The Fire-Breathing Winter Dragon and Clicker Training

It's been an awful winter. In fact, if I didn't know better, I would be convinced the gods of fate had it in for me. I got a horse in June and all was fine for a while, but in September the rains started in the desert. They increased in October. They obliterated the world in November. OK, realistically they only obliterated the arena where Lexi is boarded, but it felt like the world (though granted some of the other things going on at that time might have contributed to the feeling of world obliteration).

My friend Doris had a relatively dry arena for a while, so I had a couple of lessons with dressage instructor Meg Hayes there but couldn't do anything effective in between those lessons. I pulled Lexi's shoes, learned to put on EasyBoots, and rode in the orchards.

Then the snow fell. And fell. And continued to fall. A freeze-thaw cycle punctuated by freezing rain led to layers upon layers of ice on the road edges, on the lanes, in the arena. It never thawed enough to get rid of the snow, so the ice mixture got deeper. Lexi, who has a strong spirit of self-preservation, tramped herself a little track down to the bottom of the field, where she stamped out a spot to stand, and made herself another path to her hay-feeding tire and shelter (not that she's particularly interested in shelter). For weeks, she tiptoed up and down the field, and from the gate to the feeder, careful not to fall. I was grateful for her caution, as several of my friends had falls themselves when feeding or crossing parking lots, and others ended up with horses who fell and got injured.

To my relief, clicker training helped us both out. It's amazing what one can accomplish with clicker training while standing still. We worked on holding a Jolly ball, then with picking it up, with a "relax" cue to help her drop her head, with "smile," which means Stand quietly and prick your ears, and with "pose," which means Do your Pilates exercise. Lift your head, arch your neck and rock back so that you're lifting your core. We worked on standing and cautiously walking (on the less slippery days) with a tarp stretching from ears to butt. We also practiced the "bridesmaid walk" to the best of our ability on days it was less icy and we could do more than stand. The slow, steady clicker work kept me sane and it tired her mind out so she was happier overall than she would have been otherwise.

Practicing the "bridesmaid walk."
I love how we're in sync.

I taught her to drop her head when I put my hand on her poll, then cued the word "relax" so she would respond to the word alone.

Working on our Pilates Pose

Last week, I got clearance to ride after my surgery. We have no arena, no round pen, no place for Lexi to safely buck away the spring jollies. I've dug her gate free of ice and have been walking her in the orchards and she does her best to be good, but she's definitely not Little Miss Relaxation at this point. A few days ago, just over six weeks past my surgery, I saddled her, handwalked her up the lane to determine that she was in a reasonably calm state, then mounted. She stood like a rock for mounting and our flexing exercise (turn head and neck to left and right before moving off). We then went out on the lane for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. I used our clicker work to C/T lowered head and signs of relaxation. She was a bit rushed, an indication of tension, but she was willing to stop and breathe a moment and take a treat. Given the circumstances, I was impressed. (See video below.)

Cue several miserable weather days: Snow and more snow. Ice. Rain. More Ice.

Then today. Gorgeous blue skies, above freezing temps. Time to try riding again! And she was amazing. I saddled her, did a little ground work to determine her frame of mind, then mounted. Off we went into the orchards. We only went for about half an hour, mainly because neither of us is fit and I prefer not to trot until I've had at least a week of walking when I'm re-conditioning. My plan was to just walk, but Lexi had different ideas. She was 100,000 Kjs of energy, but I used clicker training to help contain it. We worked on a lot of walk-trot transitions and some lateral work on the lanes. I used C/T to reinforce the slower, more relaxed responses, including a long, low walk. 

And guess what?! She seems to have internalized "Relax" as a cue. I would hold the reins at the buckle and tell her "Relax." She'd drop her head and slow her walk. I'd C/T. When we walked off again she'd start off in her fast off-beat walk and I'd tell her "Relax," then C/T as soon as she lowered her head and slowed her walk. By the time we were home, she was doing more of the slower, steadier walk and stopping as soon as I C/T'd her. And she was chewing more calmly again.

For a horse who hasn't been ridden in weeks, and hasn't even been able to buck out the Jollies, that's pretty darn impressive. 

This is our first ride out after my surgery and weeks of ice and snow.

Playground Play and Posing with Lexi

Goal accomplished: Lexi stands quietly while I
take a picture on the way back from our ride.

With these snowy conditions, I haven't been able to do much riding, but I have been able to work on small projects with Lexi that might otherwise get designated to another day. One of my goals has been to work with her on stopping and standing when we're out in the orchards. She likes going out and has a nice forward walk for a small horse, but she doesn't like to stop and stand. I've tried to convince her that if she would just hang out beneath an apple tree she'll be well rewarded, but she hasn't been convinced. And in Kevin's "playground," a part of the farm that's dedicated to fun, she gets anxious. It's a lovely spot with a small pond (though not one we can take the horses into) and some flat and hilly ground for galloping and lots of little logs for jumping. In the summer there's a water complex too, but it's full of snow today as is the playground in general. Every time we got out there, she wants to take off, which would be fine if there weren't gopher holes hiding under the snow and the potential for slipping. So my goal has been to get her listening even when she's feeling spicy.

The challenge with clicker-training Lexi in particular is that she's not food-motivated when she's tense. She has broadened her view of acceptable treats, but until two days ago I could rarely get her to eat one when we were out. When she did, she usually gobbled it down while she tried to charge off or held it in her mouth as she stared at whatever goblin might be up ahead. 

But we've been doing a lot of click/treating while walking out in the snow the past couple of weeks, and two days ago we ventured into the playground and walked around the pond and up the hill past the cross-country jumps that usually get her wired up. As usual she would start getting high-headed and "looky," but this time I asked her to walk figure-eights on the ground around me, then disengage her hind quarters, with plenty of clicking and treating for a quiet response. And pretty soon she was offering me behaviors. What if I drop my head to the snow? Click/treat. What if I stand quietly with my ears pricked? Click/treat. What if I touch this log? Click/treat. And so on.

And yesterday we rode out in the orchards and for the first time she stopped to take treats quietly and appeared to be trying to sort out what behaviors might get her a click/treat. What if I walk faster? Drop my head at the walk? Stretch my nose forward? How about a trot transition? The beauty of the click is that the response to what she's doing is immediate. She gets instant feedback. "Yes, that's a lovely walk." "Yes, rounding your neck and lifting your back is absolutely the right thing to do." And so she does it again. And again. And if I respond with perfect timing (hah!), theoretically I could make rapid progress towards whatever my goal is. 

The challenge for me is sorting it all out. Clicker training teaches mindfulness, because it's very easy to miss a clickable moment, or worse, to click the wrong thing because you're a split second late. So, for example, when tied for grooming, Lexi has her little buoy to target as I'm grooming. She has a small repertoire of behaviors which I'm working to "microshape." That is, I want to take her from touching the buoy with her nose stretched out and her neck flat and change her "shape" to an arched neck, her weight balanced and slightly rocked back so that she lifts her back at the halt. It's something Alexander Kurland calls "the pose."* We've been working on the pose over the last few days and today, as I was grooming her, I had her standing closer to the buoy, her neck lifted and her head more perpendicular to the ground than it has been, as well as her ears pricked. I was working to click her only when she gave me a more attractive look as she touched the buoy, a step closer to the pose (I'm not asking for the finished product. It's too soon!) If you were watching, you would have seen her moving her head quite a bit. What if I touch the snow? No? OK, how about wiggling my lips on the buoy? No? What about looking out across the distance with my ears pricked, with my nose almost on the buoy? Click/treat. Hurray! OK, what about pricking my ears with my nose on the buoy. Click/treat. Yeah!!!!! 

And so on. But if I mistime the click, I'm clicking her for turning her head towards me, or for pinning an ear, or for taking a bite out of the buoy, so I have to be absolutely mindful in order to click at the right moment. I don't always get it right and that's why it's a slow process, but it's always fixable. If something isn't working, I just go back to the previous step. 

Next up: Using play, and fixing as I go.

*Make sure to watch this video by Alexandra Kurland to see what "The Pose" will lead to (I hope) as my work with Lexi progresses.

Engaging Readers, Conversations about Writing, and the Wisdom of Combining Horses and Words

My previous post, with its question about how to engage readers, generated a microscopic blip on the "stats" for my blog -- but more importantly it also generated a couple of helpful conversations. My friend Peter Reed wrote, "I believe that current social media is moving towards a visual sense only. Check out Instagram or snap chat. Both are predominantly visual .... It's getting more and more difficult to get people to read something longer and more complex."

The chart to the left, shared by my friend Jill Widner, reveals some sobering facts about reading and books. My novel faces an uphill slog towards publication for a good reason. But still: 43% of books are read till the end, savored I hope, and loved. And if 70% of adults haven't been in a bookstore, perhaps at least a certain percentage of those bookstore-deprived people have ordered books online, or directly from an author's site, as I've done on occasion. Why pay the middlepeeps when you don't have to?

As a child, I read voraciously. While my sisters and their friends usually used their 20-pence pieces to buy Cadbury's chocolate or other sweets at H. Williams* in Dundrum after Mum picked us up from school on Wednesday afternoons, I always bought cheap volumes of Enid Blyton's Secret Seven and Fabulous Five series. I read them by flashlight under my duvet at night, but loved more furiously Watership Down and The Yearling, which brought me to sobs in the silence of my room. And now I want to do what writers did for me so many years ago; they replaced the cold blue of my room with sailboats and islands and horses galloping down shale slopes and rabbits in deep underground warrens and dying fawns. (I read The Yearling only once, and can't imagine reading it again. It turned me against guns and hunting and any desire to eat meat; I cried for days, and while that might sound devastating and terrible, I think it's not: "The more a child reads, the likelier they are able to understand the emotions of others," the chart above says. Yes. That.)

Pam, a long-time, now-retired colleague, asked me a couple of provoking questions: "But the question in your blog is how does a writer engage readers. So, who will the readers be? How do you expect or anticipate them to show engagement? Are they going to be readers or reader/writers?"

I had to think about the answer for a while. I wasn't thinking of an audience for my novel Entangled Time as I wrote it. My sister Moira had read the draft and said it reminded her of a cross between Maya Angelou and the novel The Help. I think that works. It's literary, I hope, somewhat historical fiction, and perhaps is written in an accessible enough way to be appealing to an audience with an interest in topics such as racism, dying, love, the nature of God, physics, intergenerational secrets and family dysfunction. 

But that brings me to the question of the audience for my blog. I began it to track how I'm doing connecting with my formerly abused horse Lexi without a sense that I was writing "to people." That was the plan, anyway.  Then I got self-conscious and started writing for an imagined audience, so my writing took on a more structured, formalized feel. And now I'm throwing in writing as a topic and I'm wondering how few of my potential readers might love both horses AND writing. Should I split the blog up? Two blogs: Horse training (via the clicker), and a sabbatical-theme blog about writing and engaging readers? 

Oh, screw it. That's getting entirely too complicated. People are multi-faceted. If you're like my dad and you think horses are worthless creatures that "bite at one end, kick at the other and consume a hell of a lot of money in the middle," then ignore the horse posts. And if you just want Lexi stories and not all these words about writing and readers and theories about humanity, ignore the writing posts. Yes?

It's a work in progress, that's for sure. Now to figure out how to get the visuals that will hold the attention of increasingly visual readers!

*H. Williams image scanned by Brand New Retro and found here.

Percolating

Places to Percolate

I woke last Saturday with a sense of shock. I was done; I had turned in my grades. I was looking at six months without teaching. Vertigo -- immediate, unprecedented. I've been working in some way or another since I started babysitting at 12 years old. I had summer breaks in college and for my first few years of teaching, and years ago I had a quarter-long sabbatical to write about Sebastian Barry closely followed by another one to work on the breast-cancer memoir that I wrote with my mother.  But that was 16 years ago. Since then I've been teaching straight, including summers, without a break.

At the end of every quarter I turn in my grades and breathe a sigh of relief. Then I wake the next morning and think about prepping. It's who I am. It's how I've lived. I can't imagine what it's like not thinking about what I'm going to do for my next set of classes -- tweaking curriculum, adding a new activity, figuring out state-of-the-art software. So a moment of giddy joy on Saturday turned almost immediately into a kind of panic. But before I could plunge too deeply into the void, Azalea came in to remind me we were going Christmas tree catching the next day and I was able to focus my energy on the familiar -- getting out the decorations, moving things around to make room for the tree, not-thinking not-thinking not-thinking about having nothing to do for six months.

What I know about myself is that the best way for me to write is to not write. I have to do nothing* in order to write freely. It's how I think. And it's impossible to do enough nothing when I'm working.

So Saturday I prepped for the Christmas tree, and Sunday we went and chopped down our Charlie Brown tree in the woods in a wee bit of a snow storm, then drank hot chocolate with Peppermint Schnapps to get warm before the drive home, and Monday I paid bills and cleaned things and continued not to think about the nothing that is waiting for me, and Tuesday -- which is today -- I ran on the ditch bank through snapping cold air, feet breaking through the thin crust on the snow that fell last week, and finally allowed myself to think about the nothing.

And this evening, after Azalea left to hang with her boyfriend, I made a plan. Right now I have a journal where I will write morning pages, and I will have this blog which is my baby-step move towards fulfilling my sabbatical promise. And tomorrow I will ask the Peoples of the Internets what you all think about how a writer who writes best by doing nothing can do something to engage with readers in the new world beyond the garret. 

For the moment, that's enough. I await your suggestions, peeps.

*And by "nothing," I mean I need time to be mindless, walking, running, cleaning the house, riding (for although riding itself is mindful, many of the chores around riding allow space for that "nothing" in which writing develops).

I'm Not Afraid of that Monster!

I'm Not Afraid (Video -- also posted on FB)

Today, when I got to the farm, I found myself in a text conversation with my sisters, so didn't go "catch" Lexi right away. Afterwards, as I was pulling items out of my storage space, I heard thundering hooves and looked across to see who was charging around. It was Lexi. She was galloping and gallivanting at the bottom of her paddock. When she saw me she whinnied and charged up to the gate. I got the distinct impression she had been trying to get my attention, and when I wasn't getting her more subtle hints, like nickers and pacing the fence (and probably smiling, or touching various potential targets), she got irritated and decided to see if thundering hooves would make me pay attention to her. I had intended to go straight to riding, but she was so happy I figured I'd better do some fun stuff with her for a bit, so before riding out in the orchards we “played” in the round pen. I put a bunch of "monsters" in there for her to pick from. She went from one to the other. She upended the green bucket. She nuzzled the old saddle pad. She pawed at and tried to eat the tarp. She lined herself up by the mounting block for me (and actually tried to step up on it -- I'm hoping to ask Kevin if he'll help me build a bridge for her if I buy the materials).

And I imagined what it would be like to have a baby, a furry little sweet-faced Lexi baby whom I could play with using this kind of training. Instead of the traditional sacking out ritual, where you do a kind of dance with the horse wanting to take off and you putting pressure on and then removing it right before the horse is about to leave until he or she finally decides the thing isn't scary after all, instead of that the horse picks the pace, decides to play with the monsters as he or she is comfortable, learns that approaching the monster is a choice that's rewarded with a click/treat. I could go so far with a baby long before I ever sat on his or her back. We'd be dancing on the seashore together with no tack in no time. We could audition for Cavalia or Odysseo! It would be great!

OK, back to reality. I have no idea what I'm doing, and both of us are just fumbling around trying to figure each other out. But it's fun.

In gratitude to Lexi. (And now back to those papers I have to read before Monday!)

Playing statues -- Or Why It Is Better to Use the Clicker than Round Pen "Join Up"

One of the beauties of clicker training is that one can use it anytime and anywhere, for just a few minutes here and there, and accomplish training and skills and self- and horse-awareness that translates to work under saddle. (At least, that is what I've read, and that is what I am experiencing with Lexi.)

And before we go any further, here is a caveat. I am not an expert either at horse training in general or clicker training in particular. But I do know what I've seen and read about clicker training for both dogs and horses is that it's positive, fun and effective. Imagine how much more amazing our results would be if I knew what I were really doing!

With the time change, I've had little opportunity to ride in the evening, but occasionally I've had time to run out to the farm and spend a few minutes doing ground work with Lexi. Today we worked at Playing Statue, in which I click/treat her for standing still. In the picture below, you can see her standing on her mat. I've taught her to stand on it while I'm grooming her, and today I worked on having her stand on it while I saddled her up. 

The above picture shows her on her good side. The next picture is her bad side; i.e. she prefers to keep me on her left (common with many horses) and so she had moved a step back off her mat as I was going to get the saddle. But beyond that, she was very good. We are also working on having her "smile" for the camera. I'm trying to capture her when she's looking straight ahead with her ears forward. She rather likes to frown at cameras, so teaching her to look pretty for her pictures is a goal for me!

Now, it's possible to teach horses to stand free for grooming using the old round pen trick of sending the horse away if she moves, keeping the pressure on till she shows signs of wanting to connect with you, and then removing the pressure so that eventually she learns that the best place to be is standing right by you. This is called aversive training. When you use aversive training, you do something the horse doesn't like in order to get her to do something you want her to do. Using pressure to send the horse away when she's moving around as you groom, then removing that pressure as soon as she looks towards you (or flicks her ear in your direction), teaches her that if she "joins up" with you, she won't experience pressure. This kind of aversive pressure doesn't have to be cruel. My sense is that old-time natural horsemanship cowboys use it all the time, and it can be light pressure used with such meticulous feel, timing, and balance that the horse rapidly connects to the trainer and feels comfort in being with him. 

Many natural horsemanship trainers tell you they're simply using herd dynamics to communicate with the horse. I had a horse many years ago who would follow me wherever I went -- including over jumps and around cones in intricate patterns -- and whom I could ride with a rope around his neck. The initial connection happened because he imprinted on me at birth, and then a good horsewoman from these parts helped me hone it. However I've also seen it used in a way that clearly caused distress to the horse, and I've seen plenty of "cowboy" trainers advocating such methods whom I wouldn't want anywhere near a horse of mine. Then a year or two ago I read a study that indicated horses are not as relaxed and connected as we think they are when they are trained using round pen "Join Up" as popularized by Monty Roberts.  In fact, pressure-and-release round-penning likely causes stress in horses. So while I could send Lexi away with fanfare every time she moved a foot and she would learn to stand still to avoid the pressure of being sent away, I prefer to have her stand because she wants to, not because she's trying to avoid something.

That being said, I do combine some low-key traditional pressure/release horsemanship as I work her, in part because I don't know how NOT to, and in part because I think light, mindful pressure-and-release is helpful.

Anyway, as we worked on Playing Statue today, I started by asking her to stand on her mat. When she did, I clicked and reinforced her with a treat. I then started moving away from her, telling her to stay and walking towards the fence where I had my pads waiting. At first I just moved one step before clicking her and returning to treat her, but eventually I could get all the way to the fence and back without her budging. Early in the session, though, she was quite restless, so I took the opportunity of doing some "reinless" driving, where I ask her to move around the pen as if she is wearing long lines, using my hands as though I have long lines in them. We worked on walk-trot-walk transitions and threw in a couple of beginning canter transitions (more on that another time), and I focused on having her bend towards me and accept me on her right side (eye), because it's still hard for her to be soft when I'm on the right. Periodically I'd move back to the mat and ask her to stand, and I'd groom her or rub her for a bit before asking her to go back to work. I think that helped her with the concept of standing still on the mat when I went to get her pads and the saddle. She had come to see the mat as a place of rest and stillness. We finished our lesson after I was able to go get the pads, put them on her, then go back and get the saddle and put it on her without her budging.  Keep in mind that Lexi didn't like being saddled much when I got her. She would put up with it, but make her displeasure known by snaking her neck towards me or biting on the wood at the grooming station, as well as by swinging away from me as I brought the saddle over to lift it onto her back. So it was a lot of fun to have her standing free in the middle of the round pen as I put the pads and saddle on her back.

In gratitude to Susan Signor, who got me started on this fun path!

And then I messed up....

Image taken from Alexandra Kurland's
Clicker Training Your Horse

Last weekend, I took Lexi to my friend's place for another lesson. She was reluctant to load again, and it may be she'll just be one of these horses who doesn't like to ride in the trailer. I hope as she gains experience she'll become more and more reliable about loading, but for the moment she's still somewhat iffy. Still, I was happy with how a little ground and target work got her in the trailer, and she rode with some restlessness but no explosions out to our destination about 50 minutes away.

Then we got there, and I messed up. I had tied her slightly differently than before, deciding to use a short quick-release trailer tie. When I unhooked it, I didn't do it properly and she ended up getting a bump on the way out of the trailer when her lead rope got caught up. Being Lexi, she panicked, pulled back and fell. Again. The last time it happened she panicked because the butt bar terrified her, but this time it was my fault. I wanted to harangue myself for not making sure everything was perfect, but there's no point, especially with horses. I had to just move forward, knowing I was likely going to have a problem to fix later on.

She got up and I checked her over and then we went for a quiet walk and started some clicker-training "long line" work (I'll explain it in another post), and she was excellent the rest of the day, including a fairly relaxed dressage lesson despite the howling wind and the presence of the ever-terrifying piebald calf and his Great Pyrenees dog best friend.

But then I went to load her. And she said no. And no again. And so an hour later there we were, working on loading in a howling gale while occasional drops of icy rain spat out of an ominous sky. I kept in mind Alexander Kurland's story of her horse, Peregrine, who has never learned to be totally comfortable in a trailer. (I was binge-reading her blog a while ago and I'm pretty sure she was talking about Peregrine when she mentioned a horse whom she always needed to work on the ground a little before asking to enter the trailer. He was never totally comfortable with just walking in.) Anyway, I watched Lexi carefully as I worked to combine the little bit of clicker training I knew with traditional work. Away from the trailer I asked for slow lateral work at a walk and slow trot. Close to the trailer I let her relax. When she put her feet on the ramp, theoretically I could click/treat her to help increase her desire to continue into the trailer, but Lexi won't eat when she's stressed, so I had to move back towards more traditional methods, which was to let her rest on the ramp, and then ask her to back up and go to work when away from the ramp.

Eventually I saw her turn her head towards the trailer every time she passed it, her ears indicating she wanted to be in it. But she could only stay on the ramp (or in the trailer as she gained confidence), a second or two before her anxiety got the better of her. I worked hard to anticipate how long she could tolerate being in the trailer, using Kurland's "Four Second Rule," which says that if the horse can handle something for four seconds, click/treat in three. Since Lexi won't eat when she's stressed, I couldn't really use clicker training to reinforce her, so instead I would simply ask her to back out of the trailer before I thought she was going to leave herself. Once out, we'd do a little slow work, and if she turned her ears towards the trailer, I'd invite her to load. Eventually she was walking all the way in, and finally she stood quietly while I fastened the butt bar. The drive home was quiet, and she unloaded well at the other end.

Clearly I need to work more on all the ground work we're doing, but I feel OK about how things went. Safety and relaxation are my goals. Lexi wasn't relaxed about the trailer at first, but she was safe and not panicky, and our work was slow and quiet, which helped her to maintain her sanity.

I love what Kurland says in the image above, which I took from her book, Clicker Training for Your Horse, an excellent book to jump start your clicker training adventures: "Any time you think you have all the answers, some horse will come along to tell you that you don't. You can never stop learning and evolving. The key to good training is to always be looking for new ideas to add into the mix." I know I used to think teaching horses to load was pretty straightforward. Not with Lexi -- in part because of my own mistakes. But it's a perfect opportunity for growth and new learning.

In gratitude for learning.