Reef is only 6 months old and was due to be moved with his mum to the stud where he was conceived. Despite having cooperated with loading in the past, Reef associated it with pain due to injuries - the reason why he'd been travelled before now. Prior to this video Reef had been subject to what became a highly pressurised and frightening situation, just to get him and mum to he stud. That attempt failed. Here is his retraining progress just days after.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE-JNYPwqKI&feature=youtu.be

Equine Clicker Training Demo 2012

I'm very excited to announce that I will be giving a clicker training demonstration with Doghill Farm's horses on Saturday 27th October. Clicker training is a fun and effective way to train horses, but it's shrouded in myth as it's not exactly mainstream yet! I'm aiming to show a little something for everyone, from clicker newbie to the more seasoned trainers. There'll be a demonstration of how to begin, plus how to proceed with the more nervous individual, where you can go with training a youngster and what you can do to fill a rainy afternoon at the yard!
All are welcome to attend, just see my Events page for details or contact me jenni@jenninellist.co.uk 07974 569407 Should it actually be a rainy day the demonstration will be held under cover!

The Equine Clicker Conference 2012

With less than two weeks to go I have been talking to one of the conference organisers, Helen Gilbertson: http://www.hannahdawsonequine.co.uk/clicker-training/helen-chats-with-jenni-nellist/
I discussed my clicker training beginnings and how setting small, clear and realistic goals enhanced my life as a welfare centre groom.

Positive Loading

The perennial problem, the horse that won’t load, not for love nor money, or even a well-aimed lunge line.


Well! Where there are problems there are solutions! Can you turn your horse’s loading problem into a successful learning experience that lasts both of you a lifetime?

With behaviour comes attitude. According to cognitive behaviour science, behaviour is part of attitude, along with thoughts and feelings. So if your horse’s behaviour states that he does not want to go in that box, chances are that he feels he does not want to go in that box, and that he thinks he does not want to go in that box. Whoa, that box must be bad!

So it must follow that to change his behaviour, his whole attitude has to change. He hates and/or fears the box. He needs to move from unwillingness and sensitivity to feeling more upbeat about the whole thing. He needs to view the box with a smile! He can do that if he can find out that the box holds nothing but good outcomes for him.

So, he’s not going to believe that in one hit. He hasn’t so far, and if things carry on as they are, chances are he’ll never make that change. Right now he is downright pessimistic about that box.

An intelligent approach could be to reduce his pessimism by not following through with all the things he dreads in relation to the box. Just let him discover that he can be near the box through his own free will. This won’t be giving up as through his own free will he’ll be able to be a calmer horse. Then he’ll be receptive to learning new, positive ideas and be able to come to a place where he can be an optimist. No one I know can readily find an optimistic thought when in the fits of despair, but most can from a less gloomy place.

But do horses really get moments of pessimism and optimism? There’s not a lot of concrete proof within the covers of the academic journals that’s for sure. But horses can learn about good and bad outcomes, they can be negatively affected by pressures and they can look forward to pleasurable experiences when they know they will happen. These pressures and different quality outcomes all affect and change horse behaviour (and attitude!) in ways that anyone can influence once they know how.

Learning skills that can help you influence your horse’s behaviour is possible if that’s what you want to do. You can not only affect what your horse does, but how he does it – his whole attitude in fact! And you may find that you will be, as Billy Connolly puts it, “better for it”.

New skills might include learning how to find the ‘beginning’ for your particular horse. Not all horses start their retraining on the same page.

Another new skill might be reading the finest points of your horse’s attitude, such as when he changes from pessimist to optimist and vice versa.

And of course there is learning the knack of timing ‘reinforcement’ – outcomes of your horse’s behaviour that motivate him to do that same behaviour again and again. And there is knowing what kind of reinforcement to use and why. You might already know about pressure and release, or you may not, but what other forms of reinforcement do you know about?

Learning to retrain a problem loader or any problem behaviour really can be quite an adventure, with new, personal discoveries around each corner. And since it is your journey, you have it in you to have a well travelled one.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/321399481283134/

What now?

Predictability, all the things that tell horses what to expect, and what to do next. When we’re training them they rely on the clues, such as where they are, where any apparatus is, what their person is doing, what other persons (including horses) are doing, and so on. Discriminating exactly which stimulus (clue!) reliably accompanies a behaviour and its outcome is a process of elimination. The horse has to learn a stimulus-behaviour-outcome sequence and to do so he has to turn detective.



Can horses really be that bright? Mischka, a 22 month old sports horse filly is learning to touch cones with her muzzle for food, then to learn to touch them in alternation in order to earn the food, and then to perform the same pattern of alternation with an increasing distance between the cones.



That’s hard. At 22 months of age Mischka is a horsey teenager, puzzles like this can easily frustrate her and make her either quit the training process or become enraged by it. She really needs clues as to what to try next. The first clue is that her person is looking at one of the cones which are placed side by side; their position will become another clue. Mischka investigates, her person says YES! and immediately presents her with a handful of food. Miscka investigates the same cone again but her person is now looking at the other cone. Miscka investigates more thoroughly in case her person hasn’t noticed then switches to investigating the same cone as her person. This makes her person say YES! again, and more food is presented. The person’s attention returns to the first cone and after a trial investigation of the second cone, Mischka returns to investigate the first, with another YES! and more food. The clues Mischka used to get the right answer were the direction of her person’s attention, the position of the cones, her preceding behaviour, and the behaviour reinforced via the reception of food.



Mischka rapidly makes the link between alternating her touches of the cones and food, or no food if she makes the incorrect choice, and consistently swaps cones. The stakes are then raised. The cones are placed nearly half a metre apart. Now Mischka has to make an effort to get her nose from one cone to the other. Perhaps it’s easier to stick to just one cone now? Mischka tries this and only touches the first cone after being rewarded with food the first time. There is no outcome for this behaviour and Mischka makes the effort to bring her nose to the second cone. This makes her person say YES! and food is delivered. Mischka recognises the clues from the earlier lesson, notices where her person’s attention is, recognises that touching each cone is only rewarded on the first touch, never the second, third or any other number of touches, then smoothly returns to alternating her touches.



This raise in the stakes is repeated several more times, with the distance between the cones growing to nearly 8m. Now it becomes very apparent that one of the clues that Mischka is using is the proximity of the other cone. When it’s further away and slightly out of view because it’s behind her, the behaviour of switching between the cones falls apart. Swinging her forehand from one cone to the other no longer works because the stretch is too far and it puts the previous cone out of sight so that it is no longer a clue that it is also the next cone.



Mischka first tries to solve the problem by walking to the people in the training area, perhaps to get a better idea of what they are looking at! Her attention seeking behaviour is ignored and then Mischka spies the other cone. She’s told YES! just as she starts to head towards it. This gives her the clue that she’s got the right answer, but she continues her route and touches the cone before looking for her handful of feed. The clues to keep going are the early signal for reward, and her person looking at the cone and also walking towards it where she ultimately gives Mischka the food. Mischka tests investigating the people again when she finds them closer to her than the next cone, and after a few trials gives up as there is no outcome.



The sight of the next cone remains an important clue. On one occasion Mischka starts to walk to her person after leaving a cone, then remembers that this will not result in food, so stops and starts to walk backwards. While reversing she notices the next cone and turns and walks forwards to touch it – with the now firmly expected outcome of food reinforcement. After consuming the food Mischka walks backwards again, because last time she got reinforced for touching a cone she had just happened to be walking backwards in the same place. Mid back-up she steps forwards again and touches the cone she just backed up from. Her person fails to reinforce her because it was the incorrect cone. Mischka walks forwards then and circles around finding the next cone, and some positive reinforcement for doing so. Then she reverses, catches sight of the next cone and walks onto it.



Reversing has become a means of sighting the next cone, and a clue that she is going to make a correct choice. So also does circling forwards and away from a preceding cone. Clearly a less changeable ‘go find the next cone’ signal is required. Mischka needs to discern just one signal or specific compound of signals that means ‘there is another cone for you to find and touch’. Her person adds in a verbal signal ‘TOUCH’ while focusing on the next cone just as Mischka is on route to it and success, regardless of whether she reversed to sight the cone or simply walked forwards from the preceding one.



The next chapter is where Mischka learns to look for the cone in direct response to her person’s direction of focus and the verbal cue, perhaps even if the next cone has been moved a little since she was last there.

Connecting with horses

When people talk about having a connection with their horse, where the communication between horse and person is invisible or once you know what they’re doing, nearly invisible I’m reminded of the Clever Hans story.

For those who don’t know Clever Hans could count and do maths, and counted out the answer by pawing the ground. But actually he couldn’t. His skills were scrutinised and it was found that if his owner didn’t know the answer, he didn’t either. What he could do well was read his person! He would watch his owner, Herr von Osten, and paw the ground when he saw a very, very slight downward movement of von Osten’s head, and then stop when von Osten very, very slightly raised it again when the ‘right answer’ was reached. Initially von Osten denied helping his horse in these puzzles, and quite possibly he was not aware that he was helping his horse. It took a very observant student to notice what was actually happening. Horses are amazing observers and I think that is part of the ‘pure connection’ that people talk about – horses are ready to receive information.

I think that connection is based on three things: attraction, empathy (at least from the human) and communication. We are intrinsically attracted to our horses, for one reason or another. We are ready to communicate with them, but there has to be a ‘how to’. That ‘how to’ is empathy – to feel for – and communication, and what we communicate to the horse will affect how attracted he or she is to us.

With attraction and empathy our channels of communication with the horse are set to ‘ready to receive’. I think all people who are very good with horses are ‘ready to receive’. And once ready to receive, we can then be ‘ready to respond accordingly’. That’s where timing our communication signals comes in – sending the message when the recipient is ready to receive. I think that in good horsemanship it’s working both ways, if we send messages when the horse indicates through his or her behaviour that he or she is ready to receive, then the horse learns when and how to open lines of communication with us.

I also think that communication is learned, that we co-create a language with our horse. I do get a bit behaviouristic about this. Having my communications received and responded to in the manner that I wanted is reinforcing – if I signal ‘please do this’ to my horse, and she does so in response, then I’ve got what I wanted and am more likely to do it again in future. I may also learn to make this request when my mare is attentive to me, so she learns how to communicate to me to cue her to do something that invariable ends up in reinforcement for her and so we both become more sensitive or ‘connected’ to each other.

Scientific definition
Reinforcement: A consequence of behaviour that makes the individual more likely to perform that specific behaviour under the same circumstances in future.

In my experience horses tend to ask for opportunities to get positive reinforcement more often than they do negative reinforcement unless they are stuck in a pickle as it were. Positive reinforcement is more pleasing to the horse, and a pleased horse is more pleasing to me. I don’t like my horse to get in pickle, so mostly she’ll be getting positive reinforcement – for her those things are food when she’s in the mood (that’s a lot!), scratches when she’s in the mood (“but there’s only so much scratching I like Jen”), and a canter up the common when she’s in the mood (quite often these days as she’s leaner and meaner). This all means that I don’t think food, when used most deliberately, gets in the way of greater sensitivity or connection to each other, but it will if there is no understanding about how it is given – from either party, horse or person!

Scientific definition
Positive reinforcement: To ADD a rewarding stimulus to the individual as a consequence of behaviour increasing the likelihood of that behaviour occurring in future.
Negative reinforcement: To REMOVE an aversive stimulus from the individual as a consequence of behaviour also increasing the likelihood of that behaviour occurring in future.

If a person wishes to become a horseperson who has a connection with his or her horses, that person needs to love horses, needs to understand what their horse’s behaviour means to their horse, and needs to learn how the laws of learning work and are applied (not necessarily in academic language, it’s practical application that’s at stake). Then they may become a horseperson and realise that the state of being for a horseperson is lifelong personal development. So yes, like Ghandi they may be different today as the result of what they learned yesterday – I know I am.

Giving up

Learned helplessness is a debilitated state where the horse has learned that it has no control over the outcomes of its behaviour. It is related to the use of aversive stimulation such as inescapeable restraint coupled with painful or otherwise adverse treatment and is a welfare concern(1). Horses that have no prior experience of successful escape or avoidance in other adverse conditions are more likley to be susceptible(2) .

Scientists called Seligman and Maier (3) took three groups of domestic dogs raised in a lab and tested their ability to escape after receiving one of three treatments. Two groups were put in a harness from which they could not escape - the first group experienced electric shock but learned they could stop it by pushing a panel with their nose. The second group received the shock but could not turn it off. The third group of dogs had no such treatments and were used as controls. When tested on their ability to escape electric shock by jumping a hurdle, the dogs in the first and third groups succeeded but the second group who were subjected to inescapable shock did not succeed. The conclusion was that the dogs that failed to escape had become learned helpless (3).


A possible way of causing learned helplessness in horses is to use the somewhat controversial Imprint Training. This comprises restraining a foal on the ground and exposing it to a variety of aversive stimuli, such as human fingers inserted up the nostrils and other orifices until it no longer struggles against the restraint. It was developed to make foals more tractable to veterinary treatment and husbandry (4).

Newborns have had limited time in which to solve any problems at all, and the procedure involves exposure to adverse stimuli until they stop trying to escape. There is some possible evidence of a learned helpless effect. Compared to controls, imprint trained foals were more easily handled (5,6,7) suggesting that either they had learned they couldn't escape from human handling or had habituated to human intervention. But as the foals got older and had no further imprint training, the differences reduced with imprint trained foals becoming harder to handle (5) with the effects of imprint training disappearing by six-months-of-age (6).

If imprint training did produce learned helplessness effects they clearly did not last. Maier and Seligman (2) also discuss more temporary effects such as mongrel dogs that were not lab reared and only subjects to one session of inescapable shock that were still able to successfully escape over the hurdle when tested.

The take home message. It's not advisable to subject animals to any situation in which they will be frightened and unable to escape!

1. Hall, C. Goodwin, D. Heleski, C. Randle, H. and Waren, N. 2008 Is there evidence of learned helplessness in horses? Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 11(3): 246-266
2. Maier, S. and Seligman, M. 1976 Learned helplessness: Theory and evidence Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 105(1): 3-46
3. Seligman, M. and Maier, S. 1967 cited in (2).
4. Miller, R. and Close, P. 1991 Imprint training of the newborn foal. Western horseman, Colorado Springs
5. Williams, J. Friend, T. Collins, M. Toscano, M. Sisto-Burt, A. Nevill, C. 2002 The effects of early training sessions on the reactions of foals at 1, 2 and 3 months of age. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 77: 105-114
6. Williams, J. Friend, T. Collins, M. Toscano, M. Sisto-Burt, A. Nevill, C. 2003 Effects of imprint training procedure at birth on the reactions of foals at age six-months. Equine Veterinary Journal 35(2): 127-132
7. Simpson, B. 2004 Neonatal foal handling. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 78: 303-317