The Art of Natural Dressage

Hi, Since I'm new to all this stuff I thought it may be a good idea to start with something 'simple'like he Jambette.

How do you learn your horse to do that?
(your horse has to straighten a leg forward right?)

another question: Do you guys use clickers/food or a voicereward or something to teach your horse the exercises?

thank you for reading!

Greetz Jasmijn

Hi Jasmijn,

I think there are at least three ways:

1. Touching the horse's leg with a stick or with your hand
2. Letting her target something with her leg
3. Mimicry (showing her the movement by doing it yourself)

Personally I prefer mimicry, but you have to see what works best for the two of you.

In each case the most important thing is to reward the slightest try. Even if she only shifts her weight to the other leg in the beginning or moves her hoof a little bit. Soon she will begin to offer more.

Concerning your question about the reward: I think that I can say that everybody here uses rewards. Some people "only" use scratches or nice words, but many people also use food rewards. We have a lot of clickertrainers here. What you use as a reward depends, besides other facts, on what Keri likes.

So there are lots of things to experiment on. Have fun!!

Hi,

Thank you for your answer!
I think i'll try to touch her leg with a whip and then do de mimickry. So that later on she'll know what to do.
With the reward, i'm just gonna try what works best, i'll let you know how it goes .

I think the jambette is the exercise that is the nicest, easiest and usefullest of the 'stretching'-things. You can build it out on so many ways, spanish walk, trot, polka, and maybe even the galop on three legs or pirouette with one leg high.

I'm learning it to Missy now, just started with it one time, and she immediately understanded what I ment. I touched her leg (low), she lifted her hoof a little bit, I 'clacked' with my tongue (that's my clickersound) and gave her a piece of carrot.
After 5 minutes, she knew that if I point to her hoof, I ask her to lift it.

It's not really stretched at the moment, only the lifting, but when you only reward your horse for the stretching-moments (when she know the cue well), she'll understand you very soon..

I think it's nice to change the cue to mimickry at a later moment, but now I started with 'pointing', and I think it's a little bit confusing for her to have two cues, to be honest..

I'm not very experienced at teaching horses the Jambette, Missy is only my 3th horse (to teach it), but if I were you, I would choose one cue for it, so that it's clear for her what you mean, and you can ask it quick for her, instead of having a whole ritual of touching and lifting your own leg.
(But I would like to read some other opinions from the more advanced in this. Because this is only a tought from me, I don't know if it's true what I'm saying )

Succes with this nice exercise!

Hi everybody,

Today I went and tried the jambette with Fleur, I visited her today. I touched her leg with a whip, and for a couple of time's she lifted her leg, so I gave the cue and then gave her a peace of carrot. When she lifted her leg about 3 times orso she didn't want to lift her leg anymore. After that I stopped asking her.

Do you think that she was bored or that I should try it with my hand, like, Myukii, or that she just didn't get me?

I don't have the chance to practice a lot with her, but I will try to teach Keri also the jambette, so maybe I know what to do better next time.

I hope you have a answer for me !

Kind regards,

Jasmijn

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A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

Try touching or tickling (try not to tap) lighlty in different places. Or you can try a couple of times on one leg and then go to the other side of the horse and try the other leg.

Sometimes it is not boredom, but it may take them a while to understand the direct path from touch=leg lift=carrot.

Just take your time and each time you visit with her, try again.

Cisco's "jambette" button is at the very top of his leg, and almost on the shoulder!

Ok, thanks .
This is also good to train my own (in)patients .

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A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.

Beau has really mastered the jambette with his right leg, it is high, stretched and he can hold ti long. The left side is much more difficult, and so he tends to offer the right side. My cue is voice with lifting my own leg and touching the shoulder I want lifted. But Beau tries the easy leg... So I say jambette, lift my left leg, touch the left shoulder and before the left 'sort of jambette ' comes he lifts right first 3 or 4 times, then gets frustrated and does an ugly left jambette, a lot of times followed by a stump on the ground.

How can I get them equal?
Not rewarding the right one anymore? rewarding more for a left one?

He really blows himself up because he finds it difficult.

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Horseriding is an art

My horse is a beautiful living sculpture

Barbara, Freckles is/was exactly the same! When Josepha was here she said he needed to do a lot of deep carrot-stetches - almost like starting a bow - to lengthen his top-line and open his shoulders.

It has helped soooo much!

Also I took his left leg in my hands a few times and gently "helped" him stretch forward and up. He is improving so quickly it's hard to believe, but I do see that he needs to lean quite far to the right to get his left leg up? In the beginning I had to "show" him that lifting his head would make it easier? And I find he does the left leg best if I back him a step or two before I ask?

I don't know if any of this will help at all ...

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Glen Grobler

Words that soak into your ears are whispered...not yelled. Anon

Another way to do the stretching that Glen describes is to use a pedestal...only not the kind to stand on, but the kind you put a foot up on. I taught this to Cisco and that is probably why he has a jambette and Tam doesn't...because I didn't teach this to Tam !

Anyway, start low, and when the horse puts a foot on it, then you lure the horse's head down between his front legs with a treat. It helps them stretch. Again, start with a low pedestal, then gradually work toward taller pedestals (this is the hard part...finding ways to make higher pedestals).

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"Ride reverently, as if each step is the axis on which the earth revolves"

Good ideas from other so far with stretching and pedestals and all...

And I do think that focusing on the 'weaker' leg for a while and withholding reinforcement for the strong one does help with balancing out left and right behaviors!!!!

So say for a week? only reinforce the left?? And also keep a high rate of reinforcement at first, reinforce the left simply for effort, so he begins to realize that the left leg is also an 'opportunity for reinforcement', and also so doesn't get frustrated??

Brenda

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All the great advice is already given, so all I can add is that you can also use a target to equalize both jambettes. If you reward Beau as soon as he touches (on your old cues) with his knee a target that you dangle in front of his leg (first very close to his leg, later on you lift it higher and higher so that the leg will follow upwards), then pretty soon he will get more confident about which leg you mean, and it will also be quite easy to get both jambettes as high as the other.

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New horse book: Mandala horses!

Never stop making mistakes! Natural Dressage

thanks for all the advice!
I'll try it out as soon as I get the time and I'll keep you guys posted on it

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Horseriding is an art

My horse is a beautiful living sculpture

Thanks for the help!!!
I put a target ( my whip) in front of his leg and he instantly got it
yeay!!!

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Horseriding is an art

My horse is a beautiful living sculpture

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"Ride reverently, as if each step is the axis on which the earth revolves"

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Diego's Journal
There's no more looking back - no more grey skies black.

There are different possibilities, but works best for most horses that I know is mimicry: just keep your leg up as well - if he stomps, still keep it up and immediately reward when he lifts it again. Mostly the horses will start copying your movement within a few trials.

Maybe also the sticky on Building duration in exercises will be helpful.

Oh, and what really helped for Summy was rewarding constantly during the leglift. That is, I did not ask for keeping the leg up longer and then rewarded when he put it down but kept on rewarding as long as he held it up and stopped when he put it down.

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Diego's Journal
There's no more looking back - no more grey skies black.

Ronja does Jambette perfectly with one leg, but never with the other one. She lifts the other one only bended, never straight. She can do it with a box or smth to put your leg onto, but not "just like that".. and she also lets me to straighten the leg.... This has been going on for 6 months or so now...Or even more. Whatever I do, only one leg version of Jambette.
And what is wierd is that, I have noticed in other excercises and in movement, that the leg that does jambette better, is the "weaker leg" and the other one is the stronger one. I have done balancing ecercises and everything, but still... And that is for sure, I have paid great attention and read a lot about it.
Any ideas?

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flow

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Diego's Journal
There's no more looking back - no more grey skies black.

Yeah...and actually the weaker leg in jambette is Ronja's overall stronger leg - that is the main thing that makes me puzzle. And she is not anatomically incapable either - as I said, she does it with the help of a box or stone or treetrunk or smth - so I know that she is capable of straightening the leg. She has been starting to put the leg down in front of her straight now..not lifting it straight, but not lifting it bended also...she has now figures out that it needs to be straight...just not up in the air yet. ^^
Meanwhile, the other leg gets higher and higher and stays up longer and longer....
Different biomechanic in different legs.

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flow

Of all the basic exercises Er likes lifting his legs the most. I have successfully taught him to lift is legs up like he would for a farrier and to stretch the front legs out on front of him. The problem is, he likes this a bit too much. He often stretches his legs out in fornt, even if I ask for something else, or sometimes even if I don't ask for anything at all. Like I wrote in my diary, me and Er had to stop with these exercises for a while, because he didn't seem to enjoy them as much as in the begining. So now we're taking things really slow, making sure that he knows he has the option not to do what I ask of him. But the leg stretching persists. At first I didn't really mind, but now sometimes this turns into pawing the ground and though he generaly looks out for me, he did touch me with his leg once or twice, and I really don't want to encourage that. At first I decided to ignore it, but it didn't go away. Now I'm not sure what to do. I thought about simply leaving whenever he does this, but I'm not quite sure, something doesn't feel right about that..

Hi Katja,

I moved your post to the jambette topic, because it seems to fit better here.

Here is a link to some topics that might answer your question:

My horse tries too hard - reward or not?
Stimulus control and begging with exercises
Clicker training and stimulus control
Decreasing Unwanted Behaviour Using Positive Reinforcement (Differential Reinforcement)

Don't know if you have seen this already, but we have a collection of links to threads about different topics, where I have put some discussions that might help to answer some of the most frequently asked questions.

Warm Regards,
Romy

Thank you so much, now I have quite a few new ideas. I'm sorry for the trouble, I should have been mopre persistent in looking for the answer in the forum myself. I'll be more patient next time

Katja, it's not really a problem and it's easy to change the behavior. Simply reward him for doing something else, or reward him BEFORE he sticks a leg out. It will completely short circuit the behavior.

With my boy Tam, and with many horses, it's a favorite behavior. It becomes a favorite behavior because we reward it so often in the beginning and because it's so easy for the horse to do. They understand it easily and it takes very little effort. Sometimes, simply ignoring it doesn't make it go away, and in fact, it can strengthen the behavior and cause it to happen more frequently because the horse believes that you simply are requiring he do it fifty times before he gets rewarded rather than the one time it took in the beginning. I hope that makes some sense.

So the first way to stop it is to start rewarding some other useful behavior more often. That behavior will then become the more favored behavior and your horse will start offering that instead. A good one for beginning is to ask him to put his head down and give him a treat. Do this over and over. If he happens to stick a leg out or starts to paw, ask him to put his head down (nose as close to the ground as you possibly can) and reward him at the ground level (not after he's brought his head back up).

The second way is, as I said, to "short circuit" the behavior. For this, you simply reward your horse for not doing it. Reward him with fast and frequent rewards for not putting that leg out. Don't worry that you might eliminate the behavior completely...it will still be there when you ask him for it. If you know he will offer it, simply give him a treat before a front leg moves. If you miss the opportunity, just ask him to do something else and reward for what you asked for.

Putting the jambette on cue and only rewarding it when you ask for it is also a good step to take...but if you are wishing to free shape (without too many cues) and reward what he offers, then all you have to do is make a little suggestion to him that something other than the jambette will be rewarded, then carry on with the free shaping...even if that means you reward him for just standing there and doing, apparently, nothing at all.

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"Ride reverently, as if each step is the axis on which the earth revolves"

Great advice from Karen!

Another thought for you to throw into the mix:

Both my horses love to jambette as well. It's especially my girl Circe's default move -- when in doubt, get that leg up in the air and wave it like a conductor!
Especially when she first learned it, she was obsessed! (I actually have yet to see a horse who doesn't love it once they get the hang of it...)

We've tried a variety of things to control it (along the lines of what Karen has suggested) and they made a difference, but she still was doing it fairly frequently.

But -- I recently realized that she would do this when she was uncertain or lacking confidence. If I asked her something that she didn't understand or wasn't sure she felt okay about, she'd pop up that leg. This shifted my perception of it from being something that I was tired of her doing to feeling like it was an opening into her saying, "help, wait, I'm not sure about this thing you want!," which actually suddenly felt really helpful because it became a cue for me to step back, slow down, and think about what might be bothering her and how to fix it.

So, now, when she offers the jambette, I reward her with a treat and a big rush of soft, happy, 'aren't we both wonderful' energy -- we both benefit from that. It's become our tool to recalibrate. We both get a big dose of relaxed and happy success and I find that she's then almost always willing to try what I've asked for next.

May or may not be relevant for you and Er, but it's been a powerful enough realization for Circe and me that I thought I'd share!

All the best,
Leigh

PS: Please, don't have any worries about posting in the 'wrong' place -- it takes a little while to figure out where everything is, here, especially as the forum has gotten bigger. Romy is our resident human encyclopedia and helps us keep things organized!

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"Ours is the portal of hope. Come as you are." -- Rumi
www.imaginalinstitute.com

I completely agree with everything Karen and Leigh said before - I can confirm all that from my experience as well. I´d like to add another point to consider though.
I have observed with Mucki that the Jambette is not only used as default behaviour for showing that he´s ready to work, but he´s also using it to show off. He is really really proud of it. Same with Lily.
I watched Mucki doing his Jambettes when play fighting Jolly. I´ve also seen Lily doing a Jambette to impress her recent love interest Filou. The Jambette is after all not so much a learned behaviour, it´s more like it´s already there but not exercised. All that makes it very much a self reinforcing behaviour. Which means it´s hard to eliminate once learned, because the horse will train himself. But it also means that it empowers the horse to gain more self confidence, even to gain more recognition in the herd.

I think the same applies to most lessons that include a certain "brag factor", like Spanish Walk, all collected movements, and more suppleness in general.

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

It's funny how obvious things sometimes seem after someone gives you a clue or two. Thanks guys so much, Leigh you really inspired me. Now all the pieces fit. When I thought about it, he always popped his leg up when he wasn't sure what I was expecting of him, for instance, when we were learning to just stand still and relax (because he tends to rush things). He also does it when I go away for a while, to fetch some brushes in the tack room or whatever. I don't know why I never saw it as a sign that he's ready to play and learn. He has so much to teach me

Love everyone's posts. A girl at the barn just told me yesterday that she taught her horse to lift a leg when she wanted her food. Now, for the past 7 years, he's been doing this and she wants it to stop. She told me she ignored him but he continues to do it.
I'll give her the info you shared. I'm sure she will try it.
thanks everyone
Joc

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Jocelyne
[Hug your animals everyday. You never know!

I gave this a try today and he lifted each leg on each side and held them in the motion as if I was asking him to pick up his feet to clean, I asked a few more times and ended up with him pawing the ground Am I on the right track...

Lifting a leg on cue is definitely a prerequisite of the Jambette. So you are probably on the right track
As the Jambette is a behaviour that horses love to show, even unasked, I find it very helpful to have a clear cue for it. I would try to distinguish it as best as possible from other cues. Especially lifting a leg for picking hooves. So be sure you are facing forward when cueing for the Jambette, if you are not already doing so.

Your horse seems to be digging in his already learned repertoire of giving hooves and pawing to guess what it might be you're looking for. That's great. Now basically you just have to be precise in what you reward and what not. Are you using clicker training, by the way? I don't remember if you said so already...
If you reward only the small approximations that lead to the Jambette, your horse will soon know what you want. Look for every forward and upward motion, every stretch of the leg and reward. But right now, lifting the leg is fine. I would just ignore the pawing - it will stop eventually.

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.

Thanks again for more help! Never used clicker training, basically I ask until I get something that is close to what I want, even a try and reward with some carrot Do you most use a clicker for training there horses

I guess most people here use some kind of reward based interaction - like what you described. Not all use Clicker Training in a strict sense though. Like Romy for example and you can see at her results, that she's very effective
Personally, I prefer Clicker Training, because it can be very precise and effective in the way it marks the moment the correct behaviour occurred. But I do not always use a mechanical clicker as a marker, but also a word.
What helped me a lot was reading up the various books on Clicker Training, as they illustrate the underlying learning theory very well. And that is the key to all training, in my opinion.

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Volker

The horse owes us nothing.