I think it’s important to show real life training, rather than carefully edited, scripted and captioned training. I also have to live up to my own encouragement to everyone to be brave learners, be prepared to make mistakes and that ‘the animal is always right, so how can behaviour be wrong’. I think various trainers have said different iterations of this message, from Skinner to Bailey to Ramirez.
There isn’t really mistakes in this video, but it may look like it to some people. I’d like to explain and if you watch til the end you’ll see a rather funny blooper I’ve left in there.
Firstly, note there are 3 points in this post and video, the first is regarding Mercedes’ behaviour, the second is about being mindful of how you deliver your reinforcers, look after your body and your horse’s body and straightness and also how you deliver the reinforcer affects whether your horse is more or less ‘in your face’ and ‘muggy’. Thirdly, I wanted to talk about and demonstrate Feeding for Position and that learning happens after the click.
In regards to Mercedes behaviour, let me say that horses need to move, they are designed to move and domestic horses don’t move enough generally. Many domestic horses are often overweight or prone to becoming overweight, understandably. Therefore when I started R+ training, I was focused on movement and exercise, not standing around and giving a lot of food. This hopefully explains what’s happening with Mercedes’ behaviour in the video. She has a long and strong Positive Reinforcement history with movement, with doing things. She doesn’t do standing still very well in certain contexts. She’s very happy to stand still for certain things, but overall my training is about movement and I like that and I think it’s good for my horses. But if I want to do explanatory videos like these, you can see where this becomes problematic if you watch Mercedes’ behaviour.
The first point I’m demonstrating in the video is about HOW you feed. Looking after your back and your horse’s back requires some attention to detail and practice. Think about being ambidextrous and feed from both sides, both hands and in a way that is cleaner, smoother and easier for both you and the horse. You’ll notice how much straighter Mercedes is when I feed from my left hand on her left side and also how I’m not twisting my back. These small details can make a big difference.
This leads into what I also wanted to demonstrate and talk about and that’s the subject of Feeding for Position and more precisely, Bob Bailey’s famous words “The Click doesn’t end Behaviour, learning keeps going ie. Click for Action, Feed for Position.”
I often explain it as these glowing dots in space that the horse can see, they are places where there is R+ history, where the horse has been fed, reinforced for a behaviour specifically. The horse, any animal, gravitates to places of value where they’ve been repeatedly fed. They can also be super specific about the place, the body part, etc. You’ll see that in my video, I think it took about 2-3 trials and Mercedes kept her head at the ‘red dot’ ie. the place where reinforcement was last delivered repeatedly, down low and then up high.
This is exactly why it doesn’t worry me if she’s a fidget head and can’t stand still (such as in the video), because it would take very little for her to learn that standing still has value and she will quit asking, “when are we going to move??”.
Feeding for Position can be a very useful tool in your force free tool box. I feel that is where the art comes into the science of what we do. Some examples might be when we are teaching a behaviour, but then also using the food delivery to ask the horse to move away from you or to go somewhere else to get the reinforcement. This can be a way to teach a ‘go to a station/hoof target’ behaviour, where you would feed on the station, but then start to offer food away from the station, so that they learn to leave and go there and eventually on cue. Another example might be in Reverse Round Pen training, in order to encourage movement and really hammer home the message of voluntary movement. We would click for behaviour ie. more speed or a nice head or body shape, you might then offer the food/reinforcer ahead of the horse. Although you clicked for behaviour, the horse has to walk (another behaviour) to acquire the reinforcer.
Can you think of any times you’ve clicked for action and fed for position?
I hope you enjoy the video and I’ve given you some food for thought.