Some thinking time....

This morning I decided to return to Velcro desensitisation, as well as doing a bit more cone work. I am a great believer in latent learning, so I hoped that Faith would have been processing our last few efforts with Velcro, and be feeling more relaxed about things.

As the weather is nice and quiet at the moment, we are taking the opportunity to work mainly on the yard, which is great. So I started ripping the Velcro, and clicking for Faith standing nice and still, which she generally does. I do this on quite a quick repetition, so that Faith can have a really high rate of reinforcement for it. So Faith is fine with it when I stand by her head, by her shoulder or by her tummy. What I really want to be able to do is rest it on her and rip the Velcro. So we worked up to that, I rested the fly mask on her shoulder, ripped the Velcro, and she skipped away. Too much Mum, don’t like that. OK then, I stood by her shoulder, did a few more rips while she stood quietly, and moved on to cone work.

Now I have probably done cone work with Faith maybe five or six times, compared to the twenty or so times I have done Velcro desensitisation with her. This morning her strike rate for picking up the cone and giving it to me was 100%! Brilliant! Now having said that, we still have some refinements to make. The behaviour is not on cue (at least not an intentional cue that I am giving), so the behaviour is not completely under control yet. Also because my cones are really light, I keep my toe on the corner of the base so she doesn’t knock it over, this means her strike rate can be higher, and consequently the rate of reinforcement is higher, which motivates her.

I need to revise my policy on this, as dealing with frustration and developing emotional control is something Faith needs to work on. I am of course bearing in mind that she is only just two years old, so I am not judging her too harshly, still it is a lesson that is best learned sooner rather than later. At the moment she deals with her frustration by giving me her ‘big’ shoulder and getting close to walking into me. She does this quite slowly, and I simply back her up by gesturing at her chest, and when she backs up a couple of steps out of my space, she gets rewarded, and we start again. There is nothing aggressive about it, but she is just clearly telling me that she doesn’t enjoy not getting it right, and finds it frustrating. So yes, I need to allow her to get it wrong a bit more, so that she becomes OK with that. In a sense, I have sacrificed that part of building the behaviour, in order to help get that behaviour established, and now I need to go back and address that.

But I couldn’t help thinking that even factoring all those points in, Faith has learned to pick up a cone faster than she has learned to accept Velcro. Now I wonder why that is. I have noticed that her body language is totally different between doing cone stuff and doing Velcro stuff. If I’m honest with myself when we are doing Velcro stuff, her weight is almost always on her outside fore, and she is looking away slightly. She is prepared to stay (and she is at liberty, so doesn’t have to), but in her heart of hearts, she would rather go. It also might be that cone work is just more fun for her because it is very interactive, (she is doing something, rather than having something done to her), so she is really in more control of the situation. It also might be that I am generally more relaxed about the cone work, because let’s face it, it really doesn’t matter if Faith can’t pick up a small plastic cone, but it kind of does matter if she can’t accept a rug. So maybe I am just giving off unconscious signals of tension when doing the rug stuff.

So what to do about it? Well firstly I am going to stop getting my knickers in a twist about rugs. I am going to buy a cheapy one like Tilly and Tommy’s rainsheets, that has no Velcro, and will more than adequately keep her dry. If I can’t use the ‘posh’ rugs till she is three four or five, then who cares, as long as she is healthy and dry somehow.

I am also going to keep up the work with Velcro, but slow it right down to ensure that she is totally relaxed with it, according to what I pick up from her body language.

So this brings me neatly on to the usefulness of teaching what I call ‘daft things’. Now I am not a fan of trick training, I have always been open about that. By that, I mean I don’t like the idea of teaching horses to do stuff that is essentially a human activity. For example, Alex Kurland (who I very much admire) shows horses who are trained to pick a paper out of a letter box, or put a basket ball through a hoop. I don’t really like that, as it seems to be trying to teach the horse to be a kind of pseudo-human, and I like horses to be horses, because their non-humanness is one reason why I like them so much! I feel the same about teaching dogs tricks as well.

Anyhow, there are some ‘daft things’ (such as picking up a cone) which I think can be ethically taught, because it is fun for the horse, it teaches them how to learn, and also it teaches the trainer how to teach. This is what I have found with Faith’s cone work. In itself it is a useless activity, however, when comparing it to the other stuff that I am teaching (e.g. rug stuff), it has been useful to compare and contrast not only the results, but the processes themselves. For example, the cone work has highlighted the need to help Faith with emotional control, that it is a good time to start teaching her about yielding her shoulders and quarters. It has helped to introduce carrot stretches, it has highlighted that being able to help the horse feel that they are in control of their training, makes them more confident, which in turn speeds up the learning process. It has also made me aware of things like the correct mechanics of treat delivery, and the importance of incorporating failure into the learning process, or rather, allowing it to be part of the process.

This will then inform and develop my training when it comes to the more ’important stuff’, and hopefully make it a more pleasurable and fruitful process for both Faith and I.