn to like training as well.
This is an example of some simple relationship building training you can do with your equine. This training can form the basis of some foundation behaviours, such as conditioning the clicker (marker signal), teaching a default ‘standing still facing forward’ behaviour, hoof targets (stationing), you can introduce a nose target and you can teach ground tying by working on duration, distractions and distance.
When we transition ourselves and our horses, it’s a huge learning curve. Be kind to yourself and your horse – especially if you suspect they may be shut down. Horses awakening from a place where they learnt that the only way to survive was to keep their head down and not react and not let their feelings be known, will find their voice in earnest!!
So be prepared and be forgiving. We may be paying for the sins of others or ourselves, but either way, our horses had no choice. All we can do is be kind to ourselves and them and put one foot in front of the other, and clicker train!!
