Posts Tagged ‘horse
HorseFlix
Ok, so I admit I’ve been sort of M.I.A. from my blog the last few days, but I have a very good excuse! I’ve spent the weekend (my weekend counts a 1/2 day saturday thru monday since I hold hours at my shop on saturday from 10-4 and I’m closed sunday and monday) at my family’s new horse farm, Iron Horse Farm. Unfortunately it rained all weekend so while our plan was to finish the fence building we instead hung fixtures and worked on electrical stuff.
But anyway – on to the real topic of this post, HorseFlix. I stumbled across this website that is very very intriguing. Apparently it is very similar to the popular Netflix, which my husband and I use to the fullest as we are huge movie buffs, but instead you can rent horse movies and instructional dvds. The website says plans start at $9.99 a month and it looks like you have 21 days to keep and watch the movie before it needs to be mailed back. This is a neat idea if like me you are a visual learner and really enjoy watching instructional dvds on horse training. As someone mentioned in a blog I came across:
Most training and instructional DVDs cost big bucks and it’s often hard to know before hand if you’re going to end up liking it or not (much less whether you’re going to want to watch it multiple times). I usually end up not buying DVDs that I’d like to watch just because I’m unwilling to invest $50 in a DVD that I might not even end up liking.
The other neat thing is that I found lots of the parelli videos on there – and I personally know how much those parelli dvds can cost, renting them would be much more cost effective. And if you need to go back and review something simply just rent the video again. I might just have to try out horsefilix, perhaps I could get a few friends to go in on it and we can all have “horse movie nights” – maybe I’ll even get my local pony club involved. I just might have to hid this from my husband though, he probably won’t like the idea that I’m taking up valuable netflix time for horse videos. 🙂
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
Clicker Training Community
Today I stumbled across a yahoo group for clicker training horses. And as if I don’t have enough e-mail already – I joined the group. I was surprised to see that this group is over 10 years old and currently has 3,098 members. Wow! Thats a lot of clicker trainers.
Gotta love a good pony roll. Chincoteague Minnow
Upon skimming some of the most recent messages I have found that this group may end up being a great wealth of untapped knowledge. People are posting videos of training their horses, asking questions and finding answers, and even discussing new techniques.
There are zillions of messages I could comb through, but one in particular caught my eye today.
I’m not sure when to click when riding. I’ve realized I started a habit
of doing it like this. Theres all kinds of little bits and pieces I
want to reinforce but what I’ve been doing is little behavior chains.
For example: Go forward, soften to the bit, move your shoulder away,
follow the rein, step your hips over to stop. Click! Each piece is being
rewarded by the release of pressure and the click comes at the end.
Each piece has been reinforced with the clicker individually in earlier
sessions. I’m wondering if I should avoid clicking for the completion
of each behavior chain. It seems she will start to think the thing I
really want her to do is stop if I always click at the end. Maybe not,
I don’t know??
I spent a good year clicker training Minnow to keep moving when I vaulted off.
As I mentioned before I don’t proclaim to be any sort of expert on clicker training – I consider myself a hobbyist and I do it for the pure enjoyment and to make learning a better experience for me and my horses. That being said – as I’ve admitted before – I really haven’t read any clicker training books. I’m not really a “book” learner, I would much rather learn from life experiences, the occasional article/video online, or watching demos. So when I read this question it hit home because I have been contemplating the same thing lately – when is the right time to click when riding? Now I could of gone out and bought every book off the shelf to find the answer, but personally I think its better to find what works for me and my horses. I’ve been experimenting with it myself on Boomer (Chesapeake Boomerang) and I think I’ve discovered that its different for every horse/rider combo and every task at hand. I think for Boomer it was important in the beginning to click and reward him for small simple things, like moving away from my leg pressure even the slightest, but now as he is understanding the concept better he’s not going to get rewarded until he leg yields completely to the rail like I wanted. And as we continue his training I may be racing him through a set of poles and as I ask him to yield to my leg pressure by each pole – he won’t get rewarded until he completes the entire pattern being completely responsive to my leg pressure.
Minnow moving away from leg pressure as we round the bucket.
Who knows if I’m doing it the “correct way” – but is there really a correct way? I mean isn’t training an animal about creating a language that you and that animal can understand? So what if I do it the total opposite of the way its meant to be done – if I can get to the end result that I wanted in a positive way then I think its a success. Thats what I think is so great about clicker training. There doesn’t seem to be a “this is the way its supposed to be done” method in my opinion, its about utilizing a simple “click” to take the place of a “your right” and how you get to the end result is completely up to the trainer – there is no one right way.
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
P.S. you may notice that I accompany all of my posts with videos and/or photos – this is for all you visual learners like me out there. I don’t think I could read anything unless it had a picture 🙂 enjoy!
Gypsy Vanner Hard at Work
One of my childhood riding companions now works at a local Gypsy Vanner Farm called El Brio Vanner, and one of her favorite horses, Odd Job Bob, has been away training with famous trick trainer, Tommie Turvey. I posted his most recent video where you can see Bob performing liberty work as well as the sit and laydown. And I love that you can see Tommie giving Bob a nice big carrot when he’s done a good job. It may not be clicker training, but its still a reward for completing the task.
-KD
www.ponypaintings.com
One Tuff Ball
Yesterday I ordered a Tuff ball from Toysforhorses.com for the ponies. I’m very curious to see how this thing will hold up – the photos of horses jumping on top of them are amazing! I’m already scheming of new tricks to teach them all using the ball and I’m hoping to work the ball into Minnow’s act at this years Pony Penning.
-KDConfidence Building
My sister and her wanna be race horse, Jet
On Sunday morning I took Boomer out for his second trail ride with the clicker. I had mostly talked about Blitz and how my mom and I were trying to teach him to control his emotions on our first ride with the clicker, well Boomer also came along for this training session where he learned to stand quietly after racing up a big hill, as well as how to walk home quietly. This time I went for a ride with my sister and her speed racer pony, Jet (you can only imagine how she got her name). Jet gives off a constant adrenaline that I think all the other horses can sense – she walks with urgency all the time and she only knows one speed and its FAST! Now this is perfectly fine for my sister, infact she can’t stand going slow – so they make the perfect pair, but for the rest of us we usually dread trail rides with Jet. Not only can our horses not keep up with her, but the adrenaline she puts off catches most horses off guard and prompts them into bucking and rearing fits when we begin moving with any sort of speed. Its like they feed off of her energy and they don’t know how to handle it – so most of them “explode”.
Boomer in his bitless bridle
Anyway, the point is that now that I have begun riding with the clicker, Boomer did not “explode” once, infact he remembered each and every spot that we had stopped (and waited) the day before and began halting on his own. (I of course made him move onto a new spot of my choosing so he learned that it wasn’t about a specific spot, it was about listening to me). I can’t say I’m surprised at how quickly he caught on – I know he’s smart – but later he did actually surprise me at how much confidence the clicker training had given him in just one short ride.
Now if you read my earlier post you probably saw that on my trail ride I had lost my camera in the woods and had to go back for it – well this time it was the cell phone (From now on I am riding with a trail bag). After about 20 minutes of my sister and I riding up and down the same hills I couldn’t find it. So my sister decided to head back to the barn to get her phone so we could call it. I was a little nervous about having her leave me and my young Boomer alone in a wide open field, but it made more sense for only one of us to go back while the other kept looking. So as Jet rode off in the distance I was amazed at how Boomer just stood and waited for me to tell him to walk away from the direction of home. (If I had done this with him a few months ago I would of most certainly had to get off of him and it would of been highly probable that he would break free of my grasp and run home). It seemed the clicker training was helping him to build confidence – we proceeded to ride up and down the hills alone until my sister returned and we were able to find my phone. I was very proud of how Boomer handled himself in this situation, most horses wouldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes on their own. I’m going to continue to work with him using clicker training, and I’m sure we are going to be able to accomplish amazing things together.
