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PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2008 12:35 am 
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Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:55 pm
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Location: northern, Illinois, USA
Here is the latest video of Jackson and I. We just started to do Humming-tops. He is making wonderful progress.

http://video.xanga.com/ivyschex/b17c7912402/video.html

Ivy

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PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2008 8:01 am 
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Joined: Fri Aug 31, 2007 8:20 am
Posts: 6281
Location: Dresden, Germany
Great video, Ivy!! :D

Your riding and especially his reactions look so much better without the cordeo pulling.

The humming-tops are great already. We haven´t done them for months, but at the moment we are revisiting them and try to get them (1) while we are walking and (2) in canter - that is, Titum is already jumping the get back to me part, so we still have to figure out how to get more energy into the away from me part. Maybe we will get back to using the tiger, so thanks for the reminder. ;)

Did you learn rearing with the tiger or did you just add the tiger to get the rears higher when he already knew how to rear? We have done the latter and also from other people I have never heard that they could actually learn rearing with the tiger, so I would be very interested to know how you did it.

I think you are doing great and the only suggestion I could give at the moment is to train in a larger area. In that way he will probably show more energy in the running with you things and also you will become less purposeful - less like getting him to run, which, at least with the horses I know, can pretty much make them NOT run.

I am looking forward to more videos! :)


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 Post subject: Ivy's videos
PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 12:13 am 
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Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:55 pm
Posts: 430
Location: northern, Illinois, USA
Here is a video of my mare, Cinder. This is the second session of companion walking that we have done. She is just learning about clicker training and all things like AND.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfThxjjVRmE

She is a six year old Kentucky Mountain Saddle Horse mare.

Ivy

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 Post subject: Re: Companion walking
PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 9:03 am 
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Location: Dresden, Germany
Oh Ivy, she is so, so, so wonderful! I don´t know what it is, but she is one of the few horses I could fall in love with at once and only treat her with velvet gloves (Is this understandable in English? - in German it means "very carefully"). She seems so sensitive and still she has such an expression. Just lovely! :smile:


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 Post subject: Re: Companion walking
PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 8:31 pm 
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Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:55 pm
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Location: northern, Illinois, USA
Romy wrote:
Oh Ivy, she is so, so, so wonderful! I don´t know what it is, but she is one of the few horses I could fall in love with at once and only treat her with velvet gloves (Is this understandable in English? - in German it means "very carefully"). She seems so sensitive and still she has such an expression. Just lovely! :smile:


Romy, Thank you. I have had her for about 2 years and always did more traditional things with her. She was used as a lesson horse before I got her and had lots of bad habits. She is almost always trying to get the upper hand, but she is super smart. I have been trying to use low pressure ways of working with her. I am using clicker training and a little bit of Carolyn Resnicks techniques.

I think that she does need "velvet gloves." We use the expression "kid gloves," in reference to gloves made out of goat skin, but I know what you mean.

Ivy

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 Post subject: Re: Companion walking
PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 8:49 pm 

Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2009 4:27 pm
Posts: 483
Location: Corneto di Toano, Italy
Hello there,

I think you 2 are doing very nice there, especially after such a short training!

But what puzzles me is: at the end it says your mare is for sale???
I don't understand?

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AnneMarie

------
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make'em drink...


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 Post subject: Re: Companion walking
PostPosted: Sun Jan 24, 2010 8:54 pm 
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Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:55 pm
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Location: northern, Illinois, USA
I bought Cinder with the intent of training her and selling her. I have too many horses and I really have to sell some. I wish I could keep her, but I need to work with her and then sell her. :sad:

She is doing great, but I just can't keep her right now.

Ivy

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 Post subject: Re: Companion walking
PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 10:25 am 

Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2009 4:27 pm
Posts: 483
Location: Corneto di Toano, Italy
I understand... must be hard on both of you!

I have 4 horses myself and I realise that often it is too much work for me to get done... :roll:
But I could not part with anyone of them. They are like my children.

Result is that they can just be 'horse' as we do only a tiny little bit of training every now and than.
Far too little, I know, but after the feeding and caring most of my energy is gone :sad: , especially when the weather is grey and wet (like now again)...
So there is little risk that I would train a horse in order to sell it :funny:

At least she will have received a nice training.
Hopefully you will find a buyer that wants to continue in the same way afterwards...

Good luck!
:love:

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AnneMarie

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You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make'em drink...


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 Post subject: Re: Companion walking
PostPosted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 2:12 pm 
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Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2007 4:10 am
Posts: 3688
Location: Pacific Northwest U.S.
AMA wrote:
I understand... must be hard on both of you!

I have 4 horses myself and I realise that often it is too much work for me to get done... :roll:
But I could not part with anyone of them. They are like my children.

Result is that they can just be 'horse' as we do only a tiny little bit of training every now and than.
Far too little, I know, but after the feeding and caring most of my energy is gone :sad: , especially when the weather is grey and wet (like now again)...
So there is little risk that I would train a horse in order to sell it :funny:

At least she will have received a nice training.
Hopefully you will find a buyer that wants to continue in the same way afterwards...

Good luck!
:love:


I confess that besides all the wonderful people here at AND that I so value as friends and companions in this adventure in the next stage of horse and human associations I also am here because I may one day, as Kate and I know, have to give up Bonnie, and possibly even Altea.

I'll be 78 when Bonnie is four and ready to be backed, and I know that between now and then we will have spent a great deal of money for her keep and care. If I'm not able to ride then it's likely I will look for buyers. Guess where the first place I'll look will be. :friends:

I'm hoping for a two year turn out for her in Idaho where she can run with other horses and mules and get more socialization than just her mother can give her. She needs playmates.

Donald

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~~~~~~~~~
So say Don, Altea, and Bonnie the Wonder Filly.


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 Post subject: Ivy's videos
PostPosted: Wed May 05, 2010 8:28 pm 
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Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:55 pm
Posts: 430
Location: northern, Illinois, USA
Training the Balancer’: The Gold at the end of the Rainbow

Horse training, or learning about horse training, is a long road. It never ends. However, there is great joy when you find the gold at the end of the rainbow. There have been many ups and downs while training Jackson. There have been quick and unexpected results and there have been times when I didn’t think we were ever going to accomplish a certain task. Teaching Jackson the balancer’ (pronounced bal-on-say) is one of those things that took a long time, but I think I have found my pot of gold.

Ever since I saw Nevzorov’s horse doing the balancer, I have wanted to train Jackson to do it as well. There was very little I could find out about it. In the beginning, I didn’t even know how it was spelled. Eventually, I found out how it was spelled and learned just a little bit about it, but there was not clear plan, that I found, on how to start training a horse on the ground at liberty. So I had to pave my own way.

I started last fall, I think. I knew that, for me, to capture the behavior I wanted, I would need to use the clicker. I started the training in the round pen. First I would have Jackson trot or canter around the round pen, then I would suddenly ask him to reverse directions, making sure he turned to the inside. If he did, I would let him slow down afterwards and then I would give him a treat. I made sure to do this evenly on both sides. Then I began to ask him for more. I wanted him to turn more quickly, more like a pivot on the hind legs. If he did it nicely, I would click that moment and reward.

This seemed to be the hardest thing for him to learn to do consistently. Some days he would do some nice changes of directions and other days it was just sloppy. I decided to shelve it, for the most part, during the winter. As soon as the snow melted however, I was ready to give it a try. As it turned out, he seemed to have remembered our previous lessons and did pretty well. I then began to add more difficulty. I would ask for a change of direction and then, right away, another change. When he would put those two together, I would click and reward. It did take a lot of patience and quite a lot of pressure (being careful not to use too much pressure, of course). It might have been easier for a horse that had more energy than Jackson, however.

Then we spent lots of time working on getting two or three changes of direction consistently. The trick was getting him to change directions, without doing any forward steps. After working on this for a few days, there didn’t seem to be much progress. So I dropped it for a few weeks. Then, right before the horse show in April, I gave it a try. There was huge improvement. When I asked for those changes of direction, he gave me some really nice movements. Certainly, it was not hopping from one foot to the other, but it was consistent jumps from one side to the other, pivoting on the hind legs. I was thrilled!

Then it seemed to get easier and more fun. I needed to refine his jumping and landing on both legs to jumping from one leg to the other. I began by just asking for the jumping side to side. I would click and reward for consistency and rhythm. After about a week of working on it, he started offering to jump from side to side on his own. Once he learned that he could get rewarded for offering it, he started to try different things with his feet. If I saw him jump and land one foot, I would click and reward that effort.

It simply became a matter of shaping his behavior to be closer and closer to what I wanted. If he tried really hard, but didn’t get it, I would still reward and encourage him. If he managed a step or two of the right thing, I would praise him a lot and shove handfuls of grain in his face. Finally, he figured out how to jump to his left, land on one foot, then jump to the right, and land on both feet. Progress, but not finished. I needed to figure out how to get him to land on one foot going in both directions.

I would ask for the balancer, and just watch for the behavior that was close to landing on one foot. It didn’t take long at all. I tried to be consistent with what I would reward, and, as a result, Jackson got more and more consistent in giving me two or three or even four very good steps of that balancer.

That was yesterday. Now all I have to do is gradually build on that until he can consistently give me many steps of the balancer. It took a long time to get here; there were times when I wasn’t sure we would ever get it, but we did. With patience, persistence, and encouragement from my friends and family, I did find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Here is a link to the video that we made today. Thanks for watching! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZfWU9i3dtk

P.S. I need to go find another rainbow to chase.

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Blog: http://www.EquestrianHarmony.wordpress.com


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PostPosted: Wed May 05, 2010 9:33 pm 

Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2008 9:58 pm
Posts: 1622
Location: Western Cape, South Africa
Fantastic...... :applause: :applause: :applause:

isn't it funny that as soon as we really almost give up and then try halfheartedly really thinking that nothing will happen....it all comes together!!!
What I like about wtaching this especially the slow shots is the amount of power and movement in the neck that is needed to do this. Just makes me more sure that strapping horses heads is not going to get anyone anywhere....

You've given me another exercise to try working towards and it's great you've shown the steps as I have got a beginning of this when we play wild. Often I will change direction and change again in front of Morgan and I will get a bounce from one front leg to the other before he dashes off like a looney!!! So I can see where I need to shape next......thank you.

So what's next for Jackson?

You must be so proud of both of you.

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Annette O'Sullivan

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. - John Lennon


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PostPosted: Wed May 05, 2010 9:38 pm 
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Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:55 pm
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Location: northern, Illinois, USA
Morgan wrote:
Fantastic...... :applause: :applause: :applause:

isn't it funny that as soon as we really almost give up and then try halfheartedly really thinking that nothing will happen....it all comes together!!!


Morgan,

Thank you, thank you! *taking a bow* You are right though. It has happened often enough and I still am amazed what can happen when you don't give up!

Morgan wrote:
So what's next for Jackson?


I think I want to teach him to hold one front leg in the air while he moves his hindquarters around. At least on person on this forum has got there horse to do it. I also want to train Jackson to do that balancer under saddle. I don't know how that is going to go. We will see.

Thanks!

Ivy

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PostPosted: Wed May 05, 2010 10:33 pm 

Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2008 9:58 pm
Posts: 1622
Location: Western Cape, South Africa
Would it be possible to shape that whilst using a pedestal and asking for the back feet to move whilst keeping the front leg still???? As long as he undertands not to put weight on the pedestal leg?

It actually amazes me how supple and nifty they can be. Morgan often moves his other legs around whilst the farrier is busy with a front leg. He will lean and then do a little jump to rebalance himself without putting more weight on the leg the farrier has. I have never seen another horse do this, they always seem to snatch back the leg being held, or try to move and then loose their balance. Morgan is so funny sometimes, he seems to do this when his body/legs are bothering him because he is having to hold them in that position for so long. He only started doing this after I started clicker and asking for specific legs, he seemed to suddenly realise that he could move each leg independantly if he made a conscious effort.

My rainbow would be the lie down on command anywhere anytime! ..........I will get there one day........

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Annette O'Sullivan

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. - John Lennon


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PostPosted: Wed May 05, 2010 10:58 pm 
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Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:55 pm
Posts: 430
Location: northern, Illinois, USA
Morgan wrote:
Would it be possible to shape that whilst using a pedestal and asking for the back feet to move whilst keeping the front leg still???? As long as he undertands not to put weight on the pedestal leg?


Annette,

That is a great idea! I was just thinking along those same lines today as I was trying to figure out how to help him learn that. I hope I can give it a try tomorrow and see how that goes.

Thanks,

Ivy

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PostPosted: Wed May 05, 2010 11:57 pm 

Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2008 9:58 pm
Posts: 1622
Location: Western Cape, South Africa
don't make him dizzy...... :funny:

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Annette O'Sullivan

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. - John Lennon


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