A chilled Filly

Tuesday 28 February 2012

Solo on Bonitao

Last night was a big night for me and Bonitao. Ritchie was away on a trip but said I could ride Bonitao. This is the first time I've ridden him without being under her watchful eye. To be honest it made little difference to what I did, I always imagine Ritchie, or worse James Roberts, is watching me whatever the circumstances of interacting with a horse. This really makes me focus on being precise with what I do and is a technique I would recommend to anyone to help really maintain focus during a session.
The prepare to ride went well, but was a bit limited by having another horse in the school being jumped. This also happened to be a horse that Bonitao dislikes with a passion thus adding to the energy. Whenever the other horse, a mare, came near his ears flattened right back in his most aggressive stare. Chris Cox states that he never allows his horse to do this, but I have not found any ideas on how to correct it.
Many people are surprised that we still do a prepare to ride on as mature a horse as Bonitao. For details see the Plan website. To be honest it only takes around 5 to 10 minutes more than not doing it as most of the plan is covered by normal riding preparation. "Touch all over" for example is done as I groom him, "place feet down" as his feet are picked out etc. The difference is one of awareness. Whilst I am picking out the feet I am gauging on a scale of 1 to 10 how good he is at placing the feet. A low score is fixed before moving on. Nine times out of ten nothing needs to be done and feet are picked out in the same time anyone else would take.
The only extra time taken is in moving him around prior to mounting in the prepare to ride and pre-flight checks section. Even this saves time and improves safety in the end as by the time I mount he has moved enough to be warmed up and has blown out enough that his girth is fully cinched up.
Yesterday having mounted I kept everything fairly low key with some "follow the rail" at walk and trot, sideways along the rail,and a couple of attempts at canter. Cantering was not so good so I decided to wait until Ritchie could watch again to coach me through it. As she said Bonitao was also on a first solo not having her there and my have been a little anxious as a result.
All in all a good ride, certainly boosting my confidence and hopefully his. With Filly and Billy off the agenda for the time being this is certainly one of the best ways I can improve my horsemanship, hours in the saddle.

Monday 27 February 2012

The future

Following the recent events I have had a few days to reflect and make some decisions.

First decision.
This turn of events has to be viewed as an opportunity. I can now focus more on my riding skills on our horse Bonitao and as luck would have it a couple of good friends have asked me to help them with a young 18month old colt.

Second decision.
This blog will continue, but of course will not be about Filly or Billy at the present. However in honor of two young horses who taught me so much in such a short time the name will remain the same. I'll document my riding and ground skills progress with Bonitao and add some more theoretical behavior posts as I get time to research and write them.

Third decision.
I am still committed to following my dream of becoming, in time, a proficient colt starter. I don't know why this somewhat dangerous aspect of horsemanship appeals to me so much, but it just does. Until you have experienced the joy and heartache of trying it, it is probably difficult to understand. I guess part of it is that I have always loved to teach. In the past I have lectured on all aspects of gliding for example. Everything from aerodynamics to human sports psychology. The joy of seeing progress in human or animal is brilliant and in young colts there is the satisfaction of seeing very rapid changes. Not just tiny incremental improvements in some dressage move or other but massive changes in their manner on an almost minute by minute basis.

Having said all that I am going to review Pats advice on approaching a horse in their stable and that will be the subject of my next technical post.

Saturday 25 February 2012

A Bombshell is dropped

I had a nice trip to Larnaca. Arrived there on Thursday afternoon and spent considerable time in the gym and learning to use my new skipping rope. Physio suggested it's use in order to increase the fast twitch muscle in my damaged hip. Then nearly the whole crew went out for a very pleasant meal at the local restaurant after which I retired to my room. Quick text to Ritchie (my wife) with my room number so that she could ring me for a chat.
Around 9:30pm UK time the phone rings and we chat about the days events with the horses. She has had a nice ride on Bonitao. Amy (the head girl) has tried riding him in our western saddle and loved it.

Then the bombshell.

She had been told by Rick that Filly had had her first ride earlier that day with Amy riding. It had all gone very well but to avoid confusing her with Parelli methods I was no longer able to train her at all. I could pet her and groom her in her box, but that was it. Amy and Sue (Ricks wife) had not mentioned this earlier to Ritchie. Ritchie was on the yard for the first ride but no one had let her know it was going to happen so I won't even get to see a video of this "coming of age" event for Filly.
Of course I knew this would happen one day, but it was the nature of the way it was done after all the time I have been playing with Filly that has left me deeply shocked.
I feel particularly upset that they could not let me know this was going to happen and at least give me time to knowingly have a last play with Filly. I had recently had a lesson with Becka (an instructor at James Roberts yard) and she had seen me play at liberty with Filly. She thought I would easily get my Level 3 Liberty audition with her and with only a little refinement Level 4. That would have meant so much to me, not for just getting a certificate but for being able to say "between us we achieved this level of trust and understanding". Liberty was easily our best and most fun activity. Now this has been taken away. I am also sorry for Filly that she will probably never play at Liberty again, able to express her joyful horsenality.
I was also upset that after waiting 2 years for her to be ridden there was suddenly such an all fired hurry to back her that they could not a couple of days for me to be at home and witness the event.
A subsequent comment from Amy was that she was difficult to lunge as she kept turning in on the circle. Well I can guess why. If she feels more than 4 ounces of pressure on the rope she will yield to it and turn to follow the feel. Of course lunging must never be done with the rope trailing on the ground I am told so pressure must have been applied to keep the rope tight, hence she turned in.

The only compensation I have is the knowledge that I have given her a decent start in life. When I started playing with her she could not even go in a field with other horses as she got severely beaten up by them. She had been rejected by her mum and so had not had a good grounding in horse etiquette and would annoy any horses around her. As a result I had to learn Natural horsemanship so that I could teach her how to be a natural horse. That really is starting from a negative level. Slowly we taught her enough so that she could safely stay in a field with other horses, who could then give her the life instruction she had been missing.
She also matured into a horse that could accept human contact and not feel threatened. To start with she used to try and put preemptive strikes in as she was sure the human was going to hurt her. It got to the stage where she totally trusts me, so far as I can tell, and will unflinchingly put herself in a vulnerable position by rolling at my feet.

I am going to miss that happy questioning face looking at me as I approach her stable with halter in hand and the way she would canter to me in the field with sheer exuberance (see video link on right) and then stick to me as we played at liberty. Also the way that she would change from playing exuberantly with me then immediately stop and put her head in my arms for a cuddle.
All in all she was one of my best friends and a teacher without whom I would not have made nearly as much progress as I have. Her difficulties really gave me the motivation to study the subject in depth out of a desire to help her as much as I could.

As for the future ?
I have been told that I can continue playing with Billy, but I won't. It is now clear that Sue and Rick have absolutely no interest in trying natural methods to work with horses, preferring the traditional methods that have produced serviceable horses for them in the past. A shame that they are not open enough to at least have come into the school occasionally in the last two years to see what I was doing, but I was told in no uncertain terms that they were not interested and I was not to even discuss our techniques with the yard girls. As a result playing with Billy would purely be for my benefit and would not help him at all.
I will probably not spend much time petting and grooming Filly either, much as would love to. Parelli is not something one just "does" in the school, it involves all interactions with the horse. The blanket ban on me doing any training with her thus precludes such activities as well. In addition there is a part of me that wants to keep alive the memory of Filly as she is now, not as she will become after traditional methods of training have been applied to her.

Lastly I would just like to say "THANK YOU FILLY FOR ALL YOU TAUGHT ME AND THE FUN WE HAD TOGETHER"

Wednesday 22 February 2012

Reinforcement part 2

 I copied my last post to the Parelli Savvy club forum and received some replies including the following from Kris. I pushed my banking analogy to near breaking point to answer the query and have copied it here for the sake of completeness.


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Kris Hughes wrote:

It is the question of the subject becoming sensitized or desensitized to the stimulus. I have a long history of working with the less overtly sensitive type of horse (draft type ponies) and observe them becoming disinterested in both niddle and piddle as delivered by me. I also notice that I then tend to operate in a way that can oversensitize more highly strung horses - usually not in a good way!

Off to check out your blog ... 
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My reply

As time wore on the banker got used to seeing the notice go up on the noticeboard announcing his imminent sacking. He realised that he had probably become too valuable to the bank and that they had never made any serious attempt to sack him and so he started to ignore the notice and just trade as he pleased. Confusingly he still got the odd bonus, though they seemed to relate to no particular activity on his part, so these began to mean less as well. In fact he was now in a place that meant there was little the bank could do in order to motivate him to trade more actively in the way they wanted him to.
Slowly the bank managers realised their mistake and agreed amongst themselves to be much much more careful as to when a piddle bonus was to be awarded. It had to be done when the banker had actually done something they liked, rather than just on a whim. They also realised that the notice provided no pressure to him as he was totally desensitized to it and thus the niddle reinforcement method stopped working. But how to resensitise him to the dismissal notice. Drastic action was called for. They had to follow through on the threat and dismiss him. Not permanently as they still needed him, but temporarily. In addition they had to pick their moment. If they sacked him for a small transgression he was likely to just leave and never come back. They had to pick a time when the new phase of pressure was justified and would be considered (after careful reflection) by the banker to be so.
It didn't take long. As the banker was now desensitized to all that the management could do to him he had become a bit maverick. He was no longer trading just in metals as they wanted him to. One day he bought futures in a new firm setting up to export bikinis to Greenland. Just the opportunity they needed. He was summarily dismissed and given a book on global climate to read just to show the stupidity of his actions. This placed him under huge psychological pressure. He knew that with this reckless behavior he was unlikely to get a job at another bank.
After a few days a letter was sent to him asking if he would like to renegotiate his contract with the bank. Much relieved he returned, but to the realisation that not only did the notice on the board have real teeth, but he had to work much harder to get a bonus in future.
Management also realised their mistake and stopped issuing dismissal notices for very little apparent reason but reserved them for when they were needed and justified. The result was that the banker realised that the notice did actually mean something, was not just an idle threat but something that could really be carried through. He was confident when the notice was on the board with just a few letters of the signature that it was not an imminent dismissal, just a warning, so the notice did not make him so afraid that he wound up unable to think. However he now knew the bank could follow through on its' threat. This opened up new levels of communication which could be subtler and lighter than before and may even just be a blank piece of paper where the notice was usually placed. Thus confident he went on to make more an better deals. In time even his piddle bonuses reappeared, but only when really deserved.

I've pushed the banking analogy as far as my imagination extends now so back to real world of horses.
There is much talk about desensitising horses to all sorts of things, balls, tarps, lawn mowers etc. People are even proud about the objects to which there horse will not respond. The truth is that due to their nature it is relatively easy to desensitise a horse to all manner of stimuli, but in very few cases is it actually desireable.
If only we could replace the word "desensitise" with the phrase "make confident about" then we would leave our horse light and responsive to our signals, rather than dull. Thus we can play with a stick and a flag for hours, waving it around with low body energy in friendly game and like the banker (where the bank had no energy to follow through) they quickly learn to ignore the stimulus. The trick is to stop using the stick and flag in friendly game as soon as they are confident in its presence but not dull to it. How to gauge this ? I would suggest that this point occurs when they actively move towards it with curiosity, not away in fear or unconfidence. Thus the horse still recognises that the flag is there and reacts to it, but not in fear. From then on the flag should be kept as a communiucation device, not a freindly device. It is a fine balancing act which may require more friendly game with it from time to time to reestablish confidence, but better that side of the line than dull.
I must admit to making the desensitising mistake with Filly and the stick and flag. To resensitise her to it I would have to make it extremely aversive, probably more so than I have the emotional control to do with a horse I love. My solution has been to store this experience away and find another means to communicate with her other than the flag. Stick and string is what I tend to use exclusively now. My other horse, Billy, I was very careful about and we still have good, confident communication with the flag.

p.s Should you go to see James Roberts don't make my mistake and mention the word desensitising. A short repost or longer lecture may result !

Thursday 16 February 2012

Reinforcement

I have been thinking long and hard about this subject trying to fully understand it and now, with the help of Equitation Science, I think I have got it ! I am going to use this blog to try and explain my understanding of it and maybe if I still have it wrong someone can use the comments section to correct me.

There are two types of reinforcement that are used in training animals (or humans), "piddle" and "niddle" (bear with me on these strange words). I would like to use the analogy of a banker working in a bank where he cannot directly speak the language of the bosses to get the idea across. Again bear with me on this, all MAY become clear !
So this mythical English speaking banker has arrived at his new job in a foreign land. Snag was no one told him they didn't speak a word of English, but he knows his job and so figures he can work out what the bosses want. He is a little perturbed when his dismissal notice appears on a noticeboard in the office, but relieved to note that the signature of the boss is not attached. This has placed him under some psychological discomfort and he realises that this must mean that he is not performing the job as expected. He tentatively goes about his business and tries to appease the boss by buying a few Greek debt bonds and is alarmed to see that the first two letters of the signature has been added to the notice, so rapidly sells them. One letter it tipexed out. Phew I must be headed in the right direction. He has just had his first taste of Niddle reinforcement, and whilst the notice is still there, feels a little more comfortable. The next day he scans his investment strategy possibilities and buys some subprime mortgages from the USA. Five letters of the signature appear. That can't be right and so now feeling very uncomfortable he sells them to a suitable sucker and four of the letters are suddenly removed. That feels much more comfortable and he has had his second taste of Niddle reinforcement. He also now has a good idea of what the boss does not want, but the notice is still there. He now tries, tentatively, buying a few ounces of gold for which he pays a fair price. All the signature is now removed and the signature space is blank. Ah ha, feeling much more comfortable now but relalising that more must be needed to get rid of the notice altogether he buys more gold and some platinum for good measure. The notice is removed altogether and replaced buy a nice fat bonus cheque, which not only removes all his psychological pressure but makes him feel valued and secure at the same time. He has undergone his third niddle reinforcement and received his first piddle reinforcement. He relaxes and puts his feet up. After a few days the notice returns causing a little concern, but he also realises there is a way to make the notice disappear. There must be more work to do. This time he scans the market, sells his platinum and buys some copper. Notice is gone. So this is a metals trading exchange he is in. Now he has a good notion of how to behave and it becomes easier and easier to get that notice removed from the wall (niddle reinforcement), he also gets more piddle reinforcemts in the form of bonus cheques, dinner vouchers etc.
After a while he has been doing so well that he is continually getting piddle reinforcements and comes to regard them as part of his basic salary, feeling undervalued and annoyed at his employer when he fails to receive them for doing nothing.
This causes his employer a problem. To get to the point at which niddle reinforcement again works he has to give the banker a shock to his system, remove all the piddle rewards and again place the notice on the board. He realises that he is now risking having the banker resign altogether as the banker now perceives the removal of the piddle reinforcement as a pay cut, but has to take the risk. On this occasion all is well and the banker gets back to work, but the employer realises he must not take this risk too often and gets better at balancing the niddle and piddle reinforcements.
From this it can be seen that niddle and piddle reinforcements all lie on a continuum. The middle point of the line is no reinforcement at all (the few days when he did nothing in the analogy). On either side of this "neutral point" lie two different regimes. If niddle reinforcement is on the left side of neutral and piddle on the right it should be apparent that to move along the line from left to right the banker must make and attempt at doing the correct thing and is rewarded by being made to feel more comfortable. If they are to the left of neutral this may involve the removal of some of the discomfort that it being applied. Removal of discomfort is by definition going to make him feel somewhat more comfortable.

Lets get back to reality. I've purposely used the words Piddle and Niddle to overcome the layman's disquiet of the words positive and negative. To the average person something that is "negative" has the unfortunate connotation of being bad. In the animal behaviorists dictionary this is not the case and the terms have a more defined meaning. I hope it is obvious that I am using the word Niddle for negative and Piddle for positive. So niddle reinforcement is negative reinforcement.

Niddle reinforcement occurs when an applied discomfort, such as pressure on the bit, is removed, hence the term "negative". It is used in it's mathematical sense of "to take something away" (in this case discomfort) rather than in its popular sense of "being bad".
In Parelli terms, then, let us consider the phrase "Pressure motivates, release teaches". Applying the pressure is NOT reinforcement, it is asking for the response. Thus applying discomfort is NOT negative reinforcement, subtracting the pressure when the correct response occurs IS negative reinforcement. The release of the pressure is the niddle reinforcement that teaches the correct response to the original applied pressure.

Positive reinforcement lies on the other side of neutral and involves adding something nice, like a treat, to reinforce the offered behavior. The trick, as the employer above discovered, is to carefully balance the use of piddle reinforcement and niddle reinforcement so that the neutral point stays at neutral.

If too much piddle reinforcement is given then the employers idea of a bonus can quickly be seen by the banker as a right. Thus unbeknownst to the employer the banker has a new neutral point in the reinforcement continuum and the withholding of what are bonuses, in the employers eyes, will be seen as application of pressure in the bankers eyes. The neutral point from the point of view of the banker is now in what was originally the piddle region of the scale. The snag with horse training, of course, is that it may be impossible to give the bonuses continually at the right time to keep the horse feeling that it is in the neutral spot. It could be at the end of a 45 foot line after all. (The banking community is having similar problems as we speak of course ! How to readjust the lack of a bonus to be the neutral state).

With this post I have hoped to convey that positive and negative reinforcement are in effect the same thing, but they lie on different sides of a neutral point. One of our responsibilities is to ensure that neutral point occurs in an appropriate and consistent place. I have also tried to explain that "negative reinforcement" is nothing bad, it is just a scientific term. I had someone explain the other day that they think negative reinforcement is awful and they never use it. I asked if they ever put pressure on a bit, with the leg, even with the eyes. Of course they did. This showed that they did use negative reinforcement, but just did not understand the term and it's application.

I believe that it is the popular use of the word "negative" and it's connotation of something bad, that leads people to think that it is the application of pressure that is negative reinforcement, whereas in fact it is the removal of that pressure that is negative reinforcement. To overcome this inbuilt prejudice you may find it easier to use the words Niddle and Piddle, but I suggest you do it under your breath in the presence of others

Monday 6 February 2012

Rapport

Sorry it has been a while since my last update, but things have been busy around here.
Following on from the audition, I made the resolution to not continue the mistake of being too focussed on the performance, but become more focussed on the rapport.
I believe that many people mistake rapport with just making the horse love you. Having played in my mind with the concept I now realise that rapport is made up of all three of the "Love, Language, Leadership" trio. Think of it as a three legged stool. By improving each element it's leg is made thicker and stronger and less prone to accidental damage. Eventually the legs are strong enough that you can put real pressure on the stool and sit on it without it falling over. Neglect a leg and you wind up breaking the stool and lying flat on your back on the ground ! (I originally put a slightly ruder sentence in but changed my mind :-) )

Sure "Love" is part of it and Filly and I spent a long time with me just cradling and stroking her head this evening, but "Language" is also important.

If you don't have language then you both get frustrated with each other and rapport is damaged. Of course to get Language it is sometimes necessary to use a high level of pressure (phase 4), not often but it happens. I used to worry that this would break the rapport but in fact it enhances it as our ability to communicate gets stronger.

Leadership is also a vital part and this comprises two parts in my opinion.
The most important is to have a plan so that you can act like a leader even if that is just a plan to play hard for the evening and have fun. Having a plan changes your body language and makes you act like a leader. I don't mean "I am going to do friendly game for 3 minutes, followed by two minutes of porcupine, then 3 minutes of driving etc etc". That's not a plan as it doesn't lead anywhere except to a bored horse. A plan is "by the end of the session I want to have my horse left brained, forward thinking and have the rapport intact. We will work on my ability to ask for a good squeeze game and use her play drive to achieve it. I don't even want her to realise we are training, we are just playing and I will use whatever elements of NH I need to to achieve the goal".
The second is to use the "attitude of justice is effective" principle, especially with a left brain dominant horse like Filly. Today for example we were doing squeeze game at liberty. As she came past me in the squeeze she flicked her tail and tapped my jacket with it. That was like giving me the finger in horse language, I was quick enough to respond almost instantly with my "tail", the string on my stick, and tag her with just an ounce more energy than she had me. The look on her face was a picture. Ears pricked she looked at me with new respect and did not flick her tail on subsequent passes. The key here was a) timing and b) I tagged the zone that had offended me.

To achieve these lofty goals I have been playing with way more energy on my part, particularly at liberty. We now turn and burn with quick fire changes in the games. From stick to me at canter over a jump, to direction changes, to circling game, to squeeze game, to YoYo. All the games (except maybe porcupine) are involved, but not as individual games but as part of a whole. Filly gets really excited. Her direction changes are exuberant and expressive. Sure she leaves my side at stick to me for a second or two, but that is just exuberance and I can't canter fast enough to satisfy her play needs ! The slightest nod of my head and she rejoins me. This is not slow precise training, just fun and rapport building and as a result her liberty squeeze game became really really good.
The proof that this attitude helps building rapport is that after all the high energy and adrenaline charged activity she calms down in an instant as I drop my energy and stands with her head in my arms for a long cuddle. No prey animal is going to let a predator wrap their arms around its head unless there is some degree of trust and rapport there are they ?