Halloween Horrors

By Neversummer October 21, 2020 Clicker training No Comments
Sometimes the result of the training is so beautiful. We see a horse leaping to respond to barely there cues. They seem to work as one with the person. Beautiful movements, swift reactions. It’s a beautiful display.
What we don’t see is how the horse came to this place.
We see beauty.
The horrors are hidden.
Hidden behind closed barn doors. In round pens and arenas. We don’t see the whips and raw mouths. The tight nose bands and tie downs. We happily over look the white eyes and nostrils wrinkled with stress and pain.
Do you think there’s any horse without its mouth raw when it goes into training? I heard asked on a horse page once.
How often is that the truth? All we allow ourselves to see it the pretty picture presented, not the monsters hidden within.

 

Halloween Horrors

By Neversummer October 17, 2020 Clicker training No Comments
It’s almost Halloween 🎃
There are so many scary stories involving horse training, I thought it would be fun to share some of them. Like horsey Halloween ghost stories.
👻 Welcome to Halloween Horrors! 👻
 
My horse came to me with perfect manners.I loved him so much I wanted to make him happy. I gave him cookies and carrots every chance I got. He started to come running every time he saw me. I knew he loved me too.
Then he started shoving me with his nose and searching me for treats. Of course I gave them to him when he asked. What else could I do? I wanted him to keep loving me. The more I gave him the treats he demanded to more insistent he got.
The last time I didn’t get the treat out fast enough and he bit me! 😱
I am never going to hand feed a horse again. Obviously it was hand feeding that caused the biting. Horses should never be fed by hand. Training by feeding treats is an awful idea. Can’t people see what it does?
Food is an inanimate object. Objects don’t train horses. People train horses.
It does happen that way often enough. Teaching horses to bite by feeding them is only too common an occurrence. It should be remembered though that it is people teaching horses to bite by feeding them. Not hand feeding itself that teaching horses to bite.
Horses need to be taught treat manners just like they are taught to accept a rider. Without that training we can be bitten just like we can be bucked off.
Don’t be sucked into the horror story.
Teach treat manners.

Punishment

By Neversummer October 13, 2020 Clicker training 1 Comment

Why  are we always so quick to want to punish?

I watched a school board meeting last night. They were arguing over policy and before they even had it set a couple of them wanted to decide on the punishment.

They were eager to chose a punishment for children starting at kindergarten!

What do they think punishing a small child is going to accomplish?

With rewards we can be sure that actions that are rewarded will be repeated.
 
Actions that are punished though, we never know what we have actually taught. We think we’ve put a stop to the behavior. We think they will think twice about doing that again. Punishment is very rewarding to the punisher. Instant gratification because it puts a stop to the behavior.
 
For the moment.
 
The one being punished may have learned something completely different. Often it is that the one doing the punishment is mean, they’re bad, they should be avoided. It can be that they should be careful not to repeat the behavior where they might be caught. Sometimes it is that they themselves are bad, not worthy, not good enough.
 
These are bad enough things to be teaching animals. Why would we want to teach that to our children?
 
Before jumping to punishment we should always look for other options. Can we change the situation that lead up to the problem? Can we encourage behavior that makes the undesired behavior unlikely or impossible? Can we educate people who are pushing for punishment?
 
I realize horses are harder to train than children. I have both and wish children were as easy as horses. I understand the difficulty. I don’t understand this as a solution.
Not punishing behavior doesn’t mean letting animals or children run wild. Boundaries are still set. We still expect behaviors we desire to be performed.
Especially in this case I refuse to call behaviors that are punished ‘bad’. Neither animals nor small children have any concept of ‘bad’ they are simply doing what comes naturally to them.
We are the ones calling them ‘bad’. How can the problem with teaching a small child they are ‘bad’ not be blindingly obvious?
Isn’t it better to teach them they are good? To seek out things we can be proud of them for?
We find what we seek in life. If we go around looking for bad things to punish then that is what we will find.
If we look for the good…

 

 

 

The Strangest Positive Reinforcement Story I’ve Ever Heard

By Neversummer October 2, 2020 Cattle, Clicker training No Comments

I know all the rules of the training, I know positive reinforcement is effective, I know it works.

We needed something done RIGHT NOW though. There wasn’t time to  train. It would be easiest and kindest to both animals to just get the job done and over with.

Our goat had her baby. We had nearly given up on her. The people who bred her for us said their ram had a fifty percent calf crop this last time, whatever the proper goat term for that is, a fifty percent kid crop? There was a good chance ours hadn’t bred. She was looking pretty fat and her bag was getting bigger. I held out hope. Yesterday she went into labor. Moaning and groaning she began digging nest holes. Weirdest thing I’d seen. Who’s ever heard of a goat making a nest?!

By evening still no kid, we locked her in the barn for the night in hope of warmth and easy checking.

By morning there was a beautiful white female kid. Our goat, Baa’s bag isn’t great though. We would need to offer lots of help so she could figure out how to nurse and get started at it. Milking Baa and offering the kid a bottle would be a good place to start.

The children named her Violet. I wasn’t sure if it was an improvement or a disappointment after the last one. Snow White Tractor is a name for any goat to live up to 😉

Baa is only partly feral. She will eat out of our hands and is calm to handle but not halter trained or trained to let us milk her. We put a halter on her, snubbed her off to a post and my husband held her while I milked.

I milked her a few years ago when she had her last kid. She wasn’t bad, not great but just kicking my bucket, not fighting. This time she was having none of it. We needed milk for her kid though so we held her and fought and got the job  done.

It wasn’t easy and I wasn’t looking forward to doing this a few times a day until the kid figured out how to do this on her own.

I went out a couple of hours later with some of the milk in a bottle to feed Violet. I brought treats along as a peace offering to Baa. She came right up to take them. Not too mad about the milking then.

I fed Violet the bottle then  offered Baa more treats. Baa spent lots f time licking my hands. Violet decided the milk hadn’t been  enough  and finally started looking for a meal.

I nudged her up to Baa and Baa didn’t take off. Carefully reaching out I gave a tug at her bag. She stood and went back t licking my hands frantically. I gave another squeeze, go a good stream of milk, let her lick my hands.

It finally dawned on me that she was licking the milk off my hands.

We developed a routine. I milked, let Baa lick, milked, let Baa lick.

By rewarding her with the milk I was able to squeeze out into my cupped hand I was able to refill my bottle for Violet and get a good start at getting the bad side of her bag stripped out. AND get Violet put on her and nursing on her own!

All without anything holding Baa.

The first and most important rule of trainnig with positive reinforcement is that the one being reinforced gets to decide what they find reinforcing. Some people might argue that that’s not the first rule. Whatever. I’m calling it first, they can choose their own. That rule is followed by the reinforcement has to be strong enough to make it valuable enough for them to want to perform the behavior to earn it.

I had offered her treats in our earlier milking. They were not high enough value.

Her own milk that I needed to get out of her for her and Violets well being was a VERY high value reinforcer. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that human adults are the only ones who drink milk. All animals love milk. It’s just a matter of them knowing how to get it. Cows and bulls will often  nurse other cows.

And Baa was happy to do just about anything for a taste of it.

That was the weirdest training session I have ever spent. It was amazing to see how well +R worked with the right reinforcement and how much quicker and easier it was than using force, even  without much prior training.

Trick Riding

By Neversummer September 21, 2020 Rusty No Comments

We’ve all seen the horse for sale adds with a person standing on their horses back to prove that the horse is ‘broke’.

We’ve all rolled our eyes a little because while it shows the person is braver than I am at least, with better balance, it doesn’t show much about their training.

This is not that. Not anything to do with it.

My daughter does have a goal of being able to stand on a horses back. I support her in that because I can see quite a few benefits. None of which are to help in selling the horse 😉

Both children do gymnastics, because they enjoy and are good at it and because I like a sport that can add so much to their riding abilities.

Vaulting is a wonderful sport that I would love for them to be able to do. If there were anything closer to us. There are a couple drawbacks to living in the middle of nowhere. There are probably some resources available online. There are for everything else, I need to remember to look.

This is our improvised version.

Rusty volunteered to sidepass over the top of a small round bale. Just the perfect height. Getting on and off has been a hard part of riding for both children. It’s a long ways up and down. Having a bale to cut the height in half helped a lot. They were soon hopping off and on, spinning circles, even standing on his back. No pictures of that, I was too busy holding on tight, there were no hands left for a camera.

As they get better and more comfortable we will switch to jumping off the side without a bale to shorten the distance to the ground.

Is it dangerous? Maybe. Life is dangerous. Every precaution has been taken and my faith in the horse is complete.

Instead I think it adds considerable safety to their riding. Knowing how to get off safely is one of the most important things you can do. Being comfortable on a horses back and being able to stay on in many different positions is a close second. Being comfortable on a horses back, not tight with fear, instead loose and moving with the horse, is something we work hard to learn.

The change in both of them with only a weekends worth of practicing their gymnastics on Rusty’s back is amazing.

For his part, Rusty isn’t thrilled I admit. He is willing though, as long as I provide treats. If I slow down on the treats he takes a step away from the bale. When lead to the bale he steps right into position and asks for his reward. I don’t think we are bothering him too badly.

As long as everyone is loving it we are going to keep practicing this.

Perfection

By Neversummer September 2, 2020 Clicker training No Comments

My husband said I shouldn’t write this post.

I’m sure he had many reasons for that. Possibly embarrassment among them. He also said it sounded like bragging. If that is what you take away from this than you are missing my point. This isn’t about bragging it’s about view points. I’ll say that ahead of time and then ignore his wise advice and say what’s on my mind!

My above mentioned husband is as close to perfect as its possible for any man to get.

My horse Rusty, is very nearly perfect. The other horses are only a small step behind him.

My children are very nearly perfect.

God has truly blessed me.

How did I happen to end up with these wonderful creatures? It wasn’t purely God’s grace, although that was a large part of it. A lot of it has to do with outlook.

We find what we seek. If I was mad at and about any of them. If I focused on the things they have done, the things they are doing, wrong, If I remembered every slight, every bad behavior, every injury, Then those are what I would find.

We sat at a rare meal out, in an actual restaurant, the other day. The children were being less than perfect. The husband was tending towards the grouchy side. I was working towards joining him. It was miserable. Then I got to thinking about this post, floating about in my mind already.

We find what we seek.

I informed children and husband of how perfect they are, how happy they make me. My darling husband scoffed and laughed. The children climbed on me, laughing. The downward spiral was broken. We all laughed as they took humor, and maybe some pride, in their perfection. The food came. We were a happy family again.

In training with positive reinforcement we spend our time looking for the right answer, for the good behavior. It can change our entire mindset. If we let it.

It does help that my husband is kind and loving and works hard to make sure I am happy.

That doesn’t change the premise though. We find what we seek. Look for the good in life and you will find it. Look for the bad, well, that is where you will find yourself.

“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”  1 Peter 4:8

Treat Manners

By Neversummer August 27, 2020 Cattle No Comments

I’ve stopped training Ghost.

She and Blossom have started trying to run me over. The resource guiding and over enthusiasm has reached the point of being dangerous. The whole herd is interested in what’s going on and want to get closer. Poppy thinks all these young kids should get out of the way and let the matriarch have her share. She isn’t above forcing them out of her way.

It’s a good way to get smashed.

Does that mean that feeding treats, training with food, creates a monster? Is this an example of how hand feeding teaches bad habits, is dangerous, and should never be done?

Many people believe that horses, or cattle 😉 should never be hand fed. They believe it will ruin a well behaved animal and make a poorly behaved animal dangerous. It is long standing tradition, for many people, to never give treats for these reasons. They feel very strongly about this and any conversation about it can turn quite heated.

Do I believe this is the problem with Ghost? Am I going to turn aside from my wicked ways and never feed her treats again?

In a word.

NO.

The problem here isn’t the feeding of treats. The problem is my training.

That is the same problem all these people who have had trouble with hand fed animals face. It can be hard to accept that we have personally created a monster and much easier to blame it on something else. Like feeding treats.

In truth though, lots of people feed treats regularly without bad results. Even more, many people train animals that can do amazing things happily and willingly with the best of manners with no more tools than a treat. It has been well proven that it is possible, even common.

So why is it so easy to believe the problem is in feeding treats and not the training?

It can be hard to go against tradition. It can be impossible to find an alternative when the alternative is not something we are familiar with. It can be hard to accept that we don’t know everything. Ego is a humans biggest down fall. Saying we might have been wrong, admitting that we are unable to do something that works so well for others, can be nearly impossible.

Instead of giving these two darling animals up as a lost cause, I am going to train them better.

How am I going to do that when I just got done saying I am going to stop training?

Sometimes training requires a certain location or set up. Not a round pen or anything fancy and expensive like that. All I need is a fence and a place away from the rest of the herd. What we need here is protected contact. To keep me safe and to make it easier for them to understand what I am asking of them.

Because that isn’t available in the middle of a pasture surrounded by the cow herd, our training will have to be put on hold for awhile. Unless I am able to catch them near the perimeter fence and away from the herd. That is a difficult training situation to set up.

I can wait. We have time. The important thing is to look for the root cause of training issues, acknowledge when we are the cause, and figure out the steps needed to fix the problem.

Blaming a training aid that is well proven to work doesn’t fix anything.

Kids Horses

By Neversummer August 14, 2020 Lady No Comments

Many years ago I was on a trail ride, a big trail ride. One of those week long ones with hundreds of horses and riders. Sometimes along the way people needed a lost shoe replaced or other farrier work done.

One evening we were standing around watching a farrier re-shoe a horse, talking and hanging out. Apparently there wasn’t much else going on that evening.

He had his small daughter along, sweet and cute, we were talking to her too.

They each had a story to tell. The differences in their stories were heart rending.

The farrier told of how not too long ago his daughter had been life-flighted to the hospital after her pony had kicked her in the head cracking her skull. He swore that pony had turned and looked at the girl before carefully taking aim. He had hauled it to the sale. No way was he keeping that thing around after it purposely tried to hurt his child.

Nobody blamed him for that.

Seeing your child near death with a skull fracture would have to rank high on the list of the worst things that could happen.

The sweet tiny child said that her dad had taken a baseball bat and hit the pony until it died.

Looking back I’m not sure how she would have known that, not with the time she spent in  the hospital. At the time it made perfect sense. A beloved child, a viscous pony, and a story that could be told publicly without condemnation while quietly covering the truth of an act done in rage and anguish.

Yes there are lots of reasons the terrible accident could have happened. Yes, the whole thing is terrible from every side.

The love of a parent for their child is the point of the story though and the importance of choosing carefully when looking for a horse for children. Also the importance of teaching children to be kind and polite when dealing with their horses. So often we see children  doing things that could and should cause them to be on the receiving end of a kick or bite.

Introducing our children to horses is the best thing a parent can do. It is as exciting for the parent as for the child. It can also be one of the most dangerous things we can do. We need to be sure to take the time and do it right.

Respect

By Neversummer August 13, 2020 Uncategorized No Comments
Respect
/rəˈspekt/
  1. 1. a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.
  2. due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others
verb:
     1. admire (someone or something) deeply, as a result of their abilities, qualities, or achievements.

I was at the local coffee shop the other day. There was another family in there, the mother of the family has a reputation for being, if we are polite we would call it straight forward, to the point, and abrupt. If we are being honest we would call it mean. Not to her kids, or at least not any more to her kids than she is to the rest of the community.

The barista went to school with her daughter and they had been chatting.

Something was said that the mother misunderstood as being about respect. She said a few other things but the part that stuck with me was that she thought the young woman had always been afraid of her in school and because of that had always respected her.

I sat looking at her thinking about that and about how it applies in the horse world too.

People are continually confusing respect and fear.

Like her we yell. We chase out horses around and micro manage their every move. We wonder why our horses don’t want to be near us and wont let us catch them. Then if they don’t do exactly as we say we jump all over them, move their feet, make them ‘respect’ us. What a sad life it must be for her to have to constantly fight and worry that people won’t accept her and listen to her if she acted any other way.

Respect has to be earned it can not be forced and is in no  way related to fear.

That horses are unable to feel respect according to any of the definitions has been well discussed, if not agree upon by everyone.

Let says that horses could feel respect though. If we are trying to get our horses to respect us are we using fear tactics like this lady? Are we confusing a quick scurry to get away with a desire to do as we ask and work together in mutual respect?

So much horse training is based on fear. The fear makes us feel safe and comfortable, and as though we were getting respect. Like this poor lady in the coffee shop are we confusing fear with genuine respect?

Lady, Giving Lessons

By Neversummer August 10, 2020 Lady No Comments

Lady got ignored a bit yesterday, we were busy doing things that didn’t involve horses. Not sure why that sort of thing ever has to happen 😱
Today we brought her out for the daily tapping session that it has been decided is going to be on the schedule Lady’s person even decided that her little brother needed a lesson on how to tap.
Then a good long time spent hand grazing and getting used to things like hanging out in our yard.
Then when it was time to put her back there was another lesson on how to take a halter off. Something that confounds both children. 😆 I don’t remember it being this hard but it gives them something to work on and Lady was amazingly patient with the whole thing for a long time.
Once she has had time to settle in better we’ll work more towards riding. For now I’m loving watching them play with Lady and seeing how well she is taking these crazed small creatures. Everyone is learning lots while we hang out and get to know each other.