Groping in the dark and navel gazing!

This isn’t going to be as suggestive as the title may imply, so don’t get excited!

I post this blog on a couple of forums, as well as having my own blogspot. I do this because I really value the feedback I get from people who are very experienced with the art of clicker training, as well as those who are either new to it, or haven’t considered it as a training technique before. I really, really appreciate the time and effort people go to when writing comments on my blog, and it is a wonderful opportunity to look at my training through someone else’s eyes.

I am particularly blessed to have the support and advice of a few people who are very, very experienced in this field of training, and who have a unique ability to interpret things from a point of view that is totally horse centred. I admire this skill pretty much above all others in the horse world, and it is one that I am earnestly trying my hardest to develop. I am aware that my zealous attempts to nurture this skill, must often make me sound like a sanctimonious pain in the arse, but it does all come from a genuine intention to be totally honest about my own interactions with my horses, and a real desire to be a better horsewoman.

It is because of this, that no matter what small achievements I make through clicker training with my own horses, I still feel very much that I am right at the beginning of my path, and often groping blindly around in the dark, literally finding my way by ‘feel’ alone. That is another reason why blogging this process has become so important to me, as often I only really ‘learn’ what I have done, by looking at what I have done, if you see what I mean.

This was really brought home to me yesterday, when a wise person on another forum commented on my last little video clip of the step work I was doing with Faith. She noted Faith’s actions in lifting her foreleg a couple of times in the course of the training session, and congratulated me on noticing this displacement behaviour and taking the training back a couple of stages and rebuilding.

Well I couldn’t help but chuckle at this! Yes, I had noticed the behaviour, and I had taken things back a little bit, but that was probably more luck than judgement, and definitely more ‘feel’ than any kind of conscious decision. I certainly had not interpreted the foot lifting as any kind of displacement behaviour. In fact, if truth be known, I had to go off and Google ‘displacement behaviour’, to actually check that it meant what I thought it did! But, yes, that now makes sense. Faith at that moment was experiencing conflict between her desire to stay and be rewarded, and her anxiety at me climbing the steps.

Of course, the answer to this problem, is to take the training back a few steps to an anxiety free stage, and build again from there, so that there need be no conflict when that stage is reached again. So although, if I’m honest, that wasn’t my thought process during the making of that clip, it will be from now on. Another lesson learned through the generosity and observance of others.