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.
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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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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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! 
