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