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I'll tell you a little more about it:
Yes I WAS nervous
. But as (nearly) everything worked quite well I felt better after a short while.
I had 6 participants. I started showing the things I do with Filux, all the nice little tricks we know using the clicker. Filux was absolutely great:
He did everything very easily and in the best way he can
, it was as if he understood that we had to convience some people of our way
After that I did a theory-part: I explained the history and scientific backround of clicker training and how it works. And I explained a little of my (AND-)philosophy and how I use the clicker and how I work in general. The participants didn't react much and didn't ask questions so I was a little bit unsure how they thought about it. But in the end when I asked, they said they liked it and it was interesting and three of them want to try to work with the clicker.
Than in the third part we worked with the horse of one participant (Heike), you see it on the pictures. His owner does a lot of groundwork and he already knows a lot of things and is very clever. Heike did the first steps herself with my instruction and they both got it very quickly. Then we thaught him to touch a target with his nose, which he got after a few tries. Me and Heike worked with him by turns. Then we tried to improve some exercises he already knows with the help of the clicker. All that was very interesting for me, because I "Clickered" only with three horses before.
One thing was very interesting for me: During the day I realized that I'm not really a "clicker-person" that means that I see the clicker as a very useful tool and very helpful but it's only one thing among many - do you know what I mean? I realized, especially when I worked with the other horse, that my strength is not the clicker but my feeling for the horse, my experience with many horses and that I'm quite skilful in showing the horse what I want. And the clicker is just helping with all that but it's not the crucial element...
Because of that, I would prefer to call such an event "ground-Work-clinic" in future, but especially at this place of my former riding teacher I couldn't do that, because this is her "territory". She does "groundwokr-clinics" herself and invited me fo rthe clicker-day because this is something she doesn't teach herself. So if I want to do another day at this place I would have to call it "clicker-info part 2"
One nice side effect: The covered arena over there has a great ground: And Filux with his arthrosis walked so well on it
We arrived quite early so after I had shown Filux the place, I took the opportunity to ride a few rounds and Filux walked and trotted so nicely! So I know that at home when he doesn't want to move in the arena with me on his back, that has probably much to do with the pain he has in his feet because of the bad ground here.
Oh and I forgot one thing: After the theory part, Andreas wanted to drive home with Filux. So we had to load hin into the trailer. After this didn'nt work that well when we started to go there, I had the idea to use the clicker and make a public experiment out of it....
Well to make it short, this was not the most triumphant part of the day
My pressure to succeed was definetly to high and I was not confident enough to let us enough time...
So I finally used some pressure and dominance (not much, I think in "normal" eyes this was still very soft but....) and I hope the result was not that the spectators think: Finally it workes only with pressure....
Luckily this was not the last thing we did that day.