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 Post subject: Working with Gaucho
PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 3:15 pm 
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Edit by Romy: This discussion was split from this thread: Why I chose to use Clicker Training, and who is my mentor

Donald Redux wrote:
Thanks for the link, Eileen.

Interesting reading. I can see some possibility of a behavior we link with an emotion being marked and reinforced. I can also see the possibility of the emotion being driven by that very behavior.

It's not been my experience though.

I think it important for me to keep emotion and behavior separate unless I can show clearly I am in fact looking at a behavior that is the result of an emotion, and not an emotion that is the result of a behavior.

Just as "calm," postures are taught, head down, for instance, we can inadvertently call for an excitation behavior, say rearing, or jambette, and find ourselves with an emotion growing in and being expressed by the horse showing through either far more energy displayed than we wished for or new behaviors that are escalation from the one we asked for. Say, we asked for a jambette and the horse gave a few then began to rear. We could assume some emotion was triggered, possibly. The horse's affect, of calm, would tell us he was trying a new behavior to produce a click and a treat, but if his affect was one of tension around eyes, mouth, ears back tightly, we might assume we had triggered an emotion of fear and or aggression.

We would not be, I believe, in a state of operant conditioning at all (the horse learning a behavior) but in one of classical conditioning where we called up a reaction from normal preknown behaviors of the horse.

I believe, an opinion of course, from observation and from what I have read that this particular point of difference is what is being explored in the study I looked at that you linked to.

Emotion is a loaded word. In strict behaviorism it isn't part of the protocols. Behaviors are. That we assume an emotion connected to a behavior nearly always (and possibly always explicitly) moves us firmly into classical conditioning.

Or it's my preference. I'm very tuned into animals and their emotions, and yet I prefer, for their sake and my own, when I'm training, to stay away from classical conditioning except for keeping a positive atmosphere.

I continually call on their good memories, such as mothering, and herd society pleasant experiences (herd buddy for instance) to keep things "classical." LOL

On the other hand, any task we set about doing together I'd prefer, until we are abundantly clear, be just a task, and operant task, one of learning not emotion. Later we can have our fun, or other emotion that might signal me about the internal state of the horse.


I think the emotions we are talking about are relaxation and fear, there are many stages of this anxiety, frustration etc.
I think of it as two ends of a scale Relaxation ------------------------------------------------- Fear with the other emotions occurring between. I agree that horses learn when relaxed and maybe when fearful they react but I think an anxious horse could learn infact that is my experience and the question is does then the emotion go with this newly learned behaviour. I suspect the horse would give us this answer by the body language when the exercise is cued and yes in such cases I have seen many horses with ears tensley back and tight mouths. So this leads me to believe that the emotion of anxiety has been shaped along side the behaviour. However that is what I see with my eyes but I do believe what Paul Andronis talks about is slightly different, so please do not take this as so.

Donald Redux wrote:
Going to the description of having reinforced anxiety, I wish there was a vid I could look at, sans my being there in person. I have to wonder if a behavior wasn't reinforced that provoked an behavior that had an emotion associated with it ... in other words, someone rang a bell and the animal salivated. We know he "felt," hunger, and it's very emotion loaded. What if we reinforced a behavior that was to the horse connected (PTSD possibility) to a negative emotion .. anxiety. We didn't reinforce anxiety, we reinforced the associated behavior.

I know this seems pedantic and very like circular reasoning but the distinction, as it so often is, is very important. It means that it's not necessarily the clicker but the associations with certain behaviors attached to the clicker. To explain: If this horse will not counter condition, that is will not learn to associate a click with something pleasant, yes, you are right, and we are stuck.

Here are a few questions. Did the trainer(s) properly "charge the clicker," that is to say associate the click sound with a primary reinforcer for THIS particular horse. Food is not always primary. For some abused horses having the human leave is the most primary reinforcer.

If that's the case (not saying it is, just an example) then "charging the clicker," would have to start from "click then leave,) for the trainer.

Pretty soon we'd have our first pleasant association with the click sound. I'm sure you can see the possibilities to then work toward the food reward being a secondary reinforcer, and the possibility of eventually replacing leaving, with the food reward.

The experiment, if that is what we are doing, to support the theory of clicker association with anxiety would have to be duplicatable, and falsifiable.

In other words, we need more data from more subjects, and we need to be able to prove that we an teach this same "anxiety to the clicker," to a significantly large sample of other horses.

That we can do it, or have done it, as you point out, with one horse would correlate with taking precautions against the possibility of running across one other such horse that confounded the broad and pretty universal experience of others horse handlers using clicker.

The two groups of clicker trainers I belong to, and various individuals I've read stories about rehabilitation from suggest this is in the case you cite, an anomaly and not to be concerned about generally.

Neither you, nor we, are wrong or right. It is very worth noting that it did happen and very worth exploring the possible causes.

The horse history, and much evaluation of him, vetting for instance, and observation including attempting to teach non-anxious responses in the way I suggested (find that primary pleasant reinforcer), might be very valuable to our clicker world. I won't soon forget this contribution you've made to expanding my own knowledge on the subject, and each new horse I deal with, or horse and owner, will be looked at through the prism of what you have found.

Best wishes, Don
[/quote]

Thank you Donald it was never my intention to criticise any work done or being done with the clicker . The horse in question is indeed my own horse Gaucho and this fuels my desire to understand. There may be other studies regarding other animals but Dr R himself saw Gaucho as a complicated case and not one that would be seen often. However he felt that we had much to learn about why he responds the way he does. Gauch does indeed have PTSD and this would of course complicate the matter and he is very prone to colic an added complication for me.

I can answer some of your questions, the anxiety behaviour is tongue sucking, like wind sucking but he does this on the tongue. This was in place when he came to me, he was a horse who would become very anxious out in the fields and would stand at the gate waiting for me usually tongue sucking. If left the anxiety increased and he would begin to panic so yes I brought him in but of courses this rewarded the behaviour. I am sure I could bring to mind many such incidents, during his early years with me he was always anxious. So when I trained he would at times tongue suck there was no way around this even when trying to teach relaxation there would always be a degree of anxiety. This is why Dr R felt it might have become part of a behaviour chain and when we shortened and then extended the chain he was far more relaxed.

The clicker was charged correctly his problem is the opposite he loves clicker but becomes over excited, he is also very intelligent and a great discriminator of body language. So yes it was suggested that he was picking up on subtle cues from my body language and the evironment that triggered the anxiety behaviour. Sometimes he tongue sucks because he is truely anxious and then settles at others he offers this as a learned response and at those times if I do not cue another behaviour the anxiety escalates. So perhaps you will agree an interesting horse and not an easy situation to get your head round :smile: :smile: :smile:

Best wishes
Eileen

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PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 4:11 pm 
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Eileen, if it wasn't so hard for him I'd certainly agree that this is indeed an interesting case. I've not heard of tongue sucking before, let alone as an anxiety indicator.

I think it was okay to bring your horse in from pasture and likely not really a factor in reinforcing (rewarding) the anxiety behavior.

There's another side to behaviorist work, and that is the nurturant part. If the subject doesn't feel safe enough to receive and respond (operant as the behaviorists say) then you really can't get anywhere with such problems as you describe.

Modifying the environment is a standard practice clinically. Moving away from safety reduces the subjects response to you. So we modify the environment to create a safe haven to work in. From it we encourage the subject to peek out, as it were, to the provoking negative stimuli. In fact one can describe the best pressure release training in this way.

Unfortunately much NH (any pressure release system) consists of "flooding." That is overwhelming the horse with negative stimuli (say fear of a tarp) and push him to accept it and rely on the handler submissively.

I'm not meaning to reject it as a method (though for myself I do in my horse handling) just explain it and how sometimes anxiety is indeed, just as you suggest, linked to events. If this horse had a lot of pressure put on him, and apparently something or someone did, or you would not agree that PTSD is present, then it explains a lot.

Had he been clickertrained before you acquired him?

There is a question in the clicker community about mixing -R and +R and one of my views on this is that indeed a horse can be traumatized by confusion coupled with fear from negative stimuli and +R is also being offered.

+R is attractive and pleasing by it's definition. Just as a human can be made dysfunctional by have "choices," that offer pleasant feelings but with a danger caveat that is most unpleasant so can a horse.

Successful NH work, for instance, manages to override the fear part and the horse gets to the more pleasant results (relief). And explains why I personally choose +R so the horse can be clear, very, on what I am asking (the clicker behavior event marker), and so pressure becomes less of a factor in our exchanges, until there is no perceptible pressure at all for him.

I don't wish the risk of excessive pressure through use of -R methods in horse-handling. Not that I think he necessarily is, but he appears as some subjects do that have blown out from pressure.

Imagine if you were a horse and I offered you a marker for something you just did then rewarded you, then decided that I was out of time and patience with you and I picked up a whip and threatened you with it and then began using it on your unpleasantly. Then thinking better of it because you responded badly and didn't give me the behavior I wanted, I went back to "shaping," with the clicker and reward.

Crazy making. I struggle constantly with removing my old habits of pressure methods from my handling repertoire. This is not easy I think for anyone to do as pressure is so much a part of daily life it can feel strange, even kind of vacuum like, to not use it.

Sorry for the length of this, but things you have brought up in your post remind me that I am offering my reasons for the choice of the clicker methods.

The best of all, and I bow to Romy on this, and stand corrected if I am mistaken, is the classical conditioning represented by her particular brand of play with her horses. Their environment is rich with experience, excitingly pleasant and engaging, and a model I reach for myself as I use +R operant conditioning to move toward the joyful environment that the classical offers.

I run a little FB page on the subject ... though it might not appear so, and it's title is even partly "Classical...."

And my horses, the two of them, show some very nice signs of being happy in this environment. I hope over time to have them help me discover how to reach out further into this particular state of being. A joyful one.

Best wishes, Don

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Love is Trust, trust is All
~~~~~~~~~
So say Don, Altea, and Bonnie the Wonder Filly.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 4:47 pm 
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I want to make sure I am being perfectly clear on your question. So ...

YES! You can associate the clicker with aversive stimuli. But you really have to work at it.

I think it would take many repetitions to bring about that effect.

Likely it would be most deliberate. Harder to do accidentally enough times to become conditioned.

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Love is Trust, trust is All
~~~~~~~~~
So say Don, Altea, and Bonnie the Wonder Filly.


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 2:49 pm 
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Donald Redux wrote:
Eileen, if it wasn't so hard for him I'd certainly agree that this is indeed an interesting case. I've not heard of tongue sucking before, let alone as an anxiety indicator.

I think it was okay to bring your horse in from pasture and likely not really a factor in reinforcing (rewarding) the anxiety behavior.

There's another side to behaviorist work, and that is the nurturant part. If the subject doesn't feel safe enough to receive and respond (operant as the behaviorists say) then you really can't get anywhere with such problems as you describe.

Modifying the environment is a standard practice clinically. Moving away from safety reduces the subjects response to you. So we modify the environment to create a safe haven to work in. From it we encourage the subject to peek out, as it were, to the provoking negative stimuli. In fact one can describe the best pressure release training in this way.

Unfortunately much NH (any pressure release system) consists of "flooding." That is overwhelming the horse with negative stimuli (say fear of a tarp) and push him to accept it and rely on the handler submissively.

I'm not meaning to reject it as a method (though for myself I do in my horse handling) just explain it and how sometimes anxiety is indeed, just as you suggest, linked to events. If this horse had a lot of pressure put on him, and apparently something or someone did, or you would not agree that PTSD is present, then it explains a lot.

Had he been clickertrained before you acquired him?


He recieved basic training in Spain before coming to me I began clicker training soon after his arrival and I think it was a very pleasant surprise for him. To the way he reacted violently and with extreme fear to simple requests I would say an immense amount of pressure was put on him before coming to me. We have always worked at giving him a safe haven he is out most of the time but always has access to his stable his place of refuge.

Donald Redux wrote:
There is a question in the clicker community about mixing -R and +R and one of my views on this is that indeed a horse can be traumatized by confusion coupled with fear from negative stimuli and +R is also being offered.

+R is attractive and pleasing by it's definition. Just as a human can be made dysfunctional by have "choices," that offer pleasant feelings but with a danger caveat that is most unpleasant so can a horse.

Successful NH work, for instance, manages to override the fear part and the horse gets to the more pleasant results (relief). And explains why I personally choose +R so the horse can be clear, very, on what I am asking (the clicker behavior event marker), and so pressure becomes less of a factor in our exchanges, until there is no perceptible pressure at all for him.

I don't wish the risk of excessive pressure through use of -R methods in horse-handling. Not that I think he necessarily is, but he appears as some subjects do that have blown out from pressure.

Imagine if you were a horse and I offered you a marker for something you just did then rewarded you, then decided that I was out of time and patience with you and I picked up a whip and threatened you with it and then began using it on your unpleasantly. Then thinking better of it because you responded badly and didn't give me the behavior I wanted, I went back to "shaping," with the clicker and reward.

Crazy making. I struggle constantly with removing my old habits of pressure methods from my handling repertoire. This is not easy I think for anyone to do as pressure is so much a part of daily life it can feel strange, even kind of vacuum like, to not use it.

Sorry for the length of this, but things you have brought up in your post remind me that I am offering my reasons for the choice of the clicker methods.

The best of all, and I bow to Romy on this, and stand corrected if I am mistaken, is the classical conditioning represented by her particular brand of play with her horses. Their environment is rich with experience, excitingly pleasant and engaging, and a model I reach for myself as I use +R operant conditioning to move toward the joyful environment that the classical offers.

I run a little FB page on the subject ... though it might not appear so, and it's title is even partly "Classical...."

And my horses, the two of them, show some very nice signs of being happy in this environment. I hope over time to have them help me discover how to reach out further into this particular state of being. A joyful one.

Best wishes, Don



He has always been trained by the use of reward but that may mean food, distance or at times both he takes the food and then likes distance to process the information. For some reason giving distance is dubbed -R and I myself did find this confusing, if a horse wants distance and you give that are you not rewarding with something he/she wants. You know he never initially explored or played and that was very sad now I reward all these little investigations into something new . I think he is much happier and sometimes does hold a look of joy and contentment on his face, as I go about my daily chores I catch him watching me with such a look of peace on his face and that makes me feel very good. I hope too that one day we will reach this state of joy, I have recently joined FB and will visit your page.

Thank you for the discussion I have enjoyed listening to your thoughts.

Best wishes
Eileen

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Listen! Or your tongue will make you deaf.



Cherokee Saying


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 3:26 pm 
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My understanding of plus R and minus R is this: Plus means to add something desirable. Minus to take away something undesirable.

It gets tricky in a situation as you describe.

Are you in fact removing a negative when you remove yourself from his presence? Or are you adding the state of aloneness he prefers?

This is one of the typical confounding elements in behavioral work.

Give what you believe to be his history before coming to you my best guess is that yes, you are in fact performing a -R act to move away. There is a clue I think.

And one from the NH playbook, when properly done. Your presence, if you stay in range of his anxiety inside whatever proximal boundary that might be, is "flooding." Forcing stimuli upon the horse. The object in NH is to do it until the horse's resistance collapses and he "submits," and is compliant - helplessness.

The first example that comes to mind in NH and similar pressure systems of training is Round Penning. Something I refuse to do any longer and gave up in about 1963.

Would it not be logical (and you may have already done this) to find a way to minimize your presence but be present nonetheless? Become more of a passive piece of furniture in his life? Sit somewhere the edge of his tolerance ... maybe not literally sit, but find a way to be a non-pressure figure to him (not to you or I as we might judge pressure, but to him as HE judges pressure)?

I've forgotten now his response to food, but being primary positive reinforcement in living creatures you could cycle yourself into and out of his critical range of anxiety dropping food for him.

Desensitization comes first to mind as I think of the horse in what you describe.

If he is more comfortable in some spot I'd put him in it - a stall, a small paddock. Close to the action, as it were. In the middle of activity. Your activity since you are the primary handler.

How is he with grooming? Are there areas on him he shows some pleasure being groomed on?

On the other hand, you do need a map of his anxiety. That is a list of things, and locations, circumstances, that trigger his tongue sucking behavior. And most important, which such things as they are reduced reduces his tongue sucking. You need to know the turn off switches to the unwanted behavior and incorporate them as counter conditioning by reinforcing those things.

You can then change minus R to plus R. I would experiment. For instance, just as he stops or reduces tongue sucking, drop a handful of treats in his bucket, and turn and walk away. You will be pairing both as +R, taking the minus aspect of leaving. Feed treat/leave. If leaving is more pleasant for him soon you will have charged up the treat with pleasant associations.

Is this making any sense? Best wishes, Don

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Love is Trust, trust is All
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 8:00 pm 
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Hi Don,

what you are saying makes a lot of sense but the situation is very complicated or at least it feels that way to me at times.

I'll try to explain, if he has a pile of hay to eat he is fine, I can groom, lean across his back or even sit in the middle of his hay and he carries on munching quite happily. The problems start when he has no food, with clicker training he takes the treat and begins to tongue suck before the treat has gone he can do this for perhaps a minute or more. If we are working on a behaviour he is comfortable with the tongue sucking stops around the fifth click. However with a new behaviour it can escalate so that his anxiey increases and he starts to bite at himself so we try to keep new sessions very short.

If he does not want to interact with me then he walks away and that is fine but most times he wants close but when close becomes anxious. He could leave as he is at liberty but chooses to stay and if I leave he becomes even more anxious. He will grab and pull at my clothes so I carry an object for him to mouth and he eventually settles. The grabbing is not aggression more a need for comfort I believe.

He does not bond well with other horses but does have one friend my older gelding who is very good with him. He was I am sure trained into learned helplessness and I think it has damaged his physche. There is a marked improvement if I use very gentle pressure and release to train but my concern with this is it because he is better or falling back into learned helplessness. Also if he feels pressured even with clicker he will colic.

Best wishes
Eileen

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PostPosted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:27 pm 
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ET wrote:
Hi Don,

what you are saying makes a lot of sense but the situation is very complicated or at least it feels that way to me at times.

Yes, it has presented as very complex to me too. I've rattled on while in the back of my head I'm hoping for something in our exchange that will trigger recognition for me and allow me to make more specific advice available. Thank you for sticking with me and I may have found what I was looking for. Read on.
ET wrote:
I'll try to explain, if he has a pile of hay to eat he is fine, I can groom, lean across his back or even sit in the middle of his hay and he carries on munching quite happily. The problems start when he has no food, with clicker training he takes the treat and begins to tongue suck before the treat has gone he can do this for perhaps a minute or more. If we are working on a behaviour he is comfortable with the tongue sucking stops around the fifth click. However with a new behaviour it can escalate so that his anxiey increases and he starts to bite at himself so we try to keep new sessions very short.


And there it was. I have a real life situation going on very similar to this though the horse doesn't show extreme anxiety as yours does. But the solution my student is using with her horse is the same one I'm going to suggest to you - and you are going to, unless I explain it well - going to think I'm nuts and that this advice is counter intuitive. Read on please.

ET wrote:

If he does not want to interact with me then he walks away and that is fine but most times he wants close but when close becomes anxious. He could leave as he is at liberty but chooses to stay and if I leave he becomes even more anxious. He will grab and pull at my clothes so I carry an object for him to mouth and he eventually settles. The grabbing is not aggression more a need for comfort I believe.


There is the message - his communication to you of what his emotion is. I suspect the older gelding, likely a calm old guy that has learned things through life experience is doing something very specific right along the lies of what I'm going to suggest.

It has to do with generosity. More to follow - I hope you are reading your quoted words from the message of yours I'm replying to. There are such powerful key elements there in what is happening and what should happen.
ET wrote:

He does not bond well with other horses but does have one friend my older gelding who is very good with him. He was I am sure trained into learned helplessness and I think it has damaged his physche. There is a marked improvement if I use very gentle pressure and release to train but my concern with this is it because he is better or falling back into learned helplessness. Also if he feels pressured even with clicker he will colic.


Combining -R and +R is very risky for a troubled horse. It's like using harsh discipline with a child then switching to loving soft nurturing then back to harsh discipline. It makes a child crazy. The point of pressure, -R, is that you have to do it to the point of unpleasantness to train successfully, and then the association with it is always present - and that association, no matter how gentle the pressure becomes is threat. Pressure release people are in deep denial about this. Don't argue with them, just think behaviorally.

And most important about this avoidance of mixing the two methods - the human child experiencing this inconsistency in parenting will most often revert to some behavior to try and make some sense of it - and that will often be perverse behaviors, including soliciting the harsh behavior because it's part of a cycle he is familiar with. So will the horse. He will calm when punished.

Does that make you as queezy as it does me? But it's true. And I hate it. It makes for mental illness.

The issue of colic is like an exclamation point from him on your story. He is emphatically telling you so much.

One - he trusts you deeply. Two - he doesn't trust the world very much. Three - it revolves around food, a common occurrence with humans who exhibit anxiety through eating disorders. He has an emotional problem, a very rational one to him (which you of course already know) that manifests in some perverse behaviors (tongue sucking) and food obsessiveness and odd food behaviors.

The solution? (bet you thought I'd never get here).

Use the lowest starch/sugar treats you can manage to - I very much like un-molasses added beet pulp pellets, very cheap, or alfalfa pellets. Or hay pellets which I've not tried but trust from others use of them.

When you say "colic," my mind immediately goes to endocrine conditions - could he be insulin resistant? If so the treats I've suggested are safest.

And if he's unfamiliar with them charge your clicker using the new treat. Just like when you started clicker training. And lay it on THICK - super thick.

Treat only one pellet at a time but machine gun him with them. I mean fast, as quick as you can get the pellet in him.

20 rapid fire clicks with treats isn't too much, and if you can't click, don't worry about it, just TREAT. Get this guy overloaded with the experience of super generosity. Do this for a few days one or two or more sessions per day.

If he changes gear on you and starts to snatch at the treat do a very brief session of "back of the hand first," with him. Hold the treat in your palm, back of hand up, press to his lips, wait for him to stop mugging your hand - that is holding his mouth still (even better if he moves off the contact a bit) then spin your hand, open it and give him the treat.

But always go back to machine gun treating for now. I think you may see a considerable change in behavior.

This generosity technique comes to me from Peggy Hogan, herself a most generous author and horse trainer wise to the ways of the horse and especially the troubled horse. She does such remarkable but quiet little things with results that bring tears to my eyes for the horse's reaction, from sullen rejection and withdrawal to eager happy participation.

I've used this method on three horse's now with great success. Bonnie was one of them. She kicked me once on departure from an intense training session - back when she was about 9 months. I learned to give her a generous "end of session," handful of treats - her anxiety stopped.

I did this with Dakota, the super reactive horse I rehabed about 5 years ago and told the story here. He was awful about grabbing at my hand for the treat - like an alligator coming at me. Cured.

And the horse we are currently working with who has a decades long history of mouthy mugging, snatching at clothes, tugging, nipping, snapping, and occasionally biting ... who already in only one session is starting to show self control.

And that's the secret - empower the horse to good social human/horse behavior. Show him what he needs to do to make you give him a treat, and treats. Those of us that are crossovers from pressure/release work can appear to these horses as stingy and that they are going to have to figure out some way to make us give more.

It taught me that my former technique of NOT clicking and NOT treating just because the behavior the horse offered wasn't quite what I wanted was wrong wrong wrong. I now understand that I must give the horse the benefit of the doubt, and even if he didn't do the behavior I wanted go ahead and treat any way. Generosity pays.

Fool him. Just give him more for being a horse, just for standing there doing nothing.

To make it completely simple go ahead and attack the symptom of tongue sucking. How? Be firing treats into him before he can start sucking his tongue. Do not wait, do not slow down, do not let the occasion of tongue sucking happen, and if it does, just walk away. Then in about ten seconds (assuming his tongue sucking stopped) go back to rapid fire C/T.

Look for a "stop sucking lure." In other words if something makes him stop sucking for even a second, CT it fast. Maybe call his name, or whinny like a horse, or stomp your foot - be creative, don't fear upsetting him - you've got the clicker you've got the treats. You always can correct any "mistakes," which are nothing more than opportunities to take another try at it. I love mistakes. Horses seem to gain courage from our mistakes. They LOVE it when we back off and start over - because that's a horse characteristic of a more confident horse. Puzzle solving comes naturally to them, and if we excite that characteristic we can pull a horse out of emotional dead ends.

You will NOT spoil him. You will make a confident, safe friend of him. Best wishes, Don

_________________
Love is Trust, trust is All
~~~~~~~~~
So say Don, Altea, and Bonnie the Wonder Filly.


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PostPosted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 8:39 pm 
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Donald Redux wrote:
Yes, it has presented as very complex to me too. I've rattled on while in the back of my head I'm hoping for something in our exchange that will trigger recognition for me and allow me to make more specific advice available. Thank you for sticking with me and I may have found what I was looking for. Read on.


Not at all, thank you for sticking with us, this horse is very special to me and I really do want to help him.

Donald Redux wrote:
And there it was. I have a real life situation going on very similar to this though the horse doesn't show extreme anxiety as yours does. But the solution my student is using with her horse is the same one I'm going to suggest to you - and you are going to, unless I explain it well - going to think I'm nuts and that this advice is counter intuitive. Read on please.

There is the message - his communication to you of what his emotion is. I suspect the older gelding, likely a calm old guy that has learned things through life experience is doing something very specific right along the lies of what I'm going to suggest.

It has to do with generosity. More to follow - I hope you are reading your quoted words from the message of yours I'm replying to. There are such powerful key elements there in what is happening and what should happen.
Combining -R and +R is very risky for a troubled horse. It's like using harsh discipline with a child then switching to loving soft nurturing then back to harsh discipline. It makes a child crazy. The point of pressure, -R, is that you have to do it to the point of unpleasantness to train successfully, and then the association with it is always present - and that association, no matter how gentle the pressure becomes is threat. Pressure release people are in deep denial about this. Don't argue with them, just think behaviorally.

And most important about this avoidance of mixing the two methods - the human child experiencing this inconsistency in parenting will most often revert to some behavior to try and make some sense of it - and that will often be perverse behaviors, including soliciting the harsh behavior because it's part of a cycle he is familiar with. So will the horse. He will calm when punished.

Does that make you as queezy as it does me? But it's true. And I hate it. It makes for mental illness.

The issue of colic is like an exclamation point from him on your story. He is emphatically telling you so much.

One - he trusts you deeply. Two - he doesn't trust the world very much. Three - it revolves around food, a common occurrence with humans who exhibit anxiety through eating disorders. He has an emotional problem, a very rational one to him (which you of course already know) that manifests in some perverse behaviors (tongue sucking) and food obsessiveness and odd food behaviors.

The solution? (bet you thought I'd never get here).

Use the lowest starch/sugar treats you can manage to - I very much like un-molasses added beet pulp pellets, very cheap, or alfalfa pellets. Or hay pellets which I've not tried but trust from others use of them.

When you say "colic," my mind immediately goes to endocrine conditions - could he be insulin resistant? If so the treats I've suggested are safest.

And if he's unfamiliar with them charge your clicker using the new treat. Just like when you started clicker training. And lay it on THICK - super thick.

Treat only one pellet at a time but machine gun him with them. I mean fast, as quick as you can get the pellet in him.

20 rapid fire clicks with treats isn't too much, and if you can't click, don't worry about it, just TREAT. Get this guy overloaded with the experience of super generosity. Do this for a few days one or two or more sessions per day.

If he changes gear on you and starts to snatch at the treat do a very brief session of "back of the hand first," with him. Hold the treat in your palm, back of hand up, press to his lips, wait for him to stop mugging your hand - that is holding his mouth still (even better if he moves off the contact a bit) then spin your hand, open it and give him the treat.

But always go back to machine gun treating for now. I think you may see a considerable change in behavior.


You have put my thoughts into words, scattered thoughts that have been swimming around in my head these past months. When I used very gentle pressure and release he looked very calm with no tongue sucking but for me there was always something missing that joyful interaction that a clicker horse gives. But with clicker training there would be times of joyful intereaction but more often anxiety and stress. I knew I wanted to clicker train it is my preferred method these days but I questioned time and time again was I putting my needs above his.

I always felt that he had some sort of a mental break down but most would just change the subject or ignore and for a while I have wondered if food is a comfort as you say an eating disorder. Everything you have written makes perfect sense. Last summer he went to Liverpool University hospital for observation after a bad colic, I did ask the vet who researches stress colic about the tongue sucking after treat delivery and she mentioned it being a rush of sugar to the brain. So I tested different treats for tongue sucking he is best with a chop for some reasons pellets make it worse, the chop is Hi Fi Lite a mixture of alfalfa and soft straw and suitable for horses at risk from laminitis. We also noticed after the Liverpool incident that at times he looked bloated, Several months after his return he had an allergic reaction to what we have no idea but over night he came out in oedema swelling mainly on his neck and head some already weeping sores. This condition cleared quickly but he refused to eat his normal short feed and acted very upset when I offered it to him. It did ocurr to me that there could be something in his food that was not good for him and I gave him the Hi Fi Lite as that was all he would eat. He has been on this for quite a while with an added mineral and vitamin supplement and a probiotic. He is looking much better physically, sleeker with no bloating but we have still had some minor colic problems. I did not realise that colic could be a sign of insulin resistance he has been scoped for ulcers and is clear and many other tests but I do not believe he was tested for that , he has no other signs that would suggest he has this but I would like to know more.

Any way we tried your technique this afternoon, I was concerned that he would become over excited by the quick fire treats but quite the opposite. This boy shone with joy and I think at first could not believe it was happening it was lovely to watch him and he was a perfect gentleman, he always is when not stressed. So Donald that answers one question it is not the sound of the click that is causing anxiety and I must admit I did think it was. So we will continue, but most important of all he did not tongue suck once, so many thanks to both yourself and Peggy hogan for this idea.



Best wishes
Eileen

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:04 pm 
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I strongly believe you are doing the right thing for your boy. The serious efforts you've put into tracing down what might be going on for him indicates that, but too, moving away from -R and into +R, crossing over, is a brave and important part of the regimen you have set for him.

It's well understood that in humans changes risk reactive loss symptoms .. grieving, and that this can have physical manifestations. In fact the term "clinical depression," has pretty much come to mean that body changes can be identified and treated in the process of grief. Stress is the link.

Many things trigger stress reaction. Some actually are good, but still present a physiological load. It's sort of like too much sugar. Still it's part of us and part of the horse.

Theoretically (mine alone at this point unless others have gone before me I do not know about) a shift from a -R life to one of +R constitutes both a move in to classical conditioning and risk of stress. Pavlovs' dogs, subjected to classical conditioning, may well have developed stress symptoms. And why? Because they were not on an empowered schedule. They were in fact totally helpless when it came to food. They could not make it appear, they could only salivate in anticipation of its arrival.

Can you see the potential for stress we place on horses? Fortunately we do not, we back yard and countrified causal horse owners, keep our friends in stalls and feed at precise moments preceded by much ritual. (Pavlov's Bell).

However, and why I think the potential for many more horse owners to choose clicker, when we move a horse into the +R world, and additionally empower him to manipulate US, that is have some control over his own life, it presents high stress situations for many horses ... most I think.

I see a kind of segue from the rapid fire treat feeding to reassure the horse and introduce him to empowerment as the next step. That is moving carefully from machine gunning treats to introducing things he can do to make a treat happen. Generosity carried over into a paradigm of empowerment of the horse.

This is too I believe very much what happens in the socially well balanced safe herd setting. Except for the minor pressures of daily living they very much meet each others' needs and generous with each other. It happens at a pace so slow and calm we, unless we are keen observers, don't catch on to that easily. LOL

While there is great diversity there are some basic and important elements to good socially healthy interpersonal behaviors that prevail. And since we've captured his body for life (by breeding and management) when we begin to respect certain behavioral elements we will have a more pleasant partner to live with.

You are going through his transition with him. The one from -R to +R. I think the less -R that occurs in his life the more smoothly things will flow forward toward that better healthier life for him.

Your experience with the high rate of reinforcement (ROR) and what you saw happen is both an important turning point, and one you can see you can capitalize on by what you do next, and a strong indicator you are on the right track.

I very much admire what you are doing, and admire also the self control you have engaged in by focusing on your own behavior vis a vis -R and +R.

I cannot recall if you have subscribed to Peggy's forum to share this.

This is an open portion of AND, thus publicly available without subscription. Would you mind terribly if I invited her subscribers to visit and view this thread? It's a very supportive group (very AND like in some ways), and many have faced similar things or will in the future. It's an important story you are living.

Best, Don

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PostPosted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 9:38 pm 
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Donald Redux wrote:
Many things trigger stress reaction. Some actually are good, but still present a physiological load. It's sort of like too much sugar. Still it's part of us and part of the horse.

Theoretically (mine alone at this point unless others have gone before me I do not know about) a shift from a -R life to one of +R constitutes both a move in to classical conditioning and risk of stress. Pavlovs' dogs, subjected to classical conditioning, may well have developed stress symptoms. And why? Because they were not on an empowered schedule. They were in fact totally helpless when it came to food. They could not make it appear, they could only salivate in anticipation of its arrival.

Can you see the potential for stress we place on horses? Fortunately we do not, we back yard and countrified causal horse owners, keep our friends in stalls and feed at precise moments preceded by much ritual. (Pavlov's Bell).

However, and why I think the potential for many more horse owners to choose clicker, when we move a horse into the +R world, and additionally empower him to manipulate US, that is have some control over his own life, it presents high stress situations for many horses ... most I think.


We do make so many decisions about our horses that in some ways never involve their input and this does not feel right. It is the kind of world we live in and we can not give them back their freedom because we have left them with no place to go. Also we have bred horses who are dependant on humans for their survival so we owe it to them to do the very best we can with what our circumstances are.

We have five other Spanish Andalusians, through no fault of their own four of these horses were in need of rescue. Well bred horses who for one reason or another had no further purpose to fulfill yet each one has a character and emotions like any human. These horses were bred as people pleasers or so I was told, easy horses that did whatever was asked without question. They are fighters and refused to go under one young mare was starved to a point close to death and they almost destroyed her mentally in order to dominate. She is a gentle mare and responds well to the clicker with none of the anxiety of her brother Gaucho. It is strange Don but this young mare totally trusts me without question but in the eyes of the others I see a question. They trust me but I feel they have some unconcious anxiety perhaps simply because I am human. The other five, Gaucho and Dida we did not at the time rescue, all show anxiety with the clicker though none as bad as Gaucho. I did your test with each horse and none showed anxiety with the quick fire treats, so perhaps the anxiety comes from being given power over their lives again.

I know for Gaucho control is important, not control of me but control of his life and who can blame him for that. He is also a horse who is desperate to communicate his need to humans not always in an easy way but I do understand some of what he tries to say.

Donald Redux wrote:
I see a kind of segue from the rapid fire treat feeding to reassure the horse and introduce him to empowerment as the next step. That is moving carefully from machine gunning treats to introducing things he can do to make a treat happen. Generosity carried over into a paradigm of empowerment of the horse.

This is too I believe very much what happens in the socially well balanced safe herd setting. Except for the minor pressures of daily living they very much meet each others' needs and generous with each other. It happens at a pace so slow and calm we, unless we are keen observers, don't catch on to that easily. LOL


Funny you should say that but only the other day I was working on head lowering with young Dida and it suddenly struck me that when they release their fear and relax these horse would need no training they would be happy to answer your request. That is what I feel is the biggest block for them all they are afraid of the world and I provide a safe haven, my older horse two ID crosses, a welsh pony and my friends ID/thoroughbred do provide some stability in their lives.

Donald Redux wrote:
You are going through his transition with him. The one from -R to +R. I think the less -R that occurs in his life the more smoothly things will flow forward toward that better healthier life for him.

Your experience with the high rate of reinforcement (ROR) and what you saw happen is both an important turning point, and one you can see you can capitalize on by what you do next, and a strong indicator you are on the right track.

I very much admire what you are doing, and admire also the self control you have engaged in by focusing on your own behavior vis a vis -R and +R.

I cannot recall if you have subscribed to Peggy's forum to share this.

This is an open portion of AND, thus publicly available without subscription. Would you mind terribly if I invited her subscribers to visit and view this thread? It's a very supportive group (very AND like in some ways), and many have faced similar things or will in the future. It's an important story you are living.

Best, Don


The transition with him is important because for me at least what he teaches me is a guide for how I work with the others. With them I can at times see the point at which the damage began with him and draw back so they do not suffer as he has.

I would like to subscribe to Peggy's forum I am still getting my head around FB, please feel free to share Don, the ideas and thoughts of others are so helpful and supportive to me on this journey.

Best wishes
Eileen

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:56 am 
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Thank you Don and Eileen for sharing your experiences here. This thread is very interesting for me. Reminds me of what R+ is really about - generosity! :yes:

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 5:33 pm 

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Very interesting thread! It will take me a while to read through all of it. I have a lot of experience of this with dogs, not much with horses. If I have anything useful to add I will when I'm done reading. I applaud any of you who have the courage to take on animals with PTSD or similar. :clap:
Birgit


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:56 pm 
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While this appears to be a pretty complex case, that is the tongue activity horse seems to be, I suspect it boils down to reactive attachment disorder, an old diagnosis for children that have not developed, or have lost the capacity to attach to a caregiver safely and confidently.

RAD has been renamed I think since my retirement, but much of what Eileen is posting about this horse and others she is working around and with, sounds just like a parent discussion where I listened to many instances of reports that child had bizarre and often seriously anti-social and or self damaging behaviors as a result of RAD.

Why would a horse need to attach to his caregiver? My bet is that you, Birgit, have seen this many times with dogs you have worked with. Removal from the mother before normal weaning is pretty serious stuff. If the dog, horse, or child is abused as well, and RAD reactivity isn't dealt with to reestablish a healthy relationship things just get worse.

I've seen punishment oriented attempts with all three that went so bad it resulted in the worst possible outcomes.

We learned early on with children that clear boundaries, taking responsibility for consistency and having both a sense of humor and a thick hide, where the paramount parenting skills needed.

Sort of like, "yeah, you are having a fit, and you still will wear your shoes outdoors, get back to me for lacing instructions," mindset.

Giving the subject something to do that they can do in the face of perverse behaviors seems to be the key. Busy hands, or mouths, and all.

Teaching dogs or horses (and dare I say kids too) new obtainable skills and using them to empower the subject has to be part of the mix.

The day that terrified shy pup, foal, child, finds the toy and brings it too you is much more, with such individuals, than just a trick.

It's the beginning. This is why I admire Eileen so. For taking this on, sticking to it, searching for answers, creatively dealing with barriers and challenges.

I'm very invested in your input, Birgit.

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PostPosted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:41 pm 

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ET: Something I just saw recently, is a reference to Kay Laurence who says that it's not really the click that is the signal, it's going for the treat pouch that is a much more reliable indicator or cue to the horse that they did something right. Kay works with dogs, but I think she's onto something.

Maybe you could just give rapid-fire treats and not click at all. I'm wondering, too, if you're breaking things down tiny enough. I'm not there, so I can't see what's going on. You might very well be breaking things down into tiny increments and noticing the tiniest reactions.

There's also switching to something easier, such as touching a target for several repetitions. This is something Alex Kurland calls "micro-shaping." It keeps the Rate of Reinforcement (RoR) up but gives the horse something easy to do, breaks the tension, and gives them a mental break.

The other is to go out with only 20 treats (or maybe only 10). Do something easy, that he already knows how to do. Keep the RoR up as high as possible and only work through the number of treats you have. Then give your session-is-over signal, whatever that may be, and leave. Don't come back again until the next day.

I have found with one horse I have (Atticus), who has not been mistreated in any way, that working on something that he doesn't like twice in one day is too much. Once I get started, I want to keep going and going and going. Training for only 15 minutes or only 20 treats is very hard for me.

I saw where you said you are training at liberty and that's good. I'm working my Atticus at liberty to load onto a trailer. He already knows how to load, but he has given indications that it's not his favorite thing to do. (Duh.) So I wanted to clean up his response and wanted to do it at liberty. I also realized I had to up the quality of the treat. So I take one or two carrots out to work on liberty loading on the trailer. I have to force myself to stop. If I go over my allotted amount or try to come back and do more, it's a lost cause. He just doesn't want to work at it anymore.

I have another horse (Ollie), supposedly a TB, whom I have had for seven years. I've never abused him and I'm pretty sure the previous owner who bought as a baby didn't abuse him either. But still he has issues. Now that I'm working with him at liberty I'm finding all sorts of things he'd really rather not do - be in the wash rack, be near a hose, have the water turned on, have the water running, be brushed, be sprayed near the neck or head, have the mane combed, have his feet handled (although cleaning is okay), having his feet trimmed, and having his sheath cleaned. Now some of these things were done easily before as long as he was in cross ties. Now that he has the option to leave, he does. How interesting it is to me to find out these things that he doesn't like after all these years.

Ollie used to be almost retarded about taking the treat; he kept dropping them! Now I think he was so tense in his mouth, chin, nose, etc., that he just couldn't relax those muscles enough to get the treat properly. Things are better now that I've upped the RoR and I'm working at liberty.

Gaucho is lucky to have you. Slow down even more and keep chipping away at it.

Shawna Karrasch said the other day that she feels like she's running into a huge boulder that's blocking her path. She works on the boulder and gets it cleared away. But now there are two big rocks in the way. She works on those and gets them cleared away. But now there are four medium-sized stones in the way. And so on, and so on. We just keep chipping away and asking more questions and trying different things to see which permutation or combination of things seems to help the most.

Good luck to you.

My 2 cents.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 9:38 pm 
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Thanks to all for your input.

Gaucho had a colic attack this morning in theory this should not happen as we have been working purely with +R and relaxation exercises. This is a pattern that has ocurred over the past few years we appear to be moving forward with calm and he throws a colic, thankfully he is recovering. So I have done some very serious thinking today and have one other option I need to explore.

Thank you for your help Twiliath I am familiar with the work of kay laurence and we have sucessfully used the clickless treats. Both Gaucho and his brother Bertie will mark the reach of the hand towards the treat pouch and it does help to calm we will switch between the two depending on reaction. What does appear to be the problem is building duration with these horses and I am at the moment working with the re cue that kay laurence recently talked about at clicker expo and this is helping. These horses have clocks in their heads and if I initially build duration for perhaps 2 secs they know exactly when that treat should come and over react if they do not hear the click. I only noticed this by watching a video and saw the swing in was marked by the time I should have clicked. I have tried other marker signals but once they are used to the new marker the old problems return. As suggsted by JRR we have also worked with shortened chains and used a touch target as a comfort behaviour this actually does help a lot. All the horses are making progress but Gaucho's colic problems do concern me.

Recently at ORCA Paul Andronis gave a talk on how the behaviour creates the emotion and as we know change the behaviour and we change the emotion. When I first met Gaucho I did not realise that he had been trained into learned helplessness infact I saw in him what others did not. I think I saw the horse he was born to be a proud young stallion, others later described what they saw a none horse who just did what was needed and offered nothing a horse with no personality. The second time I went to see him I was surprised by how calm he looked almost too calm for a three year old but of course this was shut down. Even though he is a good stallion he can be mister prance and dance in your face sort of a guy and a bit what I call snarky. Usually before and just after a colic attack he is very calm and body language shows all signs of relaxation, not mister answer back and ask what your motives are. I thought about this today and the very behaviour that I have been working on over the past year is what he displays when he is sick. The well behaved polite boy is the sick horse, perhaps the behaviour pattern for relaxation vibrates closely to the pattern of shut down. Over the past year I have at times been concerned that I could be experiencing shut down with him, I checked my journal and this happened when he was referred to Liverpool last year. I also checked my diary and think we had colic free for six months during a period when we worked with empowered movement. He is Spanish, flamboyant and passionate and free shapes best of all, I have nothing to loose by trying this as his health is my main concern.

I do believe I saw a video of an Icelandic who was depressed until his owner shaped bad atitude so any thoughts on free shaping safe bad attitude would be appreciated :smile: :smile:

Twiliath I took on board all your suggstions and thank you for the first few years I thought he was autistic as he did not seem able to process info very well even with the clicker. At times even taking one step forward can be to much for him it is like he wants too but his feet won't move. I don't mind too much about training with him I just wish I could resolve the colic I think the vets have run out of ideas. They are very kind and tell me my management is spot on but can offer no other ideas.

Thank you all for your kindness. :smile:

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