The Art of Natural Dressage

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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...