Horseman's Arts » Sensitive Chestnut Mare with Baggage

It is Not About the Food

sharon — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:11:33 +0000

The lovely Danke

I thought I would follow up with my own observations of the experience with Danke and the massage therapist.

As you may recall (and if you missed it you can read about it here) Danke was not OK with having Heather standing on the hay bale while she worked on her croup area. This was the first time she had attempted to work with her like this. In the past if Danke needed to move Heather would just stay with her till she settled. But, since Danke is so tall (17+hands) it was necessary for Heather to stand on the hay bale to get a better look and feel of this particular area. As such it was necessary that Danke stand still. HA!

Initially I simply blocked Danke’s efforts to leave. However, when Heather invited me to join her on the hay bale to look at/feel a particular knotty area the problem escalated when there was no one up front to keep Danke still! So the first problem we solved with clicker training was just getting Danke to stand still long enough so that I could see what Heather wanted me to see. Then it was time for Heather to get to work. It was quickly becoming clear that just telling Danke not to leave was not helping her feel good about the process.

That’s when I said, “Well, you know, we could click her for standing here while you work. Do you think that would be too distracting?” As you know Heather believed it would be. But, I felt that it was worth a try because we weren’t going to get anything done at the rate we were going! So, we proceeded.

The part that I wanted to add to Heather’s story was how initially one might have questioned the sensibility of the plan. At first Danke tossed her head and stomped her feet. An inexperienced person might have said, “this isn’t working,” and quit.
But I kept the click/treats coming at a fairly high rate. Click for positiong her rump near Heather, click while Heather had her hand on her rump, click for stillness, click for relaxing the neck and so on. It really only took 5 extra minutes to start to see that Danke was ‘getting’ the idea that the clicks were coming when she let Heather ‘in’ and worked with her to release the area.

Heather’s surprise that the food would end up not being a distraction comes from one of the most common myths about clicker training. It is hard to wrap your head around it if you haven’t seen it time and again.

When the horse is really clicker savvy it isn’t about the food. It is about the process and the understanding.

Getting a Horse to Work WITH her Massage Therapist

heather — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 19:26:16 +0000

The author, Heather Davis, with Cheyenne

By Heather Davis

I am a certified equine “massage” therapist, applying principles of touch to encourage horses to release old neuromuscular strain patterns and relearn how to exist without previously held pain and resistance. Much of my work is informed by the work of Ida Rolf (known as “Rolfing” or Structural Integration), osteopathy, shiatsu, and myofascial release. Many horses, when asked to “let go” of old tension and memory stored within the body’s vastly intelligent network of innervated structural soft tissue, will take some time to relax into the willingness to release. I am asking horses to tune into parts of their body that may be uncomfortable. These are areas where, often, the horse has spent a great deal of time and energy avoiding. So, it is not surprising to see horses feeling fidgety or anxious about my request for their attention to be brought back into these areas.

Usually, when confronted with this “fidgety” response from a horse, I take it as a message to readjust my approach. It can take a bit of time initially to figure out how to get the horse willing to be with me and make releases. When I began working with Danke, Sharon’s tall and lovely chestnut warmblood mare, we had a little difficulty getting her to settle in and relax into the release process. Even the simple presence of my hand on or near some of her troubled areas would find Danke tossing her head, pinning her ears, and moving her body to avoid the touch. Since my work’s goal is to inspire release, it certainly wasn’t helpful to be battling Danke into demanding that she stand still and be

Danke

present with us. Sometimes those demands would lead to more resistance in her body and it would be the two-step-forward, three-step-back approach.

Sharon asked me how I felt about us clicking Danke for the behavior (namely the relaxed and willing behavior) we were looking for. Would it be distracting? I thought it would. I felt like shifting Danke’s attention “outward” onto the click and reward process with Sharon might take Danke’s attention away from me and my hands and from going “internal” with her attention. But, we decided to give it a shot.

I stood on a hay bale (Danke is a tall drink of water!) over Danke’s right hip area. Sharon stood at Danke’s head and we broke the whole process down into little pieces. First piece: asking Danke to stand next to the hay bale without moving while we briefly place a hand on the area of trouble. When Danke is still for even a moment in this, Sharon clicks and offers a reward. (This step actually consisted of a set of sub-steps.) Second piece: lengthen the time Danke is standing still next to the hay bale and remaining still (and relaxed) for a hand on her hip. Third piece: I wait for the “feeling” in my hands that Danke has shifted her attention to her hip and sacrum area. As soon as I feel this, I click, and Sharon is waiting at Danke’s head to offer the reward. Little by little, we are shaping Danke’s attention by rewarding her when she makes the decision to soften into my touch. It is working! And Sharon and I are so excited about what we have found! Teamwork! Danke is willingly deciding to bring her awareness into her troubled areas and offer release.

As it turns out, the use of “clicker training” was NOT distracting for Danke’s task of focusing inward. Not only was it not distracting, it was actually helpful! It allowed us to prevent instilling yet more resistance in her mind and body with continued requests for her to be still. Once she understood what we were asking (soften into my touch), the physical release process actually seemed much easier for her. The mental brace against the release of her hip was much more of a hurdle than the actual release of the hip itself. That is, once we opened the door with clicker training for Danke to let go of the mental guarding of her hip, the actual hands-on release work for that same area came relatively easily.

What a discovery!! I look forward to continuing this exciting work with Danke.

[Sharon's Note: Heather Davis is an Equine Massage Therapist. You can reach her via email at hdavis1234 @ yahoo.com.]

Danke’s story: solving a perplexing problem

sharon — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:30:07 +0000

Danke, a tall and beautiful sensitive chestnut mare, came to me for training with quite a bit of emotional baggage as a result of some unsettling prior experiences in her life. One positive was, though, she arrived quite clicker-savvy because her owner used clicker training to teach her some tricks during several months of recuperation for an injury.

Danke is one of the most sensitive horses I’ve ever met. She has a strong sense of self-preservation. I discovered early on I could not pressure her do anything. Either she bought in or it was ‘no deal.’ If she was feeling vulnerable and other horses were nearby she might just stop and start kicking the unsuspecting victim. I had to be very careful who was riding nearby.

Clicker training was instrumental to her recovery. There were quite a few holes in Danke’s training, so quite a bit of time was spent doing groundwork, longeing, and noodling under saddle in order to get all the little bits and pieces that worried her straightened out. But straighten out they did and now she is such a lovely horse to ride.

One of the most interesting parts of her story had to do with how I resolved a problem she had with cantering, especially to the left. Whenever Danke was asked for canter to the left, she immediately threw her whole body, stiff as a board, to the left. No matter how well things appeared to be going prior to asking for the canter left, as soon as she THOUGHT that we were going to canter she did the same thing.

During longeing, I had discovered that she was quite responsive to a “kiss” signal to canter. I decided that to resolve the problem under saddle I would do “nothing” to ask for canter in any “normal” way (with legs and seat); instead, I would sit upright with a very relaxed seat and just “kiss” for the canter. Before it could go bad, I would click the instant she thought about cantering. I could feel her start to take the first step with the outside hind. Of course she stopped mid-stride when I clicked. I fed her a lump of sugar and then set her up to canter again in the same way as before. Again I’d kiss and again I’d click the instant she thought about cantering. I repeated the procedure, again and again. Each time, though, I let her canter a little longer before I clicked. Again and again, I’d click, stop, and treat for “thinking of cantering,” “a step of canter,” “two steps of canter,” “a quarter of a circle of canter,” “half a circle of canter,” and finally “a whole circle of canter.” I continued in this manner day after day.

Of course, every day I was also clicking her for accepting my leg for forward movement, clicking for slow down, clicking for accepting turning aids. Little by little, when it came time to canter, I would begin to notice that she would accept my leg aid to request that she continue to canter, and I’d click that. Then I started to integrate some downward transitions, and I’d click those. Then upward transitions back to canter using my leg and seat in a normal manner. Of course, I’d click those, too.

I continued like this for no less than three months. Yes to the casual on-looker it appeared that I wasn’t ‘doing’ anything. And I seem to spend a lot of time stopping to feed treats. I was often asked, can’t you just canter that horse yet? I’d just smile and say, nope not yet. Every day, if she said she couldn’t do it, I would return to clicking for one stride. But bit by bit, it got better and better, until one day the problem was simply gone. Today she has a beautiful canter and is happy to pick it up when asked from trot or walk. This is just one example of rewarding the behavior you want and taking the time it takes. And having more than just a “little” faith in the process!