Free Jumping the Pony

The pony has been feeling great lately! Between the bitless bridle and clicker training, he really feels good. Over the winter with his anxiety spiking and him dumping me a bit, I was kind of getting done with trying to do anything with him. My priority for him right now is to use him as a stand-in for my future second horse and to have something going so that if a friend comes to ride with me, we can go into the hills together. But he's doing much better now! 

He's a really good trail pony

We kind of got into this odd little routine in our work where he'd be super lazy for a bit and then he'd wake up and immediately get anxious. Like his body needed some time to loosen up but then his brain couldn't handle being loose/forward/whatever? I don't know what was going on. When that would happen, after about fifteen minutes, I'd spend about five minutes having him do something basic (like turns on the forehand or something easy) and then we'd be done with the ride. 

Over the last few weeks though, he's been having this really pleasant time in between the laziness and the anxiety where he'd feel really damn good. But he'd still worry, so we'd end with some basic stuff and be done. Last week though, we had a really good ride where instead of worrying, he just got very ON. There was a confidence about the energy and looseness that hadn't been there before. I had to kind of talk myself into doing more given that every time he's felt like this, I've either fallen off or come close to it (not like he's far from the ground lol but he's quick!). But I was feeling really good about my ability to breathe and visualize him staying with me and he did. 

We saw a snake recently!

Last week, I decided to longe him and see if he wanted to do a little bit of jumping. I turned him loose in the ring while I put up the world's tiniest cross rail. Normally I don't work with him at liberty because he thinks that eating leaves is way more interesting than anything I want to do with him. But this time he was super into hanging out with me! 

He immediately walked over the jump and got clicks for that, then turned around and did it again for more clicks. I wanted him to warm up for real though, so I sent him around the arena a few times before actually pointing him at the jump.

He warmed up fairly quickly and got clicks for moving forward and releasing his under neck. Once he was warmed up, I sent him over the jump and he happily hunted it down for a click. We did that several times each way and he was so game that I decided to put the jump up to the second tiniest cross rail that has ever existed. 

I love these trails, it rained this weekend
so they are not usable for a bit

He did jump that one a few times, but I noticed that his jumping arc was starting to change. He'd fling himself over it and then land heavily, tossing his head. I can't adequately explain how tiny this jump is. We have those white cavalletti blocks and I made a crossrail out of them with them on their side (not standing up). The poles are actually pretty crappy (going to replace those) so they were sagging a bit. It was SO small. He was giving it more effort than required and I think it was because the actual apex of his jump was well after the jump. He was cutting down right after it too. 

One too many hard landings and he was super over it. He galloped by it kicking out at the jump, then started to spin hard away from it. 

Now, I don't care about jumping this horse. It'd be convenient to be able to jump tiny cross rails like I did last summer on him so that I could practice what I'm learning in my jumping lessons in between. But I also feel more confident jumping now so I don't think I necessarily need that. I've tried my best to emphasize to the pony that he is no longer expected to do anything. He is on an R+ ONLY training plan. Good things get rewarded and bad things get ignored. 

So instead of pushing the issue, I put the jump down to poles and had him end on a good note trotting over the poles. It definitely got me thinking about the jumping issue though. 

And a deer!

I'd like to try to clicker train him to jump a bit softer. He seems super into the jumps until he lands hard and then he's not as excited about it. I'm curious as to whether I could teach him to jump in a better way that has him rocking back and jumping rather than just flinging himself over his shoulder to do it. If I could teach him to land softer, would he enjoy jumping more?

So the plan is to have him jump at liberty once a week and to shape him with clicker training. I'm going to start with canter poles and slowly build him up into the world's tiniest grid with the world's tiniest cross rails. 

We'll stick with the R+ only training so if he decides that he'd rather not jump, oh well, we will stop. But I figure it'd be a fun project for me given that I'll probably want to free jump my next horse a bit and shape the way he jumps. Kate did that a ton with Flounder and I think that's a huge part of why I love riding him so much. 

Always game for trails

As much fun as I'm having with the pony, it's definitely showing me that I really want another horse with TC's personality. The pony is a bit on the quirky side personality-wise. He's kind of hot and cold. Super into what I'm doing and then not that interested. Standing super toned staring at me aggressively with his happy pony eyes and then totally ignoring me. 

I don't know how much of that is nature vs nurture, but I appreciate TC's constant happy-go-lucky attitude and how personable he is. The pony has pretty good conformation, like I think in his youth and mine, I could have done something pretty spectacular with him. Whereas TC's conformation makes him more challenging to ride. But he's always super game, which I really appreciate. 

I still love the pony, I just think that I'll be after a Flounder/TC type for my next horse! 

Clicker Training the Pony

After the pony had a tough couple of weeks, I gave him a week of just trail riding and introducing clicker training and he seems much happier with his life. 

Not a bad week

The contrast between the pony and TC is really funny to me. TC is so full of joy and is so expressive, he has absolutely no shame. The other day, two squirrels were chasing each other and ended up in the arena rolling around in a little squirrel ball. I thought I was going to be witness to squirrel murder as TC leapt into the air to... join them? Pounce on them? I don't know. Another ride, he spent several minutes staring into the air with his happy ears perked excitedly at a vulture circling above. And I can't forget him telling me for our entire ride that he wanted to bite Riot, then finally at the end snaking his neck, nipping him in the butt, then shaking his head and striking out like YES FINALLY IT WAS AS GOOD AS I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE. Essentially, TC is a golden retriever. 

The pony, on the other hand, is more like a cat. He takes things very seriously. He is a bit of a fun hater, harassing other horses to stop having so much fun, life is serious you guys, stop having such a good time. In his work, he takes things really seriously and tries very hard to be a good pony but also gets frustrated if I'm preventing him from being a good pony or asking him for things he can't do because it implies that he won't be a good pony unless he does them, which he can't, and I'm rude for asking. The only time his goofiess comes out is if food is involved. Then he gets VERY CUTE. It's amazing how he can go from being just kind of a normal pony to a completely ridiculously adorable pony in the time it takes for me to open the cookie jar. He arches his little neck and perks his little ears and I swear his eyes get bigger and brighter. 

Such a good trail pony

I've thought that I might be able to bring out more of his happy feelings about food while we were working with clicker training. And it kind of worked! 

I started with just one session on the ground, I should have done more but I was impatient. He took to it very quickly, learning that he couldn't mug me to get food and learning that the click meant that food was coming. 

After that, we moved to undersaddle work and it only took two rides for him to be very on board with clicker training undersaddle. He still takes it so seriously though. When TC hears a click, he flings himself into a halt (we've had to work on this lol) and then looks back at me like YESSSSS GIMME SNAX, sometimes it legit feels like he's going to fall over backwards preparing himself to receive a small handful of alfalfa pellets. 

When Sunny hears a click though? He gathers himself carefully, halts square, and stands quietly waiting for me to get the food, then, and only then, does he turn his head to the side politely to get his food. It's right about this phase where they switch and TC takes the food very politely and the pony comes back at me with his jaw unhinged just in case I'm offering him the entire bag. We are working on that. 

More trails are coming this year and
one starts at those trees and zig zags
up the hill all the way to the top!

I think he's still working out the connection between what he's doing and the clicks at this point. I'm keeping it very basic. Most of the pony's issues are around going forward, so I've been clicking for the feeling that he's taking me forward without rushing. 

With TC, who is always game to trial behaviors, I basically just click when things in general feel better. I kind of let him experiment with what led to a click instead of me having to wait for specific behaviors. Sometimes I have ideas in mind, such as wanting him to reach for contact more or wanting him to shift his weight back, but often times when I'm clicking, it's the equivalent of someone saying "good boy," it just means "whatever that was, I liked that."

Because Sunny is so early in this process and because he's less likely to trial new behaviors, I'm trying to be very specific and train one behavior at a time for a bit. Give him a bit more confidence in the training process. Go forward without rushing = treat. Eventually I'll add more behaviors to the list of things that earn him treats. 

I love these trails

He's definitely seemed more interested in his work now that he is getting food in exchange. I think the loss of interest in what we were doing was partially caused by a few incidences that happened that caused him to lose faith in me and partially caused by him actually losing weight this winter (which had been a goal but it went a tiny bit too far, he's not super skinny or anything, I just want another 25-50lbs on him). He's now getting more food, more pasture grass, and clicker training! Pony probably thinks he won the pony lottery. 

Hopefully he continues to feel better about work and life in general! 

Long Lining in the Meantime

This last weekend I got the EQ Saddle Science measuring kit so I measured TC and sent the measurements to them. So now it's just the waiting game until they bring me a saddle to try for two weeks. It's fine to wait IMO, my burnout is getting better but I'm still trying to do a little less and take the pressure off myself and that includes with riding too. I feel bad because I think TC really misses being in full work. He had about a week where he was like "go away, I love my pasture" but now the pasture seems to be less interesting than I am. 

This is where I'd like him to be all the time

This is where he likes to be right now, which is
fine, he's still IFV and tracking up, it's just lower

I've been doing a lot of stuff with him though, but very limited dressage until the saddle comes. In the mean time though, we've been doing bareback rides with the equibands, bareback trail rides, and long lining! 

The long lining has been really cool because there's nothing restricting his shoulder AND I can see him. So I can encourage him to change his posture, know that he can do it, and reward him immediately for trying. 

My main goal is to get him lifting through the base of his neck, as that was the main issue last year. I figure if I reward him for doing it on the long lines, that he'll become strong enough where that's where he wants to be. I am also giving him a voice command ("up") and trying to pair the two so I can say that undersaddle too. 

Such a good boy

He went left first and then right so the right ended
up being better

I was pretty surprised by how quickly he caught on what I wanted him to do. Soon he was pleasantly in front of the vertical with his neck lifted and then I could send him into it to get him to flex his lumbosacral joint. I did a bunch of bending exercises too and the more supple he became, the easier it was for him to really lift through his back. 

He was able to get that in canter too and I could send him on without him coming against me (an issue we have in the canter undersaddle). This was cool because it unlocked a whole new canter! He looked SO good in it that the first time I saw it, I didn't even let him continue for a stride longer, I clicked on the first stride and he halted to get his treat. After that, he surged back into canter to try again and then I had him hold it for a few strides. 

By about 30 minutes in (15 mins each direction), he was so tired. He took a nap when I hosed him down. But I could SWEAR that three days later he had another layer of muscle on him. 

Look at that neck and reach with the inside hind!

Also teaching him to set back on his hind end with
a hand on his chest

I rode him yesterday in Rico's weird bareback pad with stirrups, which I know 1000% isn't the right thing to ride in because bareback pads with stirrups are bad for backs. But I was super curious to do a short ride and see how he felt. I stayed out of my stirrups and mostly supported myself with my thigh (like I'm supposed to lol). 

He felt absolutely fantastic! So much better in the contact and so easy to maneuver. I was chatting with my friends last week saying that TC used to feel like he was an extension of my own body and just like moving myself around, I could just think about moving him and he'd move. Over the last year and a bit though, he's become more foreign to me and I think this is because of the saddle fit issues (among other things). 

We still aren't 100% back yet by any means, but this was one of the first rides where I got glimpses of what used to be. I could get my suction on him well and make changes with intention rather than aids. 

Clicker Training Undersaddle

On my webinar series, I did one on how I've used clicker training to work with TC. I figured I'd both link the video here and break down my speech (which I definitely mostly read from, what, I'm not being graded or anything) into sections if you prefer to read it. It's going to be long to read and lots of this information is stuff you guys already know about TC, so feel free to just skip ahead or listen to me ramble on and on. 

As an aside, if you ever wonder what it's like to take a lesson from me, this is it. I talk incessantly, don't give my riders a single moment to understand what I've said, and I do laugh at my own jokes. Sorry, not sorry. 

Link here if the below video doesn't work. 

TC's Background

Every rider has that one horse, the one that makes you question everything you thought you knew about riding horses. My current horse, TC, is that horse for me. He’s been an absolute blast to develop and he’s in a great place currently, but he was a very tricky young horse.

I began riding him in late 2014 after earning my Gold medal on my retired Grand Prix horse, Rico. I needed something fun to ride and TC was bred by a family friend who I reached out to in search of something fun to ride for free while I finished up graduate school. I had client horses to ride, but I enjoy having my own horse very much, so TC would be a surrogate until I found a horse to buy after I entered the workforce. 

Baby TC was a blast and I loved his personality and his work ethic. Sooo I bought him in the fall of 2015. And he promptly climbed up on his panel fence at his new barn, fell off of it, and ripped his suspensory out of the origin site. He went to a rehab facility until he was trotting for a good amount of time and then came back into my life. 

Rehabilitating a young, powerful horse is tough. TC had to stay in a small paddock so he wouldn’t run around, he couldn’t be turned out, and he had to stick with a small amount of work each day as he continued to heal. This led to a lot of undesirable behavior, the most undesirable of which was bolting. 

Baby TC had shown a desire to bolt, but his gangly body didn’t let him do anything really aggressive. Five year old TC was a different animal, add into it that he was cooped up and unable to let off any steam. There was no longeing him down or turning him out before riding. And winter was rapidly approaching too. 

I began clicker training him on the recommendation from a good friend who also uses clicker training in her program. I found that clicker training was incredibly helpful to get the bolting to stop. I also used it to reduce his spooking. As we went into winter, I realized that I had no way of exercising him effectively without riding him, he’s never taken to side reins very well, so I clicker trained him to reach for contact on the long lines. I moved on to teaching him to engage his hindquarters and lift his back while long lining. 

I’m using clicker training currently to continue to improve the connection, to put the piaffe on, and to reinstall the medium walk because all he wants to do is piaffe now. 

Baby TC being skeptical about sprinklers

The basis is conditioning and there are two types of conditioning, both of which are utilized in clicker training.

Classical Conditioning

Pavlovian conditioning, or classical conditioning, involves the pairing of a primary reinforcer with a secondary reinforcer. Pavlov actually was studying dog’s salivary glands. He fell into classical conditioning when he noticed that his dogs started to salivate not when they were given food, but prior to then when they knew they were given food. He called this psychic secretion and wanted to know why it happened. And that’s where the bell came in to the operation. Essentially he would ring the bell and then feed the dogs, them eventually associating the bell with the food, and would salivate to the bell. 

Now, dogs aren’t born thinking that bells sound delicious, but with enough pairing of the bell, a secondary reinforcer, to the food, a primary reinforcer, the dog then responds to the bell as they would respond to food, by salivating. 

To relate this back to clicker training, take the bell and replace it with a clicker, take the dogs and replace it with your horse, and take the food and replace it with a treat or some grain. Eventually the clicker means the same thing to the horse that the treat does. And the clicker is a much easier reinforcer for the rider to use to pinpoint the exact moment the horse does something correctly rather than trying to quickly run over and shove cookies in the horse’s mouth. 

Not spooky at this lol

Operant Conditioning

The other kind of conditioning is operant conditioning, which we all use every day with our horses. Operant conditioning was fleshed out by B.F. Skinner. Essentially operant conditioning is when a behavior is shaped by what follows it, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s a four part process, but I’m going to start with three parts because it’s easier to understand this way. 

The first part is the antecedent, but for our sport, let’s just change that to aid. The aid is a stimulus that indicates that you want the horse to perform a behavior, which is the second part. The behavior itself. Following the behavior, as we all know from growing up, we have consequences. Consequences can either reinforce a behavior or punish it. Reinforcing a behavior causes the behavior to occur more frequently and/or with greater strength. Punishing a behavior causes the behavior to occur less frequently and/or with a weaker strength. 

There are four types of consequences: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment. They can get confusing because the words positive and negative don’t refer to good and bad, they refer to whether you added or removed a stimulus. Reinforcement is anything you do that increases the frequency and/or strength of a behavior and punishment is anything you do that decreases the frequency and/or strength of a behavior. 

So positive reinforcement is the addition of an appetitive stimulus after a behavior has been performed that increases the frequency or strength of the behavior. Think of a horse finally nailing a clean flying change and getting a walk break and scratches on the wither. The addition of an appetitive stimulus, the scratches and break, after a behavior, the clean flying change, that you want to encourage to occur again. 

Negative reinforcement sounds bad or weird, but we see it everywhere as well. This is the removal (negative) of an aversive stimulus after a behavior has been performed that increases the frequency or strength of the behavior. Think of a rider who puts their spurs in their horse’s side, then when the horse moves forward (desirable behavior), the rider takes the spurs away from the horse’s side, the removal of an aversive stimulus that increases the likelihood that the horse will move forward. 

Positive punishment is another weird one, but it’s what you think of when you think of punishment. The addition (positive) of an aversive stimulus to decrease the likelihood of a behavior. For example, when TC crowds my space, I tap him with a whip on his chest. This is the addition of an aversive stimulus that will hopefully reduce his desire to crowd me. I can tell you that hasn’t worked all that well. 

Negative punishment is one we dont typically use with horses unless we’re eight years old and through tears tell our pony that just bucked us off that he is NOT getting any carrots later. It is the removal of an appetitive stimulus after a behavior that discourages the behavior. We use it rather infrequently with horses only because it’s tough to set it up where it actually discourages a specific behavior. TC isn’t going to think that I’m not giving him a cookie before I leave the barn because I was unhappy with something he did earlier in the day, horses just don’t think that way. 

Conditioning for Clicker Training

Now that we’re through conditioning, hopefully you can see how clicker training combines the two types of conditioning. We use classical conditioning to make the clicker an appetitive stimulus that you can then use as a consequence of a behavior in operant conditioning to make the behavior more likely to occur. 

To clicker train an animal, we first have to acknowledge what primary reinforcers are effective reinforcers. To classify a primary reinforcer, think of what can reinforce an animal without any conditioning history, or learning history. For example, I do my job in exchange for money, a reinforcer. But I had to be taught to value money, because children raised in a society without money will not see any inherent value in having it. Children raised in a society without food will… well they’ll die. That got dark. But children are born wanting food and water and shelter. So are horses, they aren’t born wanting praise or clicks, but they are born wanting this list, among other things. One thing to note on this list is the wither scratches. There have been studies that show that scratching a horse’s wither lowers their heart rate and therefore relaxes them, and that is also a primary reinforcer. I’ve used wither scratches as a reinforcer for horses I ride who I don’t use the clicker on, it’s a great reinforcer. 

Lots of exposure for this weirdo

Bridge Training

Our first task involves classical conditioning and it’s called bridge training. We are essentially creating a bridge between the clicker and the primary reinforcer we are using. I chose to use TC’s grain because I wanted to not worry about how many cookies he was eating in a day and I also don’t use clicker training every day, so didn’t want to have his diet changed so randomly. I can adjust the amount of grain he gets after his ride based on how much clicker training we did during the ride. 

One of the worries people have about clicker training is that it will cause the horse to mug you for food or to start biting, but the bridge training I used with TC helps eliminate that response while also bridging the clicker to the primary reinforcement of grain. 

I started with TC in his paddock and he saw that I had grain and was very interested in me. I didn’t let him come after the grain, just waited for him to get bored and realize I wasn’t going to give it to him. He was fairly rude, so it took some time. Eventually he heard a horse whinny and looked away. And that’s when I clicked and gave him a small handful of grain. He was suddenly really interested in me again, mugging me for more grain and getting in my space. I remained patient and he got bored again, looked away and then I clicked and gave him grain again. We did about five minutes a day for a few days and soon he had figured out that he only gets grain when he looks away, so he would see me coming with the clicker and my bag of grain and would not mug me, but rather look away because he knew that was how he got the grain. 

By teaching it this way, I’ve taught him to not be mouthy or mug me for grain but rather to give me space and wait for the click. [at this point I showed this video of Shawna using this bridging technique]

At this point I was finished with the classical conditioning part of the training, TC knew that a click meant grain and was happy to work for clicks because he knew grain would follow. 

Remember when he used to rear
himself calm at the trailer?

Eliminating TC's Bolting Behavior

Now, a lot of people start target training at this point, but I had a very specific goal in mind, so I didn’t go that route. I’ll eventually target train TC for fun, but I moved straight from the bridge training to addressing TC’s bolting behavior. 

I started to then begin to solidify the whoa aid to address TC’s undesirable bolting behavior. If you remember from Kate’s talk a few weeks ago, she went over Andrew McLean’s work on behavioral issues. He has an entire chapter on bolting and his main point was that bolting, at its root, is caused by the breakdown of the whoa aid leading to the horse no longer being under stimulus control, which is a fancy way of saying that I couldn’t stop him. Basically, the reinforcement he got from bolting, such as getting away from perceived danger, was way more effective than the reinforcement he got from not bolting, which at the time was just to not annoy me. 

So my goal was to increase the reinforcement history of the whoa aid so that it could override the reinforcement history that he had from bolting. Bolting is very self reinforcing, if the horse bolts and doesn’t get killed by the thing they were afraid of, no matter whether the thing actually posed a threat, the horse feels reinforced by the lack of death and that strengthens the bolting response. But TC likes food, sometimes more than he likes avoiding dangerous situations, so I began to reinforce the whoa aid. 

I worked with him on the ground first, using my aid, saying whoa and taking back on his halter, to produce a behavior, a halt, that I then reinforced with a click and some grain. When he stopped, he was not allowed to immediately climb in my lap for the grain, the whoa needed to be appropriate. At first, he didn’t get it easily, but after doing it every day for a while, he started to slam to a halt more aggressively, even offering it when I even touched his rope or when I said the word “no” because the whoa meant grain so he may as well do it as much as he could. 

From there, I schooled it on the longe line, getting it to the point where if I just shifted my weight a little or touched the line a little, he’d stop. Then I took it undersaddle, which I’ll talk about later. 

Tarp de-spooking unnecessary

Reducing TC's Spooking Behavior

TC’s bolting behavior was getting way better with the clicker training. I noticed two things about the bolting. First, I noticed that when he bolted, it was far less aggressive and easier for me to stop. He didn’t go nearly as fast and didn’t go nearly as far before I could stop him. Second, I noticed that the frequency went down, he didn’t bolt as often as he used to. For a long time, it seemed that he bolted out of the blue, without any warning. At this point it started to only happen if something scared him rather than just randomly. 

His spooking was a secondary issue, but when I noticed that his spookiness was what was keeping the bolting alive and well, I began clicker training for curiosity and relaxation. 

TC’s spooking has always been interesting to me. I took him to two bombproofing clinics and he loved them, wasn’t spooky at all. You can thwap him with plastic bags and pool noodles, ask him to walk across mattresses and water, he’s fine with all of that. He was even fine with the cats running across the front of him, dogs barking and running at him, strollers and bicycles passing him on the trail, and the resident chicken taking a dust bath in the arena. If there’s a clear reason for what is going on, he’s fine with it. But if the wind picks something up and it flys around, or if something has changes at the barn, or if a wheelbarrow is sitting by itself vs being handled by a barn worker, he is terrified of it. 

Because TC’s spooking was not just a startle and would always lead to him putting more space between him and the thing he was afraid of, which was naturally reinforcing to him because getting away from a scary object meant that the object would not attack him, I began to address it by trying to override that reinforcement history with clicker training. Now, he could choose between two reinforcers: the reinforcement that he got from running away from the object vs the reinforcement that I was going to provide to him for taking a step closer to the object. 

I started out by leading him around my barn waiting for him to become weary about something. I found a tarp that he didn’t like and made him stand still near it. Then I coaxed him forward and he took one step, so I clicked and gave him a treat. We worked on it until he was standing on the tarp and then we moved on. I did this technique for a while, until every time he saw something that made him nervous, he would approach it rather than run away from it. 

Once I got him to drag me toward things that previously scared him, I noticed that he still would stand stock still with his heart beating really hard, so I began to click for relaxation. It wasn’t good enough to stand near the object, he had to relax. It took a while at first, but soon he took a deep breath and I clicked for that. I noticed a huge decrease in his spooking once I started only clicking for both approaching the spooky object AND relaxing near it. He can still be spooky, he still hates wind, but he’s way easier to console now and definitely the spooking has both decreased in frequency and strength. He’ll startle or if it’s really bad, scoot, but gone are the moments where he’d get truly out of control. 

Happy to hang out in this tunnel

Improving the Connection on the Long Lines

I mentioned using it for long lining, and here’s the progression for that. TC has a very friesian neck, his tendency is to go the way he’s going in this first picture, with his neck retracted and his hind legs stepping short. He didn’t like long lining at first because he can be rather claustrophobic, so I had to clicker train him to reach to contact. I would aid him to bend a little more but most of this beginning work was a waiting game. He soon blew his nose, leading him to reach down a bit, so I clicked that. Then I got a lot of voluntary nose blowing, I clicked at first but soon waited until he stopped blowing but kept a bit of stretch to click. Slowly I shaped the behavior until he reached down all the time. 

I loved this because it meant that I could work him effectively in hand without having to ride him, very helpful when he would act up in the winter or when I was in a rush or when he stamped on my foot and I couldn’t ride him. I started clicking for all sorts of things, coming through with the whip meant he would flex his lumbosacral joint and step further under for a few steps and I clicked for that. I continued our work with the whoa aid there, all kinds of things. Just shaping his behavior on the long lines so I could continue developing him when I couldn’t ride him or just didn’t want to. 

Clicker Training Undersaddle

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve used it extensively undersaddle as well with TC. I started doing it with the bolting, reinforcing the whoa aid from my seat, rein, and voice. I then moved on to the spooking undersaddle, encouraging him to walk up to things. Then even did some work on reaching for contact, reinforcing any weight he put in the reins. 

Clicker training undersaddle can be tough to coordinate as a rider. I will often grab small cookies instead of a bag of grain because it’s just easier to carry around, as the grain sometimes finds its way out of the bag. Holding the clicker is tricky too, as is coordinating the click. But once the coordination is there, it’s incredibly useful. What it does for TC is provide him with a discriminative stimulus, something I wanted to throw in here at some point. 

A discriminative stimulus is an indicator to an individual that a reinforcer is available. Think of it this way, you’re walking down the street and you’re hungry, you see a restaurant, that restaurant is reinforcing to you because it means you’re about to get food, it’s the bell the dogs salivated to. But then you see that the restaurant is closed and it becomes far less reinforcing, you’re still hungry but food is not available to you. But if you see the sign is flipped to open, the restaurant immediately becomes reinforcing. The open sign is a signal to you that the reinforcer, food, is available. 

Think of a horse who acts up in the show ring because he’s figured out that his rider doesn’t have as much ability to correct him. The show ring becomes a discriminative stimulus for bad behavior, the horse can quote get away with bad behavior in there. 

What I noticed when I would grab the clicker and ride with it is that TC would be more likely to offer me things that he’s been reinforced for with clicks. Me holding onto the clicker became a discriminative stimulus. So even though I hadn’t done much work undersaddle with the clicker, he saw that I had it and knew that clicks were available, so he worked harder for them. I didn’t have to click very often undersaddle to keep him working hard for clicks. 

We’re nearing the end so I wanted to share two videos of things I’m doing with clicker training right now. Here is a video of me teaching TC to piaffe with the clicker. 

Hilarious, definitely doing more bombproofing
clinics in the future with future horses and with
TC just for funzies

Changing my Philosophy

Lastly, I wanted to talk about how this has changed my training philosophy. I’ve ridden with trainers in the past who emphasized that when a horse is doing something bad, they are meaning to be bad. There’s a lot of language used that just isn’t correct: my horse is an asshole, he knows what I want but he just doesn’t want to do it, he’s not actually afraid of that thing he just wants to get out of working. 

Clicker training for me put everything in a different perspective. TC didn’t bolt to be an asshole, TC bolted because bolting had a stronger reinforcement history than not bolting. TC didn’t spook because he was trying to get out of work, TC spooked because spooking had a stronger reinforcement history than working. TC didn’t refuse to stretch to contact because he didn’t feel like doing it, he refused to stretch to contact because there was no reinforcement history for it. 

With clicker training, TC has become an incredibly easy horse to train for me, he’s only been doing the piaffe for two months and it’s already a higher quality than my Grand Prix horse’s. He’s not got the conformation to reach to contact easily but he does it becuase he’s been reinforced for doing it. 

And I notice a difference in him too. He is very playful undersaddle, excited to work every day. He knows that I’m going to be fair to him, that if he gets an answer wrong, my first thought will never be that he is being deliberately bad. 

The End! 

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time and I know this is a bit different than my normal posts because I literally just posted my webinar in words. But it was so fun! Make sure you check out the Facebook page to find out when the other webinars are happening and look at the playlist of all the ones we've done so far on youtube. 

No One Ever Had to Sell Me On How Nice a Fire Smells

TC has been improving in the brakes department, which is really great, though it's obviously been pretty hard on both of us. Him because he had his world flipped upside down, me because he hasn't woken up one day and just been like "yeah brakes, sounds good" and been perfect ever since. One of us is unreasonable and it isn't the one who wants to attack bird shadows.

For the most part, he starts out great and then as he gets more and more internally pressured, he gets worse and worse. Starting Thursday last week, I decided to address the issue on the long lines before getting back on him. I've still been riding on the trails though, of course. It's not a safety thing, it's a frustration level thing (for me, mostly).

By the way, this title is a lyric. The whole lyric is "if the price of life is hell, well, no one ever had to sell me on how nice a fire smells" and I kind of love it.

From Sunday, he had so much fun out there, I'm trying to swing
a weekday trail ride when I can too, get out there twice a week,
which I think will help break up the difficult work

The long lining gives me a different perspective. Well, the long lining itself allows me to see him on his own, which is helpful because I don't have mirrors, sure. It's the clicker training that gives me another perspective. I think I have this issue figured out and it all goes back to the very beginning, stimulus control, and pressure aversion.

Essentially, TC has always been a very pressure averse horse whose primary response to pressure is to get away, even if it involves busting through things. This is apparent as far back as when he was being halter broke and someone cornered him in a field and he went through the fence to get away from them. It's apparent in his bolting behavior, his go-to response for spooking is to leave. It's apparent even in his weird shit with gates where he sometimes rushes through them. Pressure = GTFO. Always.

Over the years, I've addressed it with external stimuli. We've done bombproofing clinics, we've done tons of ground work, lots of traveling, I've shook more things at this horse than is probably appropriate (plastic bags, bags of cans, flags, balloons, pool noodles, etc). His go-to response remains, but it also has become muted over time. You can stop him from bolting, he spooks in place WAY more now, and we're still working on instilling curiosity rather than flight. It's been a long hard road, but he's so much better.

There's been so much rain, but the trails aren't
so bad! 

The other thing about TC is that he's sensitive. He may look chunky and low tone because of the friesian in him, but he is what I'd consider a sensitive horse. Maybe not hot in the traditional sense (I ride him with spurs and a whip), but emotionally and physically sensitive. He's always been insanely light in the bridle and very in tune with rider biomechanics.

Knowing those two things is key in deciphering his recent behavior.

Alexis, who I plan on giving a hard time to for breaking my horse, suggested that TC need to carry more tone if he's going to do Second level and beyond. I took this upon myself and decided to pump him up a bit more. In the past, because of his zippiness, I've praised relaxation the most. But mental relaxation required physical relaxation, which turned into me underpowering him in order to keep him mentally chill. Alexis, who is not at all to blame but we're friends so I can give her shit, was right, he was underpowered for the work I wanted him to do.

When I added power, I added internal pressure. Makes sense.

We know how TC responds to external pressure: leaving. Turns out that he responds the same way to internal pressure too. He leaves. The only issue is that by leaving, he doesn't relieve the pressure like he does when he nopes out of a situation with a bird or a leaf blower. So he just keeps leaving.

Sleepy cows under my favorite tree, one of them got up while
we walked by and TC was like "friend?" 

I'd notice this more if TC was a very dull horse in the bridle, but for weeks I didn't realize that he was trying to leave because of how light he is in the bridle because the weight in the reins was enough to hold him back. All that I could tell is that the connection felt crappy. He was taking more weight in the reins (a good thing IMO, he felt comfortable going to the bit, nice!) but he was also feeling less good in the bridle.

Eventually I realized that not only was the connection feeling like crap, I had no brakes, and thus this whole ordeal started. When really, it started years ago when TC discovered that running away = pressure release. Rather than becoming connected to the bridle when I added more pressure, I was basically holding him back from trying to relieve the pressure by running off. I can't emphasize enough that the weight in the reins of me holding him back is as light as Rico has ever been in his life. It just doesn't take much to hold him back. Until he finally busts through the barrier (bolting).

Enjoying the views!

So fast forward to now. This has to be fixed. I've decided that showing doesn't matter, lessons don't matter (though I will be taking some), what matters is this and only this. And it is not going to be a quick fix. This is me asking a coming 8 year old horse to fundamentally change the way he addresses pressure. In much the same way as the bombproofing clinic, I must put him under internal pressure and then praise him for not leaving. Over and over again. This is HARD undersaddle because I sometimes literally can't stop him. So to the long lines we go.

My main goal on the long lines is to be able to say the word "whoa" and have TC halt (responding to an aid vs physical pressure on the lines). My secondary goal is to have him stay back on his hocks at all times, never letting his chest start to pull him along, which dumps him onto the forehand and gets him thinking of blowing through the bridle with his chest. I'm also looking for him to respond (not react) to the aids in a productive way.

So far, TC seems to start out pretty chill and low tone, happy to walk quietly around, halting when I ask him to halt and trotting when I ask him to trot.

Eventually, and more often to the right than left, TC becomes internally pressured and can't handle his shit. This is when he starts reacting badly to the aids. He seems to think that he can't go forward at all, so he resists and resists my go aid until he BLASTS through the invisible barrier, gets told he can't go there, runs backwards and sometimes tries to flip around the other way.

Back down the hill

I've been working to get him to this place where he's more prone to panic, and then that's when I click for fucking anything that isn't refusing to go forward or blasting off. I want him to be able to carry more tone without panicking.

This fucking sucks, let me tell you. It sucks to have to bring him to a place where he finds it so unnerving to be. He gets a lot of praise, the work is easy, and I try not to do it more than two days in a row (he gets a fun hand walk day or a trail ride in between). But it is important. I want to make sure that as I bring him up the levels of dressage, I'm not having to put his mental health in such a precarious place in order to get the scores I want. 

So, we'll see how it goes. He's already improving a lot. He's also moving outside this weekend, which should reduce that 0-60 panic switch when he goes from low tone to high tone. I think he'll be way happier! He's also getting chiropracted soon (already had his teeth done and his saddle fit) and I'm considering CBD pellets if those two things don't work for him. Adequan is also in the mix coming up. I just want him to be happy in his work. And then we'll go from there!

Creating Reinforcement Histories

Every now and then I teach a lesson where I end up feeling like I learned more, or clarified more for myself, than my rider did. This happened a few weeks ago and I want to talk about what came up.

Meeting some new friends at the new barn!

We got on the subject about reinforcement histories and reframing the interpretation of the horse's behavior. Pretty much any behavior a horse offers is a) a trial behavior to see if it results in reinforcement or b) a behavior that has been reinforced before. Period.

I mean, we know that horses do not do things because they are assholes, or because they know better but don't feel like it, or because they want to get out of work. Horses always take the path of least resistance. So the logical conclusion is that it is the rider's fault if they have accidentally reinforced behavior they don't like, created a pathway that is less resistant than the one they would rather the horse take. Or, it's the rider's fault for making the correct pathway more difficult to take than another one.

So instead of thinking "why are you being such a dick doing this behavior all the time?" with TC, I've been thinking "this is a behavior that has previously been reinforced, I will make sure that it does not warrant a reaction from me this time." In addition, I've been really reinforcing the behaviors I do want to occur more often, like going on the bit and being in front of the leg.

It doesn't look like it, but I pressure washed my
trailer over the holiday and it's so clean! But my
phone is real sharp so can see all the spots I
missed, thanks for nothing, Google

With this in mind, the main goal in this lesson was to solidify the baseline gaits. To stop having roundness come from the rider making adjustments but rather to be a state of being that the horse is in at all times.

Aids should be left for specific movements that the rider wants to turn on and off during a ride. I don't want my horse to be in shoulder-in all the time but I do want my horse to be straight all the time. I don't want my horse to be in extended trot all the time, but I do want my horse to be forward all the time. All of these "all the time" things are contained within the realm of baseline gaits. And for those baseline "all the time" things, they should not be aided for, but rather be a state that the horse is constantly in while being ridden.

Just like the horse habituates to the girth and the rider's weight on their back, they should kind of habituate to being in roundness, in straightness, into the bridle. The "aid" for roundness and straightness should be the rider's weight in the saddle and the rider's leg around the horse and the rider's establishment of a steady connection in the reins. Not pushing with the seat, moving the bit in the mouth, shaking the horse off the bit into artificial lightness, or nagging the horse forward with the leg.

Wandering around the new barn

Horses often perform what are called superstitious behaviors. A horse paws before the feed truck comes and then think that pawing causes the feed truck to come, so they paw more. Maybe the pawing only "works" when certain other signs appear too. I have a hilarious example of TC developing a superstitious behavior. We were working on changes and I was praising him after his attempts. I noticed though, that every time we passed a tree he'd shy away at it, shake his neck, then I'd send him across to the change and praise. I realized that he thought the entire series was what I was praising. First you shy at the tree, then you shake your neck, then you do confusing things with your legs, then you get praise.

So a rider that aids and aids and aids the horse for baseline behaviors that we want apparent at all times is leaving way too much room for superstitious behaviors. First the rider wags the head, then we go sideways, then we do a circle, then finally on the bit and praise. If classical conditioning is used instead of operant conditioning, the superstitious behavior is less likely to occur. I am simply waiting for the horse to offer something like roundness and then shaping that behavior with reinforcement (scratching the wither mostly, but I did clicker train a lot of baseline behaviors in TC).

Not being an asshole in the cross ties, he's
actually growing up!

But how to create this? This horse made things easy actually. She is highly motivated by reinforcement and very willing to trial behavior. TC is like that too. He wildly guesses even if he thinks he will be wrong (since the only time he gets punished is when his wrong answer is dangerous, he doesn't get punished for guessing, so he is more likely to feel comfortable guessing).

I got on, I established contact, I wrapped my leg around her, and I waited. For a long time. Eventually she went to root lightly (a behavior that has been reinforced probably by the rider getting the reins yanked out of their hands accidentally before) and I scratched her wither for putting her neck in a more roundness-oriented place. She tried several other behaviors that have clearly been reinforced: spooking at something, leaning off to one side, slowing down, and putting her head up, before the neck went down again. Another scratch. Another long wait.

After about forty minutes, I had her pretty committed to roundness without my involvement. She knew that was a place she could go for the reinforcer she had been searching for. I put her rider on and we worked through all the same things.

He really wants to go in that field... 

By the end of the ride, which was over an hour, we had a horse who was solidly into the bridle, swinging over her back, relaxed, and most importantly, confident that she knew what her job was. She wasn't trialing undesirable behavior anymore, she had found what she wanted, which was praise, and she had enough of it to keep her motivated to continue to perform this particular behavior for however long rather than trying to find another behavior that led to a reinforcer.

Homework was to do this every day. For months. Until the horse comes out of the stall confident with what her job is. For weeks. Then aids can start to be applied. Movements can be played with. But always the baseline gaits first. Always.

The cross ties are a step up, so he looks gigantic
all the time now

For me, saying outloud that there is no aid for roundness was what surprised me, when I said it I stuttered for a second because I was like "what the FUCK did you just say, Megan, there is no aid for roundness? Why do people pay you to do this?" and then had to restate it again to let it sink in for me (this is part of the reason why I love teaching so much! I feel like my subconscious thoughts come to the surface). How many times do we hear "hold the outside rein and soften the horse to the inside" or "slide the bit in the mouth" and all that stuff? Hey, I've TAUGHT a lot of that in the past, like, the recent past.

A lesson like this is tricky to teach a lot of the time (not this time), people want an answer, they want to hear about some black magic aid that will put their horse on the bit once and for all. They do not want to hear that they have to sit and wait every day. For months. They do not want to hear that their horse isn't just being an asshole when they yank the reins out of the rider's hands or shake their neck at them or refuse to do something that the rider is convinced they're asking for in a clear way.

TC's new bff. Look at his SUPER CUTE EARS, he smashes
them forward like this when he's happy

But really, creating reinforcement histories is how horses learn, it's how we all learn. So I need to reinforce the things I want the horse to do, and stop reinforcing things I don't want the horse to do. It is that simple. It is that easy. It does take a LONG time. But when I get on TC, I do not think about forward, I do not think about roundness, I do not hope anything (other than that a leaf doesn't blow by us lol), I know without a doubt that he will be on the bit. Not because he's some perfect being that was born on the bit, not because of some black magic that I'm doing.

But because we put in the work, he had the reinforcement history. Going on the bit has been a thing that has gotten him way more praise than anything else in his life. And so he goes. On the bit. All the time.

And so now, looking upward, as I get really tempted to pull him into collection or make him stay straighter... I have to stop and remember the reinforcement histories, and just keep building on them.